Monday, July 24, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
Reward and repetition are two of the best ways to ensure certain types of
behaviors continue. And if such motivations are in place long
enough, behavior becomes permanent as rewards harden into entitlements and
repetition becomes habit.
We’re seeing something like this play
out in the latest iteration of what Ruth Wisse urges us to start calling “The Arab War Against the
Jews,” a more descriptive title for what even
Israel’s friends keep calling called the “Arab-Israeli” conflict, which
presumes an inaccurate “cycle-of-violence” narrative.
This time, the so-called “cycle”
consists of Palestinians (urged on by leaders in both official and popular
media) using their own holy places as the launch-pad for murder, then using
Israeli security measures at those same holy places as a pretext for riots,
further murder and demands for global protest.
To any rational observer, this mini- or
pre- Intifada III is ultimately destined to suffer the fate as have previous
ones with lots of people – Jew and Arab – losing their lives, a degradation of
whatever progress Palestinian society might have made since the last
“uprising,” and hopes for co-existence pushed ever further away. These
are actually important goals for those urging on the killing (even if those
actually holding the knives are motivated primarily by the urge to kill any Jew
they can reach).
Needless to say, those “Friends of the
Palestinian People” here on our shores have risen up to “stop the violence,”
specifically the violence Israeli police, soldiers and citizens use to prevent
their children from being stabbed, run over, shot and blown up. As for
the killing spree itself, well – as usual – this crowd of Peace Warriors has
little time for such trifles.
One of the few interesting things about
this entirely unsurprising set of behaviors is the way those hoping to anchor
their already-scheduled propaganda campaign to the current crisis are no longer
even bothering to hide the transparency of the falsehoods they embrace and
espouse.
On one level, the laundering of
murderers (by, for example, presenting killers or would-be killers gunned down
during an attack on their Jewish prey as “victims of Israeli aggression”) seems
cynical beyond belief.
But after two decades of fauxtography
(including presenting victims of murderous violence everywhere else in the
Middle East as Palestinian “victims”), why not go the next step and simply lie
to suit your needs without a second thought? Especially since fewer and
fewer people outside the circle of Israel’s regular supporters show the
slightest interest in calling SJP/JVP/BDS out on their fabrication,
manipulation, and atrocious behavior.
This is where the repetition phenomenon
mentioned at the top of this piece starts to provide some descriptive (and,
sadly, predictive) utility. For just as Palestinians have been trained
over the last two generations to automatically blame everything wrong with
their lives and history on the Jews (a process which only accelerated once the
“Peace Process” kicked in two decades ago), our local anti-Israel propagandists
have been trained to expect almost no challenge to their endless propagandizing
and lies – not from the media, not from cowed or corrupted academia, and not
from the governments who fund the Palestinian polities working tirelessly to
ensure violence continues.
And if you bother to ask why “human
rights activists” have so little time for the rights of humans beyond
Palestinian ones (although only the ones under Israeli jurisdiction), out comes
the accusations of “changing the subject” (presuming the
boycotters don’t ignore critics altogether).
I guess the one dim light in this
otherwise depressing environment is that a political movement which thinks it
has others in their pocket tends to get lazy and careless as feelings of
invulnerability coupled with fantasies of impending triumph leads to poor
decisions and overreach. It remains to be seen, however, if anyone will
ever be willing to break the cycle of rewarding Israel’s enemies for the
suffering they bring upon themselves and everyone else.
