Israeli Lobby
If you've seen the documentary about Al Jazeera, Control Room, you may remember an acerbic "independent journalist" arguing with a blue-eyed marine press liaison. I had the opportunity to see the acerbic journalist, Ahhmahed Schleifer, give a talk here at UGA recently. (That blue-eyed marine, Joshua Rushing, incidentally, has joined Al Jazeera and now hosts his own show. Also at this talk I met the 2003-2006 CNN Arabic translator. I recognized his voice from 2003 news clips that I'm editing right now into a video/documentary about consuming war. Small world.)
Anyway....
Schleifer gave a somewhat nonconfrontational presentation regarding reporting tendencies of the U.S. press when it comes to Middle Eastern politics. His rather simplistic analysis argued that two filters determine the western press picture of the Middle East. The first, he said, is access. We have more sympathy toward westernized states due to access and sheer point of view of the camera. Second, he said that suicide bombings create good news because, essentially, if it bleeds, it leads. I found his analysis rather conventional and unsatisfying given that he has had so much experience covering Middle Eastern conflict. So I asked him this question: "Americans do not seem to have a point of reference for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no sense that there is even an occupation, that Israel has all the guns, and that anywhere from 4 to 7 times as many Palestinians are dying of F16 strikes and bombs than Israelis getting blown up in pizza parlours. What accounts for this? It can't be 'access,' because Israel has a relatively free press. And there is plenty of violence to satisfy the blood thirstiness of the camera, so this can't be the reason either. What is it?"
His soft, hand-wringing answer was: "There is a very powerful Israeli lobby in the U.S., and this puts a tremendous amount of pressure on journalists to report the right things lest they be labeled anti-semitic. But this fact is so obvious that it goes without saying."
Afterward, many people thanked me for asking the question, even though the answer was "so obvious" that I didn't need to ask. I have run into this "Israeli lobby" argument in a few places, notably in the Media Education Foundation's wonderful documentary, Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land, where they cite organizations like CAMERA and AIPAC as comprising important filters alongside corporate/state strategic interests in the Middle East (i.e. Israel as U.S. mililtary outpost). I have been a little hesitant to grant much credence to this argument. Who wants to be labeled an anti-semite and end up like Norman Finkelstein, shunned? Only he can't be an anti-semite because of his Jewish ethnicity. For him, they bring out the old Christian epithet "self-hating Jew." You might check out his book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.
Here's what I'm leading up to. Recently a couple of reputable professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published a little piece about the Israel lobby in the London Review of Books. It had been turned down at several other publications. The piece has received attention of all kinds. Here's an article about its impact in The Nation. The politics surrounding the bare mentioning of an Israeli lobby are quite enough to make your head spin. But this fact, strangely, does not keep Fox News from writing a story about it, even though they have adopted the language of these lobby groups in their insistant use of "homicide bombers" among other things.
Anyway....
Schleifer gave a somewhat nonconfrontational presentation regarding reporting tendencies of the U.S. press when it comes to Middle Eastern politics. His rather simplistic analysis argued that two filters determine the western press picture of the Middle East. The first, he said, is access. We have more sympathy toward westernized states due to access and sheer point of view of the camera. Second, he said that suicide bombings create good news because, essentially, if it bleeds, it leads. I found his analysis rather conventional and unsatisfying given that he has had so much experience covering Middle Eastern conflict. So I asked him this question: "Americans do not seem to have a point of reference for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no sense that there is even an occupation, that Israel has all the guns, and that anywhere from 4 to 7 times as many Palestinians are dying of F16 strikes and bombs than Israelis getting blown up in pizza parlours. What accounts for this? It can't be 'access,' because Israel has a relatively free press. And there is plenty of violence to satisfy the blood thirstiness of the camera, so this can't be the reason either. What is it?"
His soft, hand-wringing answer was: "There is a very powerful Israeli lobby in the U.S., and this puts a tremendous amount of pressure on journalists to report the right things lest they be labeled anti-semitic. But this fact is so obvious that it goes without saying."
Afterward, many people thanked me for asking the question, even though the answer was "so obvious" that I didn't need to ask. I have run into this "Israeli lobby" argument in a few places, notably in the Media Education Foundation's wonderful documentary, Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land, where they cite organizations like CAMERA and AIPAC as comprising important filters alongside corporate/state strategic interests in the Middle East (i.e. Israel as U.S. mililtary outpost). I have been a little hesitant to grant much credence to this argument. Who wants to be labeled an anti-semite and end up like Norman Finkelstein, shunned? Only he can't be an anti-semite because of his Jewish ethnicity. For him, they bring out the old Christian epithet "self-hating Jew." You might check out his book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.
Here's what I'm leading up to. Recently a couple of reputable professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published a little piece about the Israel lobby in the London Review of Books. It had been turned down at several other publications. The piece has received attention of all kinds. Here's an article about its impact in The Nation. The politics surrounding the bare mentioning of an Israeli lobby are quite enough to make your head spin. But this fact, strangely, does not keep Fox News from writing a story about it, even though they have adopted the language of these lobby groups in their insistant use of "homicide bombers" among other things.
posted by thebaffler at 10:07 PM
3 Comments:
nice, cozy place you got here :)..
World peace cannot be achieved by sitting around on our duffs singing hippy songs to the moon. Peace can only be achieved through excessive acts of seemingly mindless violence. Who do bullies pick on in the playground? The giant, crazy looking guy who looks ready to snap and kill the person nearest or some harmless looking weenie who appears to do anything to avoid conflict? People pick on the weenie because people like to start fights they think they can win. In the same way, people will continue to attack America and our interests when they get the idea that they can piss off America without us immediately eradicating them and everyone around them in the most painful way possible.
Now, if I were president, here’s what I would do. Next time some country does something we don’t take a pining too, such as supporting terrorism or speaking French, I’d pick the dumbest reason for an attack, e.g., "A ‘q’ should always be followed by a ‘u’. I don’t make the rules, Iraq, but I will enforce them." The more irrational you look, the more scared the country will be that you will really hit them hard. I’d then give the country the old one-week notice until bombing starts. Then, after just twenty-four hours, I’d start bombing. When the stupid dictator calls to complain, I’d say, "I meant one week max. Oh, and by the way, ground troops - one week." I’m sure that would be enough to capitulate the average evildoer, but some extra measures could help intimidate others as well. Like, instead of just saturation bombing a city, super-saturation bomb it. After annihilating everything until nothing but ash is left, I’d nuke the ashes. It’s that extra bit of extremely disproportionate use of force that makes other countries start to wonder if America "has it all together" and really worrying who we’ll lash out against next.
Of course, Europe will start complaining, and Europe’s bad mouthing of America gives comfort to our enemies. I mean, those guys values are so messed up they think calling someone a "cowboy" is an insult. Best idea would be to assassinate the leader of the first European country we hear a peep out of. This will probably make us look evil, though, when we want the image of crazy and violent. So, when the Europeans ask why, I’d claim to never have heard of the person: "I didn’t even know France had a leader. Sure it wasn’t suicide? Yeah, committing suicide with a sniper rifle would be hard, but not impossible if you had a five-hundred yard length of string to work the trigger." Assassination does seem a little extreme, but we’re talking about Europe. I mean, what are they going to do other than quickly capitulate under a mild threat of force. We’ll probably start seeing, "We all love America!" parades in bids to not be our next targets.
Now the world will be pretty convinced that America is frick’n nuts and just looking for a fight, but we need to really ingrain it into everyone’s conscious so that no one will ever even contemplate crossing us. This requires making good use of our nukes. I know, nukes can kill millions of people, but they sure aren’t doing anyone any good just sitting around. I mean, how many years has it been since we last dropped a bomb on someone? No one even thinks we’ll actually use one now. Of course, using nukes shouldn’t be done haphazardly; all uses have to be well planned out because the explosions are so cool looking that we’ll want to give the press plenty of notice so they can get pictures of the mushroom cloud from all sorts of different angles. But what to nuke? Well, usually the idea is populated cities, but, by the beliefs of my morally superior religion, killing is wrong. So why can’t we be more creative than nuking people. My idea is to nuke the moon; just say we thought we saw moon people or something. There is no one actually there to kill (unless we time it poorly) and everyone in the world could see the results. And all the other countries would exclaim, "Holy @$#%! They are nuking the moon! America has gone insane! I better go eat at McDonalds before they think I don’t like them."
But why stop there. We’ve got like tons of national parks; we surely wouldn’t miss just one if we nuked it. Our excuse will be that we heard a drug dealer was hiding there. Then the foreign nations would be like, "Sacre bleu! These Americans are nuking themselves! Surely they will think nothing of bombing us! Let’s adapt their vapid culture as our own so they might consider us one of them."
Now all other countries will be completely freaked out and never even dream of messing with us. They’ll say the name of America with hushed whispers and always praise us in public for fear of reprisal. We’d be like an Old Testament god to them; perhaps they would even start worshiping us - actually, we should make that a condition of favored trade status. Not only will we have ensured peace for ourselves, but we can also now easily end any conflict between other countries. We see two nations warring over some territory, all we’ll have to do is say, "Hey, break it up," and they’ll be racing to concede to each other rather than get on the bad side of the "crazy, homicidal Americans." And, if people are being oppressed by an evil government, all we’ll have to do is say, "Hey you! Stop being communist!" and the next day they’ll have elections, capitalism, and free-press to keep from having their country turned into a parking lot. It will be that easy to motivate our fellow man, because there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Now all that’s needed to keep peace is to come up with new and creative ways of looking insane and belligerent without actually harming anyone. Missile defense is probably a good step in that direction. Next time some country steps out of line, we launch a nuclear missile at them. Just seconds before it hits, we blow it up with our missile defense so that everyone there sees the huge explosion in the sky. Then the president would just call up their leader and say, "Hey, we lost sight of our SDI test. Did you see if it worked?"
By now, you’re probably saying, "Great idea. But how to do we pay for all these random acts of violence?" Just create an "Other Country Tax", a tax for being a country other than the U.S. After implementing my plan, all the countries will be eager to pay the money, and probably add a nice tip to win favor.
So there you have it, a real peace plan that could actually work. Warmongering pacifists want us to act all nice such that countries think we’re rational and won’t kill everyone with a blind fury, thus making it possible they might actually attack us and draw us into a war. But, if America follows my idea and lashes out at the slightest provocation with unmeasured vengeance, there can be peace. So there’s the choice: either be a homicidal maniac thus ensuring peace and love in the world, or be some pacifist hippy while the streets flow with the blood of the innocent.
Very funny stuff, Anonymous. I'm on board. As I have always said, America can, should, must, and will blow up the moon.
Post a Comment
<< Home