There is a great blog called "Bad News from
the Netherlands." The point is to publish every single
story that can make the Netherlands look bad, without any balance or context,
to show that in the aggregate the methods used by Israel-haters to delegitimize
Israel can be used against literally anyone. Looking at only that blog, you
would conclude that the Netherlands is a racist, crime-ridden state that flouts
international law and has no redeeming characteristics.
Max Blumenthal does exactly the
same thing in his latest book about Israel - except he is far lessobjective than that blog.
Blumenthal's anti-Israel screed
is called "Goliath." From what I can tell he took every possible
activity by every possible Israeli Jew that can be remotely construed as
negative, adding some hyperbole and eliminating context, and threw it into a
book that is being hawked by the usual misozionistic crowd
as evidence that Israel is rotten to the core.
While "Bad News from The
Netherlands" only copies news stories, Blumenthal layers his hatred for
Israel onto every incident, every anecdote, every piece of hearsay that he can
find - as long as it makes Israeli Jews look like fascists (a word that he
repeatedly associates with Israel in the book, as the index indicates.)
I decided to browse a little on
the Amazon preview of the book, and saw this little non-anecdote on page 42:
Before any trip to
Israel-Palestine, I receive a dizzying array of advice from jour-nalist and
activist friends on how to pass through Israeli security with minimal
harassment. A Jewish-American writer for a Palestinian diaspora publication
told me she always wore blue-and-white clothing—the colors of the Israeli
flag—and a gold Star of David necklace, and flirted openly with security officers
of the opposite sex. A left-wing Israeli activist advised me to behave in an
irritable, churlish fashion, blurting out terse responses to questions from
security officers to avoid creating the perception that I was overcompensating
for any "anti-Israel" intentions. Other journalist friends warned me
to erase any and all Arab contacts from my phone, and to delete any material I
had published about the Israel-Palestine conflict from my computer hard drive.
They reminded me about Lily Sussman, the twenty-one-year-old Jewish American
college student detained in December 2009 by the Shin Bet at Israel's border
with Egypt because she was carrying suspicious items, such as an Arabic
phrasebook. After two hours of intense interrogation, a baby-faced Shin Bet officer
appeared to inform Sussman,"I'm sorry, but we had to blow up your laptop:'
He then handed her a Macbook riddled with bullet holes. Luckily for Sussman,
the bullets missed her hard drive.
After deciding that I was too
lazy to purge my computer and cellphone of Arab contacts, I concluded that I
had nothing to hide and that the Israeli intelligence services could not
possibly be foolish enough to treat me as a security threat. I then reminded myself that I was an
Ashkenazi Jew who would be automatically afforded special rights according to
the designs of Zionism.
My Jewish privilege would be borne out during many trips in
and out of Ben Gurion Airport. Whenever a security officer greeted me with the
requisite opening question, "Are you Jeweesh?" I have learned to
casually respond, "Of course." If I were ever asked if I had any
Israeli family, I would tell them about all my imaginary cousins in Tel Aviv or
about my imaginary Israeli girlfriend. "Are you thinking of marrying your
girlfriend," a young female security officer asked me once., sure
am!" I said with a bashful smile, bringing a satisfied grin to the face of
the officer. Because the
maintenance of a Jewish demographic majority is Israel's national priority, the
production of Jewish babies is a key national priority. With my promise to
inject top-grade Ashkenazi Jewish sperm into the ovum of a young Jewish Israeli
woman, I was marked with a level-one
security classification.
Each time I reach the kiosk at
passport control on my way into Israel-Palestine, I do my best to appear calm,
and even a little bit bored, while the officer examines my documents.With bated breath I wait for the
loud thump of the metal visa stamp when it meets the pages of my passport. Only
with that noise will I know that I have gained admission through the fortified
frontiers controlled by Israel. As a sense of relief washes across my body, a
single thought enters my mind that is constantly reaffirmed throughout my time
inside Israel-Palestine: I am a lucky Jew.
Blumenthal admits that he
travels to Israel often. He admits that he has never had a problem entering Israel. He admits that no one
ever looked at his cell phone or computer.
Yet he spins a tale of
nervousness, of suspicion. He gratuitously makes fun of the Israeli accent.
(Would he ever do that to an Arab?) He pretends to know that the polite
reaction to his lie about wanting to marryhis fake Jewish girlfriend is proof
of Israeli bigotry. (I have no idea what a "level-one security
classification" is. I'm pretty sure he made it up, something he has done before.)
And, of course, his repeated
easy entry into the country only proves how terrible Israel is. Yet for some
reason, every single time he
is about to visit Israel, his friends keep offering advice on how to avoid the
inevitable harassment.
This gives a small inkling of
how skewed Blumenthal is.
To be fair, he does mention the
case of Lily Susskind. I don't know what happened there. It certainly
sounds bad from his telling of the story. Clearly her "Jewish
privilege" didn't protect her as Blumenthal claims it protects him.
Of course, Blumenthal - who pretends
to be a journalist - doesn't bother to try to find out what
really happened from the perspective of Israel's security. He implies that
Susskind's Arabic phrasebook and equally innocuous items are the reason she was
detained. What he doesn't mention
is that Susskind was living in Egypt at
the time.
Plus she had a visa for Syria on
her passport. A country that Israel is technically at war with.
Plus a hand-drawn map of
Jerusalem.
Plus a photo on her phone of a
graffitum saying "Fuck" next to a Star of David.
But to Blumenthal, the Arabic
phrasebook it the only thing worth mentioning as an unreasonable excuse for her
to be questioned.
His intent isn't to document
reality, but to propagandize.
If he would have been honest,
and told that story straight with context, then we can be properly upset at
what appears to have been a gross overreaction on the part of the border
officials. I confess I don't understand why, if Susskind was
considered safe enough to enter Israel, they had to (almost) destroy her
computer.
Israel isn't perfect by any
means, and it has to deal with problems that no other country has to worry
about. I would find it hard to believe (in the absence of any other
information) the the people who shot her laptop would remain in their jobs if
this incident would have been pursued.
When 18 year olds are forced to
grow up fast to help defend their country, sometimes they do very inappropriate
things that would be considered normal pranks on any college campus. This
doesn't justify it, but the country is a pressure cooker and blowing off steam
is inevitable. It is not evidence of "fascism."
Nevertheless, even with all the
pressures and insults and haters targeting the Jewish state, Israel
consistently tries to improve. An honest journalist would mention that.
But Blumenthal isn't
honest. He isn't a journalist but an Israel-hating ideologue who
is willing to play fast and loose with the facts to get his point across.
He doesn't want to expose problems so they can be solved, he wants
everyone to hate Israel as much as he does. He doesn't want to improve the
Jewish state, but to destroy it.
Which is pretty much all that
you need to know about this book.
--
Elder of Ziyon
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