Support for Israel is plummeting among the U.S. public, but Zionism dominates mainstream media more than ever. Several recent high-profile examples show the staggering disconnect between the media establishment and its viewers.
Pro-Palestine activists have repeatedly been beaten back at Harvard, and sure enough, today the school paper’s endorsement of BDS is facing intense backlash. But this time round the pro-Israel arguments feel familiar, and have lost their bite. Faculty and alumni letters claim the endorsement will cause Jewish students to feel alienated. One alum warns angrily that Harvard will lose Iron Dome protection. Gosh.
Phil Weiss and Yakov Hirsch discuss the cultural sources of pro-Israel movements in American politics. Hirsch examines what he calls “hasbara culture” – the ways that a discourse of Jewish victimhood has conquered Jewish, Israeli, and even American political culture.
After the synagogue attack in Texas, Yair Rosenberg and other “Never Again” journalists rushed in to explain that antisemitism is a belief in Jewish control that permeates America and transcends history. According to the hasbara culture these authorities propagate, it is always the 1930’s. And isn’t that convenient for Israel and its lobby: Never Again journalists seek to make it taboo to mention Israel’s political power in the U.S.
Pro-Israel writers have dismissed all criticism, opposition and even enmity to Israel and its actions as springing from an ancient malady, antisemitism. They thereby erase the true history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, in a so-far successful effort to discredit the critics. Israel’s actions exist very much in history, and its supporters use very sharp elbows and knees to get its way.
When Rep. Rashida Tlaib faulted people for making record profits from Gaza tp Detroit, Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL accused her of antisemitic “dogwhistling.” And Bari Weiss joined in the smear campaign, saying, “So many people have been willfully blind toward the worldview of this congresswoman.” Tlaib’s actual crime is being Palestinian.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s courageous encounter with President Biden on a tarmac in Detroit yesterday, demanding action against Israeli war crimes, is already having an effect. Biden, who is on the defensive from the progressive wing of his party, told Netanyahu today that he “expects ‘a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire,” NBC reports.
The US press is finally making room for Palestinian voices, with a stunning op-ed by Refaat Alareer in the NYT about how it feels to be pounded by missiles in Gaza. And Rula Jebreal tells MSNBC that Palestinians inside Israel experience “Trumpism on steroids.” But Israel supporters fight back, with Bari Weiss saying that killing innocent children is the price of having a state.
Saying that the dehumanization of Palestinians is a cancer in the Jewish community, Peter Beinart is no longer showing deference to the Jewish guardians of the communal victimhood discourse. This is his cultural importance,” claiming Jewish authority for himself and discrediting Bari Weiss’s discourse of victimhood.
Bari Weiss’s rage over Peter Beinart’s role in a panel on antisemitism with Rashida Tlaib and Marc Lamont Hill next month shows that Weiss is in a battle with Beinart about who will represent American Jews. Weiss represents a tribal perspective of sacred victimhood; and Beinart’s universalism and openness to the Palestinian story is a threat to her.