The Jewish conundrum: If America only knew (continued page 2)
Jewish Emigration:
Jewish emigration to America began at the end of the nineteenth century with the outburst of anti-Semitism in Russia. This hatred spread into Western Europe culminating with Hitler’s “Final Solution” and the Holocaust.
There were six prime cities in which the Jewish population settled and became dominant: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Los Vegas and Washington. These cities, with a marked Jewish presence, became power centers of finance, banking, commerce, education, entertainment and politics.
As Jews came to America their strategy to citizenship was education (coming from Synagogue Hebrew/Torah tradition), and their years as money-changers/bankers, and being skilled in the garment/retail business, made them more adept to the needs of the commercial dimensions of urbanization.Indeed,these key professions and occupationsbecame the vehicles by which the Jewish population,notwithstanding intense Americannativism,was able to ascend and move into upper middle professional classes as lawyers, doctors, bankers, University professors, scientist (Einstein is a notable example), writers and entertainers.
The Jewish population in the United States at 7.2 million is nearly half of the world total world`s Jewish population today (http://ajpp.brandeis.edu/infosheets/National.php). Nevertheless ,they exercise tremendous influence in the shaping of modernity. Recognizing that education, money and the media were critical to survival they quickly became influential in these professional areas. Although few in numbers, the Jewish population do exercise a significant influence on shaping the American narrative about Israel. Regardless of their religious or secular orientation, most Jews rally to the defense of Israel, and use their considerable media and economic influence to sustain and strengthen Washington’s commitment to Tel Aviv.
Many of the major movie studios were Jewish: such as Warner Brothers andMGM. Jewish directors, actors, and writers today have a significant presence.Not surprisingly there are fewdepictions on the silver screen of either American Muslims or Palestinians.
Media is likewise so inclined. The Jewish presence in network news is particularly strong. ABC, NBC, and CBS are led by Jewish executives as are manyof their key staff members and writers. This pattern holds in newspaper ownership as well. For instance, the NY Times and Washington Post are controlled by the Sulzberger and Meyer-Graham families(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/do-jews-control-the-media b 753227.html).
The Holocaust makes the American Jewish community, especially older generations, emotionally nervous about survival. For them a threat to Israel is an existential threat to the individual. The Holocaust and its many stories became an effective tool to create a collective guilt response within the American population compelling it to loosen its purse strings in behalf of the state of Israel.
There is, however, a growing concern among younger American Jewish Millennials, like IF Not Now,led by Emily Mayer of Brooklyn, about settlements, and the sincerity of the nationalist Netanyahu government about peace. They are much more secular and critical than their older generational rulers about the Nakba (1948, Day of the Catastrophe), the West Bank, Jewish settlements, Oslo, and what Is happening in Gaza today.(ifnotnowmovement.org).
The new Nationality Law passed by the Knesset,by which Jews alone can be citizens and Hebrew the official language, makes a mockery of both a Two-State solution, or ofan equalitarian unitary state that denies 20% of the Arab population any possibility of full citizenship.
Israeli Media Narrative:
Over the last four decades, Tel Aviv has developed a brilliant strategy to control the American mind through their narrative of the Jewsas victims. It says:“the Jews (as David)must be vigilant in order to survive in an anti-Semitic/Islamic world (as Goliath).” Moreover, as victims they have the moral right to defend themselves while Palestinians do not.
This ‘victim narrative’ or indoctrination campaign is sustained by a comprehensive media campaign that rests on five strategies:
First,by reminding America constantly of the Holocaust through film, television, documentaries, and books. A new film about the capture of Adolph Eichmann, Operation Finale,has just aired .It surely will generate another sympathetic ground swell for Israel. Surviving the Holocaust has bestowed upon them a `superior morality` by which they have the right to deny Palestinians and other Arabs their freedom in the name of a “Greater Israel,” and that their viewpoint of history or geography of Israel/Middle East is the correct one.
Second, the on-going Palestinian crisis used as an opportunity to reaffirm their national sovereignty,and thei rterritorial claims over the West Bank and East Jerusalem ,to form a unitary Israeli state in which Arabs are treated as second-class citizens with little political legitimacy as affirmed by the Jewish Nationality Law .Ironically, the Jewish victims, who fled Europe more than seventy-five years ago from the Nazis,have become the oppressors under the nationalistic banner of Zionism in which the western values of democracy and equality have been lost to a strange blending of blood and religion.
Third,they continually portray Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon as terrorist organizations even though they have made peace with their two major Sunna Arab neighbors, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who hardly can be described as democratic. Tel Aviv has joined with Egypt and Saudi Arabi as a way of crushing Hamas, and simultaneously neutralizing Iranian influence in the Middle East through its ties to Hezbollah and the Al- Assad family of Syria .Since 2000, nearly 10, 000 Palestinians have been killed instark contrast to 1,248 Israeli fatalities. This disparity in deaths is never reported or analyzed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpZZEhPT_5g).
Fourth, and most important, is the ease in which America has been so easily manipulated to see the Israeli point of view. This is done through a comprehensive/retelling of pro- Israel presentations or documentaries. For instance ,the biography of Ann Frank, which pulls at western feelings of guilt about the Holocaust, or again through aone-sided portrayal of Palestinians/Hamas, as inveterate terrorists, who through rocket launchings put peaceful Israeli farmers and citizens at risk.
Fifth, this Israeli spin, echoing Trump’s fake news about differing facts, is directed at maintaining America’s unequivocal support behind Israel’s ultimate goal of driving the Palestinians completely out in the name of a“Greater Israel.” This Zionist/nationalistic goal is ongoing and comprehensive. It involves expanding settlements in the West Bank, destroying Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem and other cities, along with the creation of dehumanizing conditions characterized by a concrete wall of separation, numerous checkpoints making Palestinian movement humiliating and difficult. Ironically, the Palestinians,who cultivated the land for nearly 2 thousand years, are treated as pariahs or outcasts on their own land.
When the American media reports on what is happening in Gaza it focuses exclusively on Hamas’ terrorism, but never mentions the horrendous living conditions and isolation that the Palestinians experience daily, (Cf, Ann Baltzer, Life in Occupied Palestine).Palestinians live in‘quietdesperation,` while the world watches and applauds another Israeli air strike leading to the loss of more Arab innocents sustained by a blind American Military/Public that has fallen for the Israel propaganda machine. Suchblindness begs the question, “who is the real Goliath today?” (The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States, Media Education Foundation 2016)
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