...the Web has helped open up entire subjects that were once off-limits to the press. The domestic politics of US policy toward Israel is a good example. Until recently, the activities of pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC were all but ignored by reporters fearful of being branded anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. Today, the Web teems with news, analysis, opinion, and polemic about US–Israel relations.
Rob Browne, a Long Island dentist, keeps track of Israel-related legislation in Congress on the left-liberal blog Daily Kos. M.J. Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer-turned-dove, dissects the Israel lobby's activities on Talking Points Memo. Fiercely opposing them is a battalion of Israel defenders, including Ron Kampeas, (Capital J at the JTA wire service), Michael Goldfarb (the online editor of The Weekly Standard), and — the most influential journalist/blogger on matters related to Israel — Jeffrey Goldberg (at The Atlantic).Both sides feed off the vast amount of data available on the Web. "In the past, I wouldn't have been able to get Haaretz except by going to Hotaling's," observes Philip Weiss, author of the blog Mondoweiss, referring to the long-since-shuttered foreign newspaper shop in New York. "Now I can get it, and the entire Israeli and Arab press, online." Weiss is one of several friends I've seen flourish online after enduring years of frustration writing for magazines. With its unrelenting criticism of Israel, his site has angered even some of his fellow doves, but it has given voice to a strain of opinion that in the past had few chances of being heard. In June, Weiss, with $8,000 in reader donations, traveled to Gaza with an antiwar group, and for several days he filed reports on his encounters with students, aid workers, and Hamas officials.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Blogging and Israel
From a review article on blogs:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
The real story is not who says what about Israel, but why there is a grossly disproportionate (relative to, say the war between the West and Islamists) amount of bandwidth devoted to insulting Israel and Hebrews (or Jews, if you like). The moral of the story: Jew-hatred (I will not attempt presenting my hypothesis about Jew-hatred here). And what is furthermore fascinating and perverse is that the genocidal rants and Goebbels-esque propaganda of the anti-Jewish racists is often treated as some sort of rational argument that deserves formal refutation. The internet is a vast propaganda tool, where war is waged by anti-Jewish racists/Islamists (who outnumber the total number of Hebrews many times over) with lies and baiting. Yet, the number of Hebrews who refuse to admit this is not insubstantial, preferring to cling to the false promise of appeasement. And, relatedly, what is even more telling and fascinating is how bloggers in general tacitly condone through ommission the murder and barbaric violence of the Islamists. I have come to realize years ago that the anti-Jewish content on the web is exactly war waged by other means. And, as the blogger here mentions, some of the de facto allies of the Islamists are certain traitor Jews themselves. The ironies are obvious, but still stunning. I think what Jews lack is righteous hatred and rage for those who oppress us. It is amazing that a people who have been treated like sh*t for the past 2000 years still feel sorry for those of their would-be slaughterers who have yet to be fully successful; any other people would hate their oppressors to the bone, but some Hebrews seem incapable of generating anger except against their own. Bizarre, my Hebrew brothers, inexplicable. yet simply true.
Thanks for your perceptive comments
I think what's amazing about the situation is how right-wing Israelis believe that they are incapable of doing any wrong, that any violence they engage in is beyond criticism or even evaluation, and that they have a continued right to billions of dollars in military support from American taxpayers without any accountability for how those weapons are used.
If I were a right-wing Hebrew who believed that God gave me a certain piece of land for all eternity, I would pray to God very diligently, because the US will not continue to support right-wing Hebrew spiritual delusions indefinitely.
In point of fact, if God is your real estate agent, you don't need billions of dollars in American military aid. Get your military power from God, just as King David did.
Anon: (I love when outlandish opinions are expressed by such brave people that they can't identify themselves because those opinons cannot be supported by facts.)
Anyway, yes, we make mistakes in thinking such a simple thing like a) Jews came from the Land of Israel [Palestine/Holy Land/Terra Sancta] where they developed a unique religion, monotheistic and a culture; b) they lived there as a sovereign people from about 1200 BCE until early 7th century, except for a 70 year period of exile, and a second conquest and destruction of political independence in 70 CE, followed by another suppression of a revolt in 135 CE - all of which is attested to by either documents and records or archaeologicall evidence; c) after the first Arab occupation (the second after the Crusades in 13th century), almost complete dispersion occurred; and d) that throughout the years of Exile, Jews returned inn smaller and larger numbers to the Land and tried recreating a state and in 1917, 1919, 1920 and 1922, international forums, conferences and the League of Nations all recognized that in granting the Jews the right to reconstitute their Jewish National Home - that all this would be simple to grasp.
Our second mistake is to think that we could confront Arab terror and violence with right and without might and then when we needed to fight, the nations said 'but you are Jews, you don't use violence, well, not like us'.
Oh, and when we do get our military power, part of which we have shared with the US, and then eventually use it, don't you going running to your god to complain.
Post a Comment