An important article about the demonization of Israel–and increasingly, the outright anti-Semitism—which has been instigated by far too many members of the Chattering Classes: writers, entertainers, behind-the-scenes media people, and college professors. Carolyn Glick: Itamar’s Children. Excerpt:
Israel’s leaders were caricatured as Fagin, Shylock, Pontius Pilate and Hitler on the front pages of newspapers throughout Europe. IDF soldiers were portrayed as Nazis, and Israeli families were dehumanized.
No longer civilians with an inherent right to live, in universities throughout the US and Europe, Israeli innocents were castigated as “extremist-Zionists” or “settlers” who basically deserved to be killed.
Professors whose “academic” achievements involved publishing sanitized postmodern versions of anti-Jewish Palestinian propaganda were granted tenure and rewarded with lucrative book contracts.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: See also Robert Avrech at Seraphic Secret.
Neptunus Lex says: “Gaza: The entire place is an open-air insane asylum, a place where all the toxins of the Arab Middle East have been isolated, pressurized and cooked over an open flame until reduced into purity.”
To which I would add only that a measurable part of the heat and pressure have been contributed by Western “progressives.”
David, there is also a program in place to describe life in Gaza as hellish for the residents, the better to demonize the Israelis. Roger Simon had a corrective piece last year.
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/05/25/dining-gourmet-in-gaza/
Sorry. If I include a link, my comment gos straight to the spam filter.
Until fairly recently, traditional anti-Semitism, based on suspicion of “the Other”, was on the decline. Today’s anti-Zionism, which originates from the “progressive” Left, despises Israel not because Israel is so different from their own societies, but *specifically because* Israel is an exemplar of the values and strengths of Western civilization.
It seems certain that the growth of the new anti-Zionism has re-energized the older anti-Semitism. I’m reminded of the C S Lewis novel “That Hideous Strength,” in which sinister forces seek a junction between an ancient magic-based form of evil and a modern science-based form.
Spengler has a bit on other aspects of Muslim culture, especially in Afghanistan.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA11Df03.html
Are we sure we want to defend this ?
The Office of Civil Rights in the US Department of Education has launched an extensive investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism at University of California Santa Cruz. The office also wants to determine whether this is part of a larger trend at UC campuses.
I’m not providing a link due to the spam filter issue….you can find a top-level link at Instapundit, and follow the link chain to get to a letter by a Santa Cruz lecturer describing what she has observed and also a lawsuit filed by UC Berkeley students.
There are, clearly, Palestinian groups on various college campuses that are anti-Israeli and disruptive–Santa Cruyz, Brooklyn College, Evergreen etc.
And clearly any number of Jew haters are in media etc in Europe. But we are here being told
that anti-Israeliu hatred as arelsult of the killing in the settlement is approved also in the US–please show me where that has taken place in our media. I have yet to see it and suggest that this is not true.
ps: calling people who write, publish, etc the chattering class is similar to referring to something called “elites.” How many that post here or make comments belong to The Chattering Class? or are Elites (ie, have graduated college)?
David and Michael,
I may have found the cause of the spam-filter problem. I had the term “nofollow” in the WordPress comment blacklist. It must have seemed like a good idea at some point. Anyway, I have removed it. Please try again to post comments with links.
Apologies for all the hassles.
NZ…”But we are here being told that anti-Israeliu hatred as arelsult of the killing in the settlement is approved also in the US–please show me where that has taken place in our media”….not sure quite how to read this sentence. If you mean: has the media openly approved such killings, no, the “respectable media” generally has not. What they HAVE done is to endlessly and repeatedly skew the terms of the discussion against Israel: for example, Palestinians killed by accident in Israeli strikes are typically given NAMES, as are terrorists killed on purpose…but Israelis are often referred to as “settlers” and not even named. Read Meryl Yourish’s blog for an endless stream of samples of biased reporting.
Regarding “elites”, this subject needs a separate post, which I hope to put together soon. For now, let me just note that the idea that a college degree makes one a member of an elite is ridiculous, and the idea that an advanced degree makes one a member of an elite is only very slightly less ridiculous. But numerous individuals, especially on the Left, act as if their credentials (often in easy or even trivial subjects) put them in a class beyond the general run of Americans.
I also think the labeling of all college graduates as elite to be a far stretch.
These “elites” you speak of are guided through their journey to ascension by academics. Around 1997, during a discussion of why internet sources were disallowed for a term paper assignment, academics were described to me, breathlessly, as “individuals who research credible works”. My counter point was that these academics must not form many original ideas of their own and instead parasitically exist through a form of “legal” plagarism. :) So, I ended up withdrawing from said 200 level English class in the second week and instead converted my 2 year degree to applied computer sciences. Things occur for a reason.
These people exist in a sealed echo chamber, both socially and mentally. The replenish their population by invite, after the proper shibboleths have been sacrificed to. They cannot be reached or in truth even effectively communicated with by sane or rational peoples. I’m reminded of the dwarves in “The Last Battle” (just read that to my youngest children, which I’m happy to report are all morlocks like their father).
Anxiously awaiting your thread on elites, David.
Related–Marty Peretz: Obama’s Scandalous Approach to the Middle East.
What is now clear is that the only help Barack Obama was willing to give to the Arabs was his coldness to the Jewish nation. Or, and I want to be frank, his hostile indifference to Israel. It has been a not quite sub rosa sub-theme of his presidency since the beginning.
and
What is curious about Obama’s infatuation with Arab societies (and with non-Arab Muslim societies, too) is that he knows just about nothing about them. And I don’t just mean their histories or theology. What’s clear is that the president grasps pretty close to zero about the actualities of these states, their economic and social realities, the stratifications by tribe and sex, the race between literacy and population growth, the synchrony of tradition with bureaucracy, the stultification of education, the militarization of these polities, their abhorrence of liberal ideas. And the fact is that Obama is neither fast-spirited nor supple. He certainly was blindsided by the turbulence and torment that has wracked the region over more than two months now. Why could he not see the new amidst the crumbling old?
“And the fact is that Obama is neither fast-spirited nor supple.”
Yes, that’s become quite apparent, hasn’t it? He really has been the most churlish and incurious figure we’ve had as president in a long time.
A very good post by Bookworm: who do “progressives” think the enemy is?
A second Holocaust is coming. The USA intended to end the first with nuclear weapons, but the EUropeans were defeated prior to the weapons’ availability. The Israelis know who their enemies are. So: how many Muslim countries will exist in five years? ten years? following the nuclear retaliation that will destroy their religion and societies?