Israel suffered a P.R. disaster in the last Gaza attack: western media for once openly questioned the reasoning and morality behind yet another murderous onslaught on an imprisoned population, the fifth in the last 12 years. Even the NYT runs an op-ed saying that “legitimate resistance” to violence is a Palestinian right. Pro-Israel voices in the media are pushing back by saying sharp criticism of Israel is antisemitism.
Liberal Zionists can relax. With the apartheid designation by a leading Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, still a secret to most Americans, groups like J Street don’t have to explain why they still oppose the nonviolent global campaign for Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS).
In a delusory column in the New York Times, Bret Stephens says Israel only wants to annex land because it has been “ostracized” in the West. And American Jewish status is “fragile,” unlike in Israel. These crazed claims show that Israel advocates cannot deal with an argument for Palestinian rights.
Peter Beinart is so important in Jewish culture because he insists on humanizing Palestinians, and refuses to use the Holocaust lens of perpetual victimhood when considering Palestinian resistance. Palestinians are not driven by Jew hatred, as so many pro-Israel leaders argue, but by a natural response to dispossession and occupation.
Why is the New York Times missing in action on the burning issue of annexation? Undoubtedly because there is no way to twist annexation in a pro-Israel direction.
NYT regrets running Sen. Cotton’s call for military crackdown on protest. It should do the same for 4 op-eds justifying Israel killing nonviolent demonstrators. But Bari Weiss’s role at newspaper reflects long attachment to Zionism at NYT.
Bret Stephens’s opinion of the Trump “peace plan” for Palestine is titled “Every Time Palestinians Say ‘No,’ They Lose”, and is premised on racist invention, beginning with its history lesson on why Palestinians “lose when they say ‘no’.”
Bret Stephens’s controversial and self-satisfied column about Jewish genius is of course about Israel. His ideas of cultural supremacy justify Palestinian oppression. When he says that the Jewish gift for original and highminded thinking has fostered…. anti-Zionism!
The New York Times wants Netanyahu out because “elements of the Democratic Party have grown increasingly suspicious of Israel, if not hostile,” and replacing Netanyahu “may halt this dangerous shift.” Palestinian human rights are no account here. Though Israel’s politics have only shifted right, Israel-watchers say.
The news this morning that Israel will bar a visit by U.S. Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib…