Homocon

Shortly after the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003, my boyfriend and I decided to take a trip to Australia and New Zealand (thinking that we may as well go before things got so bad that we could never safely leave the country again). On one of the days we were in Australia, we flagged down a taxi, and the moment the very Australian taxi driver learned we were from the states, he began to talk about the Iraq war. Which was fine. I have no problem discussing with foreign citizens what my government chooses to do, and what my personal opinions are regarding those choices. But what floored me was when he said, and I quote, "Yeah, it's all about the damn Israelis -- the Jews have really got your president under their thumb, don't they? They control the banking, the media, the government, they have their hands in everything!" My mouth dropped open in astonishment, and my boyfriend just laughed, because he had always told me that I was too naive about anti-Jew sentiment throughout the world. What was the most astonishing part of it, though, was that the taxi driver literally assumed that we would just agree with him and start complaining about "those damn Jews" ourselves. When my boyfriend replied, "I just love the Jews!", I thought the driver was going to slam on his brakes and throw us out of his taxi. The rest of our ride was spent in utter silence.

Israel has some of the most liberal laws in the world for homosexuals (a hated group within Islamic culture), and by far the most liberal laws in the Middle East for women (though Palestinians do allow their women a prominent role in blowing themselves up), yet lefty feminist and allegedly gay-friendly media and academia members continue to assert that the state of Israel is "an affront to civilization" and "a vindictive Israeli victimizer" (and let's not forget the litany of anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly each year). Paul Varnell in the Chicago Free Press stated that, regarding the treatment of gay men and women, "Palestine makes rural Texas look like San Francisco," yet Palestine is the who, what and where that the far-left (including the gay-left) lines up to champion, with leftist spokespersons stating that "the surrounding Arab nations (only) allegedly wish to see the destruction of Israel" -- willfully (for this is the only term that fits) dismissing the very real and persistent call among Palestinian and other Arab groups for the complete elimination of the state of Israel.

It boggles the mind.

In February of 2001, the London Observer published a poem by British-Irish author and Oxford Academic Tom Paulin titled, "Killed in the Crossfire". The poem labels the Israeli military as "Zionist SS" wantonly slaying innocent Palestinian children, and its usage of the term "dumb goys" for non-Jews reflects Hitler's similar usage of "dumb goyim" in 'Mein Kampf' for those he considered "duped" by the "sly" Jews. Also in 2001, France's ambassador to London purportedly stated that the present international security crisis in America and Europe had been triggered by "that shitty little country Israel". In July of 2002, D.D. Guttenplan wrote in The Nation that unrest in the Middle East was the direct fault of Israel's defense policies, and that the Arab attackers aren't terrorists or extremists, they're simply the country's "disaffected and marginalized Arab minority" -- thereby laying fault for suicide bombings at Israel's own doorstep by hoisting the canard of "the poor Arabs" who, it's worth noting, come from countries whose leaders earn billions in oil revenue (which apparently doesn't "trickle down" to its citizenry).

D.D. Guttenplan also noted that "(T)he tattered mantle of Jewish victimization is draped over policies of collective punishment and murderous reprisal (against the Palestinians) that are modeled on the tactics used to crush Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto," while further complaining that the tragic history of the Jews is being used as a gag to stifle dissent against Israeli brutality.

Answering-Islam.org.uk reports that "during the last 20 years, Muslim terrorists have targeted and murdered tens of thousands of males, females, adults, and children. All over the world, in Kenya, Algeria, Indonesia, Egypt, Iran, France, South America and America, etc., Muslim terrorists have attacked and murdered those they felt were a threat to their aims." But apparently, in Guttenplan's world-view, it's Israeli brutality that's the scourge of the global community.

Even the Catholic Church, long considered a fair-weather friend of the Israeli nation, is warning of rising anti-semitism, with Pope Benedict XVI proclaiming that "Christians and Jews must join forces so the insane racist ideology that led to the Holocaust never resurfaces."

Oops, too late.

******Next: "Those Darn Jews: Part 3"

ADDENDUM:
Hmmm, maybe the Palestinians are reforming . . . ?

OFF-TOPIC:
"A twirling ice cream cone that, divorced from intent, looks like the Arabic inscription for Allah no more is the Arabic inscription for Allah than a cloud that looks like a sheep is likely to yield a sweater and a pair of wool socks . . . "

*sigh*

I have such a blog-crush on Jeff Goldstein.