A Strategy for reversing the tide of anti-Israeli bigotry
Today’s Jerusalem Post runs a commentary by Professor Gil Troy which should be read by anyone who is fed up with the kind of reactive, take-action-only-after-the-roof-has-fallen-in approach that has been a characteristic of pro-Israeli advocacy for far too long.
Troy pegs his piece off this year’s forthcoming “Israeli Apartheid Week” from March 1 to March 14, (yes, that’s right, their intellectual capacities do not even extend to knowing how many days there are in a week!). Events will be held in cities across the world and Troy sensibly suggests that action should be taken to ensure that the organisers and participants do not have things all their own way.
He offers for consideration a three-pronged strategy which he characterises as the “Three P’s”:
First, “Push-back”:
“We will rarely sway with mere facts someone who has swallowed the apartheid libel and drunk the anti-Israel Kool-Aid. Our target is wavering Jewish students and the vast uninformed and uninterested middle. We should play off the radical demonizers, making them look extreme and foolish as we demonstrate our informed commitment, our enlightened passion, the rightness and righteousness of our cause.”
Second, “Position Israel better”:
“The truth is our friend. Israel has compromised – and seen withdrawals from territory and other concessions “rewarded” with violence. Until critics deal with that, they are simply Israel-bashing with no real commitment to peace.”
Third, be “Proud of Israel”:
“[Israel is] an extraordinary old-new land, one of the great successes of the twentieth century, now leading the way technologically in the twenty-first century. Just as the US is not only defined by its racial troubles, and Canada not only defined by its linguistic tensions, Israel is not just about the Palestinians.”
Troy then moves from the strategic to the tactical, offering for consideration the “Three H’s”:
First, think “Horizontal”:
“…today’s informational, ideological and political playing field is vast, chaotic and democratic. Students, bloggers and activists should speak their minds, display their passions, forge their own relationships with Israel and express their pride as effectively, as creatively, as widely, as they can.”
Second, be “Hip” by:
“…singing, rapping or tweeting a new song of Zion, one that is relevant, resonant, inspirational, conversational, internalized among millions of pro-Israel and pro-democracy activists, rather than dictated from above or simply inherited from our ancestors.”
Thirdly, he suggests that pro-Israel groups should not be afraid to be “Hysterical” by which he means that Israel supporters should:
“…laugh among ourselves while mocking the heavy-handed propagandists who build their entire ideology on negation – investing time, money, energy in denigrating Israel rather than building anything constructive for Palestinians, or anyone else…”
Troy is a professor of history at Mcgill University currently on leave in Jeruslalem. His enthusiasm is infectious. He concludes his piece with words that should inspire us all:
“Wouldn’t it be great if next year, the anti-Israel forces canceled their annual festival of nihilism because the push-back they triggered simply wasn’t worth it? Now that’s a strategic goal worth pursuing.”
And so it is.
To read Gil’s piece in full, click here:
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/troy/entry/let_s_mobilize_against_anti
Tags: Israel
February 7th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Brilliant
This strategy is particulalry important on uiversity campuses
It is high time we were proactive rahter than reactive
Joy Wolfe
February 7th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Everyone should realize that “BDS” is really just Blatant Double Standards.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
“…laugh among ourselves while mocking the heavy-handed propagandists who build their entire ideology on negation – investing time, money, energy in denigrating Israel rather than building anything constructive for Palestinians, or anyone else…”
It will soon be Purim. We’ve got a job to do!
February 8th, 2010 at 1:57 am
Robin, if you’re still awake, please join a worthwhile, civilised discussion developing on a CiFWatch thread between Modernity and myself concerning anti-Semitism of the moderate left vs the moderate right.
I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading your book and so could only speculate (but of course not confirm) that you’d likely agree with me.
http://cifwatch.com/2010/02/06/wheres-the-libel
February 8th, 2010 at 6:14 am
“Our target is wavering Jewish students and the vast uninformed and uninterested middle.”
These groups need to be categorized and understood, since there will be several reasons why Jews “waver” and the uninterested middle are “uninterested”. I however can’t help feeling lifted by Professor Troy’s constructive approach and attitude and that we should look upon ourselves more positively and to promote truth. We should take back the middle ground that has been so offensively hijacked and trashed by extremism, and to do so we have to be more vocal and pro-active.
February 8th, 2010 at 6:57 am
I call it “IslamoFascism Apartheid Week”.
Just remind those in the middle of the crimes against humanity that have been perpetrated by Islamofascism over the last 20 years.
9/11, Londons 7/7/05, Bali, Madrid, Beslan, Buddahs of Bamiyan, 8 year Iraq/Iran war, suicide bombings in Iraq, honor killings of girls, hanging of gays in Iran, the genocidal parades in Iran, the Hamass/Hezbollah nazi salutes, the racist Hamass charter, the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the deadly Mohammed cartoon riots, Female Genital Mutilation, the death fatwa on writer Salman Rushdie, Muslims only cities in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of the USS Cole, Ft. Hood massacre, the underwear bomber… And on and on.
Nothing to exaggerate. Just the facts. Islamofascists are bullies who think dhimmis not submitting is a Nakba.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Someone, maybe I will, should construct and post a bunch of questions to be asked of the speakers which will allow them to give free rein to their obscenities….Questions like….
1) Why do we do this ONLY one week per year? Are our brothers in Gaza not suffering every single day? Why not make it “I-A Month”? Why not “I-A Year”?
2) Our children in Gaza are under siege…why don’t we create some uniforms and lay siege to creches, kindegartens, and junior schools?
3) The Israelis block off roads to our brethren in Gaza. Why do we not petition the Government of this country to show solidarity by creating “Jews Only” and “Jews Prohibited” roads?
4) Since our sisters in Gaza are prohibited from giving birth in sanitary conditions in hospitals, should we not demand that Jewish women in this country be denied maternity wards?
Finally, and this question must be asked OF EVERY SPEAKER, AT EVERY RALLY, IN EVERY CITY…If the Israelis practice apartheid against us in their country, why are we targeting JEWS in this country? Is every Jew an Israeli?
February 9th, 2010 at 12:54 am
Journalist Abu Khalid Toameh, who makes appearances on US campuses to speak against events like “Israel Apartheid Week” says there is more hostility expressed towards Israel on western campuses than there is on campuses in Gaza and the West Bank.
http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/11/what-does-pro-palestinian-really-mean.php
http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/05/islam-today-1.php
I believe there was a study conducted a year or so ago of attitudes towards Israel in African nations that found, regardless of whether the country was predominantly Muslim or Christian, that the average person in the street (as opposed to the government) was more sympathetic towards Israel than the Palestinians. (Indeed, there were Darfurians fleeing the state-sponsored Janjawid seeking refuge in Israel at the risk of being shot by Egyptian border police. I guess nobody managed to get news to them that Israel is an apartheid state.)
The theory advanced for this lack of hostility towards Israel was due to the absence of anti-Zionist Israeli and Jewish academics like Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Norman Finkelstein teaching in the institutions of higher learning in those countries.
February 9th, 2010 at 4:40 am
elixelx, there are “Muslims Only” cities in Saudi Arabia. Taking your thinking to the next step, there should be “Muslims Prohibited” cities. Right? It would be only fair. And since no churches are permitted in Saudi Arabia, Saudi funded mosques and madrassas in the West should be PROHIBITED, and dismantled until Saudi Arabia permits churches to be built and Christians permitted to wear crucifixes in public in SA. Right? elixelx, there is Gender Apartheid in Saudi Arabia, inhumane punishment like stonings to death for “honor”, executions of gays in iran. Is every Muslim a shaheed, jihadi? Should the West treat Muslims as if they are all potential terrorists like the Christmas day underwear bomber, as bombers of Pan Am 103, as assassins, as thieves?
February 9th, 2010 at 10:05 am
Eddie, you are absolutely correct! We should do each and every single one of the things you suggest, except in spades….
And yes, you are right again…they ARE all jihadis, thieves, liars, killers, torturers, terrorists, sodomites, catamites, buggerers and melon-lovers…I wish I had thought that before you pointed it out to me!
We must Whack ‘em where they live, whack ‘em where they don’t live…They must feel in their own flesh what they want others to feel!
Of course, I’m just being sarcastic! Do you understand what that means?
What a simplistic non-thinker you are, taking everything I said, just questions after all, to a logical conclusion and coming up with an absurdity!
I will assume then, from your reasoning, that just because you once had an argument with your Dad, and were suckled by your Mom, that you are now Oedipus!
Which totally explains your answer to me….!
February 9th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
elixelx, If Israel and Jews were “the problem”, then muslims and their 57 entities would be living in peace with their Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Bahai, Zoroastrian neighbors. Is that the case? Even you elixelx know that islamofascists are are War with people and cultures all over the World. Islamofascists are even at war with fellow muslims – ever see shiites and sunni blow each other up, blow up golden mosques? Islam and muslims have become a mortal threat to the entire world. Checkpoints are necessary at every airport in the World. To filter out suicidal, homicidal, islamofascists. There are 6 billion NON-muslims versus 1 billion muslims. Who do you think will prevail? Who do you think will lose Mecca/Makka, Qom, Medina? Who will have no place to Hajj to? Who has 60 years of expertise in the development of nuclear weapons versus an islamofascist entity that just recently acquired some basic weapons.
February 9th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
“elixeix”:
I’ll answer your “questions”:
1)
If you did it all year long, then the general public would have more time to see how absurd your positions are. Maybe you have “all year” for such activities…is this what you are paid to do? Harass people like us on sites like these? Say “hi” to your Saudi sugar daddy for me. And be sure to send us a postcard when you finally grow up and get a real job (I know, I know…bashing Israel is a good gig, and it sure beats working….at least as long as the petrodollars hold out).
2) But you already have the uniforms! I’ve seen footage of your kids in Gaza and elsewhere as young as four dressed up in toy suicide vests! Your “children” would not be “under siege” if your cowardly “fighters” didn’t hide behind them! Stop teaching hate, and just maybe there would be peace, and you wouldn’t be under siege anymore!
3) A brilliant idea! As soon as the Jews of Canada start firing rockets into Canadian neighborhoods, blowing themselves up in your cafes, and investing all of their resources into creating hate and mayhem, then such measures should be taken forthwith!
4) “Giving birth in unsanitary conditions”…hmmmm. Um, where is all the hundreds of millions of aid you are getting every year from the EU, the US, etc., going? Even according to a recent report by the BBC (hardly a friend of Israel), some 144 trucks A DAY go from Israel into Gaza with humanitarian aid. Israel even provides you with electricity. Imagine if such standards were applied to NATO in Afghanistan, that we’d have to provide electricity to Taliban-held areas and we’d have to provide humanitrian aid to the areas they control. Again, if you didn’t use every iota of resources that came into your hands to promote hate and death, MAYBE your women could give birth in nicer clinics. But of course, it is easier to blame everything on the Zionists…..
You sound like a German circa 1944 complaining about the effects of allied bombing. ‘They are destroying our cities….our children are suffering…the hospitals are overwhelmed with casualties’ Kind of conveniently leaving out the part about how YOU STARTED THE F****** WAR!
And FINALLY…No, every Jew is not an Israeli. Sadly, there is a significant minority of Jews who are so steeped in the “ghetto mentality” that they are simply afraid to stand up for themselves. But rest assured, pal, that MOST Jews DO support Israel. And we have a lot of friends among non-Jews; after all, the enemy Israel fights in Gaza is not much different than the one NATO fights in Afghanistan. We will work tirelessly to make sure that the general public is aware of this elemental fact, and as this occurs, the credibility of your nonsense genocidal movement that masquerades as a worthy “cause” will wither and die.
In the end, your indignant moral self-righteousness is nothing but a big fraud. Yasser Arafat himself traveled to Hanoi in the late 1960s to learn tactics for defeating a materially more powerful foe, tactics which were successfully used against the U.S. in Vietnam. But the U.S. could come home after losing that war; Israel has no choice but to win, and she will. You and your people are only pawns who are being sacrificed on the altar of Moslem bigotry and bloody-mindedness. The attitude towards Israel of the Arabs and Moslems of SW Asia is really no more enlightened than racist whites in the pre-civil rights U.S. who’d form lynch mobs to evict a black family that moved into a white neighborhood.
Wake and realize this, “elixeix”, or keep dying like cannon fodder in the face of the Israelis who are simply defending their homeland. It is your choice.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:25 am
You didn’t read my original post or my reply to Eddie, did you, Robman?
When you go to a rally where the Arabs/Muslims/Palestinians/Dhimmis are speaking, and you ask them outrageous questions, they give outrageous answers–just as you did! In answering my questions as though you were them you have shown the world the mind of impenitent killers! Thanks for that!
As for you, Eddie–again I agree with you 100%. What we have to do is show this cruel, murderous face to the world, and what better way to do that than by asking outrageou questions and making outrageous suggestions at their rallies.
That was my entire point in my first post, and one you and Robman seem to have totally misunderstood.
When I’ve been to Palestinian rallies here in Spain–and believe me they get far more outrageous than you will EVER see–I try to ask one question only, and it usually gets the mad, psychotic, wild-eyed response I am trying to get…and that question is…
WHEN WE DEFEAT THE JEWS IN ISRAEL, SHOULD WE THROW ALL THE LIVING ONES INTO THE SEA LIKE ABU NIDAL DID TO LEON KLINGHOFFER, OR SHOULD WE MAKE A BIG KORBAN AND SLIT ALL THEIR THROATS LIKE KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED DID TO DANIEL PEARL? (FOLLOW UP) SHOULD WE KILL THEIR WOMEN AND CHILDREN TOO, OR TAKE THEM FOR WHORES AND SLAVES?!
So, wise up you two! Go to their rallies! Ask them some of the questions I outlined in my original post! Film their replies! Post them on U-Tube! That’s the way we defeat these madmen–by showing them to be despicable, outrageous killers-in-waiting to be scorned and laughed at while they talk; to be fought against and killed when they act!
One final word: How often have you seen mobs baying “Death to America!”, “Death to Israel!”, “Death to the Jews!” at Iranian rallies held by Ahmadinejad? Fine, so during the last election campaign A’jad handed out POTATOES to his supporters. IMMEDIATLY the opposition candidate, Moussavi, started screaming “Death to Potatoes!”
My Iranian friend, Gholam explained: Whenever Iranians don’t like something, no matter how small, they shout “Death to (fill in your pet peeve)”. If you have a stone in your shoe you have options “Death to stones!” “Death to Gravel!” “Death to shoes!” “Death to Pain!”. You see how ridiculous it becomes, how petty, how small, how insignificant it becomes, when you give them a mile and they make it an inch!”Death to Potatoes!” indeed. That’s comedy gold!
How seriously will you EVER be able to take “Death to America!” again now that you’ve heard “Death to Potatoes” issuing from the same lips?
And that’s the intention behind my original questions: to provoke answers so far beyond common sense and reason that there is no going back.
If you think that doesn’t work come up with your own strategy!
“Death to strategies!” “Death to Irony!” “Death to hints and allegations!”
February 10th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
elixeix,
Got you. If you had mentioned the bit about replies and U-tube in your original post, I’d have got you the first time around.
Bear in mind, we are so used to outrageous crap, that irony disguised as the same is hard to detect after a while.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
elixelx, I’ll leave haunting pal-e-SWINIAN war rallies to you.
Please post your video responses to YouTube. Your videos will help put a stake in the heart of islamofascism.
Is it true that Muslims wish to reconquer Spain, or as they call it Al-Andalus?
After 9/11, I take “death to america” seriously. I respond with “Death to Mecca/Makka”.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
You have some “sense of humor” “elixelx”. I understand the placename incorporated into your name “Elx” (this is in Catalan at the vey edge of historic Catalan-spaking part of Spain, “Elche” in traditioal Catilian Spanish) just shows us – as a reminder – the immense and un-ueberable HYPOCRISY which is part and parcel of your (?) country, Spain. Your country’s history is if I may point it out to you is soooo bloodied, so sordid and tragic that I don’t think a Spaniard, ANY Spaniard for that matter, can have the cheeck to tell a word about Israel or Israeli behavior. I really have not much time to engage in a dialogue with you on all facets of your history and its consequences and lessons, but just allow me to say to you this. Spain’s moral hypocrisy is so absurd, so mind-boggling and your country’s overall morality is ultimately so untenable that Spain makes quite a good comedian of itself collectively as a nation.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Last word on this thread:
1) I live in Spain, Gabor, but I’m not Spanish! I’m a Jew born in India, and I’m the last Jew in Elx. There is a 1st. century CE synagogue just been discovered outside Elx, so maybe I’m the first Jew back in Elx in 518 years! BTW the weather here is phenomenal, 300days of sunshine a year, guaranteed.
2)Eddie and Robman: Yes, the Muslims regard El Andalus part of their “Caliphate”; and it is there, centred on Granada, five hours away by bus from Elx, that most of the pro-Muslim demondtrations take place, usually attended by thousands of THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS who are disgusted with the crushing Christianity of their fathers (there have been two in Elx in the last two years on May 1st., now called “Palestinian Solidarity Day”. I will be going to the next one, hidden camera in hair!) . You would think they would know better, given the near 800 years of Muslim dominance over their forefathers, but the disillusionment of the young in this country is epic. In dress, music, culture they are aping in their own ways the Afro-American experience in America, digging up their roots and finding they like what they see, so long as it is “different”. More and more women in Granada, not just Muslim women, are using headscarves; in Elx there are even one or two full- face veils, and there has been an explosion of kebab shops opening to replace the traditional Spanish restaurants. So, yes, the young in Spain seem determined to repeat the Dhimmi acts of the past when the MOZARABE (mixed Muslim/Christian) culture was rife! Once again, I insist, ALL THIS is driven by THE YOUNG! The older people, who lived under Franco, are very very wary of the Muslims whom they regard as beggars, thieves and despoilers! What the Alamo was to the US, Melilla is to Spain! I have posted two or three music/cartoon videos on u-tube, but can’t seem to find the link!
3)Finally, Gabor, may I recommend the work of Pilar Rahola, a leftist Spanish journalist from Barcelona, to show you that there are still some “still small voices” breaking through the incessant anti-Israel, anti-Jewish chatter of the MSM in this country!