Buy Israel!

The Jewish National Fund, my 'voice in Israel', was kind enough to inform me that 'The week of February 25 - March 3 is Buy Israel Week!' Who knew? It goes without saying that Arabs need not apply. 

But of course they're not really trying to sell Israel off. They want me to 'Combat the BDS movement by supporting our Israeli partners and buying their goods and services.'

Yeah, right!

Political synergy

Writing in yesterday's Algemeiner, Adam Levick excoriates 'professional Israel hater, anti-Semite whisperer', Ben White. His crime? 

Whilst it’s unclear if White consented to being cross-posted by Al Qassam Brigades or not, the decision by an official Hamas propagandist manning the site to promote his anti-Zionist, post-colonial agitprop represents a perfect example of the political synergy between the British anti-Zionist left and the Islamist reactionary right (what’s known as the Red-Green Alliance).

The article in question, 'What a periodof relative calm looks like in the Occupied Territories',

highlights an “infographic” purporting to demonstrate the number of attacks in Gaza since the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel in November – data which, per White, “lay bare the daily reality for Palestinians and the power imbalance between the occupier and an occupied, colonised people fighting for their basic rights.” 

It doesn't 'represent' any kind of 'political synergy' whatsoever. The 'official Hamas propagandist manning the site' thought the data presented in the infographic useful. And I agree. I linked to it on Facebook. As for 'what’s known as the Red-Green Alliance', it's a figment of his imagination. Principled antiracists like Ben may agree with 'the Islamist reactionary right' that Zionism is not a good idea, but there is no evidence of any alliance, even on the reasons for opposing Zionism.

There's no need for Levick to contest the content of the infographic, which shows that over the three months since 'Operation Pillar of Cloud', Israeli has launched 106 attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing 4 and wounding 91, while only two mortar shells and no rockets were launched from Gaza. Over the same period, Israel killed 6 and wounded 618 in the West Bank.

After all,

...such antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic and anti-democratic Islamist movements like Hamas don’t give a damn about political “power imbalances” or “basic [human] rights”, but are often willing to cynically employ tropes which evoke such Western values when it suits their purposes.

In contrast, by implication, Israel, 'the only democracy in the Middle east', would never resort to such antisemitic actions as corralling millions of Jews into a tiny ghetto in the Levant, or purporting to represent all Jews; it would never tolerate women being relegated to the back of the bus; it couldn't imagine returning Palestinian gays seeking asylum to the families who want them dead; and it certainly wouldn't discriminate in housing or education or anything on the grounds of ethnicity. The argument, therefore, amounts to 'Don't criticise Israel. Somebody else did something worse.' You wouldn't accept such an excuse from a four year old child, but when it comes out of the mouth of the hasbara establishment, it's supposed to make sense.