Here is an article, written by Matti Friedman that will
serve as a good example for how a world of mass-delusion eventually boils down
to a simple question. The article has the title: “What the Media Gets Wrong
About Israel” and the subtitle: “The news tells us less about Israel than about the people
writing the news, a former AP reporter says.” It was published on November 30,
2014 in The Atlantic.
This is a 4700-word article that gives details of many small
things and a few big ones, but never addresses the central question which bites
at the instinct of the readers and the listeners, even if they don't ask the
question out loud. The following is what the article evades – perhaps not
deliberately – but inadvertently and out of ignorance: “What are the Jews doing
in the occupied Palestinian territories to begin with?”
There was a time when colonialism as practiced by the big
powers was accepted because the occupation of another country was justified on
the basis that the latter was backward and needed to be modernized if not
civilized. Thus, colonialism as an institution was thought to be a virtue and
not a sin. But with time, some local groups learned how to organize themselves
and fight the occupation. When they inflicted enough pain on the colonial
powers, the latter began to rethink their justification, unable to answer the
question: What are you doing here to begin with? And this is when they
discovered that occupation was a sin and not a virtue, after all.
Then, at a time when colonialism was beginning to disappear
from the face of the Earth, the phenomenon of Jewish illegal immigration into Palestine started to take
shape. Having not the imagination to explain in acceptable terms why it was
necessary for the Jews to have a place they call home, they borrowed the
justification that the dying colonial powers used to give. They falsely claimed
that Palestine (otherwise known as the Land of Milk
and Honey and a component of the Fertile Crescent )
was desert from end to end. However, they assured the world that the Jews (most
of whom were tailors, jewelers, carpetbaggers and bootleggers) were going to
snatch it from the incompetent Palestinian farmers that have tried in vain to
farm it for millenniums, and make the desert bloom by the magical green thumbs
of the tailor, jeweler, carpetbagger and bootlegger.
The Europeans who knew better but had the Holocaust on their
conscience said that the Jews should go for it. The Americans who had no idea
what was going on, listened to the handful of local Jewish voices that were
pleading for America
to follow the European example. Eventually, the administration of the day
decided to assist the Jews complete their plans in Palestine not knowing what they were, not
seeing details of them, and not realizing that the plans were open ended the
way that all Jewish plans are.
And while Friedman now complains that the “Israel story”
occupies the attention of the world media more than it should, it was the Jews
of the world – especially the North American ones – who started doing what they
do today, which is to offer junket trips to Israel for the journalists and the
politicians who are in a position to help Israel achieve the glory it seeks.
The Jews wanted then, as they do now, that the world media speak of no one but Israel , only Israel ,
and no one but Israel , thus
tell the Israel
story as it is narrated by the Jews themselves.
And no one in the “West” had up to recent times questioned
the right of the Jews to be in what is called Israel
proper, or what is known as the occupied territories of Gaza
and the West Bank . This was the case, despite
the fact that numerous Security Council resolutions were passed requiring Israel to end the occupation, numerous other
ones were vetoed by the United States ,
and numerous resolutions of the General Assembly were passed condemning Israel for
disregarding the rule of law.
And then it happened that the reality of the Palestinian
situation began to rise to the level of consciousness in Europe and in America . It was
a time when people – Jews and gentiles, in Israel
and in America – finally
joined everyone else on the planet in asking the government of Israel : What are you doing occupying Palestine to begin with?
From that moment on, considerations like those raised in the Friedman article,
lost their meaning. As long as the question: “What are you doing here to begin
with?” had not been answered, it did not matter whether Hamas or the Jews were
better at manipulating the media. The world became fixated on the occupation.