Israel Matzav

The world's oldest obsession

In England, the mass media brainwashing has gotten so bad, reports Edgar Davidson, that even in Orthodox Jewish schools kids believe that Jews have no right(!) to Israel because they stole the land from the 'Palestinians.'

My daughter, who goes to an orthodox Jewish school, tells me that, when the subject of Israel is discussed in their Jewish studies GCSE class, students routinely state things like "the Jews have no right to Israel because they stole the land from the Palestinians".

In making statements like that, those regular 15-16 year old Jewish kids, are simply repeating what they are told relentlessly in every part of the media (as I have regularly reported on this web). In the midst of the big story of revolution across the entire Arab world (funny how the media is suddenly realising that these Arab countries were abusing their citizens for decades - they have been telling us all along that Israel is the pariah state in the region) the BBC and Channel 4 has gone into overdrive ... to demonize Israel. Just a few examples of the anti-Israel tsunami engulfing British TV, in the last few days alone we have had:

• Scandalous BBC 'documentary' attacking Geert Wilders that also promoted the view that anybody supporting the State of Israel in any way was a criminal
• The Promise, on Channel 4, which Richard Millett sums up as ‘rich European Jews came to Palestine after the Holocaust, stole the Palestinians’ land and murdered British soldiers’.
• A film War Child, on Channel 4, about ‘Jews killing innocent Palestinians'
• The Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC Tuesday 15th Feb 2011 about 'the rights of children' given by the author Richard Morpurgo which included a very strong political anti-Israel message plus the completely unsubstantiated and ridiculous claim that Israeli soldiers were shooting at Arab children in Gaza like in a computer game (yeah, like Arabs never lie about these things - just like they claimed a demonstrator was recently killed by tear gas).

The relentless propaganda seems to be affecting just about everybody I know. It has got to the stage where even strongly pro-Israeli friends are unwittingly accepting anti-Israel bias as perfectly acceptable. I'd like to recount a very good example of this. The Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond is currently showing a play called 'Reading Hebron' about the massacre carried out in 1994 by a Jew. The Artistic Director of this theatre, Sam Walters, clearly has a problem with Israel because in his own words (I have the email) two of the three 'political' plays he has put on in the last year have been about Israel and both were highly critical (the other was about the Balfour declaration). For these 'political' plays Walters arranges a public workshop to discuss the political content. For 'Reading Hebron' this workshop was, sensitively, arranged for a Saturday when no orthodox Jews can attend. However, Walters has arranged for discussions to take place after some of the showings during the week. That brings me to my pro-Israeli friend Joe. He went along to the play and after-show discussion and sent an email about it. I have taken the liberty of reproducing below exactly what Joe wrote because, although he feels very satisfied with the outcome there are aspects of what he says that deeply disturb me:

Read the whole thing.

Melanie Phillips adds:

What is truly extraordinary, as Davidson suggests, is the obsessional nature of this bigotry. It is not just the eye-popping double standard in singling out Israel for attack while ignoring the fact that it is the only democracy in the region. It is not just the egregious lies and smears and the comprehensive rewriting of history that has taken place that not only reverses victim and aggressor but blames the victim for being victimised and inspires hatred of Israel and Jews.

It is rather that, for the British media and intelligentsia, for the BBC and Channel Four executives and the serried ranks of lazy and malicious journalists in both print and broadcasting, for the supercilious academics and preening political progressives and precious know-nothing luvvies of stage and screen, Israel simply fills their vision. It eclipses in its enormity all other issues and causes; in their clouded eyes, it has become an evil of truly cosmic dimensions.

Of course, these are all the unique characteristics of classic anti-Jewish hatred throughout the ages. That is why it is grotesque and immoral to dismiss this phenomenon as merely ‘criticism of Israel’ and those who protest at it as ‘waving the shroud of the Holocaust’ to ‘sanitise Israel’s crimes’. This is indeed a contemporary mutation of ‘the oldest hatred’. The real crime is being committed by all those who are promulgating this, the true evil of our times. But just as with every other closed thought system, those in its grip are totally incapable of insight even into the most obvious signs that they have lost sight of reality.

And it's everywhere. With Obama in power, it's even in the United States. What could go wrong?

Labels: anti-Israel obsession, anti-Semitism, British anti-Semitism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:42 PM