I have been contacted today by an Israeli-Australian who, while no fan of the Backman article that is the focus of controversy at The Age (see previous post), points out that it is mild in the extreme compared to some of what is published in the Israeli media.
Check this out, from the website of the country’s largest circulating newspaper. It’s strong stuff. And then check out the comments thread, in which the majority seem to agree with the views expressed.
If anyone but an Israeli had written and published this sort of material, they would certainly be accused of gross anti-Semitism. Perhaps with justice.
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The should try this one on for size.
Different blood types
Jan. 18, 2009
Liat Collins , THE JERUSALEM POST
I’m having trouble sleeping at nights. It’s not my conscience as an Israeli who has openly supported Operation Cast Lead from even before its belated start. It’s because I worry about friends in Sderot and Ashkelon – and relatives in England and Toronto.
The UK and Canada might not be in rocket range (at least not for Hamas/Hizbullah missiles), but the war in Gaza is reaching them. And from what I’ve seen, the threat will remain long after the firing dies down.
Searching for news photos the other day, I came across some disturbing images. I’m not immune to the pictures from Gaza of little blood-soaked children – the type of photos which come with a warning to editors: “Contains graphic content.” Distressing as these are, however, it is not these that keep me awake.
I blame coffee – Starbucks Coffee, that is. It’s the fashionable thing to do. An AP photo of pro-Palestinian protesters smashing the window of a Starbucks store in London on January 10 was the first image to make me do a double take. (A few days later, I found similar pictures of a Starbucks outlet under attack in Beirut.) The photo was foreign to me not only as an Israeli but as someone born and brought up in Britain. A veteran of scores of demonstrations in London during the late ’70s, when I spent almost every Sunday afternoon rallying in support of Soviet Jewry, I had never come across such violence. The masked protesters hurling what looks like police barriers through the shop window rang no bells from my days as an adolescent demonstrator. They did ring warning alarms. They were reminiscent not of my youth but of pictures from a much darker period in history when Jewish-owned shops were targeted by Hitler’s Nazis.
The other image which is disturbing both visually and emotionally is that of small children carrying “blood-stained” dolls to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza. These pictures are more haunting than the children in the original images whose memories they are trying to preserve. Adult protesters demonstrating hatred by hitting out at Jewish-owned property are not a good sign of the present situation. Children being raised with this level of vitriol is a desperately bad omen for the future.
It is, of course, part of the same phenomenon of exploiting children to further war that we have been witnessing in Gaza itself. To put in words a cartoon doing the rounds on the Web: We do everything to protect our kids; Hamas is using kids to protect them. The illustration shows an Israeli soldier protecting a stroller from a Palestinian who is firing from behind one.
Parents all over Israel have been heeding the advice of child psychologists and trying to make sure their children are not exposed to war footage on TV and are – as far as possible – kept not only physically safe but emotionally healthy. In contrast, Hamas and its supporters have mobilized even toddlers in their war effort: not only using them as tiny human shields in the Strip, but also ensuring that those not under physical threat are as traumatized as possible. I remember agonized conversations with other mothers about allowing our sons to play with toy guns. We still struggle to explain that war is sometimes necessary but never good. It’s hard to identify with a mother who gives a little girl a shroud-wrapped doll and deliberately inculcates a life-long hatred of “the enemy.” It’s the sort of education that seems doomed to literally blow up in all our faces. From carrying a martyred “toy” to donning an explosive belt is a small step, even for small feet.
LATELY I find myself thinking of Shakespeare’s Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (the celebrity pro-Palestinian actors and entertainers rallying in London last week have a rich tradition of anti-Semitism behind them). While the world obsesses over the (undisputed) suffering of Gaza’s children, I can’t but wonder where is the similar outpouring of sympathy for the children who have spent years in the shadow of Kassams and Katyushas. “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions…?” I ask. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”
Of course we do. And I have always liked to think that human blood was the same no matter in whose veins it flowed. Now, I realize that not only is Palestinian blood apparently worth more than Jewish blood – at least when it comes to photos – but it also has inherently different properties. Unfortunately, like most Israelis who have lived through a few wars and a couple of intifadas, young people I knew have been killed. As far as I know, when Jewish kids die, their hearts stop beating and their blood stops flowing (and a bit of their parents dies with them). Look at the photos circulating on the Web and in even respectable news agencies and you might notice that when Palestinian children die, bright red blood continues to soak out through white sheets. Either they are being buried alive or someone has added a few special effects to make sure their image will live on. Incidentally, when a Muslim dies, the body is usually washed and wrapped in a shroud, but martyrs are buried unbathed in the clothes they were wearing. Evidently, anyone who dies in Gaza at the moment is immediately considered a martyr.
But blood libels are also a part of our heritage.
And that is why, while friends and relatives abroad fret for my safety here in Israel, I continue to fear for their welfare.
A Post editorial on January 9 deservedly praised the Jews who have rallied in favor of Israel across Europe and the US – often despite bitterly cold weather and the very real threat of attack. This is not just a matter of solidarity, like the demonstrations in which I took part calling on the then-Soviet Union to “Let my people go!”
The Diaspora and Israel are intricately bound together: Even Jewish blood is thicker than water. Anti-Semitic attacks have risen so much since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead late last month that the Israeli Foreign Ministry has released a statement expressing its concern. I was not the only one woken up by Starbucks.
There have been attacks on synagogues (where we do not stockpile missiles) and cemeteries (where we don’t foster a culture of never-ending hatred and martyrdom). Business and academic boycotts have been launched. Jews have been physically and verbally assaulted.
I can’t decide whether it makes my blood boil or freezes it in my veins. The heat is on, and it’s chilling. A world so easily tempted to support the Palestinian side – no matter how many attacks it has perpetrated on Israelis in the past few years – is on its way to discovering that global jihad does not stop in the Middle East.
The sound of Jewish-owned shop windows being broken, after all, marked the beginning – not the end – of World War II.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1232100170492&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
(Also read the comments from the readers. But a warning: it doesn’t really get anymore offensive than this. If this is the sort of view that a mainstream Israeli newspaper can publish, then is no hope for Israel).
© http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1232100170492&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The trouble is that Backman’s commentary, and commentary very like it, creates a disturbance and sets a precedent for worse behaviour. All over the world. In New Zealand this month a story broke that two local cafes had banned Israeli customers because of the war in Gaza. It emerged that the cafe owners were men, and that two of the banned customers were women, and that the two women were also critical of the war. Unfortunately, the two women and the two men never got to meet and discuss their shared outlook because the two men had closed their minds and barred their doors. Really a blow for the entire peace movement, to have people shutting one another out of locations that were once recreational grounds for all sorts of alliances. The greatest shock of all was to see people, and businessmen, treating one another in this way while living within a nation that used to pride itself for its peaceful stance. This happened not in Gaza but in a pacific nation that was once a global trendsetter in race relations and gender equality.
Media sites saturated with accusatory allegations and adversarial conversations must be questioned, particularly if these contribute in reducing the entire world to a fractious, senseless, battleground where pointless games of one-up-man-ship are played out.
Aren’t those Israelis a bunch of anti-Semites! I say we ethnically cleanse Israel of all Israelis and replace them with some of the wackos who claim to represent Israel’s interests in Australia. Israelis have simply no ability to understand their own public relations and security needs.
Kasmann90, you’re only telling half the story about the cafe/pub bans. Both were condemned by the NZ Federation of Muslims, and both were clear breaches of the Israeli’s human rights. The cafe is owned by a Turkish migrant to New Zealand, and the pub owned by a former photo journalist who worked in Lebanon.
To mark New Zealand as some hotbed of anti-Zionism based these two incidents would be intellectually faulty.
Just as there are extreme Islamists who hide behind the cloak of a noble religion to advance their political causes, there are chauvinistic and miliatristic Zionists who seek to push nakedly political causes under the guise of Judaism.
These people need to be exposed by a rigorous media. The problem is that the horrors of the Holocaust and the guilt felt by so many in the West make it very difficult for journalists to do their job in shining an independent light on Israeli belligerence without being accused of religious and racial prejuidice.
The other factor – and you can’t say this without being accused of being anti-Semite – is the plain fact that Jews in Australia and the US are over-represented in senior positions in media, big business and finance. They exert influence in ways that I think pervert our democracies and leave many otherwise unprejudiced people feeling resentful at how Israeli interests are advanced at the expense of global political stability.
In retrospect, I think it’s fairly evident that the creation of a Jewish state of Israel – and the consequent displacement and disenfranchisement of millions of Palestinians – was a monumental mistake. What is happening to the Palestinians is every bit as inhumane and unjust as to what happened to the Jews, but somehow those lives are not deemed to be as important.
This is what Backman, in a rather crude way, was trying to get at. It is entirely reasonable to say that the cost of unreserved US (and Australian) support of Israel has come at an awful cost to the world – althought he could have made that point without references to the spending habits of Israeli backpackers in Nepal. (Blame Fairfax’s denuding of its subbing desk of senior talent for that snafu getting through.)
Israel gets away with its horrors because of a combination of Western guilt and the fact that a succession of US governments, under the thrall of a disproportionately powerful Jewish lobby, have allowed it to happen. One would hope that the pendulum might swing back a bit with the election of Obama, but given the presence among his senior staff of aggressive Zionists I very much doubt it.
In the meantime, the Middle East descends further into the quagmire and we are all unsafe as a result.
Unfortunately Backman’s article is symptomatic of a broader problem within the Australian media when reporting on this and other conflicts – a need to take sides. Apportioning blame is a simplistic and often worthless task.
By now we should have realised both through war and the rare instances where longstanding hatred has been quelled, that picking sides does nothing to promote peace.
The actions of the Israeli Government, Hamas and Fatah have all been reprehensible for far too long.
The issue with Backman’s article isn’t that it has negative perceptions of Israelis as travellers. Instead it seeks to blame Israelis (read Jews) for terrorism and a myriad of problems.
Bringing in issues of the perceptions of Israeli travellers in the context Backman used is simply a red herring used to tie in the notion that Jews are penny-pinching misers. Pretty much the only thing he failed to invoke was the concept of the twelve elders of Zion.
Israelis, like all travellers from rich countries bring a whole heap of cultural insensitivity. It is the nature of tourism that inherently travel to poorer countries brings a degree of exploitation and with it the unhappy troika of prostitution, drugs and begging.
Another thing that should be remembered is that a good percentage of young Israelis go on their overseas jaunt after completing their compulsory military service. Many of those who serve do not want to be there, and are deeply affected by there experience. Their travels abroad and their behaviour is often affected by this.
That of course is not to say that their experience is better or worse than the Palestinians, it is just the point that war affects all sides and such bias reporting seeking blame rather than understanding is worthless.
How bizarre is it for Backman to be lashed as an alleged anti-Semite for… what? while 1500 + Palestinians (latest count) are slaughtered in Gaza by the government of a self-declared Jewish state that supposedly represents Jews the world over. Meanwhile, Paul Sheehan gets away with “The population [of Gaza] has exploded amid economic privation. Women living under Sharia law are used primarily as breeding stock.” (’It’s too easy just to blame the Jews’, SMH, 12/1/09)
The mind boggles!
Thanks Margaret for your characteristically smart analysis. I feel the challenge for the media is basically that old chestnut of making quality content. You really see why we need quality, professional journalism when an issue draws out a flood of ignorance, like this one is starting to.
The painful difficulty for Palestinians and Israelis is finding a path to peace that works. That is always going to take much more humanity and intelligence than debates dumbed-down around conflict propositions like who is worse between the IDF and Hamas.
Gaza is an issue where the subbies and writers need far more depth than usual. The corporate cost-cutting means that journalists are required to do more with less experience behind them, or around them in the newsroom. It’s not surprising bad journalism like Backman’s makes it into print sometimes is it?
PS Mr Denmore: you are anti-Semitic, you still have a democratic right to free speech, and you need a spell-checker.
Dan Cass, what you appear to be asking for in journalism is anodyne on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand analysis that upsets nobody and, as a result, fails to move the argument forward.
If anti-Semitic in your world means questioning the rights of powerfully-connected Zionists to strong-arm democratically elected western governments and the media behind closed doors, well then yes, I’m an anti-Semite.
I haven’t heard of Hamas flying SMH and Age journalists over to Gaza to write puff pieces for them.
By the way, they’re called “subs”, not “subbies”.
Sabre, I took a look at kasmann90’s post to get a whole picture of what the pair of you were commenting on. It would be unfair to say kasmann90 painted a picture of NZ as a hot-bed for anti-Zionism. I think maybe the commenter was probably just as shocked and horrified as the NZ Federation of Muslims. It is such a shame that some Australians are always wanting to take sides.
Why did Irfan get to advocate the ethnic cleansing of Israel?
Mr Denmore, you refer to the “consequent displacement and disenfranchisement of millions of Palestinians” with the establishment of Israel.
Hello? Even if you take at face value the most outrageous Arab claims, they suggest about 700,000 Arabs fled the area now known as Israel. How did that become “millions”? Are you looking for a job at The Lancet?
Either you have swallowed too much Arab propaganda, or you regard their children, grandchildren and great granchildren as “refugees” even though they were born and raised in other countries. There is not one group of refugees in existence for 60 years, except the Palestinians. Why? Because the other 300 million Arabs couldn’t give a damn about them, the UNWRA wants to keep itself in a job, and the Arab leaders can use them as a political weapon against Israel.
I note you don’t hear about the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, who were forcibly driven out of Arab countries. Why? Because they went on to build a functioning, productive society, instead of a violent death cult.
Have a look at some pictures of the area around the Gaza Hilton. Absolute waterfront, and some of the nicest real-estate in the Middle East. The Muslims have done to Gaza, what they did to Lebanon, also once a popular holiday destination.
Helloooooooo Mr Lewis. You claim Mr Denmore overstates the number of disenfranchised and displaced Arabs. So Palestinians born in refugee camps are not disenfranchised? UNRWA figures state there are 409, 714 Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon alone. The Arab population of Palestine is 957, 000, excluding the population of the Palestinian capital-Al-Quds, which has a further 254, 000 Palestinians. Syria has 119,776 refugees in camps. Of course these figures only represent the people actually registered in official camps. In any event Mr Lewis, arguing about actual numbers of affected peoples (I seem to recall a number of people being labelled racist for daring to question the numbers of people affected by another conflict) doesn’t alter the fact that Mr Denmore’s central argument is correct-the creation of a Jewish state was a mistake. (Isn’t the creation of a state based purely on ethnicity/religion racist in itself?) Interesting, the fact that Palestinians were born in other countries seems to you to mean they have no connection to Palestine. Yet Jewish people (or converts to Judaism) with no link to Palestine at all are afforded citizenship. Where are the functioning productive socities you speak of by the way? If they are so functioning and productive, what are they doing displacing Palestinians from their land? Also, I think the dignity and respect of the inhabitants of their lands is a touch more important than “popular holiday destinations” or “absolute waterfront” (isn’t something either waterfront or not?). For your information, not all Palestinians are Muslims as you infer.
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