Category Archives: Anti-Semitism

“Rhymes With Fagin”

Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East

That’s the title of the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens article describing last week’s TIME magazine cover story, “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace”:

“If you’re a reader of a certain age, you might understand the headline.

In May 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Israel’s prime minister, Time magazine set out to describe the man, beginning with the correct pronunciation of his last name: ‘Rhymes with Fagin,’ the editors explained, invoking the character from Oliver Twist. Modern Israeli leader; archetypal Jewish lowlife: Get it?

The magazine’s other characterization of Begin was that he was ‘dangerous.’ A year later, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

Maybe there’s something in the magazine’s DNA. This week, readers were treated to a cover story by Karl Vick titled, suggestively, ‘Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.’ That’s one way for Time to address the current state of negotiations between the Jewish state and its neighbors, which otherwise barely rate a mention in the article.

Mr. Vick’s essay draws on the testimony of a pair of real estate agents, a columnist for a left-leaning newspaper, and a few others to explain that Israelis are too blissed-out by the fruits of their economic prosperity to pay much attention to the subject of peace, much less whatever sad things may transpire among their neighbors in Ramallah and Gaza. ‘We’re not really that into the peace process,’ says Gadi Baltiansky, a peace activist quoted in the story. ‘We are really, really into the water sports.'”

It’s hard to say what to make of this, since the article concludes by contradicting its central thesis: ‘For all the surf breaks, the palms and the coffee, the conflict is never truly done, never far away,’ Mr. Vick writes.

Indeed it isn’t: Nearly every Israeli has a child, sibling, boyfriend or parent in the army. Nearly every Israeli has been to the funeral of a fallen soldier, or a friend killed in a terrorist attack. Most Israeli homes and businesses come equipped with safe rooms or bomb shelters; every Israeli owns a gas mask. The whole country exists under the encroaching shadows of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the prospect of a nuclear Iran. How many Americans, to say nothing of Europeans, can say the same about their own lives?” READ ON.

[SNIP]

What TIME cretin Karl Vick is describing, and depicting with the aid photos of good looking Israelis on the beach, is a plucky people engaged in LIFE; working, playing, making money (horrors!), and having fun, in the face of daily existential threats. This is to be admired not condemned.

My daughter, who was decidedly not pro-Israel when she visited there, came back enthralled with the country and its people (she wrote about it HERE). Never before had she met such tough, positive, feisty sorts (and certainly not in the Jewish school she once attended in South Africa. Israelis and diaspora Jews: never the twain shall meet).

As admirable as is the Israeli absorption with the good life, I’m afraid that regular Israelis need to learn to be more guarded with creeps likes Vick of TIME. And maybe to revive some of that founding patriotism, once again.

Update III: Thomas Tomfoolery (& Jewish Stupidity)

Anti-Semitism, Democracy, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture

“Press passes can’t be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president.”
~Ann Coulter, February 23, 2005

Ms. Coulter got called a racist for that mild dig at Thomas. And she’d be called an anti-Semite if she came out with this Thomas tomfoolery:

UPDATE I (June 6): I don’t know what is more pathetic, Thomas or the organized Jewish response to her. More later.

UPDATE II (June 7): The reason the weak, uncharismatic Democrat Lanny Davis is so popular with Demopublicans is that he is, well, weak and inconsequential.

Now he wants to muscle the outlets that make use of this ancient idiot Thomas’ output. (Why does he not petition her syndicator to drop her, and hire this Jewish Woman–your host? Thomas has had a good run. It’s time for new blood.).

Of course the the old sow is apologizing; the public apology is a ritual as meaningful as are tears on Oprah.

Why extract this meaningless muttering from this woman?

As I once wrote, “It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act graciously—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering.”

Thomas may be a fool, but Davis and Ari Fleischer are incorrigible, pushy purveyors of political correctness.

UPDATE III: Robert Glisson is sad to see a woman who had it all blow it away. Sympathies here are misplaced.

And why on earth? Although I liked some of Thomas’ anti-war sentiment—has it been up to snuff with Obama?—I’m thrilled that the cow has been put out to pasture. She’s had a good run. When else, but in the age of mass mediocrity, would such a banal bitch obtain such iconic stature?

Update III: Thomas Tomfoolery (& Jewish Stupidity)

Anti-Semitism, Democracy, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture

“Press passes can’t be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president.”
~Ann Coulter, February 23, 2005

Ms. Coulter got called a racist for that mild dig at Thomas. And she’d be called an anti-Semite if she came out with this Thomas tomfoolery:

UPDATE I (June 6): I don’t know what is more pathetic, Thomas or the organized Jewish response to her. More later.

UPDATE II (June 7): The reason the weak, uncharismatic Democrat Lanny Davis is so popular with Demopublicans is that he is, well, weak and inconsequential.

Now he wants to muscle the outlets that make use of this ancient idiot Thomas’ output. (Why does he not petition her syndicator to drop her, and hire this Jewish Woman–your host? Thomas has had a good run. It’s time for new blood.).

Of course the the old sow is apologizing; the public apology is a ritual as meaningful as are tears on Oprah.

Why extract this meaningless muttering from this woman?

As I once wrote, “It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act graciously—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering.”

Thomas may be a fool, but Davis and Ari Fleischer are incorrigible, pushy purveyors of political correctness.

UPDATE III: Robert Glisson is sad to see a woman who had it all blow it away. Sympathies here are misplaced.

And why on earth? Although I liked some of Thomas’ anti-war sentiment—has it been up to snuff with Obama?—I’m thrilled that the cow has been put out to pasture. She’s had a good run. When else, but in the age of mass mediocrity, would such a banal bitch obtain such iconic stature?

Devious Deployment Of The Apartheid Epithet Against Israel

Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Race, South-Africa

Larry Auster on the meaning of the devious deployment of the apartheid epithet against Israel by “paleostinian conservatives” who, arguably, once were able to see separate development in South Africa as a desperate survival strategy by a besieged minority (now being ethnically cleansed by the majority):

“It wasn’t just paleos, but mainstream conservatives, who opposed the divestment strategy against South Africa. But such is the paleocons’ hatred of the Jewish state that they now adopt as a weapon against Israel that same left-wing policy which they themselves opposed when it was used against South Africa and which by their own estimation has led to the ruin of that country. There are no words to describe adequately the sickness and evil of the anti-Israel paleocons.”

Read “The Paleostinian Conservative calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel.”