In her July 30, 2009 editorial, O’Malley for the umpteenth time displays her obsession for all things Jewish and Israeli.  Honestly, it has come time for her to seriously consider converting to Judaism.  It would give her license for her obsession, and it might paradoxically help dissipate some of her inner psychological turmoil.  We are going to throw out a hypothesis--but we stress that we do not as yet have any proof--that O’Malley probably absorbed a lot of nasty anti-Semitism as a child, perhaps on her daddy’s knee.  As she later in life gravitated toward hard left politics the anti-Semitism of her childhood came into sub-conscious dissonance with her politically correct politics, resulting in the mish-mash of nonsense we read almost weekly in her paper.  Let’s quote from her editorial as liberally as we dare, since we remain under constant threat of suit by O’Malley for copyright infringement, and who knows what else:

Even though close to half of the current citizens of Israel are opposed to its current course, just as many of us here were in this country under Bush, they fear that they can’t do anything about it any more. They are in despair. 

This shows O’Malley’s willful ignorance of the current Israeli political scene.  I think that what she may be referring to is that not all political parties are currently within the government.  Chiefly, Kadima is out and Likud and Labor are in.  There is very, very little separating these three main parties today.  The big dividing line as of a few months ago when Likud formed a government was that Likud did not recognize a Palestinian right to a state of their own, while Labor and Kadima did.  However, Likud has now formally accepted the two-state solution, bringing it into complete alignment with Labor and Kadima, as well as with the United States.   Further, in a dramatic move, the Likud has also dismantled almost all of the roadblocks on the West Bank.  Israelis are in general despondent about the peace process, but the despair is not aimed at their own government, but at the Palestinian body politic.  The two main Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatah, vie with each other over whose rhetoric against Israel can be the most extreme, while the Palestinian Authority is virtually impotent to implement a real peace agreement, should one ever be negotiated.  Becky cites talks with various Jewish and Israeli friends who, to the extent that they are being properly represented by Becky, sound like they belong to the peace party, Meretz.  However, Meretz does not represent almost half of Israelis, rather, it won only about three per cent of the vote in the recent election.  Even then, Meretz fully supported the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza at its outset, though it announced its disillusionment after the conflict dragged on for several weeks. For more on this topic see here.

The publisher has jokingly suggested that we should auction off our position on Israel. A bid of something like $200,000, perhaps, could guarantee no mention of Israel in the Planet for six months. Unfortunately, a large percentage of our reporting staff and columnists might quit if we did that. We’re still working on shifting from being advertiser-supported to reader-supported, but that’s an uphill struggle.

No one has suggested that the Berkeley Daily Planet should never publish anything about the Israel/Palestine conflict if it wants to.  In fact, we recently awarded the Berkeley Daily Planet a coveted kudo for publishing an issue devoid of hate speech, despite the fact the issue in question (July 23, 2009) contained a number of Israel/Palestine pieces.  However, the July 23 issue is an exception.  The rule regarding Israel/Palestine at the Berkeley Daily Planet is dishonesty, imbalance, obsession, hate, and willful ignorance. 

It’s people like the signers [anti-Israel Jews] who will eventually save Israel, if it’s still possible to save it.

There are 192 member states of the United Nations.  The very survival of only one needs to be debated in the pages of Berkeley Daily Planet.  We have to say that after all that O’Malley has written or published on the topic we have a strong sense of where she would like the story to end—and it ain’t pretty.