Why pick on Israel? This may be the best answer I have gotten yet; for it speaks to my own experience as someone who shambled along in Marty Peretz's train as he swung his pot of incense from side to side and we repeated after him. By Arie Brand at Richard Silverstein's site (thanks to Drubetskoy for the spot):
Zionist apologists often come up with an argument on selective indignation. Why pick on Israel, they argue, whereas there are worse things happening elsewhere. In Darfur, in Congo, in Sri Lanka…
I believe that something else is coming in here. And perhaps I can illustrate that with the French writer Julien Benda’s account of his main reason for becoming an active “Dreyfusard”. It was not, he says, because Dreyfus’ personal fate touched him very much. It was rather because he couldn’t stomach the fact that General Mercier tried to impose the “truth” “with his big sabre”.
Something similar explains a lot of anti-Israel activism, I believe. What happens in Darfur is terrible and so is the mess in Congo. The Singhalese army is poised to eradicate the last of the Tamil Tigers. But neither the Sudanese nor the Sri Lankan government, or one of the warlords of Congo, has set up a string of PR offices around the world and has thousands of pens at their command to ‘explain’ to the world that what they are doing is entirely justified and that, in fact, black is white.
People get angry about human rights violations but they get even more angry about being systematically lied to. Human rights violations generally happen to other people and unless one personally witnesses one of these one’s concern remains a bit academic. But being lied to happens to (pre)activists personally and that arouses their rage and keeps it going. Mendacious propaganda, and being submitted to it, constitutes an assault on one’s personal dignity.
That is why I believe Israeli propaganda to be in the long run quite self defeating. Those who have been lied to for years wake up one day and are enraged about having been fooled for so long. It happened to me and I don’t believe that my experience was unique.
So let those hasbara warriors come. I have only one request: let them have a minimum of sophistication pullease because there is no satisfaction in rebutting the ‘arguments’ of the inept clods who seem to prevail in that camp.
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{ 18 comments }
Well-observed.
/agree otto
This is my own experience exactly. The longer you fool people, or help them fool themselves, the more angry they are when they finally acknowledge to themselves that they have been suckers. If the Lobby were smart, they would repackage their PR, now that it is obvious that American awareness is inexorably awakening.
"Mendacious propaganda, and being submitted to it, constitutes an assault on one’s personal dignity."
13 little words that say so much. Let them be heard and repeated in the press room, in the faculty senates, in the Halls of Congress. Let's get back to following the truth, wherever it may lead us, and not tolerating error any longer.
And rather than exploding in rage with the realization, let's each of these places establish little informal truth and reconciliation commissions, to sort out the truth from the lies, hold people accountable, but without the Anti-Semitic part. And I use "Anti-Semitic" in its traditional racist meaning, not the mendacious way in which opposition to murderous Israeli and Neocon policies has been smeared in recent years.
Witty still does not get this, your childhood buddy. He thinks he can always hoodwinked the dumb goyim. He sure has a lot of support for his POV, thanks to how little information has been given to the American people by those who call the shots in the MSM. If the Lobby and Witty were smart, given their agenda of saving Israel as an insurance policy for diaspora Jews with the high premiums paid
by unintentionally ignorant goys, the Lobby, including Witty, would not merely repackage their PR, but actually 'fess up' and set out the truth, and let the chips fall where they may–but that would
involve giving USA goys the benefit of the doubt that they will be fair, given all that has happened in their name and in light of the Shoah.
You do get though the oddness of the Arab League defending the president of Sudan, insisting that the ICC not try him.
Citizen,
You do not support your argument by misrepresenting my views. You don't know what I think, or why. Why not acknowledge that, and instead address what is presented?
I consistently argue for the Arab League proposal as far as definitions of sovereignty, and for the rule of law applied in a color-blind manner for ALL contested title claims, most by Palestinians in Israel and settlements, and some by Jews in the West Bank.
I know that you disagree with my preference for financial settlement to perfect title on land that Israelis now reside. I know that you disagree with my sympathy for those settlers that would be forcefully dispossessed by the application of "remove all the settlement", but I am NOT in the business of suggesting punitive measures.
And, I object to demonization. I don't do it. And, I contest it being done to others.
I criticize actions and policies, and INCLUDE criticism of Hamas, because I observe that they effect a great deal, and are far more than mere victims.
Phil,
Your comment on the American Conservative interview was informative. You described your focus on Israel as an obsession.
Richard, we all know what you 'think,' if it can be dignified by that name. It's mental drool, and it is monotonous in the extreme. It never varies in the slghtest, nor does it ever contain any real information whatever.
Yep…the Black is White fury describes it.
Since I started following this 7 years ago, every black is white, every lie, by the jews/zionist/politicans/media just increased my fury. Every comment I make is just a way of expelling that anger.
When I first started researching this it was to prove to myself there was more to it than I knew and the US couldn't possibily be supporting and complict in Israel's actions. It was inconceivable to me then.
Then it was that our congress/WH couldn't possibly be selling out America for Israel.
Then it was that the jews, given their history, couldn't possibily be undermining American's interest and destroying themselves here for Israel.
But what I found instead was indisputable evidence that all this was indeed exactly what was happening.
Richard, with all due respect, your remark about the Arab League is telling: the League in general is offered nowhere near the endless number of high profile forums to make or explain their positions (however repugnant), unlike those who support Israel's questionable actions, which are emblazoned on the editorial pages of every major U.S. paper almost reflexively.
Peter,
The Arab League should be offered forums to make their proposal.
Then they would be on multiple record, with the opportunity of press to inquire as to specifics.
Getting back to Arie Brand's point, I think he's right. I know that's my driving motivation. Objectively speaking the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is like a lot of other human rights situations, with the dominant power stomping on the weaker side, and with the weaker side fighting back, often with immoral methods. So why get angrier than with, say, the situation in Sri Lanka? The biggest reason is that the dominant side in the I/P conflict is a Western power and we are forever bombarded with ludicrous propaganda about how just and noble and forbearing they are. I called it ludicrous, but I believed it for a number of years.
Let's look at how the Jews rationalize away all responsibility for their own and Israel's actions by blaming instead anti semitism as the age old hatred that is the culprit in the world's opinion of Jews and Israel. This is a perfect example.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heidi-kingstone/anti-semitism-without-ant_b_178270.HTML
Heidi Kingston
Posted April 1, 2009 | 10:33 AM (EST)
Anti-Semitism Without Anti-Semites
Antisemitism in Europe is running at 1930s levels. But there are no anti-semites, only anti-Zionists.
Rowan Laxton was watching news of Israeli military activity in Gaza on television while working out on an exercise bike at his central London gym. What happened next unnerved fellow gym patrons: "F-ing Israelis. F-ing Jews," he screamed repeatedly, interspersing his rant with demands for Israeli troops to be "wiped off the face of the earth". He was still bellowing when the police arrived several minutes later to arrest him on a charge of inciting religious hatred.
This bizarre episode is worth recording for two reasons. First, because it is an example, albeit extreme, of how anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have become conflated. Second, because the 47-year-old ranter is not a low-life Jew-hater who had just crawled out from under an antediluvian rock. Rowan Laxton is a high-ranking British diplomat, a former deputy ambassador to Afghanistan and now head of the South Asia Group at the Foreign Office (currently suspended), reporting directly to his (Jewish) boss, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
****Note in this paragraph how she implies that it is anti semites who have attached their jew hatred to Israel.As if the Jews at large really have nothing to do with Israel's actions.
The sad fact of this little episode is that the hateful sentiments articulated in that London gym are now common currency across Europe. Anti-Semitism is said to be running at 1930s levels. Last month, CNN used footage of anti-Israeli protesters in London to illustrate hatred of Israel in the Arab and Muslim world, prompting one observer to note that, "the mythical Arab Street now reaches deep into Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid".
Europe is overflowing with Rowan Laxtons, educated, sophisticated, cultured, civilised and urbane. What made his outburst a minor cause célèbre is that high-ranking European diplomats are usually smart enough — and controlled enough — to speak their anti-Semitism in private, and in more nuanced language.
****Note once again she blames Laxton outburst on his being a closet anti semite instead of a person motivated by fury at Israel's attack on Gaza.
But a conjunction of events is accelerating the return of Europe's oldest hatred across the political and the socio-economic spectrum. There is a deepening sense of political uncertainty over European integration, economic dislocation caused by the global financial crisis, profound social change, and the absence of a political will to oppose the substantial minority of radicalised Islamists among the 18-million-strong Muslim population of Europe (ten times the size of Europe's Jewish inhabitants). Not least, there is a profound, widespread loathing of Israel.
***** Oh yes, a 'conjunction of events' is bringing out the anti semities, Muslims in Europe and Europe's refusal to do anything about them, financial conditions. But notice not a mention of Israel''s own actions and the jewish support of them in this loathing of Israel'.
The fact that we are able to understand the causes and rationalise the toxic phenomenon does not make this slow-motion car-crash less compelling to observe. Neo-Nazi anti-Semitism is not new to Europe, but the casual, pervasive "high-class" anti-Semitism — from the patrician boardrooms of Swiss banks to the bawdy shower rooms of the House of Lords — is discomfiting to Jews.
It is particularly discomfiting to those who thought they had, at last, made themselves socially digestible. They believed they had transcended their origins, penetrated the barrier that separated their fathers from polite society and been granted unlimited access to the "mainstream." They were wrong. And a succession of polling organisations is telling them so.
*****Here she implies that jews have worked to assimilate themselves into the mainstream and no matter how hard the poor jews try , anti semitism always get them.No acknowledgement of how jews may have put them themselves into the financial minstream, but still remain tribal politically and centered around Israel instead of the country they live in.
A study conducted by the Pew organisation last September told them that 25 per cent of Germans and 20 per cent of Frenchmen are still infected by anti-Semitism. In Spain, which has virtually no Jews but which boasts Europe's most virulently anti-Israel media and political establishment, the figure rises to 46 per cent.
More recently, a poll conducted in seven European countries by the US-based Anti-Defamation League between December 2008 and January 2009, found that 31 per cent of respondents blame Jews working in the financial sector for the economic meltdown, while 58 per cent acknowledge that their antipathy toward Jews has increased in line with their hostility toward Israel.
There is more. Nearly one-half said they believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their home country, 44 per cent said it is "probably true" that Jews make too much of the Holocaust, while 23 per cent say they blame Jews for the death of Jesus. Overall, 40 per cent of the European respondents believe Jews exercise overweening power in the business world, a figure that rises to more than 50 per cent in judenrein Spain, Poland and Hungary.
The concept of "anti-Semitism without Jews" is not new. It was, indeed, a defining characteristic of the old East European Soviet bloc, which has remained virulently anti-Semitic long after its Jewish population had been destroyed in the Holocaust.
But no sooner had we got our head around the concept of "anti-Semitism without Jews" than the new anti-Semitism has produced a new concept: "Anti-Semitism without Anti-Semites."
The father of the phrase is the German writer Henryk Broder, and the circumstance of its birth was, appropriately, the interior committee of the German Bundestag, to which Broder was giving evidence.
The supposedly non-existent anti-Semites are the phalanx of "progressive" academics, journalists and politicians who express unlimited hatred of Israel and would boycott the state out of existence but vehemently reject the suggestion that they are anti-Semitic.
Polite, sophisticated, educated, cultured Europeans have altered their vocabulary. Today they speak of "Zionists" and "lobby" rather than "Jews" and "conspiracy."
The words have changed, but the meaning retains a chilling familiarity
*** LOL, so the last 9 paragraphs are the usual everyone is a anti semite regardless of the words they use and their specific complaints. And there can be no reason for and nothing the jews have done that could possibly justify people's disgust with and the world's opinion of Jews who support Israel and Israel itself.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Did I say these are the stupidest people on earth before? I think I did.
What the Jews and Israel supporters use, as we who went to Jesuit universities were schooled in year after year, is called "Simplistic" propaganda. It is not sophisticated at all, it repeats only one idea to draw only one conclusion. The reason the jews never actually 'debate' the issue is because their entire arguement and reasoning rest on only one 'Simple' reason for all criticism and dislike of jews and Israel. Whether it is this article's author or the more well known zionist public figures screeds, their positions all always the same "Simplistic" propaganda….everything is anti semitism.
The reason for Israel is anti semitism,the reason for criticism of Israel is anti semitism, the reason for criticizing jews is anti semitism. It's a circle in which everything is anti semitism.
There are two huge mistakes people make..the first is thinking they are smarter than everyone else….the second is assuming other people are smarter than you are so you don't questions them….both beliefs can be fatal.
For the zionist and some jews the first one is always their Waterloo.
It certainly does remind one of Stalinism.
Well, this thread is going nowhere–yet another waste of time.
Not only do they have such offices, but they stand prepared to label a bigots those who publicly express a rejection of the narratives they offer to "explain" Israel's misdeeds to the uninitiated. And they don't stop at merely branding their critics as bigots within the context of the debate in question, they keep a list of people from past such encounters to delegitimize in public life, and should such a person rise out of obscurity or improbably be nominated to serve in government, they mobilize to the point of actually dictating staffing decisions to new U.S. administrations. All to constrain debate in order that their black-is-white-isms are not broadly exposed. Yeah, I think that is going to have an effect.
All the while the Arab sroll out the red carpet for the Butcher of the Sudan.
"People get angry about human rights violations but they get even more angry about being systematically lied to."
Is that why no one will give Phil a job?
shots in the dark from the retarded berel, as usual.
About the mechanics of moral outrage: it's notjust measured by the extent of the human suffering. Here's a rough and unnuanced scan:
Consider the damage done by the big tsunami of 2004. It caused huge human suffering, so where's the outrage? Why should there be moral outrage? It's a humanitarian disaster. It can feel horribly unfair but because the factor responsibility and guilt is missing (or less obvious actually) it doesn't make your blood boil.
Next case, the violence in Darfur has is a bit similar to a natural disaster – let's say it's half way.
a completely disintegrated society doesn't have the same feeling of responsibility to it.
One could wonder whether there's a also a trace of racism in this thought.
The situation in Sudan can still really manage to really make you mad, eg because of the inertia of the developed world, because there's so little action to stop it.
What about the case of brutally suppressing an uprising, killing many?
Here there is a concept at work of the ruler who is cruel but if you adapt you'll be fairly alright, a bit like 'tough love'.
Macchiavelli once wrote "keep your hand off other people’s property; for men are quicker to forget the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance."
That might well be, and it's not about human greed. The first fits a cruel way of maintaining order, the second is not about order but about theft, which is much more unfair. At least it's possible to react to it that way.
Israel is a real catalog of things that piss off people.
- partisan apologists with condescending reactions , claiming the critics are ignorant and misinformed, and insinuating antisemitism (so treating you unfairly)
- persistent large scale deception and disinformation
- a lot of people and mainstream media buying into the deception. Even Wikipedia isn't safe.
- playing the victim
- spreading blame around: the palestinians, the arabs, the critics
- belligerent militarism
- arrogance
- full moral awareness of what is happening
- cruelty
- stealing property
If there would just have been one theme, politicide on the Palestinians, it wouldn't push your buttons that much. Such a thing would be more "business as usual".
I think people get angry at the US for some of the same reasons. If you haven't gone through a phase of being really pissed off at the US foreign policy then you're ignorant – or very conservative.
Some people get stuck at that stage, which isn't very good. With mechanics, it's not that the arguments aren't valid but you don't want them to control you.
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