Israel and Palestine: delusion and the real victims
Air strike against Gaza hospital kills 600. Will world turn against Israel's assault?
By Craig McKee
People.
We appear to be an awfully weak-willed bunch. So easily manipulated. So frightened. So willing to defend “truth” that is little more than regurgitated propaganda. It makes us feel better to self-righteously conform than to risk being cast out of the club. Sad.
My life would probably be a lot easier if I just gave in to this, but I believe in truth, particularly the big-picture kind, even if that truth causes unhappiness. I’ve learned that a lot of people will passionately proclaim that they, too, believe in truth as they spout the most outrageous lies.
I have a friend (or did have) who is Jewish and a big supporter of Israel. I posted on Facebook that I stand with the people of Palestine in light of the recent violence in Israel. His comment was: “We’re done.” Just like that. Merely expressing any empathy for the people trapped in Gaza, an open-air prison that is a regular target of Israeli bombs, was a deal breaker for him. I don’t want to attack this person or mock him by name, so call him “Perry.”
For Perry, any positive comment about Palestinians is tantamount to calling for the extermination of all Jews. I kid you not; that’s what he said. It didn’t matter that I explained that my solidarity with the Palestinians does not mean support for Hamas.
I can only reach one conclusion about this. Perry thinks Palestinian lives are not as valuable as Jewish ones. And I’m being generous to him by phrasing it this way. When I asked him directly if he felt this way, he refused to answer. Instead he accused me of supporting genocide.
He wrote: “You've chosen a side. That comes with consequences. My daughter works for a Jewish charity that provides meals for those in need. She didn't go to work today because Hamas threatened every Jew on earth. That's the side you've chosen to defend.”
Perry is delusional.
His daughter – who lives in Montreal, Canada – had to stay home from her charity work because her life was in danger from Hamas? In Canada? I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but that’s absurd. And paranoid. If he genuinely believes this (and it seems he does), that’s disturbing. His view also reflects typical all-or-nothing thinking. To support Palestinians means you support all the actions of Hamas, even if you don’t. A convenient deflection.
I’m reminded of the hostility I received from a couple of acquaintances when I wrote about the Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2014 that killed about 2,500 people, more than 500 of them children (see links to my past articles on the subject below). This person played the “anti-Semitism” card with me and even went on to muse that my grandparents probably supported keeping Jews out of Canada who were fleeing from Europe during WW2. He knew nothing about anyone in my family, but he was willing to call them bigots anyway. It’s not hard to see who the real bigot was in this situation.
But Perry and other single-minded apologists for Israeli brutality don’t arrive at their delusions in a vacuum. Their paranoia is deeply ingrained. And conditioned. This is all the more reason to respect Jewish scholars like Norman Finkelstein, who is a harsh critic of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
The Israeli Defense Forces recently tweeted: “You either stand with Israel or you stand with terrorism.”
Sound familiar? Remember George W. Bush? “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
Bush was lying about 9/11, and the IDF is lying about who the terrorists really are in Israel. It is manipulation, and too many people fall for it. It is also manipulation when someone who opposes actions by the State of Israel is automatically branded as anti-Semitic. It’s a tactic.
What’s really scary about Perry’s views is that he’s a terrific guy in many other ways. It saddens me that this came between us, but I’m not going to water down my opposition to obvious cruelty and oppression just to keep things friendly on Facebook.
No, I don’t support the murder of innocent Israelis. Obviously. But the details of this “attack” are far from clear. In fact, I find them highly suspicious. I just can’t buy the idea that the Israeli military was powerless to stop the incursion from Gaza. In fact, the whole thing is starting to sound very familiar. The phrase “failure of imagination” has even been used by the Israelis to describe the alleged failure to stop this “attack” just like it was after 9/11. It’s looking a lot like Israel allowed this to happen. Or worse.
We’ve already learned that the claim that 40 babies were beheaded is a lie. And lies like that are (or should be) red flags. Remember the accusation at the outset of the first Gulf War that Iraqi soldiers had taken Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators and left them on the cold floor to die? That wasn’t just wrong, it was a fabrication. The girl who tearfully recounted this scene turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, and she had been coached on delivering the lie by a public relations firm in the U.S.
This kind of thing happens over and over. Lies are exposed but we fall for the next one that comes at us anyway. Perry’s delusion is extreme, but it’s not unique.
Famed American lawyer, author, and Israel apologist Alan Dershowitz says Israel never targets civilians and that the only reason any Palestinians die in Gaza is because their leadership uses them as human shields. He’d like us to believe that the Palestinians are the aggressors from their Gaza prison and always have been. He gets away with this despicable claim because the mainstream media are so afraid of criticizing Israel.
Today, Oct. 17, Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza killing about 600 people. Are these lives worth as much as Israeli ones? It’s hard to believe that this question even requires asking. Perhaps the outrage from this atrocity can help bring a quicker end to the violence this time.
This time.
We’ve all heard many times that the first casualty of war is truth. In Israel, or Palestine, the truth died a very long time ago.
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If you would like to help the people of Gaza, you can donate to Palestine Charity at https://palestinecharity.org/donate/
Here are some pieces I’ve written about Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish lobby in North America for my other website, Truth and Shadows:
https://truthandshadows.com/2016/05/19/okeefe-911-gift/
https://truthandshadows.com/2016/06/08/uss-liberty-lessons-to-learn/
https://truthandshadows.com/2016/10/12/smear-campaign-against-anthony-hall/
Craig, as I have come to expect, your article is right on the mark. I feel much the same as you about this situation in Palestine. I can only add to what you have said here and there for what it is worth. In my opinion the language being used to describe this situation is itself an extreme manipulation of the facts on the ground. For instance calling this a "war" is a lie. A big fat stinking lie. Wars are between parties that are roughly equal in their capabilities where each side in the war has at least a chance of defeating the other side. This is NOT a "war" between the Israeli's and the Palestinians it is a slaughter being carried out by a super power against a virtually defenseless people. Palestinians have no air force, no navy, no tanks, no attack helicopters, no smart bombs, no precision missiles, no artillery, no submarines, and no satellites to look down upon their attackers from space. Most importantly though the Palestinians do not have a super power like the USA backing them up with advanced weapons and billions upon billions of dollars. The Palestinians, many of which do not support Hamas, have a few small arms and sticks and stones. Almost a quarter of Palestinians are Christians, a fact which most "Christian" supporters of Israel seem to forget. The ratio of Palestinians to Israeli's killed over the years has remained steady at about 23 to 1. That is 23 Palestinians killed for every Israeli. That is NOT a war that is a massacre. To even call it a "war" is a lie. Saying the Palestinians are responsible for what Hamas does is like saying Americans are responsible for what ANTIFA does. I am an American and I do not support in any way shape or form what ANTIFA does but according to the Israeli's I should be bombed into the stone age every time some ANTIFA scumbags set fire to a city.
A "failure of imagination." Yes, reminds me of "I don't think anyone could have predicted people would hijack planes and crash them into buildings" when military exercises had imagined and practiced those exact scenarios.
Excellent article, Craig. I started to read this yesterday, then got distracted because I went to your FB page to try to find your post and Perry's "we're done" sub-thread, so I just now finished the rest.