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In 1993, The Oslo Peace Accords had the entire world abuzz. The result of a group of Israelis who defied Israeli law against negotiating with the PLO, the Accords were supposed to spell the end of the Israeli-Arab dispute once and for all, and set up an Arab Palestinian state within five years. Arafat was brought out of Tunis and even armed by Israel under the gaze of the US State Department like a proud mother beaming over her two children. One caveat at the time was that the Palestinian leadership had to renounce terror and arrest terrorists to make sure the process worked. Professor Menachem Klein of the Bar-Ilan Political Studies Department was one of those Israelis who helped instigate the Oslo Accords and promoted the “peace agreement” that led to so many dead Jews in its wake over the last fifteen years.

Today, perhaps it is his tenure as a senior lecturer in Political Science that allows Menachem Klein to devote so much of his time to constantly repeating the mistakes of Oslo, of meeting with Palestinian “intellectuals” and others who practice the lying more commonly found in the soulk that so many Israeli “intellectuals” like Menachem Klein find so persuasive. It might be laughable were it not so deadly, with over 2, 500 Israelis murdered thus far (and an even greater number of Palestinian Arabs) after fifteen years of the same repetitious nonsense. Klein still fancies himself a peace negotiator and activist intellectual in Israel’s academic community, getting attention in the press, and even has been an adviser to Ehud Barak, so some politicians listen to him and seek out his opinion on a peace process. But, the question is “Why?” What does it take for the average Israeli, let alone leaders like Barak, to see this emperor has no clothes? Simply put, Menachem Klein is an intellectual elitist who refuses to see any danger in the course he promotes in appeasing the Palestinian Arabs. His mania to do this has extended to his being filmed among and supported by some of the worst anti-Semites in the United States.

When the Oslo process was beginning in 1993, Klein was asked what would Israel do if the Palestinian Arabs started murdering Jews contrary to the agreement? Klein’s reply to this question was “We do not expect the Palestinian side to violate this…they CANNOT. They agreed to that.” Klein, the Israeli political scientist, supposedly smarter than the average bear, at least among the academic elite, could rest assured the Arabs told him they’d stick to agreements. After all, among the civilized of Israel’s university system, an agreement is sacrosanct, unless it is broken by the Palestinian Arabs in which case the same Israeli intellectuals will say it’s Israel’s fault all over again, not the fault of intellectuals like Klein for being naļve, or sticking to a personal agenda that cannot work.

OK, so everyone had high hopes at Oslo. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, it’s your fault; but fool me twice it’s my fault.” But in Menachem Klein’s case it’s “Fool me until the Arabs get everything they want, no matter how many Israelis die in the process.” Klein isn’t just naļve; he’s a fifth column for Israel’s enemies both in the Middle East and America, a man who hates Jews, and he’ll go to as many symposiums worldwide as he can to be the Israeli who rubberstamps whatever is said by the anti-Semites.

When the Arabs continually and unabashedly violated nearly every clause of the Oslo Accords, what did Menachem Klein do? He went to Switzerland with other great alleged Israeli intellectuals and started the Geneva Accords, another revisit to negotiating with Arab partners who only negotiate in bad faith. In the process, Menachem Klein posited again that the Arabs, who without any embarrassment talk of dismantling Israel, were trying to make peace with Israel and that Israel was the one refusing to do so.

If you want a good laugh, read Menachem Klein’s explanations of the Geneva Accords. What is particularly amusing is Klein’s explaining that the average Israeli isn’t bright enough to understand the language used, so Klein has to translate. Such an attitude might also explain his continuance and promotion of policies that kill his fellow Israelis regularly by encouraging Israel’s enemies to continue the charade of seeking peace while murdering more Israelis, particularly Jews; after all, the common Israelis are just the unwashed masses that need the superior and enlightened guidance of Israeli academics and peace activists like, er, well, Menachem Klein to explain to them how to make peace with the Arabs, no matter how much the Arabs threaten to kill the Jews and their children.

In explaining the “logic” of the Geneva Accords, Klein tells us that documents that were not authorized by any governments are all the more valid because they were signed by “Palestinian ministers and deputy ministers, Fatah representatives to the Palestinian Legislative Council, senior officials, and academics.” Meanwhile, he continues by telling us that “Those Palestinians who hold official office declared that they are signing the accord as private individuals.” In other words, their agreement has no clout. But, Klein would have us believe, because the Palestinian population sees them signing, they will automatically renounce violence and Jew-killing and make a lasting peace. Klein actually has as much contempt for the average Palestinian as he does for the average Israeli too. It never occurs to him that the Arab on-the-street already knows the art of deception as much as his Arab leadership does. The only one who seems unaware of this fact is Menachem Klein, we are led to believe by his statements and actions.

But Klein still expects the Israeli public to understand the great intellectual meaning behind the Oslo, er, um, Geneva Accords or whatever “peace symposium” de jour he is working on that day. According to Klein “ The public, however, understands that without the approval of the Palestinian leadership, these individuals would not have been able to take such a dramatic step or even to have engaged in the Geneva negotiations. On the Israeli side, the signatories include Knesset members from the opposition parties, peace activists, writers, security personnel serving in the reserves, economists, and academics.”

Anyone who hasn’t learned after 60 years of bloody Arab terrorism, which only grew worse since Oslo, that the Arabs have no qualms about using peace as a ruse to open the back door to murdering and displacing Jews, has been living in a Never-Never Land. After all, it was Arafat at the UN who raised an olive branch in one hand and a gun in the other in the 1970’s. Nothing has changed since. Arafat later boasted at Durban of his Trojan Horse to dismantle Israel over time. Menachem Klein’s words and activities inexplicably suggest he’d be the first to tow the horse on wheels inside the gates and even glad to do so.

Klein also touches on Israeli security in a most cavalier manner: “The Palestinians have come to terms with Israel’s pursuit of almost 100 percent security, although in the course of the talks they could not understand how it is that this regional superpower perceives such a deep threat to its security. After all, the Palestinians are the weak side in the conflict and have suffered at the strong arm of Israel over the years. As the side that has incurred the heaviest losses, they were amazed by Israel’s deep-rooted sense of an existential threat to its security. They did not try to convince Israel that it is making a mountain out of a molehill but rather met Israel halfway on this issue.”

How amazingly intellectual of Klein to tell us that Israel’s requirement of 100% security is unreasonable. Does 95% security comprised of only Kassems dropping on day care centers in Sderot seem more logical to this intellectual? How about 90% with 12,000 germ-laced Hizballah missiles pointed at communities in the North by Arabs who are not even “Palestinians” but Iranian proxies? Is Menachem Klein really this obtuse?

But wait, there’s more:

According to Klein’s “logic” above, the Palestinians are “the weak side” in this conflict. Israel’s 6 million Jews and total population of 7 million being faced down daily by 250 million Muslims, including Iran, and unlimited petrodollars to promote war is the real threat behind the Palestinian movement against Israel, a threat so overwhelming it continually makes Israel make bad choices in any peace process just to relieve the unrelenting pressure. Arabs insist Israel has no right even to exist, that Jewish self-determination is anathema, that even the Temple Mount or Jewish presence in Jerusalem was never there. Israel simply wants to be left alone. But Klein’s reactions to all this is to try and appease the Arabs at every turn and see their “point of view” no matter how untruthful. Klein, when confronted with Arab denials of the existence of the Temple Mount being part of the biblical Jewish temple (despite archaeological evidence), claims he is an Orthodox Jew, then tangentially agrees with Arab denials by claiming the fourth temple is supposed to descend from the heavens, so cannot be claimed to be under the Al Aska Mosque!

So here we have PLO leaders who will say they are for peace in English or Hebrew then call for exterminating Israel in Arabic in the mosques and on television over and over again, signing agreements like the Geneva Accords with suckers from Israel’s “opposition parties” (like the Communist Party), “peace activists” (like pro- ISM activists funded by Arab and EU money from abroad), “writers” (who can’t seem to find enough fault with Israel’s treatment of the Arabs and thus find lucrative markets for books among the anti-Israel world crowd), “economists” (as if anyone can’t see a better economy if peace were genuinely possible) and, of course, those egghead “academics” like Menachem Klein who we are told are Israel’s academic elite who just know better. What an unbeatable combination!!! What a shame the rest of us Israelis aren’t as smart as Professor Menachem Klein!

But the fact is, whether we are talking about the Geneva Accords, or anything related to Israeli security, Poli Sci lecturer Menachem Klein couldn’t even negotiate buying a pair of underwear from the Arabs without them stealing his own pair off of him, nor, it seems, would he really care.

Further research reveals that Menachem Klein is also on the Board of Directors of B’tselem, along with Israel’s communist party leader Anat Biletzki and others from Israel’s communist party. B’tselem constantly claims that Israel commits atrocities against the Arabs, including complaining about home demolitions for terrorist cell activity or bomb making. B’tselem is frequently cited by Palestinian propaganda websites trying to drum up the attitude in the West that Israel commits unceasing atrocities against the Arabs. Meanwhile, the Jew-killing and blood libel goes on and on.

If we delve deeper in our research we learn that Klein is really a shill for those who seek the destruction of the Jewish state while only claiming to seek “peace”. For example, Arab Professors and anti-Zionist Israelis such as Amira Hass have used Klein’s ideas to back up Arab denial of Jewish claims to the land of Israel. Hass wrote in Alexander Cockburn’s virulently anti-Semitic website Counterpunch about Klein that “It was a few weeks after the outbreak of the Intifada. He [Klein] offered the solidly logical argument, that had Arafat really secretly plotted to eventually destroy the State of Israel, he would have accepted Barak's offers at Camp David, and proceeded from there, gradually, to his final goal. Arafat, wrote Klein, could not accept Barak's offer as a final deal, because he genuinely clung to the two states solution, along the borders of June the 4th, 1967.”

This guy Klein is a “political scientist” with tenure no less at Bar Ilan University?

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, since Bar Ilan also produced Professor Ariel Toaff, an Israeli academic on the government payroll who claimed he had proof that Medieval Jews really did use the blood of Christian children to make matzo among other European blood libels that Toaff claimed were true through his research. Even the eggheads in charge at Bar Ilan couldn’t accept that one. Menachem Klein as one of Bar Ilan’s resident fruitcakes can only take second place to Toaff, but like Avis, Klein is trying harder. The fact is, Arafat himself later claimed he turned down the deal because it did not include an unconditional right of return of any Arab who wanted to move within the Green Line and that it was only a step to taking all of Israel eventually. Nothing has changed since. Just ask Dennis Ross, formerly of the US State Department, who helped negotiate the deal.

But it’s Klein’s connections to the Saudi funded US organization the Council for the National Interest that is led by Paul Findley and James Abourezk, among some of the biggest openly avowed anti-Semites in the US and Washington that begins to show Klein is not even on the same planet as his fellow Israelis who want the Jewish state to survive. Klein is actually featured in a CNI video along with Abourezk that accuses Israel of seeking one ruling regime over the Palestinian Arabs that does not include a Palestinian state. He accuses Israel of establishing an “ethno-security regime.” He classifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an ethnic struggle-cum- border conflict, but nevertheless an ethnic conflict with the Palestinians oppressed by the Jews. He classifies Israel as a powerful minority ruling an Arab majority. Actual demographics show the opposite is true. Klein says that as an Israeli, as a Jew concerned with peace and justice, he is called to expose the reality of one state dominated by Israel, and Klein says a two state solution must be created on recognized 1967 borders, known as the Auschwitz Borders, accusing Israel of intransigence. Yet it is the Palestinian leadership and Hamas that claim in their charters and their media all of Israel must be an Arab dominated and primarily Muslim nation as the conclusion of any process. The CNI even supports Hamas.

The pondering question is “Is Klein being just an opportunist here or a quisling for anti-Semites, or is he really so naļve?” View the CNI video yourself in its entirety and see the answer is most likely the former. Klein’s appearance with the CNI is like a Jew speaking out in support of the goals of Nazis during World War II. Israelis who appear at similar symposiums worldwide claiming to talk peace, but secretly booked for pushing the Palestinian agenda are plentiful, but Menachem Klein seems to be among the most skilled of them all. That the CNI is revered in America by neo-Nazis and funded by the Saudis, something that isn’t revealed in the video, but something Klein must know forces us to ask what more would Menachem Klein need to divorce himself from such an organization, even if he really was just a starry-eyed peace activist? And to think former PM Ehud Barak used this guy as an adviser!!!

Menachem Klein has also appeared at symposiums with Arab flacks inside Israel such as Hanan Ashwari at locations such as the Alternative Information Center on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem which is headquarters for the International Solidarity Movement inside Israel and run by American anarchists under Palestinian leadership. The AIC claims to seek a two state solution, but a visit to their offices reveal copious literature calling all of Israel “occupied” and the unconditional right of return of the Arabs to anywhere in Israel. The ISM acts as human shields for terrorists by the admissions of its own leadership and its own training manuals, yet here we have Menachem Klein speaking before them and supporting their activities including attacking the Security Fence that keeps out terrorists. By the way, the ISM openly supports armed resistance by the Arabs to work in tandem with their activities as human shields for terrorists.

Klein also is intent of dividing Jerusalem between Israelis and the Arabs, only he runs with people whose activities suggest not an even division as much as removing Israeli sovereignty over the ancient Jewish city and making it “international” as was proposed back in 1948. Of course, the Arabs never accepted Jerusalem as being a divided city and when they had control over Jerusalem from 1948-67 they turned Jewish shrines and cemeteries into latrines, and disallowed Christian and Jewish worship in the ancient Jewish city. Today, Klein uses the rhetoric of the PLO, ISM and Hamas by accusing Israel’s Jews of “colonialism” for retaining control over Jerusalem (incidentally, since 1967 Israel has permitted all religions in the city to worship freely). The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) did a write up on how Klein spoke at a Jerusalem 2050 seminar at MIT where dividing Jerusalem was urged by him. What’s more, “in a November 20, 2003 article published on the Jordan-based Jerusalem Forum Web site (www.jerusalemites.org ), Klein accused Israel of following a ‘classical colonial approach’ in eastern Jerusalem - a most bizarre contention considering Jerusalem’s historical and contemporary status as the political and spiritual capital of the Jewish world, and the nearly continuous presence of Jews in the city since biblical times. But, not limiting himself to accusing Israel of colonialism in Judaism’s holiest city, he also charged Israel with practicing apartheid in eastern Jerusalem - another absurd charge, not least because Israel offers full citizenship to Arabs in that part of the city,” according to another report by CAMERA.

Please tell us: What makes Menachem Klein different from any of the members in the ISM or their leaders and handlers in the PLO and Hamas?

His Ph.D?

We think not.

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Op-Ed articles appearing on IsraCampus.Org.il are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the opinion of IsraCampus.Org.il