In a recent video, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu slammed the new Hamas charter saying, “[Hamas] brainwashes kids inside suicide camps,” before throwing the document in a trash can. But Jonathan Ofir asks – what about the ways Israeli institutions are brainwashing children to hate Palestinians?
The mockery campaign against Marwan Barghouti and the hunger strikers has brought Israeli political culture to a new depth of dehumanization. Pizza Hut ran a mock campaign on its Facebook page yesterday, using a still caption of Barghouti on the toilet, with a banner saying “Barghouti, if you’re going to break a strike, isn’t pizza better?” – the meme added a pizza box on the floor
Israeli Prison Services released footage of hunger strike leader Marwan Barghouti supposedly breaking the strike by eating a snack on the toilet. There seems to be no bottom to the abyss Israel is willing to sink to in its desperation to save its image against the current Palestinian hunger strike.
Is it really ‘even-handedness’ that the 100 Senators are seeking, or merely a shielding of Israel from critique? Under the guise of supposed insidious bias against Israel, those who are biased for Israel are running a campaign to tarnish the UN for supposedly promoting BDS and the “destruction of Israel”.
When alternative Memorial Day ceremonies in Israel joining both Israelis and Palestinians were assaulted by angry mobs the government stayed silent. And when Education Minister Naftali Bennett finally commented, it was no better.
Why I chose to avoid Gilad Atzmon’s questions about a Jewish global conspiracy. Like this one: “Can you imagine a peace loving Jewish political existence?”
Marking Marwan Barghouti as a ‘terrorist’ is very important for Israel and the New York Times, too. The Times did not impose such standards when it was celebrating Nelson Mandela.
White House spokesman Sean Spencer was comparing Assad to Hitler yesterday, unfavorably so: “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons”, he said. Oops, that was bad. But it got worse.
From Tzipi Livni to Moshe Ya’alon to Yair Lapid, Israeli leaders have expressed contempt for the lives of children targeted in Israel’s wars. That makes the allegations of massacres in Syria, and the U.S. missile attack there, very useful.
The claim that denying Israel’s “right to exist” is tantamount to seeking the complete annihilation of its (mostly Jewish) people has long sat at the core of Israeli apologia. The Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish State is conveniently read as intransigence – a convenient trick from the Israeli box of magic to turn public opinion against them.