PRO-ISRAEL CELEBRITIES
PRO-ISRAEL CELEBRITIES
SINCERE? OR CAREERISTS?
This story is a companion piece to-
PRO- PALESTINIAN CELEBRITIES Ratings Chasers ?— or True Believers?
I ask the taxi driver, ‘don’t show me tourist sites, any show-pieces, only places where ordinary people live.’
The hospital have put me on the out-patient register; a weekly consultation schedule, future therapy dates in Netanya. The doctors embrace me at the end of their shifts; a duty nurse pats my cheek, as I wander out, dazed, to the taxi. I want to weep, whether their affection is genuine or not, because I do not appear to disgust them so much they will not touch me; I still pass for a human being.
‘And don’t give me commentaries, please,’ I tell the taxi driver. ‘If I have questions, I’ll ask.’
We drive around Tel Aviv for several hours. It is a city I have visited briefly in the past. But nothing seems familiar, nor repels me. Occasionally, echoes of other cities intercede — Barcelona, Marbella, Miami, Buenos Aires. These other cities, at least, dangle the illusion of belonging. One imagines how it would be to start a new life in them, marry one of the women passing by. But in Tel Aviv, I cannot imagine any of this. I am an alien, on borrowed time. I will probably never be permitted to return. In that sense, this fine city, a place where one could live out the rest of one’s days in peace, can never seem more than a film; it can never be a real place, never, not even for a moment, and I notice my eyes are moist with tears, and do not want to know why.
Didn’t the Romans prefer death to exile? I always thought this foolish, but now perhaps I understand. We pass along Allenby, the lower and upper ends, the beaches, mostly empty, HaYarkon street, past the Kempinski, grand avenues, down to the main bus station, a poorer neigborhood. I notice a few people loitering, drug dealers or hookers maybe. We pass the Trumpledore Cemetery, then up into a prosperous neighborhood.
‘Stop,’ I say. I notice bougainvillea walls. How can these be already flowering in February? Well, it can only be a film I am in, where seasons do not apply.
At Hostage Square, I get out and walk from one end to the other. Nothing draws my eyes, except the faces of the missing. Most will probably never return, or are already dead. Many countries put images of their missing on walls. But the fate of these ordinary looking people is more or less known. The missing go into a void, an empty space, but here the void is nearer at hand, something palpable, tantalisingly so; like those myths of caves leading down to hell in Medieval times.
I stop at a cafe and write up this story. After the 7th October, over 700 celebrities wrote an open letter stating their support for Israel. Few of these have had anything much to say about the matter since. It is reasonable to suppose at least some of these 700 were doing what seemed best for their career. Of this 700, only a handful continue to make significant gestures of support, and a much smaller number offer reasoned arguments.
Alan Dershowitz, Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, Ben Shapiro and Douglas Murray are among the most articulate and vocal of Zionist advocates. Yet they all sing from the same hymn sheet, in that they all invoke the same tropes.
My insinct is that all these commentators are genuine, if rather ill-informed, in their support for Israel, with one exception, Douglas Murray.
An analysis of Murray provides a useful epigone of bad-faith Zionists.
Apparently, Murray is a very familiar type of Brit, the sort who believes espousing hard-right views will lead to his acceptance by the British upper classes. If he is a social climber, then his views are his glimbing tackle. In this sense, his views would be entirely irrelevant, as whatever guff he thought would insinuate him into the favors of the Spectator set, he would adopt, regardless. Murray has no degrees in any subject even distantly related to the Middle East. His education suggests someone who clambered into a top school only at the final year stage, and his first academic work was on the lover of Oscar Wilde. Interesting it may be, but hardly a qualification for expertize in Islam and the Palestinians.
As to the pro-Israel tropes repeated by most, if not all, of the above commentators.
- Gaza could be like Dubai or Qatar, if Hamas had not misgoverned and spent on terror infrastructure. But Gaza has been micro-controlled by Israel - water, calorific intake, fuel, consumer goods, building materials, everything conceivable necessary for life all tightly rationed or blocked— so day-to-day survival becomes a priority, not building luxury monoliths. And is authoritarian Dubai such a model of governance? I would, if I had no other choice, prefer to live as a second-class citizen in Nazareth or Haifa than in any part of the UAE. It is an arbitrary non-democatic police state. This risible Dubai argument is surely not worthy of further rebuttal.
- Palestinians came from outside Palestine and should be “taken in" by their Arab friends. Here, I refer you to my story on the genetic ancestry of Palestinians. (The Jewish Identity Crisis.) Again, this smear that the Palestinians are outsiders is un-scientific, racist, imbecilic, and even Ben Gurion finally accepted it was wholly false. The Palestinian DNA is the UR-DNA of the Levant, dating back 15,000 years to the origins of recorded history. It should be preserved as a World Heritage Sight.
- The Christians used to make up 20% of Palestinians and 80% of Bethlehem. But Muslim fanatics have expelled them. Does one really have to waste time on such facile propaganda? The Christians left for exactly the same reason Muslims left. Because they were deliberately displaced and harassed by Zionists, whose stated colonist agenda was precisely to displace them.
- The Palestinians are innately violent, having already tried to dominate Jordan and Lebanon, and so not even Arab countries will take them. Ya Allah, once again, this is yet more cynical muddying of the waters. Palestinians under Fatah believed in a socialist revolution to emancipate all Arabs. So if they fought the Jordanian monarchy, it was for the opposite of chauvinistic reasons, but because they wished to liberate their brothers from an authoritarian monarchy. The same applies to Lebanon. And when in ’48 the Zionists deliberately displaced an entire population by means of 86 cold-blooded massacres, razing 450 villages and poisoning wells and crops, then where exactly did they expect their victims to go? Well, they did not care where they went because their victims were viewed as “Arabishim", not fully human. They could go and die in ditches like animals.
Even having to rebut such phoney and offensive tropes is a form of mental trauma for a Palestinian. It has nauseated me. Yet, here I am, in this elegant cafe in Neve Tzdek, surrounded by friendly, elegant people. Some even smile and want to talk to me, even though I have told them I am a leper from Gaza. None seem disturbed by that, rather they are intrigued and sympathetic. I would be quite happy to stay here. I might even be happy to live here for a while. In every other country on this earth, I could apply for a long visa or residency. But not here. This Neve Tzdek paradise will never be more than a short, half-remembered film for me, because I am sitting drinking coffee in the world’s only ethno-state, from which I will shortly be cast out into a wildness, never to return.
Belum ada Komentar untuk "PRO-ISRAEL CELEBRITIES"
Posting Komentar