Another Fisk Flop

Robert Fisk is at it again.  Notice his not-so-subtle besmirching here:

...as Professor Ian Buruma pointed out recently (and earlier), the political heirs of "deeply racist traditions" are the new champions of the Jewish state, whose policies now owe more to 19th-century ethnic chauvinism than to Zionism's socialist roots. All kinds of strange people now give their support to Israel. It is disturbing to note that the Oslo mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, supported the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank. That's not Israel's fault.

Of course it's not Israel's fault but, well, Fisk wouldn't mind you dwelling on the angle and, perhaps, hating Israel.

And as for those "socialist roots",  Zionist thought, that is, genuine Jewish national expressions, institutions and practice predate modern socialism by, say, 2500 years or so.  Perhaps socialism and/or liberalism were departures from the original concepts of Jewish national life as practiced by two Jewish commonwealths and kingdoms and tribal federations and family establishments. And he continues to drop his 5 kilo hammer:

Israel, which in the past could analyse events rationally, if not always correctly, appears, too, to have lost its ability to grasp events, its Prime Minister hiding behind self-delusional speeches...When Netanyahu and the king of Saudi Arabia could line up to plead with Obama to save Mubarak, you knew something had gone terribly wrong. Gideon Levy, one of the finest of Israeli journalists, writes with biting eloquence of his government's folly, its failure to see that Arab democracy is a cause for good, not bad...And, all the while, the settlements continue. Which is why the Palestinians will not resume peace talks with Israel under the grubby neutrality of the United States.

Liberal Jews in America are ever more outraged at this phenomenon. They have often seen something faintly fascist about the right in Israel. Indeed, I have a letter beside me as I write, sent to The New York Times on 2 December 1948, warning of the visit to the US of the young Menachem Begin whose "Freedom Party", said the letter's authors, was "closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties". Among the authors of this letter was Albert Einstein...

In brief, (a) "democracy"? but the Islamists have some 70% of Parliament and will take the Presidency come summer. what "democracy"? it's all fundamentalist Islam. (b) "they", those "liberal American Jews" are but one part of American Jewry, a small part but over-proportionately represent in the media by people like....Robert Fisk. (c) if anyone cannot analyse events rationally, it is Fisk and, through him, liberals, Jews and non-Jews, end up hating Israel because that way they can hang on him their own radical ideas, all most illogical and irrational.

By the way, that anti-Begin letter can be read here and you can judge for yourself if those Jews were smart and corect - reminder: Begin mande peace with Egypt, surrendered all of Sinai, promised autonomy/self-governing authority, etc. and was against the Military Government of Arab areas in the pre-1967 era.

Woe those who hate, who do not know and who wish not to know - and who make sure others do not know the turth.

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