Tons of people have commented on Max Blumenthal's video from Jerusalem. It's about time that Adam Horowitz and I, who run this site, offer our views of the matter. My response is bound to be positive, because it created more traffic for this site than anything in our history (certainly anything I've posted!). That said, here is why his video is important journalism: because it reveals an essential component of Israeli and Zionist society that has largely been covered up.
You can argue about Blumenthal's method all night long. I won't be there for that argument. Is the video somewhat sensational? Of course. But the views expressed are shocking, and, while they are obviously cherrypicked, they are representative of a real current in Israeli society; and a journalist who is on to something important should have the freedom to highlight shocking stuff. That's how journalism works. You don't show readers your out-takes.
Does drunkenness matter? Not really. It didn't exonerate Mel Gibson. And as to the comparison to the frat boys that Sacha Baran Cohen set up on his bus in Borat, plying them with liquor, imagine if Cohen had been touring the south during the days of segregation and had produced such film, would anyone have objected? Of course not. Jim Crow needed to be explained by exploring the underlying racist attitudes. The cruel Israeli occupation, which is so utterly contemptuous of Palestinian existence, must also be explained; and these attitudes explain it.
As to the revelation, Americans have been in denial about Israel's character for decades now. Bob Simon pulled the veil back in his 60 Minutes report on the hateful occupation earlier this year; and of course Gaza demonstrated utter disdain for Palestinian life on the part of the Israeli military. Blumenthal has now done his part to show that murderous racism is a real current in Israeli society, and among the American Zionists who rally to Israel. The shocking quality of his video may be a rhetorical necessity: in bringing the news home to Americans in a way that so many reasonable blogposts have failed to do. Blumenthal may even be a game-changer.
The rage at the video is evidence of the denial about Israeli extremism that has pervaded the American discourse forever. I am reading Benny Morris's One State, Two State, published by Yale Press. It includes endless descriptions of Arab violence, Arab assassinations. The fact that a rightwing settler killed Yitzhak Rabin, amid a festival of threats toward Rabin from the right, is glossed; and while Chaim Arlosoroff, an early Zionist, is cited by Morris for his binationalism, the author declines to say that Arlosoroff was murdered by rightwing Zionists. As he fails to say that the Stern Gang took out UN negotiator Folke Bernadotte in 1948. Or that rightwingers killed Jacob de Haan, a Dutch anti-Zionist who met with Arabs.
So the murderous feelings in Blumenthal's video have a long pedigree.
A friend objected that these are kids from West Orange and Bethesda. I don't see the point. Zionism has always depended on Americans; and if you look at Netanyahu's braintrust, there are many Americans who were called to Israel: Ron Dermer, Dore Gold, and Michael Oren. And who are these Americans who are called to Israel? They are Americans who don't especially believe in minority rights, but like Oren, speak of the demographic threat that Arabs pose to the Jewish majority in Israel. They are Jewish nationalists.
That seems to me the largest point of the video. Who is Israel calling to in the age of Obama? To creeps. Watching this video, even I have sympathy for Israel. We're a long way from '67, when idealistic Jews were mobilized by Israel. Now it's purely the ethnocentric. A Jewish anti-Zionist friend of mine says he has a policy, No Jew left behind. He means that even as he opposes Israeli policies, he wants to look out for the Jews. I feel the same kind of tribal loyalty. Jews have made a terrible error in Israel by fostering racist policies; and it will require the vigorous efforts of enlightened American Jews to save them. Blumenthal's video is a wake-up call.
