“I am going to write,” said my mother with utter determination, a clear indication that the situation reached dire proportions. I can sit and write, but for my mother the mere suggestion is a burden, thus a sign of the desperation of our times.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has given up. It took seven days for a 49-second video it had posted to be removed. Apparently, the foreign press stationed in Israel did not like being portrayed as reporting while unable to see the obvious. A sublime message indeed – wear eyeglasses! Be attuned to reality.
The segment highlights a new transportation system being developed in Gaza: European, American and other foreign money at work. It portrays the death tunnels dug from Gaza to Israel for the purpose of infiltrating, kidnapping civilians, murdering and maiming, intended to reap havoc of frightening proportions, as an investment in a modern underground subway system.
Just the audacity to think so creatively is no more than public relations gone amuck.
The segment also shows what “normalcy” in Gaza is all about: There is apparently no terrorism in Hamas-controlled Gaza, where a woman walks a stroller next to a “freedom fighter” launching a rocket (aimed at Israeli civilians) or a person selling produce being kidnapped (likely to be tortured and be put to death), because he is different than what is permissible.
Only 49 seconds. It took Israel seven days to capitulate. Disgraceful, but expected.
We all seem to be concerned with the resurgence of Anti-Semitism around the world, the stunning progress of the BDS movement and vitriolic attacks against Israel on US university campuses.
The spread of all three is Israel’s fault, for having forgotten that a war cannot be won in the defensive—Israel must go on the offensive.
Except, Israel proves time and again that she is not yet ready. In simple terms, only once Israelis suffer beyond a critical point, will they change their modus operandi. Until then, we are told the Government of Israel cannot be seen engaging in Propaganda (everyone else is, but Israel holds herself to a different standard).
Inside Israel, the ruling elites like active judiciary, media, entertainment and academia are engaged in a battle of their own. The current Netanyahu so called “right wing-extremist” government has threatened to pull the plug from selected funding for “cultural” activities that equate Israel’s just fight to survive with that of the terrorists acting against her very being. No more talk of moral equivalency where none exists.
The elites encourage behavior they find offensive in others. To them, the world’s fascination with the BDS movement is wrong, but they are allowed to boycott locations in and products of Judea and Samaria (otherwise known as “Settlements” in “Occupied Territories”).
Oh, how much the elites detest not having a complete and utter say, both in what one must think and how the budgets are to be utilized. They have grown accustomed to everything they say and do as permissible. Thus, several of the past Israeli contenders to the Oscars have been explicitly anti-Israel, all on Israeli taxpayers dime.
My fellow Israel activist and Trouble Maker Dr. Pablo Nankin of Beverly Hills has forwarded a thank you note from Artists Against Apartheid and the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which states:
The Israeli state has repeatedly evidenced that it relies on artistic propaganda to improve its “international brand” as a pluralistic democracy; all the while continuing state sponsored ethnic cleansing. Performing in Israel, as if it were just another stop on the tour, normalizes the apartheid practiced by the Israeli government...”
Apartheid that exists only in the imagination of the propagandists especially when one notes there are Arab members of the Israeli Parliament, Arab Supreme Court justices, an Arab who oversees Israeli general elections, Arab professors, Arab doctors and nurses at every echelon of society, and Arabs are treated as equal citizens of the Jewish state with one exception, they are exempt from mandatory military service.
Ethnic cleansing of the type possible only in Israel, when the minority population numbers keep growing, longevity keeps increasing as does the quality of life, birth rates are higher than elsewhere and this so-called “Apartheid” state supports it all. For example, fertility treatments in Israel are covered by healthcare and are not limited to a one time only, something that here may cost upwards of fifty thousand dollars per round, successful or not.
A new UN report after a yearlong investigation into last summer’s Operation Protective Edge also finds fault with Israel. Admittedly, says the commission of inquiry, Hamas has committed “crimes” as well, but the playing field is even. The attacker and the attacked are being judged alike, like a rape victim and the rapist.
What a great use of international funds to single out Israel, and only Israel. The number who died during the Operation was most regrettable but completely avoidable. Israel does not want war. A decade ago it left Gaza, its thriving hothouses now turned into terrorist training camps.
The Gazans are not content. They want no more Israel. Until she is eliminated from the map, they will neither slumber nor rest.
They will continue manufacturing and importing rockets and missiles. They will continue digging death tunnels and training their men and women in warfare. They have already reestablished themselves in mosques, kindergartens, (UN) schools, and even under a hospital and within residential buildings. Worst of all, they teach their children hatred from the moment they are born.
In Syria, more people are slaughtered in one week than all those who died in Gaza, but the world remains silent. No one dares lift a finger; as if it is reasonable when two hundred thousand Syrians are slaughtered by their Muslim brethren.
Silent, likely, because the only place where people conduct a chorus of screamers is in Israel. In most all other places they would be dead, but in Israel there is overabundance of freedoms.
Apparently they derive a very twisted sense of vindication when they hit and blame themselves for imaginary ills. In Iran there is an annual holiday, with processions of men beating themselves with metals until they bleed. In Israel the process is done every day of the year and is much easier on the sick who participate, as they take their cause to the radio or TV studios, they sit at cafes or at the opera and they are paid to fly overseas to malign Israel, their own home.
Likely it is a mechanism to garner attention, in a most convoluted way. I am neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist, but clearly Israel needs one, urgently.
I look forward to the day I might be appointed the Chief Propagandist (or Minister of Propaganda) for Israel. Or it can be someone else, as long as the specific title is used. Israel must engage in propaganda, as truth and justice are on her side. Until such day, Israel will keep suffering – by her own hands – and must wake up and realize that to win, she must fight!
This is the latest in the series “Postcards from America – Postcards from Israel,” a collaboration between Zager and Bussel, a foreign correspondent reporting from Israel.
