Blogging can be for keeps in the Middle East:
CAIRO, Egypt [AP] An Egyptian appeals court on Monday upheld the four-year prison sentence given to an Egyptian blogger who criticized conservative Muslims and was convicted of insulting Islam and Egypt’s president, court officials said…
By Naomi Leitner
Naomi Leitner is an attorney in Israel.
This is a personal view of life at Israel’s narrowest point. I live some 8 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. This sounds lovely and picturesque. My son and his friends sometimes walk to the beach with a picnic lunch. It is no big deal for a teenager to walk 8 miles with a backpack. But it does make me shudder to think how quickly enemy soldiers could transverse Israel at its narrow waistline. And of course, the enemy is very near.
By Vic Rosenthal
Everyone by now is sick of hearing that critics of Israel are ‘silenced’ by accusations of antisemitism. As Melanie Phillips recently said (listen to Phillips’ wonderful speech in Melbourne here), it seems like one can hear nothing but attacks on Israel lately.
However, this raises an interesting question: are there really cases in which accusations of hate speech cause debate on an important issue to be shut off, or silenced, as Mearsheimer/Walt, Jimmy Carter, Alternative Jewish Voices, Brit Tzedek, ad infinitum are saying?
The answer is definitely yes, although it’s not the critics of Israel that are silenced. And as Phillips suggests, it is due to a blurring of definitions that leads to an unjustified broadening of our concept of intolerance and intolerant speech.
The Jerusalem Post reports that a recent NBC TV show promotes the “dual loyalty” theme as well as reinforcing stereotypes of brutal Israeli treatment of Palestinians:
The plot line of the February 27 installment of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, a fictional police drama broadcast across America on NBC, centers on a journalist who is poisoned after his girlfriend uncovers a foul-up by Israeli intelligence.
The show depicts Israeli bulldozers destroying Palestinian schools, with at least one character referring to “Israeli brutality.”
It also includes a Jewish police captain who agrees to cover up for Israel by shutting down a criminal investigation at the urging of the head of the local pro-Israel group.
In one scene, after Captain Danny Ross tells his officers to halt their investigation, Detective Mike Logan confronts him and asks, “Are you a Jew first and a cop second?”
The show includes thinly disguised characters representing AIPAC officials, Rachel Corrie, etc. CAMERA has more details, including partial transcripts, etc.
It’s not news that the media — especially television — tend to reduce complex issues to simple stereotypes, often totally distorting the truth. It is interesting and disturbing to see the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel direction in which it is going, which was unheard of here recently (although it has been the rule in Europe for some time).
It seems to me that these themes are being injected at the (relative) “high end” of popular culture, for example by the Mearsheimer/Walt paper and the Jimmy Carter book; they then trickle down until they meet the slime bubbling up from the bottom where the neo-Nazis reside.
Technorati Tags: NBC, Law and Order, antisemitism, anti-Israel
By Vic Rosenthal
Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, an American Jewish organization which claims to be “pro-Israel and pro-Peace” is asking people — especially Jews — to sign a petition which says:
I call on your Administration to urgently promote talks between Israel and any party – including the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Syria – that accepts Israel’s right to exist by engaging in direct negotiations, back-channel contacts, and/or an international peace conference.
At first glance, this is ambiguous. Does it mean that Israel should talk to anyone who accepts her right to exist, and should do so in any of several ways? Or does it mean that anyone who engages in negotiations, back-channel contacts, or a peace conference thereby accepts Israel’s right to exist and Israel should talk to them?
