{"id":183163,"date":"2015-02-11T07:24:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T12:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/02\/11\/in-addition-to-everything-else-benjaman-netanyahu-could-not-find-his-ass-with-both-hands\/"},"modified":"2015-02-11T07:24:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T12:24:00","slug":"in-addition-to-everything-else-benjaman-netanyahu-could-not-find-his-ass-with-both-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/02\/11\/in-addition-to-everything-else-benjaman-netanyahu-could-not-find-his-ass-with-both-hands\/","title":{"rendered":"In Addition to Everything Else, Benjaman Netanyahu Could Not find his Ass with both Hands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Netanyahu decided on some political meddling on the judging panel for the Israel prize for Literature, and in response, the judging panel resigned en mass<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Education Ministry fears the Israel Prize in literature may not be granted this year, after the entire judges panel resigned this week to protest efforts by the Prime Minister\u2019s Office to intervene in its composition.<\/span>

<\/span>Now literary lions are likely to shun the panel, making it hard to establish a replacement, ministry sources warned.<\/span>

<\/span>In an unusual move, the Prime Minister\u2019s Office vetoed two people originally nominated as judges for the prize \u2013 professors Avner Holtzman and Ariel Hirschfeld. After Haaretz reported this on Sunday, all five of the people ultimately appointed to the panel resigned, to protest \u201cthe clear politicization of the prize and the vote of no confidence in the professionals\u2019 professional judgment,\u201d as one of the five, Prof. Nissim Calderon, put it.<\/span>

<\/span>Moreover, Prof. Yigal Schwartz, who was one of the candidates for the prize in the field of literary research, announced Tuesday night that he is withdrawing his candidacy in protest.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cThis is an unparalleled scandal,\u201d said Schwartz, a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and editor-in-chief of the Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir publishing house. \u201cI\u2019m withdrawing my candidacy and urge other candidates to do the same. This isn\u2019t a mistake; it\u2019s a continuation of Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu\u2019s deliberate policy of undermining Israel\u2019s elites to gain votes from other groups. This is sabotage that it\u2019s impossible not to oppose. Even this institution, the Israel Prize, which had remained untainted, they have sabotaged.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cNo such thing has ever happened before,\u201d Calderon agreed.<\/span>

<\/span>Tuesday, it emerged that Netanyahu\u2019s office had also vetoed a nominee to the judges\u2019 panel for the Israel Prize in film \u2013 producer Chayim Sharir. Another member of that panel, producer Ram Loevy, has also resigned in protest.<\/span>

<\/span>Over the past few weeks, Education Ministry staffers had repeatedly warned Netanyahu\u2019s aides against intervening in the panel\u2019s composition, but the bureau dismissed these warnings, they said.<\/span>

<\/span>Now, the ministry is awaiting \u201cinstructions from the prime minister\u2019s bureau\u201d on how to fill the judges\u2019 panel, they said.<\/span>

<\/span>Aside from Calderon, the other judges who resigned were Prof. Nurith Gertz, Prof. Ziva Ben-Porat, Prof. Ephraim Hazan and Dr. Uri Hollander. Author Gail Hareven had resigned earlier, after learning independently of the veto imposed on Hirschfeld and Holtzman.<\/span>

<\/span>In their resignation letter, the five scholars said the intervention by Netanyahu\u2019s bureau constituted \u201cpoliticization of Israel\u2019s most important prize, which is supposed to be granted solely on the basis of professional and artistic considerations,\u201d and raised fear that extraneous considerations would taint the award.<\/span>

<\/span>At first, the bureau declined to say why it suddenly decided to veto Hirschfeld and Holtzman after the two had already begun work. Tuesday, it said in a statement that it \u201cdecided to review the panel\u2019s composition\u201d after discovering that Hirschfeld supported refusal to do army service. The statement did not say why Holtzman was nixed.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that Bibi is minister of education in addition to being PM.<\/p>\n

He took the portfolio when the previous minister, and his party, left the coalition government.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu is claiming that the panel contains, “Too many anti-Zionist extremists<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

I call bullsh%$ on this.<\/p>\n

If Netanyahu really had issues, they could have been presented 2-3 months ago, at the start of the process.<\/p>\n

This is not a firm stand on his principles (as if he had any), this is yet another case of him fomenting conflict for political gain:   He is going for the Nixonian option of campaigning against academics to create the illusion that he cares for the ordinary Israeli.<\/p>\n

Or, to quote Spiro Agnew, he is playing the, “Effete intellectual snob,” card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Netanyahu decided on some political meddling on the judging panel for the Israel prize for Literature, and in response, the judging panel resigned en mass: The Education Ministry fears the Israel Prize in literature may not be granted this year, after the entire judges panel resigned this week to protest efforts by the Prime Minister\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991,968,1159,1175,978,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academe","category-education","category-israel","category-literature","category-politics","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}