Why do media bystanders shut their mouths when they see critics of Israel smeared as “diseased” anti-Semites. Because of hasbara culture, a Jewish-Zionist ethnocentric way of looking at the world that is both aggressive and highly politicized.
Jeffrey Goldberg paints critics of Israel as vessels of Jew hatred — including Jimmy Carter, Jill Stein, and a Norwegian band that supports boycott. And his fixation on the Holocaust caused him to be wrong in his reporting on Iran. So it is absolutely fair to bring up his Jewishness in critiquing his journalism.
The new head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, seized the opportunity to throw Netanyahu under the bus for his “Ethnic cleansing” video, in an effort to reach out to young American progressives. It won’t work. Young progressives don’t like Israel, and the ADL does.
Jeffrey Goldberg needs to maintain his status as the go-to journalist on all things Jewish/Israeli. But he can’t open his mouth about recent news because it all reflects badly on Jews and Israel. Still the world hungers for his enlightenment.
An immoral Orwellian video whose goal was to defend the indefensible, Netanyahu’s “ethnic cleansing” video was drawn in part from the words of his American rightwing glimmer twin, Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who is dedicated to committing American Jews to Israel’s defense.
Warnings of a civil war among Jews in Israel reflect the divide over the manslaughter trial of Elor Azaria, with Israeli generals determined to prosecute the medic. The generals want Benjamin Netanyahu gone; and a comment by Jeffrey Goldberg indicates that the Prime Minister may have lost an important American ally.
The world might be deaf to Palestine but it is not blind. And recent videos clearly documenting grotesque use of force by Israelis against Palestinians have the power to do more to end Israeli impunity and Netanyahu’s campaign of dehumanization of Palestinians than any other form of information.
How can Bret Stephens, who is so sensitive to any slight he perceives against Jews, use the phrase “disease of the Arab mind” when writing about an Egyptian Olympian, and hundreds of millions of other people, in the Wall Street Journal no less? The answer is that a group of ethnocentric spokesmen for the Jewish people, including Jeffrey Goldberg and Benjamin Netanyahu, exercise an Orwellian influence over what can and cannot be said out loud.
Mr. Netanyahu, I have a question: How long will “the world”, who unlike you believes the Palestinians are human beings like the rest of us, continue to just look on as you talk the talk and walk the walk of the most dangerous demagogues in history? A meditation on Netanyahu’s video dehumanizing Ayoub Sroor, a helpless Palestinian father in the occupation.
Black Lives Matter is not going to use careful and precise language about Israel, nor should it. Black Lives Matter sees the ugly reality of the occupation so it has taken on the conflict directly, and will not be bullied by the Israel lobby. When that fight gets out in the open, Israel’s actions will be in the spotlight.