Searching for a Reliable Confirmation in the Israel-Palestine Conflict

http://create.ou.edu/uncategorized/is-all-media-biased/

Browsing the Internet for relatively unbiased information regarding the Israel Palestine conflict is a difficult task, which speaks to its deeply rooted politics and the historically uncertain nature of the situation. It is then hard for many people, including myself, to form an opinion on a topic such as this when most headlines we see are clearly so motivated in one direction that it is tough to view anything as completely accurate. Most people probably just look for a confirmation of their unjustified assumptions. After going through countless media outlets, although some major sites do try to outline different stances, it seems like the vast majority either emphasize anti-Semitic instances and point out radical Islamic intent on genocide, or refer to Israelis as “settlers” or “occupation gangs” and clearly paint a corrupt, exploitative picture of the “Zionists.” One site stood out among the rest: Mondoweiss.net.

This site caught my attention mainly due to the co-founder, Phillip Weiss. Weiss himself is Jewish, however he argues the “anti-Zionist” side against the Israeli establishment. Although I’m also Jewish, have family members who live in Israel and have visited the country myself, in my research I attempt to remain aware of and understand the arguments from the non-terrorist anti-Israeli government side. With a fairly unique view for a Jewish writer, one would easily assume Weiss’ discussions of the topic are at least worth noting, so I was eager to take a look.

But then I stumbled upon an April 2015 post written by Weiss titled “Forgiving the anti-Semites.” Trying not to equate the title to “Forgiving the racists” (or even “Forgiving Hitler”), at the beginning I was following along trying to make sense of what seemed to be a diary revealing Jewish misconceptions and manipulations of “the Man” in society. After hearing a rant about why Jews were kicked out of every country they traveled to and how there have been too many Holocaust movies in the last 30 years, there was one paragraph in particular that made me seriously question all of this:

“I remembered a conversation I’d had recently about anti-Semitism with a non Jewish friend in Jerusalem. An American Protestant of the I-hate-religion variety, he asked me to explain the Israel lobby. I said that it reflected a contract the American establishment had made with Jews to drive the economy in the 1970s. We were really good at the four horses of the global economy (finance, software, education, and media), and people thought we were smarter, and maybe we were smarter; Yuri Slezkine says we are the magicians and the priests of modernity; and in exchange for that leading role, the government would support Israel. Brian Roberts runs the world’s largest media company, Chris Matthews works for him and supports Israel.”

Now we know why Jews have so much power and why there is support for Israel in America! The American government met with the small coalition of Jews that represented the entire religion in the 1970s, and they agreed that since the Jews are so intellectually advanced at finance, software, education, and media, the country would clearly gain a competitive advantage in the global economy if they take positions of power in these fields. So if they agreed to take this on, it would all be in exchange for support of their right to the land of Israel for the indefinite future. What a conniving people they must be, to be able to negotiate their way to a rise up into individual powerful positions in America. Those mischievous, up-to-no-good manipulators even made it seem like their acquisition of power was so beneficial for the country, that they got support for their homeland in a wing of American politics in exchange for the exclusive right to be granted certain positions in business and the media. And that is undoubtedly why there is support for Israel in American politics today, almost 50 years later, because government officials work to make sure the country remains loyal to this exploitative contract, and gives Jews the positions they need them to be in while supporting them during the conflict. It is also certainly the only reason any Jewish individuals like the CEO of Comcast are able to rise up into various positions, all because America made that agreement in the 70s. Pretty good deal for those darn Jews, right?

In all seriousness, a thought many people have had is that at different points in time, governments may have accepted Jews into certain countries because it was assumed they would help drive economies. And this is most likely what Weiss is referring to. However, he does not establish that premise or attempt to derive any type of point from it, it's hard to distinguish where he is even going with this. To simply say Jews made an actual contract in exchange for political support in a post titled "Forgiving the anti-Semites" is spewing more ignorance and hate into a situation abundant with both, asking readers to be tolerant of anti-Semitism, and basically asking us to forgive him.

Digging deeper into Mondoweiss, Weiss doesn’t elaborate on this in any meaningful way at least throughout the rest of this paper. This story looks more like a bad Jew joke than anything else. But it isn’t just Phillip Weiss himself behind this. Another one of their writers, Ben White, stated in a post on counterpunch.org after professing what he half-painted as evil workings of the Israeli government, “I was startled by this, since I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are.” Anti-Semitism is undeniably referred to as the blatant hatred of Jews and has been associated with the killing of millions of people of the Jewish faith. This is simply the 60-years-later version of saying you do not kill Jews yourself, but you can also understand why some do. Or that you do not hold slaves yourself, but you can understand why some might. To clearly and unapologetically sympathize with anti-Semites and claim to understand their rationale is equivalent to or arguably worse than accepting the actions of those who enforced slavery and any other demeaning form of racism or discrimination in the past, and that ignorant attempt at open-mindedness is an insult not only to Jews, but to all people hoping for a safe solution to one of the world's major conflicts. 

Unfortunately, Mondoweiss is a major source for many people blindly following a one-sided story. It is a project of The Nation Institute, a nonprofit media center that attempts to fight for social justice and civil rights. Perhaps this institution is driven by a specific force, or they need to pay more attention to what the sites they are associated with are feeding people, because even if they are arguing for the justice and rights of the Palestinian people, their writers' claims are hatefully one-sided and clearly anti-Semitic in nature.

The government of Israel receives an excessive amount of criticism and scrutiny regarding the nature of their settlements and occupations, and the underlying message Israel traces their aggressive tactics back to is anti-Semitism. Nowadays, it's not that the Holocaust is being overly portrayed, or that people ignore the history of this group of people, but I believe many people tend to ignore or underestimate the raw disliking of Jews in various societies today and how it affects what seem to be economical disputes about land, politics, and government. The fact of that matter is that too many people who genuinely hate Jews still exist.

Needless to say, in my search for relatively objective, logic-based information regarding the current Israeli-Palestine conflict, I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for.