Fiamma Nirenstein
Israel Hayom published a great interview today with Italian journalist and MP Fiamma Nirenstein. Here is a snippet (but read it all):
And yet, we can ask why it is that when facing a unilateral declaration, the world is prepared to support a Palestinian state? As this is lunacy. First, a Palestinian state cannot exist, divided as it would be between Hamas and the PLO. They have nothing in common, neither institutions nor an economy. So only violence can result from such an unrealizable expectation. Second, what could be the nature of a Palestinian state? On the basis of our knowledge until now – a state where women are inferior; extremist Islam prevails and perhaps wins the next elections; homosexuals are persecuted, as well as regime dissidents. In this case, why has it gained such widespread support around the world, particularly in the western world?
The Jews are the reason. The Palestinians’ raison d’être is not a positive aspiration to establish a state, but a negative one, to destroy the Jewish state. This apparently suits the cultural and political agenda of the world’s Left. [my emphasis]
Indeed. It often strikes me that it is impossible that all of the EU politicians, President Obama and his advisers, the journalists who write about the Middle East (Nirenstein says that Thomas Friedman “…is constantly wrong. He no longer has eyes to see”), the human rights industry, all of them, can be simply naive or stupid.
In the case of the politicians, even if they are naive or stupid — Obama has shown over and over that he doesn’t understand the Mideast — they are surrounded by ‘experts’ who should know better.
I’ve stopped wasting time analyzing and over-analyzing the reasons for this phenomenon. Arab money, Muslim populations in Europe, oil companies, fashionable academic theories, the brilliance of presenting the effort to destroy Israel as a movement of national liberation, on and on. All of these factors may be relevant to some extent, but none of them can explain the way so much of the Western world holds a position that is flat out counterfactual.
Nirenstein is correct: the Jews are the reason.
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Yes, it is the Spiritual condition playing itself out in the physical/visual world. There is no other explanation that makes any sense. I appreciate this article and the words of this lady.
I beg to differ. This has all happened just too quickly.
I went to college – undergrad – during the early 1980s. I went to a school known for a very prominent liberal bent: U of M Ann Arbor.
It was not uncommon at that time to see students carrying “Israeli paratrooper” shoulder bags. These were khaki bags with a red Israeli airborne logo emblazoned upon them. Quite chic at the time…try that on a college campus here today.
Yes, the far left of even the 60s had their Israel basher types, but they were indeed a very small fringe.
Consider the popularity of Bobby Kennedy during the ’68 election season. He was a clear shoe-in to get the nomination, and to win the election. The liberal left of that day simply loved him. And he was as pro-Israel as the day is long. Had he been elected, I have no doubt that he would have been by far, the most pro-Israel president ever.
Starting in the early 1980s, fresh on the crushing defeat of Syria and the south Lebanon-based PLO at the hands of the IDF, the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs began a campaign in earnest to use other means – centered on corrupting Western academic institutions – to undermine Israel. I witnessed first hand the beginnings of these efforts, and I did not take them seriously at the time. How young and stupid I was then.
These efforts have been exhaustively documented by the Lebanese-American scholar, Walid Phares, among others.
Such efforts have acted in a manner analogous to a passive night vision device. Those of you with military experience may have some knowledge as to how such devices work: they use “image intensifiers” that magnify ambient light hundreds or thousands of times in order to present an image that is visible to the naked human eye.
Similarly, the Saudi-style propaganda smear camaign against Israel – modeled on the tactics developed by the North Vietnamese communists during that war, only in the former case, with far more money and time to refine the message and impact – take “ambient” levels of anti-Semitism and magnify these to far greater proportions.
They can’t do it without at least some fertile soil to work in – ignorance combined with anti-Semitic tendencies, or among Israel-bashing Jews, cowardice and self-hatred – but hey, nowadays, money doesn’t talk, it veritably screams. This is especially true in economically insecure times such as the ones we live in today. All sorts of over-educated, self-important, objectivly non-productive people are looking for an easy way to ensure a comfortable retirement. Professor John Mearsheimer – I worked for him as a research assistant during the late 80s, by the way – come to mind.
OK, Vic, I’ll freely grant that good old anti-Semitism plays a clear role. That’s a no-brainer, given our history going back centuries. But political-cultural changes of the sort we’ve witnessed regarding this issue over the past 30 years, I don’t think this scale of change occurs “naturally”. It had a LOT of help. I still say petrodollars are the main culprit, to the extent that a single main culprit needs to be identified. (That, combined with the shallowness and greed that make people vulnerable to such an appeal.)