Give Israel credit for answering their critics head on, but that is the Zionist hubris. Simon Wiesenthal is propagating the latest Hasbara crib sheet to counter the ten most threatening lies about Israel. We couldn’t have summarized the arguments better ourselves. One man’s “lies” are his victim’s desperate appeals to confound systemic myopic denial. Here it is in their own nutshell:
Israel was created by European guilt over the Nazi Holocaust. Why should Palestinians pay the price? … Had Israel withdrawn to its June 1967 borders, peace would have come long ago. … Israel is the main stumbling block to achieving a two-state solution. … Nuclear Israel, not Iran, is the greatest threat to peace and stability. … Israel is an apartheid state deserving of international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns. … Plans to build 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem prove Israel is “Judaizing” the Holy City. … Israeli policies endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. … Israeli policies are the cause of worldwide anti-Semitism. … Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. … Goldstone was right when he charged that Israel was guilty of war crimes against civilians. … The only hope for peace is a single, binational state eliminating the Jewish State of Israel.
Even dissembled, the case weighs hard against Zionist mendacity.
OK, a tad capricious
To Wiesenthal’s credit, the arguments are loaded with a laudable reserve of disingenuity:
5,500 MORE HOMES have been zoned for East Jerusalem, not 1,600, (and yes, Jerusalem’s mayor has set quotas, a Jewish to non-Jewish target ratio to counter a higher Arab birthrate).
Israeli policies are the cause of [PROLIFERATION] of worldwide anti-Semitism,
The Gaza “humanitarian catastrophe” soft-pedals the critics’ real accusation: MASSACRE. Imagine referring to the Holocaust as befalling its victims with the ambivalence of a tsunami.
JUDGE Goldstone isn’t the only accuser who’s documented the criminality the world witnessed WITH ITS OWN EYES.
Apartheid legitimizers blink
Further demonstrating the disintegrating global support for a Jewish haven-state, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has all but dropped its cover as Holocaust-remembrance-sledgehammer to directly shore up the supposed public grant of legitimacy to Zionist colonialism.
Trying to turn the argument on Israel’s “de-ligitimizers” couldn’t be more out of touch.
While the US fights in expanding but downward spirals against the entropy of Pax Americana, Western public support for empire-building erodes for even the pretext of “globalization.” White Man’s Burden has smartened to Carbon Debt, missionary zeal evolved to indigenous and environmental protectionism. Religious crusades haven’t held water for centuries, but what an Auld Testament to Zionism’s xenophobic tenacity to posit the Jewish People as “chosen” to revive God-manifested destiny.
What part of “Apartheid is for Neanderthals” do Palestine’s neo- Afrikaners fail to understand? Even an 18th Century South African settler categorization gives the mid-twentieth century European transplants in Zion too much credit for pretended genealogical roots in the Middle East.
Only State Solution
Not very well concealed in Wiesenthal’s framing of the “Top Ten Lies” is a specious conceit formed by straw arguments three and ten, which presume the desirability of a “two-state solution” and/or a misguided hope for an inevitable “binational state.” Only in Wiesenthal’s rebuttal is there utterance of Israel’s true taboo –unmentionable because it will be self-fulfilling. The single state solution is dismissed with cavalier aplomb as “a non-starter.”
They desperately wish. On what basis do Zionists imbue themselves authority to trump international consensus? Hopefully it is not their nuclear arsenal. No other religious ideology, armed with nukes or without, asserts any permutation of divine refugee-status provenance to an autonomous “homeland.” Not even Tibet.
I expect sooner than the Zionists like –but then the self-defeatist arrogance may bely my presumption– the Simon Wiesenthal Center will be scrambling to bolster rationalizations against the only peaceful solution already on everyone’s mind and taxing our humanitarian patience: the single-state multi-theist modern egalitarian democracy.
Hasbara desperation
We reprint a near-complete representation of the SWC brochure below for our readers, if also to facilitate the identification of pro-Israel internet trolls by the tracts they are presently copy-and-pasting all over blog discussions. Who would have suspected that the resurgent wave of Zionist troll tripe was so transparently linked to official AIPAC and Wiesenthal Center press releases. We give the IDF Hasbara budget too much credit.
A recent IDF-merc commenter goaded us to “envy Israeli intellectual superiority.” I will admit it, I am in awe. Eagerly too. I know where it got Icarus.
Israel goes Titanic. Gotta love a good spectacle.
Appendix
Here then, courtesy of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the 2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies, enjoy!
2010 TOP TEN
ANTI-ISRAEL LIESIsrael is under assault!
Here’s what you need to know.
Act now…Lie No. 1: Israel was created by European guilt over the Nazi Holocaust. Why should Palestinians pay the price?
Three thousand years before the Holocaust, before there was a Roman Empire, Israel’s kings and prophets walked the streets of Jerusalem. The whole world knows that Isaiah did not speak his prophesies from Portugal, nor Jeremiah his lamentations from France. Revered by its people, Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures 600 times, but not once in the Koran. Throughout the 2,000-year exile of the Jews, there was a continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land.
Lie No. 2: Had Israel withdrawn to its June 1967 borders, peace would have come long ago.
Since 1967, Israel repeatedly has conceded “land for peace.” Following Egyptian President Sadat’s historic 1977 visit to Jerusalem, Israel withdrew from the vast Sinai Peninsula and has been at peace with Egypt ever since. But the Palestinian Authority has never fulfilled its promise to end propaganda attacks nor drop the Palestinian National Charter’s call for Israel’s destruction. In 2000, Prime Minister Barak offered Yasser Arafat full sovereignty more than 97 percent of the West Bank, a corridor to Gaza, and a capital in the Arab section of Jerusalem. Arafat said no.
Lie No. 3: Israel is the main stumbling block to achieving a two-state solution.
The Palestinians themselves are the only stumbling block to achieving a two-state solution. With whom should Israel negotiate? With President Abbas, who for four years has been barred by Hamas from visiting 1.5 million constituents in Gaza? With his Palestinian Authority, which continues to glorify terrorists and preaches hate in its educational system and the media? With Hamas, whose Iranian-backed leaders deny the Holocaust and use fanatical Jihadist rhetoric to call for Israel’s destruction?
Lie No. 4: Nuclear Israel, not Iran, is the greatest threat to peace and stability.
The United States and Europe can afford to wait to see what the Iranian regime does with its nuclear ambitions, but Israel cannot. Israel is on the front lines and remembers every day the price the Jewish people paid for not taking Hitler at his word. Israel is not prepared to sacrifice another 6 million Jews on the altar of the world’s indifference.
Lie No. 5: Israel is an apartheid state deserving of international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns.
In fact, Israel is a democratic state. Its 20 percent Arab minority enjoys all the political, economic and religious rights and freedoms of citizenship, including electing members of their choice to the Knesset (Parliament).
Lie No. 6: Plans to build 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem prove Israel is “Judaizing” the Holy City.
Ramat Shlomo was not about Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem but about a long established, heavily populated Jewish neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, where 250,000 Jews live (about the size of Newark, N.J.) — an area that will never be relinquished by Israel.
Lie No. 7: Israeli policies endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would benefit everyone, including the United States. But an imposed return to what Abba Eban called “1967 Auschwitz borders” would endanger Israel’s survival and ultimately be disastrous for American interests and credibility in the world.
Lie No. 8: Israeli policies are the cause of worldwide anti-Semitism.
From the Inquisition to the pogroms, to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, history proves that Jew hatred existed on a global scale before the creation of the State of Israel. It would still exist in 2010 even if Israel had never been created. For example, one poll indicates that 40 percent of Europeans blame the recent global economic crisis on “Jews having too much economic power” — a canard that has nothing to do with Israel.
Lie No. 9: Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. Goldstone was right when he charged that Israel was guilty of war crimes against civilians.
The United Nations Human Rights Council is obsessed with false anti-Israel resolutions. It refuses to address grievous human rights abuses in Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and beyond. Faced with similar attacks, every U.N. member-state, including the United States and Canada, surely would have acted more aggressively than the Israel Defense Forces did in Gaza.
Lie No. 10: The only hope for peace is a single, binational state eliminating the Jewish State of Israel.
The one-state solution is a non-starter because it would eliminate the Jewish homeland. However, the current pressures on Israel are equally dangerous. In effect, the world is demanding that Israel, the size of New Jersey, shrink further by accepting a three-state solution: a P.A. state on the West Bank and a Hamas terrorist one in Gaza. All this as Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, stockpiles 50,000 rockets, threatening northern and central Israel’s main population centers. Current polls show that while most Israelis favor a two-state solution, most Palestinians continue to oppose it.
Israel is not a product of colonialism.
Quite the opposite.
Colonialism is the condition of a motherland dispatching settlers into a foreign territory for the purpose of exploiting its natural resources and its local labor. Leaders of the “metropole” establish large estates on the invaded land.
Jews did not such thing.
There was no motherland sponsoring Jewish immigrants to Palestine in 1880, when immigration began. It is a misunderstanding that the Holocaust created Israel.
In fact, Israel existed twice in antiquity as the First and Second Temples.
Not one Arab country today existed as a sovereign, independent country prior to World War I. They were created out of the Turkish Ottoman Empire
Palestine was not Arab land. Palestine was Turkish land under Ottoman rule. The Ottomans permitted Jewish immigration.
Furthermore, immigrating Jews did not exploit Arab labor. Jews worked hard to renew the depleted land and developed industries that attracted Arabs from as far as North Africa, who migrated to take advantage of new employment opportunities and a heightened level of prosperity.
Thus, Jews did not exploit the resources of the land, they reinvigorated the land made barren through centuries of wars, including World War I, famine, poverty and disease, such as malaria and the Black Plague.
The true colonizers were Arabs and Muslims who originated from Arabia, illustrated in the map of global Muslim conquests found in this link…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests
Today, Israel is a beacon of democracy, freedom, human rights and civil liberties in a repressed Arab Muslim Middle East littered with tyrannical, despotic, autocratic dictatorships that persecute their own people and discriminate against Jews, Christians, women and gays.
Martin Luther King, Jr. honored Israel for its absence of apartheid and its embrace of democratic principles…
“I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality. “
YAWN. These are tired revisionist memes Nonie.
–up until you write “MLK honored Israel for its absence of apartheid“??? Whaaat?
Tell everyone what apartheid is.
You don’t even fucking know.
LOL.
Israeli Apartheid is where population groups are divided, BASED ON RACE, some discriminated against, made to live, work and travel apart, with everyone not of the favored religion/race denied voting representation in government and deprived of equal access to services, opportunities and redress.
Israeli bigotry is PLAIN AS DAY, and none of your dissembling or blunt contraction is going to make it otherwise. Israel doesn’t kill Palestinian civilians everyday. See, it doesn’t fly.
Are you blind to even the racist tone of your own remarks?
“Israeli Apartheid is where population groups are divided, BASED ON RACE, some discriminated against, made to live, work and travel apart, with everyone not of the favored religion/race denied voting representation in government and deprived of equal access to services, opportunities and redress.
Israeli bigotry is PLAIN AS DAY, and none of your dissembling or blunt contraction is going to make it otherwise. Israel doesn’t kill Palestinian civilians everyday. See, it doesn’t fly.
Are you blind to even the racist tone of your own remarks?”
Absolutely wrong. As expected, you are clueless about apartheid.
And, you are clueless about Israeli society.
There is absolutely no separation of Israeli citizens.
There are no Jewish-only roads.
There are no Jewish-only buildings
There are no Jewish-only restaurants.
There are no Jewish-only buses.
I’m afraid you made it all up.
Read and learn, written by a minister who fought apartheid in South Africa and who lives in Israel today…
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=170733
You are minimizing the suffering of those under apartheid in South Africa in an effort to taint Israel because you are an anti-Semite.
So, I’ll educate you. Apartheid is state-sanctioned, legalized segregation of a country’s population.
Under apartheid South Africa, Blacks were stripped of citizenship.
Blacks had no rights.
Blacks were denied the vote.
Blacks were denied employment.
Blacks could not own land.
Israeli Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze and all other ethnicities and religions are CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED freedom, human rights and civil liberties, affirmed by the Israeli High Court that includes an Arab justice.
Israeli Arabs choose to live in Arab communities similarly as Italians live in Little Italy in New York and Chinese live in Chinatown.
It is a common sociological occurrence for ethnic, religious or cultural groups to form their own communities.
Arabs are free to live anywhere they choose in Israel. In fact, Arabs tend to have larger homes than Jews in Israel.
And, Arab bedouins receive privileges in Israel in purchasing and leasing land.
Arabic is a national language in Israel.
20 percent of the Labour Party dominating Israeli politics is comprised of Arabs.
25 percent of Hebrew University’s student body is Arab.
There are senior Arab military officers in the Israeli army and airforce.
There are Arab newspapers.
Arab TV stations and radio stations.
There are Arab millionaires in Israel
The privileges Israeli Arabs enjoy are the source of scorn leveled against them by Arabs from Arab countries suffering under oppressive conditions.
No such privileges existed for Blacks in apartheid South Africa
You see, you can argue your opinion, but, you cannot argue the facts.
The facts are…
Israeli Arabs own land.
Israeli Arabs have freedom of speech
Israeli Arabs have freedom of religion
Israeli Arabs have freedom to vote
Israeli Arabs have freedom to protest
Israeli Arabs have freedom of movement
Israeli Arabs have freedom of association
I’m happy to educate you. Now, even you are informed.
Martin Luther King, Jr…
“I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality. “
Does that DISinformation work anywhere anymore?
Your redundant MLK pastes constitute Spam. Stop or we’ll have to ban you from comments again.
But certainly please do keep up your patronizing attempts to dress us down.
Look, Nonie, every government and especially every Army has an Information Office or, as they put it within such offices, “The Ministry of Lies”
Their job is unitary. They must make the actions and intents of the government or Army look justified. The more abuses the Government or Army commits, the more Information Officers they need to “clean things up a bit, make them not stink so bad”
Why does the Israeli Government employ (not counting American Volunteers, “unpaid” of course) as large a Ministry of Lies as the United States does?
What’s even more important, why in the world would we suddenly turn off our brains and start believing the IDF “information” officers, official or unofficial?
According to OUR “information” Ministry of Lies, for the longest time, Agent Orange didn’t kill people.
For a long time incursions into Cambodia and Laos by United States Troops didn’t occur. According to the Information Officers.
LSD experiments on Army prisoners didn’t occur.
The segregated South was Separate, but also Equal.
The Civil War wasn’t fought over Slavery, but States’ Rights.
That last one is recurring in Sesquicentennial celebrations of one of the most horrifying tragedies to hit America. States across the South refusing to admit that Slavery was wrong, or that killing around 450,000 Americans counting both sides, the ones killed in direct combat, was done to support Slavery.
That’s the “Official” story. Why should we believe IDF and their Official Story? According to Bush and Cheney, the IDF and Mossad provided a lot of the data of those million pounds of Nerve Gas in Iraq.
It’s the sheer Chutzpah of the whole argument, “Yeah, we lied to you repeatedly, but you’re still supposed to believe everything WE tell you or you’re Anti-Semitic.”
Works like this, you piss on our leg, tell us it must be raining, and demand that we believe it’s actually raining.
Malcolm Hedding, minister who fought apartheid in South Africa and now lives in Israel…
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=170733
Eric,
Need to talk to you.
“2010 TOP TEN
ANTI-ISRAEL LIES
Israel is under assault!
Here’s what you need to know.
Act now…”
My, my, it’s amazing how a tiny, little Jewish democratic country about the size of Vermont surrounded by 30 tyrannical, despotic Arab Muslim dictatorships that support terrorism is such a threat to the world.
Sounds like someone is a paranoid, neo-Nazi Jew hater.
Is the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s ‘lie #5’ about Israel a lie though?
‘Lie No. 5: Israel is an apartheid state deserving of international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns.
In fact, Israel is a democratic state. Its 20 percent Arab minority enjoys all the political, economic and religious rights and freedoms of citizenship, including electing members of their choice to the Knesset (Parliament).’
Here is the news of the day now, courtesy of CNN…
Letter urges Israeli girls to avoid dating Arabs
From Shira Medding, CNN
Jerusalem (CNN) — A letter from about 30 prominent rabbis’ wives was causing a stir in Israel Wednesday because it urges Israeli girls not to date Arabs.
The open letter comes three weeks after the uproar caused by another letter, which was written by 50 state-appointed rabbis and told Jews not to rent or sell property to non-Jews….
Complete article at- http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/12/29/israel.letter.arabs/?hpt=T2