Source: Bigstock
Okay, Takimag readers, I will leave it up to you to decide. Do the following acts constitute anti-Semitism? Some Jewish passengers on an Iberia flight from Argentina to Spain received an unwanted message scribbled on their kosher meal. It read, horror of horrors, “Free Palestine.” The message was daubed on the packaging of the kosher meal and was duly reported to the head flight attendant. Salvador Auday, one of the Jewish passengers who received the unwanted message, reported that the flight attendant took pictures of the message and said that he would do his best to discover the responsible party. So far so good, or bad, depending on whose side you’re on.
Thousands of miles east of that outrage, near Manchester, England, “cowardly bullies,” as described by The Daily Telegraph, targeted Orthodox Jews with water pistols and sprayed them along with some of their children. The two men who did this had singled out Orthodox Jewish men and sprayed them from the safety of their car. Greater Manchester Police called it a crime and said it was investigating. The dastardly act was widely reported and the perpetrators called names Takimag does not allow to appear on its elegant pages. The perpetrators, however, included a disclaimer in an apology they posted, which read: “This video was made purely for humorous purposes. It is a joke and not hate speech in any way. Please do not take this the wrong way.”
“Whatever happened to moral fiber in the newsroom?”
So I will leave this up to you, dear readers, to decide. A couple of thousand miles south from the water pistol attack, in Gaza, Israeli military chiefs have descended into a shouting match over the civilian death toll from Israeli air strikes. The latest reports from that unhappy area state that more than 62,000 Palestinians have died, and some Israeli army commanders are complaining to their air force colleagues that the Palestinian civilian losses are unacceptable. Major General Yaniv Asor is said to have shouted to Air Force Major General Bar that many air strikes were unnecessarily killing civilians and showing a “lack of professionalism.” Apparently cooler military heads prevailed, and tempers calmed down.
Now, what I would like to point out is the following: The conservative newspaper that gave equal billing to the three stories has obviously got its priorities wrong. Whatever happened to moral fiber in the newsroom? An already Hiroshima-like landscape that is further bombed into an even more gruesome killing field is then accorded an equal headline as a water pistol attack and a hastily written message on board an airline. I admit I’m a bit nonplussed, but then it could be my advanced age or something.
The moral superiority claimed by Israel as a democracy is undeniable, especially when neighboring countries are unelected authoritarian ex-camel-driver monarchies. Which makes the genocide in Gaza even more shocking. Democracies do not steal land from a defenseless people in the West Bank, or from weakened nations like Syria and Lebanon. Where there were once bustling communities full of homes, markets, schools, and hospitals, today there is only ash and rubble, and 62,000 dead, more than half of them women and children. So, is it anti-Semitic to point this out? And is it fair to describe the water pistol incident in fevered prose while toning down the horror of the Gaza genocide? Gaza does resemble Hiroshima, and the death toll will soon match the Japan horror.
Personally, the worst of Israeli crimes is that of starvation. Too many Jews died of malnutrition in Nazi camps for Israel to use similar tactics. The eleven-week blockade on the territory between March and May of this year is now at its peak. And it is proof that it was deliberate. Within Gaza the results of this have been catastrophic. Israel now lets in food, but Palestinians are dying every day from starvation. And Israeli soldiers have continued to shoot and kill civilians because of a problematic food distribution program that forces people to cross Israeli military lines to reach distribution. One does not need Sherlock Holmes to see this is a deliberate stunt by Netanyahu.
The Gaza genocide makes for a good bellwether—however grim—of Israeli dehumanization of Palestinians. Mind you, there are Israelis such as columnist Gideon Levy who abhor Netanyahu’s tactics. Alas, they are single voices in the wilderness. The settlers and the right-wingers seem to have it all their own way nowadays, and when I last was in Noo Yawk it felt like Tel Aviv. There were daily unbecoming exultations by the New York Post over Israeli “victories” in Gaza, followed by the gruesome despondency I felt at the Palestinian agony. The world’s revulsion does not seem to bother Bibi nor his neocon American agents. The only hope now is The Donald, but I’m as certain of a pro-Palestinian intervention by the American president as I am of the integrity of his son-in-law Jared Kushner.