Israel: A Country Where The Army Commander and An Arab (Terrorist Agent) Work Out at the Same Gym

By Barry Rubin

An ounce of reality is worth a ton of propaganda. Every day we are deluged with material about how horrible Israel is. For example, a petition to a Canadian film festival—signed by Alice Walker, Jane Fonda, and Danny Glover—oppose including films on Tel Aviv because Israel is allegedly an “apartheid” state.

The director of the festival rejected their demand but agreed that Tel Aviv was “contested ground.”

So now it is becoming acceptable in polite Western cultural circles not only to agree with the Palestinian demand for a West Bank-Gaza State with its capital in east Jerusalem but also to consider that maybe all of Israel should be wiped off the map.

I don’t know what films about Tel Aviv are being shown but I’ll bet one of them is a recent production about a homosexual love affair between a Palestinian and an Israel in which the Palestinians are portrayed quite sympathetically.

Now David Hornik points out this amazing detail. Recently, an Israeli Arab plotted as an agent of Hizballah to assassinate the Israeli military’s chief of staff, the highest-ranking officer.

But how did the would-be assassin stake out the general? Simple. They belong to the same health club where they both work out! Imagine any other country where the head of a military does his exercise at a public gym, much less one that isn't so elite that anyone can join . And so much for that "apartheid" nonsense.

Oh, and isn’t Hizballah that group which President Barack Obama’s terrorism advisor says isn’t a terrorist group, and the one the British government is starting to engage with as a normal political party?

Here are the references for the gym story, kindly supplied by David Hornik:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1111504.html
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145167282&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145167245&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3769627,00.html

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.