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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Israel and the culture wars |
| 2015-08-21 |
| By Melanie Phillips [Jpost] The banning of rapper Matisyahu by the Sunsplash reggae festival in Spain -- subsequently rescinded after protests -- was an "aha!" moment. After pressure from the Israel-bashing Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, the festival organizers disinvited the singer because he refused to support "the right of Palestinians to have their own state." Matisyahu is, however, not an Israeli but a Jewish American. Aha! people exclaimed; now BDS stands exposed as demonstrably anti-Jew. Well yes; and so too is the wider anti-Israel obsession which shares the unique characteristics of Jew-hatred down the ages: a frenzied agenda of lies and libels, grotesque fantasies of covert global conspiracy and accusations of behavior of which its targets are not only innocent but are in fact the victims. However, there's rather more to the demonization of Israel than just Jew-hatred. Across the Western world old-fashioned liberalism, based on reason and truth, is disappearing. It has been hijacked by hardleft attitudes based on eradicating the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, tyrant and victim, in favor of the only distinction that matters: the powerless versus the "imperialist" West. Through that distorted prism, it inverts reality and punishes any who disagree. This has bent the minds of millions of "progressives" as effectively as the brainwashing by the Spanish Inquisition, Soviet communism or modern-day Islamism. And just as under those closed thought-systems, today's progressives are inherently unable to perceive how twisted they have become. ...So if you point out that Palestinian identity is a fiction invented solely to mask the fact that the Jews are the only people for whom Israel was ever their national kingdom; or that the world's climate patterns have not changed significantly over time; or that President Obama is enabling Iran to develop nuclear weapons, you are smeared as a Zionist warmonger, stooge of Big Oil or traitor to America. Truth has become a "right-wing" heresy. And if you point out "The Bell Curve", or the extensive body of rigorous scientific evidence detailing profound psychological differences between men and women... |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |