Strange Bedfellows

The problem in dealing with such attitudes and opinions as are faced daily in all the Internet Israel bashing is this:  How unlikely is it to find a dogma-impassioned mind that is capable to react dispassionately and rationally to facts and reason? As Jonathan Swift has so aptly said, "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."

When one's opinions come by indoctrination from agenda-driven, teachers and professors, biased reporting in the media, or bigoted instruction of parents, the effect is the same: you wind up with a person who thinks he or she knows something. But no, they are simply parroting some manner of rubbish they have been told or taught. These angry, thought-conformed sorts then go on in life to restrict any further political input from books, film and media commentary, to carefully cherry picked materials meant only to buttress an opinion already set in cement (or emotional slop) of their former indoctrinations.

As one takes note of the tone in all these execrable screeds from misinformed (or *disinformed*) Israel bashers here and all over the Web, one cannot escape an impression exactly like one used to get from the dogma-ridden, indoctrinated-from-birth minds of white segregationists of the American South. It sounds just the same.

Self-professed "liberal-progressives" with a seething hatred for Israel will be insulted out of their knickers, right down to their Adidas sneakers, to be so compared, of course--and that can't be helped. But it is most odd, isn't it, to be informed that preoccupation with the defense and success of Israel throughout the 1950s was a cause célèbre for liberals, leftist progressives, socialists and communists, right up until the turn of the decade, when official Soviet support abruptly switched from Israel to the Arabs.

So, what was it with this sudden burst of compassion from the international Communist revolution for the plight of Arabs both in and outside Israel--not just those in the refugee camps of Lebanon and Gaza, but for the entire UAR (United Arab Republic)?

The change in Soviet policy toward Israel came as Israel changed, or let us say, 'as she matured' from the early, dominantly socialist and communist culture of the kibbutz movement into the more grown-up, buxom, free market oriented moshavim with their privately owned tracts, families living in their own homes.  At last, there were moderate to conservative elements coming into a share of the political power. 

And that was all it took: seeing this change in the political ferment of Israel, a Soviet interest in the success of the new nation was seen to be betrayed! The former Soviet support and assistance was no longer of advantage in the quest for worldwide communist influence and/or domination.

As socialists and communists have always worked to have influence on the rank and file of liberals and 'progressives' all over the world, so also they have had their measure of success in that effort--in exploiting or creating popular causes. This is Communist Method & Strategy 101. 

The propaganda machine goes into high gear, pumping out anti-Zionist disinformation, to make those militant, murdering, raping, pillaging bands of Arab guerrillas refusing to live at peace with Israel--a new people! An oppressed minority! A pariah with a new name invented to the purpose. They shall no longer be "Fatah", but "the Palestinians" or which is the same, a "liberation army", the Soviet sponsored PLO.

Now an image transformation is made to take place: make the victims (refugees from Russian and Polish pogroms, survivors of Hitler and the British naval blockade, a persecuted people who had been ganged up on by every Arab nation on their borders and beyond) appear to be the aggressor, while the Soviet backed Arab guerrillas and their supporters are made to look like victims!

But one might say the same of the defeated German Reich--were they not victims of the Jews in cahoots with the Allied forces of the US and Europe who came to their liberation? Surely those defeated Nazis are no different than those Arabs who were defeated in their plans to drive every Jew from the land of Judah into the sea. Victims, surely!

Now, with all this Soviet help of propaganda and disinformation, the same underdog status formerly accorded to the Jews of Europe and Israel, is now conferred upon their defeated enemies.  And it works. As the Soviets turned their backs on Israel, American and European liberals and leftists turned their coats to join ranks with the USSR in the genocidal aims of the Arab states surrounding Israel.

Today, the only thing missing from the picture since the turn of the millennium, is the name "Soviet" or "Communist" from the mix of forces allied against Israel. Whether its the USSR/UAR confederation of aggression or that of Russia/China/Iran/Syria--there is no difference. 

The propaganda and disinformation that disseminates against Israel today has changed only insofar as it has become all the more thoroughly entrenched in the so-called "liberal" mind, now to be found in a very sexy alliance of strange bedfellows with the Arian Brotherhood, Neo-Nazis and the KKK. How perverted could anything ever get?

You can't reason such people out of the madness they weren't reasoned into, but you can hold a mirror up to them while they are raving in it, that they may be shocked and ashamed, and enraged to the point of apoplexy to see what they see. Then somebody should call for an ambulance.