No Shock Here

Hatred, like lust (see the post on that below) can be obsessive. Just as someone who is "in love" cannot help but constantly think of the target of his desire, wondering how to please that person and win their affection, so too the person "in hate" is consumed with thoughts of the target of his attention, spending each waking moment thinking about the hurt he can cause to this person.

Sometimes there's a good reason for such negative feeling, but usually if one traces the sequence of events back, the greatest hatreds are found to have started from simple events. A rejection, a loss in a contest, a feeling of hurt pride. These are the kindling from which the venomous fire bursts forth.

There's an old proverb which is relevant here as well: "Living well is the best revenge." Nothing fans the flames of hatred more than the object of that hatred doing well, succeeding in life. When one is convinced that a certain person is worthless, meaningless, fit for nothing but scorn and derision, it's hard to reconcile those beliefs with a countering reality. All this does is increase the hatred.

Perhaps that's why post-Zionists and the Israeli left hate Israel and Judaism so much. According to all the theories they have espoused over the last century in their various forms, nothing that exists in Israel today should. Judaism is an old, archaic religion best suited for life in the ghettos of 18th Poland. It should never have survived the birth of "the new Jew", the Zionist Israeli socialist who was to replace the bent-over shteibl Yid. Yet looking around, one cannot help but marvel at how the culture of Zionist socialism has begun its inexorable exit from the stage of history, its role in our national rebirth done, while at the same time the numbers and power of religious Jews of all types continue to increase.

But further, Israel is its worthy of failure. Built on another people's land at that other people's expense, it should have ceased to exist under the weight of the immortality of that fact. If only the average Israeli was "enlightened" he would see how horrible the idea of a Jewish state is and emigrate immediately to Florida or Toronto. How could it be that millions of Israelis not only have no intention of leaving their Land, but feel proud of their state's accomplishments and have no wish to see them come to an end?

And perhaps this is the reason for Haaretz's constant and vitriolic hatred of the state it purports to be a major newspaper of. As detailed in Isi Leibler's column in the Jerusalem Post today, there are biases and then there is Haaretz. Few people forget that Dan Rather reported on a fraudlent document that made untrue accusations about George Bush. Many, however, do not remember his answer when he was confronted by this: "I don't regret if because even if it isn't true, knowing the way Bush is, it could have been." For an answer like this, Rather finished his career on a sour note. Yet one must believe that he would not have ever brought the document to light if he had known it to be a forgery beforehand.

Not so with Haaretz. Consider this piece from the column:

According to The Jerusalem Post, at the recent Russian Limmud Conference in Moscow, Landau, one of the few non-Russian-speaking participants, dropped a bombshell. He stunned those present by boasting that his newspaper had "wittingly soft-pedalled" alleged corruption by Israeli political leaders including prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, when, in the opinion of Haaretz, the policies of those leaders were advancing the peace process.
When participants challenged him concerning the morality of such an approach, Landau responded with the extraordinary assertion that "more immorality happens every day at a single roadblock [in Judea and Samaria] than in all the scandals put together."
He then unashamedly assured those present that Haaretz was ready to repeat the process in order "to ensure that Olmert goes to Annapolis."
Even former Bolsheviks in the audience must have gasped at such views, openly stated, which incorporated all the hallmarks of the Stalinist era.
It is surely scandalous for the top editor of what purports to be a reputable and prestigious daily newspaper to publicly proclaim - and take pride in - having deliberately "soft-pedalled" and possibly even covered up acts of corruption by senior political leaders in order to promote his own political agenda, and, moreover, boast that his paper would continue to do so in the future.

Everyone knows that you should take the news with a grain of salt. Reporters and editors generally choose the stories they think are worthy of coverage according to their own biases, recognized or not. They report on the "facts" according to those biases and it's up to the individual news consumer to look for a variety of reports and make his own judgement. Something like this, however, precludes a thinking person from using Haaretz as a serious source of information in the future.

Living well is the best revenge. As long as Torah Judaism thrives, as long at the State of Israel, the first flowering of our redemption, continues to grow and propser, our enemies and their allies at Haaretz will continue to hate. That is the surest sign of our success.