A Zionist On 'Enemy' Turf
Michael Coren is an unabashed, unapologetic Zionist. He says it
is arguably the most successful example of the restoration of an indigenous people to their rightful homeland in human history. It is a liberation struggle, a story of the creation of a light on a hill, that light being the Jewish state in the Middle East.
In an effort to shut the light (because, annoyingly, it is both successful and Jewish), Israel-loathers purvey the calumny that Zionist=racism=apartheid. Coren calls this
a lie, a blood libel, a politically motivated and blatantly dishonest campaign to use Soviet-style propaganda to condemn Jews
which, indeed, it is. He is taking this unpopular message to the heart of Zanytown, speaking at four universities during Israeli Apartheid Week ("this death-dark celebration of double-speak and intellectual posing"). He describes what happened at the first venue:
...while the majority of the people there were supportive, and most of those not supportive were relatively polite, the fanatic who was removed by the police showed me the face of authentic hatred.
In the middle of my talk, he ran to the microphone reserved for questions at the end and screamed foul language and abuse. That the police were there in the first place says a great deal — disruptions are not uncommon.
This particular individual then waited for me when I left the lecture hall and continued to abuse me for 10 minutes, and also try to run at me and physically confront me. If this happened to me, I can only imagine what ordinary Jewish kids have to put up with on campuses each day.
They have to put up with crap galore. But then, so does every other kid who isn't willing to swallow campus PC, the ideology that transforms university campuses into mini-totalitarian polities. (For quick reference, today's apartheid calumny has its basis in Soviet propaganda while the concept of "political correctness" is grounded in Mao.)
3 comments:
Unfortunately for Israel, they have been cast as the "honkies" in the sociocultural paradigm that has obtained since the Civil Rights Movement triumphed in the U. S.: Whites (bad!) vs. blacks--or, by extension, "people of color" (good!).
Now, a rational observer would point out that neither Jews nor Arabs are actually races in a physical-anthropological sense (though they have historically been referred to as such, in the sense in which Churchill spoke of the "Anglo-Saxon race"). But more and more ethnic groups have learned that, if they can cast themselves in the role originated by black Americans in the 1950s and '60s, they will automatically be assigned the moral high ground by the Western Leftist intelligentsia. No _apologia_, no matter how well reasoned and articulated, for the thesis that Israel is the morally superior society, will suffice to change perceptions.
In my humble, amateur opinion, only a propaganda counter-offensive, pitched at a basic, limbic-system level, full of outrage and conceding nothing to the enemy, will have the desired effect. (Resurrecting Leon Uris to write an updated version of _Exodus_ would help, but would probably be impractical.)
I agree with your humble opinion, and my strategy would be to delegitimize the delegitimizers (whose arguments don't hold up, and who are on the wrong side of history).
Turf Manchester for Best Turfs..
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