Twisted Opinions

"Israel has been responsible for catastrophe after catastrophe – from the invasion of Egypt in 1956, the seven [sic!!!] day war in 1967, the bombardment of Lebanon in 1982 and again in 2006, operation cast lead in 2008 and now Operation Protective Edge.... 

As a member of Jews against Israeli Apartheid and Socialist Alternative, thanks to everyone for coming out today and showing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. We won’t stop fighting until Palestine is free!" 

So declared a young Aussie bloke at a raucous anti-Israel demo in Melbourne a few days ago, a young bloke whose egregious, risible error regarding the duration of the June 1967 War alone suggests that he's by no means au fait with the realities of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, a young bloke who had rather less than fifteen minutes of fame today when he was featured on at least one Aussie news channel ranting on behalf of the so-called Students for Palestine.  They had burnt a (stolen) Aussie flag together with an Israeli one in the foyer of a government building in Melbourne, and had smeared both flags and the premises with red dye.

  
"Brilliant that Palestinian resistance fighters have captured an invading Israeli soldier. May they secure the release of many hostages held in IsraelI dungeons. May they capture more. The fighters in Gaza, in terms of resisting overwhelming odds, are in the tradition of the Jewish fighters who resisted extermination in the Warsaw ghetto and became am inspiration to the whole of humanity."

Twisted slogan, "Auschwitz ..."; photo: Richard Millett blog

That's how Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign chief Mick Napier reacted on Facebook to Hamas's claim that it's taken one of the IDF's troops involved in Operation Protective Edge, a young man since identified as 21-year-old  whom Israel surmises has already met his death. 

The big question is - if I lived in #Gaza would I fire a rocket? - probably yes

Thus tweeted David Ward, Lib Dem MP for Bradford East (who's notoriously anti-Israel) yesterday, earning the condemnation of his party's leader, Nick Clegg.

'In my opinion which may not be worth much I believe the article in the "TimesofIsrael" admitting that the Jew's are in fact Khazar's and a planned reverse migration to the Ukraine as well as the LP Gas find off the coast of Gaza and the Ukraine LP Gazprov and the US deal with the EU that some how all these are related as reason why the Government's are not saying a thing.'

So comments one Keith Rodgers beneath a YouTube video here,  proving that his opinion is indeed of little worth, yet also proving that satire, however well-meant by those friends of Israel who resort to it, is lethal if clumsy or obtuse.

The lesson that Rodgers's comment, and the many on the internet like it, teaches us is that the intelligence of Israel's and Jewry's enemies is not to be overestimated, and that satire badly done is liable to be taken at face value and therefore twisted into a weapon against those it was intended to aid.

Even the vicar of Virginia Water, our old mate Stephen Sizer, who holds a doctorate and must therefore be credited with an above-average amount of grey matter, was not entirely sure that the above-mentioned article in the Times of Israel, which he linked to on Facebook for the benefit of his followers, was tongue-in-cheek.

But of course twisting the truth comes second-nature to those who hate Israel and seek its destruction.

Take, for instance, what the prominent Israeli scholar Professor Mordechai Kedar, of Bar-Ilan University's Department of Arabic, said early this month on Israeli radio's Hakol Diburim (“It’s All Talk”) following the news that the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers had been murdered :

“The only thing that can deter terrorists, like those who kidnapped the children and killed them, is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.

You have to understand the culture in which we live.  The only thing that deters [Hamas leaders] is a threat to the connection between their heads and their shoulders.... Terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them — the only thing that deters them is if they know that their sister or their mother will be raped in the event that they are caught. What can you do, that’s the culture in which we live...

 I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts. The only thing that deters a suicide bomber is the knowledge that if he pulls the trigger or blows himself up, his sister will be raped. That’s all. That’s the only thing that will bring him back home, in order to preserve his sister’s honor.”

It is extremely doubtful that the professor was recommending that Israel should resort to such base conduct; as an expert in Arab and Islamic culture he was explaining how Israel's Islamic enemies view the world, and by implication how impotent Israel is given their outlook.

Yet he was widely condemned for his remarks by many, including Jews and Israelis, as if he was actually endorsing rape as a weapon of war.

If his observations could be so readily misinterpreted by many of his own co-religionists and compatriots, how unsurprising it is that they have been twisted with gusto by those (see, for example, the comments here) who are the inveterate foes of both.

As for the current  climate of widespread denunciation of Israel's actions,  Professor Efraim Karsh nails it when he writes, inter alia:

'Why do citizens of democratic societies enthusiastically embrace one of the world’s most murderous Islamist terror organizations, overtly committed not only to the destruction of a sovereign democracy but also to the subordination of Western values and ways of life to a worldwide Islamic caliphate (or umma)? Not out of a genuine concern for Palestinian wellbeing. For although the “Palestine question” has received extraordinary media coverage for decades to the exclusion of far worse humanitarian and political problems, the truth is that no one really cares about the fate of the Palestinians: not their leaders, who have immersed their hapless constituents in disastrous conflicts rather than seize the numerous opportunities for statehood since the Peel Commission report of 1937; not the Arab states, which have brazenly manipulated the Palestinian cause to their self-serving ends; and not Western politicians, the media, NGOs, human rights activists, and church leaders enticed into self-righteous indignation by any Israeli act of self-defense.

Had the Palestinians’ dispute been with an Arab, Muslim, or any other non-Jewish adversary, it would have attracted a fraction of the interest that it presently does....

For millennia Jewish blood has been cheap, if not costless, throughout the Christian and Muslim worlds where the Jew became the epitome of powerlessness, a perpetual punching bag and a scapegoat for whatever ills befell society. There is no reason, therefore, why Israel shouldn’t follow in the footsteps of these past generations, avoid antagonizing its Arab neighbors and exercise restraint whenever attacked. But no, instead of knowing its place, the insolent Jewish state has forfeited this historic role by exacting a price for Jewish blood and beating the bullies who had hitherto been able to torment the Jews with impunity. This dramatic reversal of history cannot but be immoral and unacceptable. Hence the global community outrage and hence the world’s media provision of unlimited resources to cover every minute detail of Israel’s “disproportionate” response, but none of the suffering and devastation on the Israeli side....

[S]o long as the Palestinians continue to serve as the latest lightning rod against the Jews, their supposed victimization reaffirming the latter’s millenarian demonization, Israel will never be allowed to defend itself without incurring the charge of “disproportionate force” – never directed against any other besieged democracy but evocative of the classic anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as both domineering and wretched, both helpless and bloodthirsty. In the words of the renowned American writer David Mamet, “The world was told Jews used this blood in the performance of religious ceremonies. Now, it seems, Jews do not require the blood for baking purposes, they merely delight to spill it on the ground.'