Monday, March 23, 2009

What Is Dangerous - Should Go Both Ways

In the BBC coverage of those soldier T-shirts, I found this:

sociologist...Orna Sasson-Levy of Bar-Ilan University, warned the designs could strengthen, stimulate and legitimise aggression towards Palestinians in the occupied territories.

"There is... increasing callousness," she said. "There is a perception that the Palestinian is not a person, a human being entitled to basic rights and therefore anything may be done to him."


If this is true, and it is logical, what do we do about harsh, intemperate satire.

Like this:

...an episode of Channel 2's Eretz Nehederet that included a particularly poisonous parody of "The Settlers."

This is by no means the first stab at the settlers that the popular political satire program has made. On the contrary, stereotypes of West Bank Jews feature prominently on a regular basis. But this time, the show's creators went too far. In the skit, showing an average day in the home of a family in Judea and Samaria, the mother is using a Palestinian - down on all fours - as an ironing board; the daughter, when refused permission by her mother to go a party, and denied money from her father, has a tantrum and calls her parents and her brother Nazis. Meanwhile, a trigger-happy grandfather with an American accent shoots his rifle indiscriminately, first hitting the Arab/ironing board and then a soldier who has come to the door - which has been booby-trapped with a bucket of acid. Hamas humorists couldn't have done a better job. (Except, of course, that Hamas doesn't do humor...)


Are Jews in Judea and Samaria, the butt of left-wing satire which is the only type we get in Israel due to the absolute unfairness of our broadcasting, in danger due to the poor humor directed at them?

If it's good for the goose, it should be good for the gander, no?

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