Friday, March 08, 2024
From Ian:
European Jew-hatred too deep to identify ‘even after years of therapy,’ Douglas Murray says
European Jew-hatred too deep to identify ‘even after years of therapy,’ Douglas Murray says
Traveling in the Arab world, the British journalist Douglas Murray has found “fanatical obsessives” who know something about Israel but still criticize the Jewish state. And then there are those who peddle “counterfactual history,” he told JNS.Bethany Mandel: Hamas terror attack exposes Al Jazeera for what it really is
“For instance, Egyptians think they won the war in 1973. Smart, Egyptian, young professionals will think that they won the war in 1973,” Murray told JNS, of the Yom Kippur War, during an interview in Toronto on Feb. 28 prior to his remarks at a Tafsik event.
“I had to break it to a friend in Cairo once that they lost badly. He said, ‘Really. I thought we whipped their ass?’” Murray said. “I said, ‘No, they whipped your ass. Seriously.’”
Since Oct. 7, Murray, 44, a best-selling author and associate editor of The Spectator, has done a lot of explaining about Israel on television—often on Piers Morgan’s show—and at speaking engagements. The Anglican-turned atheist’s largest social-media following includes many pro-Israel accounts that regularly share video footage of him denouncing Hamas, defending Israel and debating antisemitic guests.
Knesset member Danny Danon, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, has called Murray a “great friend of Israel and of the Jewish people.”
“We need a special designation for those bravely standing with Jews and Israel in facing the greatest surge of Jew-hatred in decades. Let’s call them ‘Heroic Friends of the Jewish People,’” wrote former American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris, now vice chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. “My first candidate is Douglas Murray.”
Murray told JNS that many people aim to distance themselves from the Jewish state “because they don’t want Israel to be their problem.”
“Maybe if we come up with a perfect argument,” he said. “Maybe if we inform people about the history, and broadly speaking, you’re talking about trying to educate or inform people who are not educated or informed.”
Most anti-Israel people aren’t informed about the Peel Commission or the Balfour Declaration, according to Murray. “You’re talking about people who have never heard of any of these things,” he said.
“Among non-Muslims in the West, there’s a lot of ignorance, too. They fall into this psychopathy, in which they knowingly or unknowingly, usually unknowingly, desperately want to be able to accuse Jews of something,” Murray added. “That motivates them, and, of course, it makes them think that they’re good people.”
In the wake of the attacks on Israel October 7, the role that the media network Al Jazeera has played cannot be understated. It is an arm of the regime in Qatar, which serves as a safe haven and benefactor for Hamas, which perpetrated the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust.Seth Mandel: The Hostage President
In a new report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Yigal Carmon outlines how the Qatari-owned media empire promotes Islamist terror worldwide. That cooperation between Hamas and Al Jazeera is no more clearly evident than how it covered the attacks of October 7.
The network aired "exclusive" clips of the attacks, and Carmon explains, "This footage could only have been obtained from Hamas itself. The Al Jazeera reporter abandoned any pretense of neutrality, proclaiming gleefully that "the settler walls… collapsed… along with the iron image of the arrogant occupation army."
Within the rules and regulations to obtain press credentials at the United States House of Representatives, it is said, "they will not act as an agent for, or be employed by the Federal, or any State, local or foreign government or representatives thereof." These are generally the rules for any press credentials across government, in the U.S. Senate, White House, etc.
And yet, Al Jazeera retains this access, and in 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice required that the media network register as a foreign agent in accordance with Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) laws.
Former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen outlined why in a report prepared for Congress, explaining that the network "repeatedly undermines U.S. interests in the region by supporting extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and [the] Al-Nusrah [Front]. […] Moreover, Qatar uses its state-owned, state-funded, state-directed and state-controlled Al Jazeera Media Network to project this vision to the U.S. public."
Since October 7, and the ensuing conflict, Al Jazeera has plainly been operating as an official mouthpiece for Hamas. In his report for MEMRI, Carmon explains, "Since October 7, Al-Jazeera has been airing official military announcements and threats by Hamas spokesmen – as well as by other terror organizations – on an almost daily basis, serving as a semi-official amplifier of Hamas messaging, often featuring outlandish claims of military successes by the group."
Biden also made sure to remind the chamber and those watching at home that Americans reject bigotry, “give hate no safe harbor.” Indeed, he said, “Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”
It all sounded like a prelude to a discussion about the specific and undeniable prejudice dominating American institutions and the public square. But, as my colleague Abe Greenwald noted on today’s Commentary podcast, there was no mention of the tidal wave of anti-Semitism currently washing away the credibility and legitimacy of mainstream institutions—not even in the typical formulation in which it is balanced with Islamophobia, though there is no chilling epidemic of the latter. It is surely relevant to the state of our union that Jewish college students are subject to a more openly aggressive version of the bigotry they would have faced a century ago at those same universities, that street violence against Jews has become a regular occurrence, that the Jewish singer Matisyahu has had to hire extra staff and security to perform after two of his recent shows were canceled over venue workers’ discomfort with Jews, and that in the America of 2024 a bar in Salt Lake City can hang a sign that says “No Zionists Allowed”—as have campus shops and other establishments.
The president succeeded last night in showing vigor and emotional range and improvisational aplomb. So we can only conclude that all of the above didn’t make it into his speech for the sole reason that he and his staff didn’t want to talk about it.
Just like his brief drive from the White House to the Capitol before the speech, Joe Biden had to take a detour around the traditional route he might have taken had he been permitted to do so by his party’s considerable anti-Zionist freakshow contingent. The president is engaged in an ongoing hostage negotiation with his own party, and he is the hostage. Mr. President, blink twice if no one’s bringing you ice cream.
