As the whirlwind of hypocritical emoting about Israel’s campaign in Gaza grows ever larger, it leaves space for a reasoned and political critique of Israel’s actions. Ramez Maluf makes a contribution to occupying that space with this article in the Irish Times.
I wrote earlier about three of the many ghastly articles and videos which I’ve encountered since the Gaza conflict began. If I communicated the sense that there’s nothing decent out there, I didn’t mean to. In that spirit, here are two pieces well worth reading.
There is a Holocaust abuse tactic that is really only available to Jewish anti-Zionists. Norman Finkelstein, the author of the “The Holocaust Industry,” often uses it. Gerald Kaufman, a British Member of Parliament, has started using it. Basically, it works like this: if your parents or grandparents perished in or survived the Holocaust, you invoke them when venting anger against Israel.
We’ve recently been treated to the spectacle of Aengus Ó Snodaigh, a member of the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, comparing both Alan Shatter, the only Jewish member of the same legislature, and Zion Evrony, the Israeli ambassador to Ireland, to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Continue reading ‘Gaza: Jewish Legislator in Ireland Compared to Goebbels’
El Criador de Gorilas is one of Argentina’s leading political blogs. Its pseudonymous author mainly concerns himself with questions relating to voter behaviour here and the United States but occasionaly ventures further afield. I take the liberty of translating part of his his latest - titled “El Criador Makes Himself Even More Unpopular” - post below, with some minor editing.
“The doleful thought sometimes crosses my mind that it is not the children of Gaza or of Israel that you are pining for, but only for your own private conscience. Because if you are truly concerned about the death of our children and theirs, you would understand the present war - not in order to uproot Hamas from Gaza but to induce its followers to understand, and regrettably in the only way they understand in the meantime, that they must stop the firing unilaterally, stop hoarding missiles for a bitter and hopeless war to destroy Israel, and above all for the sake of their children in the future, so they will not die in another pointless adventure.”
A.B. Yehoshua writes an open letter to Gideon Levy, here.
This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman, author of the Warped Mirror blog at the Jerusalem Post
“Israel’s international reputation slumped to its lowest point for two decades yesterday, amid condemnation in Britain and Europe of the Israeli army’s behaviour … There were calls for a United Nations-led inquiry into allegations that the Israeli army carried out a massacre and that its soldiers were guilty of war crimes.”
Writing in the Irish Times, David Adams comments on the lack of interest shown by the world in general, and the UN in particular, in the firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas until Israel finally decided to do something serious about putting an end to it.
“Pro-Palestinian demonstrators now taking to the streets in the West are being emboldened to shout the old slogans familiar to Jews on the receiving end of rioting in Arab lands in the 1940s: ‘The Jews are our dogs’, they are chanting in Arabic. But the media remain deaf, blind and dumb to the antisemitic agenda of these protestors.”
Read Point of No Return here.
British commentators on the Arab-Israeli struggle just can’t resist drawing analogies with the Northern Ireland conflict and, in particular, how it was resolved. I’ve already argued that they tend to draw the wrong conclusions from what happened in Ireland over the last 40 years but this article by Jonathan Freedland obliges me to do so again.
Continue reading ‘Gaza: The Northern Ireland Analogy and Wishful Thinking’
This is the final in a series of guests posts by Doug Lieb of the American Jewish Committee reflecting on his recent visit to Israel as part of an AJC solidarity mission. Doug’s previous posts can be read here and here.
An emergency medical technician and a hospital administrator. A municipal administrator and the foreign minister. An enthusiastic young soldier and a hardened senior spy.
Continue reading ‘Israel: The Lessons of the Lessons of 2006′
The word “Frappuccino” may have taken on a meaning which its inventors never intended. Starbucks, the international coffee shop chain, has been targeted by furious pro-Hamas demonstrators because of its “support for the Israeli war machine.”
Continue reading ‘Starbucks: Conspiracy Theory Hits the Streets’
This charming message was sent to a large number of cellphones in Israel. Anyone recognize the +44 country code?
Subscribe to the Z Word blog via RSS - click on the orange button below. For more information on using RSS, please read this helpful guide.
RSS
Israel’s Demise (And Other Opportunites to Bend the Mind)
In the nearly three weeks since the Gaza conflict erupted, I’ve had the misfortune of reading a huge amount of commentary on outlets ranging from the mainstream to the obscure. Some of it was just asinine, much of it was plain disturbing. And while there was a great deal of it, the three pieces I discuss below - and particularly the one I begin with, which involves some unpleasant mind bending - nonetheless stand out for me.
Continue reading ‘Israel’s Demise (And Other Opportunites to Bend the Mind)’