You've Got To Be Carefully Taught to Hate Israel

One of the most depressing aspects of trying to combat the Big Lie about Israel (i.e. that it's a murderous colonialist apartheid sate) is the realization of how much headway it's made with the young'uns. Case in point: my niece, who is studying at a large university in another province, has two roommates, both as smart, pretty and vivacious as she is. Neither one is Jewish. One has a parent who works at the CBC. Both of them are convinced--convinced!--that Israel is in the midst of perpetrating a genocide against Palestinians, and there is nothing my niece, who has been to Israel many times, and who knows the truth about the place, can say to shake them from that belief.

These two young women, clever as they are, have been indoctrinated by their schools and, yes, by the CBC, to believe a malicious falsehood, one that is being purposefully spread by Israel's enemies. These enemies, motley combination of Islamists and the leftist useful idiots in their camp, cannot abide the spectacle of a modern Jewish state existing, and even thriving, on land claimed in perpetuity for Allah. And here's the most depressing part--there are millions more who think exactly like my niece's roommates.

Young women like this, for example:

A school girl who won a regional final of the Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge with an anti-Israel speech is no longer being sent through to the grand final of the public speaking competition. 

Leanne Mohamad of Wanstead High School won the Redbridge regional final earlier this month with a speech entitled ‘Birds not Bombs’...

During the speech Ms Mohamad stated that “from 1948 until this very day more than 30,000 defenceless Palestinian children have been killed”. She used the phrase “Palestine: one voice, one country and one dream” and closed the speech with the call to “free Palestine” whilst waving a Palestinian flag. 

Following complaints by blogger Edgar Davidson to the Speakers Trust, the charity that trains the students to take part in the Speak Out Challenge, the Jack Petchey Foundation and Wanstead High School, the judging panel have now decided “unanimously” against sending Leanne Mohamad through to the final rounds of the competition. 

Julie Holness, CEO of the Speakers Trust, said that Ms Mohamad had breached “two fundamental rules that are made explicit during the training”. 

She said: “There are two fundamental rules that are made explicit during the training: the speech must have a positive and uplifting message - in fact this is one of the core terms of the agreement with the Jack Petchey Foundation [and] a speaker should never inflame or offend the audience or insult others and this, by definition, means that propaganda is ruled out absolutely from the outset...

Sadly, one person's "propaganda" is another one's absolute conviction borne of years of insidious indoctrination in the Big Lie.