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Fitzgerald: Criticism of Israel is not permitted?

Apr 12, 2008 7:48 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh recently asserted “the fact that the West does not tolerate any criticism of Israel.”

Not only does “the West” tolerate constant criticism of Israel, but Israel also — this mighty empire about the size of Connecticut, hard to discern on a map of the world — about one-third to one-half of the total debates and resolutions at the U.N. and many of its subsidiary bodies. Whole conferences seem to veer inexorably into the subject of Israel’s perfidy and the greatest tragedy in the history of the world, that of the “Palestinians” — whether it be a conference on racism at Durban, or on women in Cairo. And the Western world not only tolerates it, but sometimes joins in. Israel has been left virtually alone, save for a handful of states.
And as for the Western press, a drip-drip-drip of anti-Israel venom now courses through the veins of so many in the West because the good doctors of The Guardian and the BBC and Le Monde and Agence France Presse and Reuters and a cast of thousands, with Robert Fisk in the lead but hardly alone, have misrepresented everything. They have caused everything to be taken out of context. They have promoted the notion of the “Palestinian people.” They have caused collective amnesia about the reason, and terms of, the Mandate for Palestine. They have rewritten or ignored the true demographic history and the cadastral history of that tiny sliver of land in dusty Asia that had fallen into ruin and desolation, and that would still be in ruins if the Jews had not returned. That includes the Jews of the Middle East (the Jews of the Middle East whom we are supposed to forget about, as if they never existed) as well as the Jews whose mistreatment in Europe had its final apotheosis in Mr. Hitler and the still-unbelievable events of 1933-1945. Those who belonged to the most persecuted tribe in human history returned — though some had never left, for there was a continuous Jewish presence, always, in Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem, and even in Hebron until the Arab Muslim massacre of 1929). They returned, and reestablished, for the second time in 2000 years, a Jewish commonwealth. The incredible accomplishments in Israel, the magnanimity it has shown as well to its mortal enemies, have both been systematically ignored.

One may or may not agree with the celebrated Italian journalist and historian Indro Montanelli, who, a few years before his death in 2001 at the age of 90, wrote that the reestablishment of the State of Israel was “the greatest thing, possibly the only good thing, to have come out of the twentieth century.” Montanelli could say this because, though not Jewish, he — like Churchill — understood what that meant, in world-historical terms, what it meant to the West.

This has been forgotten in that same West, the West where we are told by this crazed Muslim observer that criticism of Israel is not tolerated. Though the least deserving of criticism, in the West, as elsewhere, Israel has become an object of hysterical and ahistorical criticism, criticism that is spread and finds favor with two kinds of people: the usual group, some 10-20% of the population in any given Western country, that exhibits signs of that mental pathology we call antisemitism (and for whom Israel provides an “acceptable” outlet for their low-level hostility or hatred) and those who simply do not know, are ignorant of, the history of Israel, of the Mandate period, of the Mandate itself, of the rules of territorial adjustment after wars, of the history of the Middle East, of the history of Islamic conquest, of the demographic and cadastral history of the area that became modern Israel, of the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics, of Islam.

And the less you know of these things, the more likely it is that you will credulously accept and pass on to others the inaccurate and at times horrifically and sinisterly unjust reporting on events, and “making sense” of events, that takes place in the popular press and in broadcasting.

From Anthony Lewis, to Tom Friedman, to Robert Fisk, to Eric Rouleau, the misrepresenters of Israel, who have done so much damage, are many and various.

“Criticism of Israel” is not tolerated? There is an object of conceivable criticism that is, in many parts of the Western world, carefully protected from such criticism, but it is not “Israel.” It does, however, share the same initial syllable. And that is about all it shares.

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