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Bleeding-heart ignoramuses

By Julie Burchill

A few weeks back it was my birthday, and my equally non-Jewish journalist
friend Chas Newkey-Burden took his life in his hands and presented me
with a cuddly toy. Now, normally I feel that people who bother with
cuddly toys over the age of eight are either mad and/or prostitutes, but
this little sweetie stole my heart. A honey-brown camel with a heart-
melting smile and a jaunty cap, he proudly wore an Israeli Army uniform
with a fetching hole cut out for his hump. "I've named him Bibi," Chas
told me, obviously in honor of our mutual crush.

Later that night Chas and I were watching a TV news report of the
beginnings of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. To say we were amazed when
a news presenter solemnly intoned that there had been "two militants
wounded" with all the grieving gravitas of Richard Dimbleby reporting on
the state funeral of the late Winston Churchill is to employ English
understatement to an almost surreal degree. But it's been that way ever
since - and more than one night has seen me screaming at the TV/my
husband "You don't understand! None of you English bastards
understands!" before running into the bedroom, slamming the door and
collapsing in a tearful heap with only Bibi to comfort me.

One of the most grotesque examples of the almost brainwashed level of
bias can be seen on the official BBC Religions Web site, where that
"peace be upon him" eyewash is going on like crazy, while other religions
are coolly commented on in a strictly "objective" way.




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The conflict has sent this tendency into overdrive, with not just the
usual Masochist Hacks For Mohammed such as Robert Fisk (beaten up by
Islamists, says they were right to do it) and Yvonne Ridley (kidnapped by
Islamists, then became one) getting their chadors in a twist about big
swarthy men with tea-towels on their heads treating the West mean and
keeping it - in their case at least - keen.

Even the women's magazines have gotten in on the act, with lots of first-
person eye-witness accounts of British citizens fleeing the Jewish
jackboot. Then turn the page and you'll often find a shocked article
about honor-killing or forced marriage, Muslim-style. That Israel is
fighting the frontline war, on behalf of the freedom and civilization of
all of us, against the very real evils of shari'a law never seems to
occur to these bleeding-heart ignoramuses.

Over at Channel 4, Jon Snow interviewed an Israeli diplomat with all the
finesse and objectivity of a neo-Nazi spraying a six-foot swastika on a
wall. Of the rockets which murdered Israeli civilians in the town of
Sderot, he said "Rockets, pretty pathetic things - nobody gets injured."
This was gleefully picked up and proclaimed by The Guardian, the
newspaper I left some years ago in protest at what I saw as its vile
anti-Semitism.

All across the board, Lebanese civilians are referred to as "civilians"
where Israeli civilians are referred to as "Israelis" - an eerie and
sinister difference pointed out by the non-Jewish stand-up comic genius
Natalie Haynes, and one which very few people appear to have noticed -
even me, until then.

In fact the tone in papers as diverse as the "liberal" Guardian to the
right-wing Daily Mail has been repulsively similar; look, look, the
Israelis are as bad as the terrorists! Worse, in fact, because they've
got America behind them! Even the normally sensible Matthew Parris in the
normally sensible Times wrote: "The past 40 years have been a
catastrophe, gradual and incremental, for world Jewry. Seldom in history
have the name and reputation of a human grouping lost so vast a store of
support and sympathy so fast."

The catastrophe he refers to is the State of Israel itself; you'd really
think, reading this, that the years leading up to the creation of the
Jewish state were, in fact, a right royal romp in the park. Instead of
the Holocaust.

A surprising number of British people - especially the super-creepy
British Jews who recently signed a treacherous letter to the press
distancing themselves from Israel's actions - seem to think Israel should
exist not as a real, imperfect country full of real, imperfect people led
by real, imperfect leaders, but as some sort of collective kosher Mater
Dolorosa, there to provide a selfless, suffering example to the rest of
us.

Fight back, and the outside world reacts with the revulsion of a man
seeing his sainted grandmother drunk and offering sailors outside. Even
(especially?) anti-Semites and enemies of Israel are shameless in
recycling the legends of "brave little Israel" - I'm thinking of David
and Goliath here - and basically believe that each IDF member should go
into battle against the assembled hordes of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah
armed with nothing but a slingshot apiece. Failing that, this tiny
country must embark on a suicidal act of self-sacrifice in the face of
murderous, genocidal hatred, as Matthew Parris astoundingly suggests:

"The settlement has to be a return to its pre-1967 boundaries. Precisely
because Israel is by no means forced to make so generous a move, the
international support (even love) this would generate would secure its
future permanently. It would bring it back within the pale."

Personally, I'd far prefer the Jews to be angry, aggressive and alive
than meek, mild and dead - and that's what makes me and a minority like
me feel so much like strangers in our own country, now more than ever.
I've always loved being a hack, but now even that feels weird, as though
I'm living among a bunch of snatched-body zombies who look like
journalists but believe and say the most inhuman, evil things.

Læs hele artiklen her:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749291.html

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