If you ever encountered the expression “confident ignoramus”
and thought it was too oxymoronic to represent someone that really exists, let
me assure you there is at least one such character that's alive and well. He is
proudly flashing his ignorant ideas with a confidence in his own infallibility
that only a pope of the socio-political variety can boast.
His name is David Harsanyi, and he wrote an article under
the title: “The Real Problem With Kerry's 'Apartheid' Myth” and the subtitle:
“The Obama Administration's stale anti-Israel canard.” It was published in the
Federalist online magazine on April 29, 2014.” As the title indicates, that
writer has taken up the subject of apartheid to say not only that Secretary of
State, John Kerry made a mistake using the word, but that the situation is
worse than meets the eye because apartheid is a myth and a canard perpetuated
by the Obama administration.
After about a thousand words displaying the full array of
his truth telling prowess, he ends the presentation by hitting the readers with
something he wishes they will never forget. He tells them that the work done by
Kerry can still serve the purpose of uniting the Palestinians – which he
suggests they will be glad to do in an effort to blame their misfortunes on the
Jews.
Of course, Harsanyi knows that no one will believe this
story because the people who would read his work are the sort that watches the
Fox News channel where no Palestinian commercial has ever appeared begging
Christians to donate a 25 dollar box of food because the Jews did them in. On
the contrary, it is a Jewish rabbi who comes on the screen all the time, and
begs for that kind of donations, blaming the misfortunes of the Jews on the
Palestinians.
So you ask: What's that confident ignoramus, David Harsanyi,
up to? And you read the rest of the article to see for yourself how a brain
that is endowed with the ability to turn reality upside down to such an extent,
actually works. The first thing you see him try to do is dispel what he calls
the Obama canard about Israel .
Okay, there is a canard, he says, but what's it about? And he tells you it is
about Israel 's
future inability to be both Jewish and democratic.
But you know your history well, and you still have it fresh
in your memory that what he calls a canard is no canard at all. It is the
inevitable result of the demographic trend in the region following its natural
course. This is something that has been debated to exhaustion in Israel for more
than a decade by all sorts of people, including former prime ministers.
Everything was said during those debates except for one: nobody cast doubt on
the notion that Israel
will have a non-Jewish majority at some point in the not too distant future.
And this is where you realize it would be an exercise in
futility to ask whether David Harsanyi was aware of those debates, or whether
he ignored them to make a false presentation. The fact of the matter is that in
Judaism there are no truths and falsehoods rooted in reality. There is what's
convenient which they call truth; and there is what's not convenient which they
call falsehood.
Given the current circumstances, the author of the article
finds it convenient to call the Kerry remarks “scaremongery,” and so it becomes
the truth for now … until further notice. But for this to be, he must dismiss a
decade of Israeli debates on the subject, as well as the conclusions that they
reached. No problem with that because this is the Jewish way of doing things.
If someone will dare contradict it, they will be called antisemitic, and there
will be attempts to destroy them personally and professionally even if they are
Secretary of State or President of the United States . Just ask Jimmy
Carter, and now Kerry and Obama.
Having dismissed the Israeli debates, and having attributed
their conclusions to Kerry and to Obama, he explains there are problems with
those conclusions. He says that the math does not add up, but does not explain
his own math. He only says that someone obscure debunked the earlier findings
which – he was saying only a moment ago – were a myth and a canard invented by
Kerry and Obama who, by the way, never did the math. Still, he concludes that
“the demographic time bomb, in other words, is a dud,” and you conclude that
his logic is so mutilated; it can only have the Star of David stamped on it. It
is Jewish through and through.
Believing in his own mind that he has created an argument as
solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, he confidently describes the state of the
current situation in Palestine ,
and what it can be made to look like in the future. He says: “No Israeli
government has seriously considered annexing the West Bank
or the Gaza Strip. Israel
can offer limited autonomy to Palestinians.” Well, well, well, forget about his
prediction that the demographic time bomb will turn out to be a dud, what he
just said is a bomb that is definitely not a dud. He said “limited autonomy”
which – you know means what? It means apartheid by another name. Kaboom! The
truth may come out the mouths of babes, but they also come out the mouths of
the confident ignoramuses.