David Bromwich shares my criticism of the New York Times's article on the Israeli plans to take more land in east Jerusalem:
A few details warrant further notice in the Bronner-Kershner story on the urban-renewal-by-monument-making that Israel has used to advance the cause of the settler movement around Jerusalem. The state is converting areas captured in the 1967 war into national heritage sites. This act of annexation it supports by the cultural claim to have discovered "indisputable evidence of ancient Jewish life here." The aim is to ring the Old City with an aura (physically marked and certified) of sacred history that will make it impossible to divide.
Meanwhile, new housing will be built for Palestinians in areas conveniently "away from the historic sections."
The Times headline, "Parks Fortify Israel's Claim to Jerusalem," is a curious instance of euphemistic grammar. Parks, of course, don't fortify an argument, people do. The headline shirks the duty of honestly explaining the stratagem by which Israel has chosen to carve up Jerusalem; it transfers the responsibility for the deed to an abstract entity. The parks did it. What could Israel do but cooperate with the parks? The technical term for such sleight-of-hand and the logical fallacy it conveys, is personification, or anthropomorphism.
A larger but less noticeable offense is the personification of the Israeli and Palestinian "narratives," which are revealed to have distinct moral characters:
"In other words, while the Israeli narrative that guides the government plan focuses largely--although not exclusively--on Jewish history and links to the land, the Palestinian narrative heightens tensions, pushing the Israelis into a greater confrontational stance."
The Israeli narrative works by gentle and rational suasion. It guides. The Palestinian narrative, by contrast, is marked by unmistakable aggression. It pushes, heightens tensions, forces confrontation. The Times may award itself the available excuse that these oddities are merely the accidental signs of abridgment for the sake of conciseness. Just as everyone knows the Israelis are saying the parks support their claim, so everyone knows that the Israelis argue that their narrative has been guided by history, while the Palestinians reply that the Israeli stance is more confrontational than that. So, you see, the Palestinians move the pieces of the story around in a different way, much as one might push the pieces of a legal argument to advance one presentation or another. All these substitutions and transpositions are neutral and impartial-sounding, in themselves. Yet the result is not innocent.
Not innocent?!? It's propaganda, pure and simple. It enables the war crime of using the illegal occupation of another's land as a means to take it over and expel the other from it. It is another is a long series of dressing up ethnic cleansing in good civic clothing – we're building parks! Aren't we exceptional! they're throwing stones, shooting rockets, sending suicide bombers. [Aren't they animals?] This ongoing Israeli aggression is only possible due to enabling by American Zionist sympathizers. Every word of it leads straight to Gaza and the deaths of 300 children. Time to cut losses and make a deal. Because it all goes downhill since Gaza.
I thought the article was very Witty.
Check out Glenn Greenwald's latest, teeing up the impending release by Iran of journalist Roxana Saberi, to knock the stuffing out of a story about the recent history of the US arresting, detaining, and even torturing journalists, in Iraq and Guantanamo, without due process. Read the whole thing here http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?source=rs... Some highlights: "Beginning in 2001, the U.S. held Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj for six years in Guantanamo with no trial of any kind, and spent most of that time interrogating him not about Terrorism, but about Al Jazeera. For virtually the entire time, the due-process-less, six-year-long imprisonment of this journalist by the U.S. produced almost no coverage — let alone any outcry — from America's establishment media, other than some columns by Nicholas Kristof (though, for years, al-Haj's imprisonment was a major media story in the Muslim world). As Kristof noted when al-Haj was finally released in 2007: "there was never any real evidence that Sami was anything but a journalist"; "the interrogators quickly gave up on asking him substantive questions" and "instead, they asked him to spy on Al-Jazeera if he was released;" and "American officials, by imprisoning an Al-Jazeera journalist without charges or meaningful evidence, have done far more to damage American interests in the Muslim world than anything Sami could ever have done."" . . . . "Many people scoff at the notion that the American media propagandizes the American citizenry, but here one sees the vivid essence of that process. Our establishment media loves to point to and loudly condemn the behavior of other governments as proof of how tyrannical and evil they are — look at those Iranian mullah-fanatics imprisoning journalists/look at those primitive, corrupt, lawless Iraqis and their "culture of impunity"/look at the UAE and their tolerance of torture — while completely ignoring, when they aren't justifying, identical behavior by our own government."
Kershner and Bonner's reporting is almost always anodyne. You come away somewhat mystified; the situation is impenetrable. Better go to the sports pages where you can get some facts. It is high level propaganda designed to sequester the American citizen from the truth. Bonner, incidentally, a few years ago wrote a hatchet job review of Carter's book in the Times, which he described as "peculiar;" he went on to express outrage that Carter should use the term apartheid to describe the conditions in the Occupied Territories. But Haaretz had and been using the term to describe the situation in the West Bank for years. Willed naievete: interesting psychological condition .
Saberi is lucky she was an American. Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian journalist, was beaten to death by the Iranian police. Outside of Canada, few have even heard of her.
These expositions of advanced, sophisticated propaganda are incredibly instructive because they force the average person to question what they THINK they know. How much of the contemporary Establishment narrative and even history itself that we believe to be true is actually a false consciousness woven by heavily Jewish media outlets like the New York Times (or other newspaper chains, or Hollywood, or Madison Avenue)? How have our values and morals been similarly shaped? And has organized Jewry accomplished this virtual MSM-narrative monopoly on its own, or did it require gentile partners of similar mindset, similar mentality, similar grudges against, for example, Islam, or Christianity, or the libertarian Founders and their advocacy of strictly Constitutionally limited government?
It seems to me, those suffering from the atheistic-materialist mentality that seeks to utilize corrupted big government or cronyism and monopolies to get their own way and bypass and erode structural limits and limitations designed to flout the greedy and the pathologically ambitious and their eternal quest for control of hearts and minds have a lot in common with the Zionists, whether they’re Jew or gentile and of the Left or Right. How many Western gentiles today need to be de-programmed and de-Judaized as a result of decades of similar propaganda spoon fed to them by mass media since birth?
We must not mince words on the following point. Ethnic Ashkenazim have no connection to Palestine beyond the mythological. In stolen and occupied Palestine they are racist, murderous, genocidal invaders, interlopers and thieves. From Ancient to Modern Judaism points to my online essays on the subject.
The New York Times = New Pravda. Don't remember where I first read it, but it's oh so true. (Incidentally, it's 'concision', not 'conciseness' :) )
Anyone want to assess this forum? http://www.activistchat.com/phpBB2/index.php Seems like a hasbara network. Along the lines of the megaphone shenanigans. It's essentially a pro-Israel, pro-American, anti-Islamic Iran, pro-Shah board.
We must not mince words. Ethnic Ashkenazim are totally connected to Israel, Judea, and Jerusalem. Any one stating otherwise is a follower of the Palestinian Nazi party or an idiot. Most likely both.
I agree with Jacobwolfen. Similarly All Germans are totally connected to the ancient Aryans and are entitled to more lebensraum in the East. Any one stating otherwise is a follower of Zionism or an idiot. Most likely both.
Rich and compelling.
Third Fraud: Longing for Zion
First Fraud – Denying the Holocaust. Second Fraud. – Denying that Jews are actually Jews.
Himmler would think that, but as he was certifiably insane, like his mentor, anything he states can be discounted.
Wasn't meant to be. Perhaps this helps with your short attention span?