The Top Ten Libels against Israel, the World’s Favourite Whipping-boy

A guest post by Geary

Whipping-boy: A boy educated together with a young prince or royal personage, and flogged in his stead when he committed a fault (OED). A scapegoat (Webster’s).

1. Israelis are the new Nazis. (Intellectually, historically and morally unserious, supremely cynical and cruel, and antisemitic per the EU’s working definition)

That would be the Nazis who:

…banned political parties and elections, invaded the whole of Europe, exported war around the world, set up concentration camps and massacred millions of Jews, gays and Roma.

Whilst the Israelis:

…who has been invaded several times in its brief history by its neighbours, have political parties represented in their democratic Knesset like the Vatican has Saints (one for each day of the year), a free press, an independent judiciary, a healthy and quite free civil society (including up to 80 human rights organizations), exports life saving medical technology around the world, set up kibbutzim and gave a home to millions of Jews, many Middle East gays and the Bedu.

Apart from that, two peas in a pod.

2. Israel “harvests” Palestinian organs. (See history of antisemitic blood libels against Jews, which such charges evoke, or are inspired by, and which are still propagated in Arab societies)

Swedish antisemites and Jenny “loose” Tonge, GlibDem baroness, spreading this one. Israel no more “harvests” organs than any other country heavily engaged in medical research.

But what Israel does do is provide the world’s one and only bone marrow registry for Arabs, so that Arab people who need a transplant … go to Israel for the best hope of survival and cure.

Now who does harvest and traffic in organs are Arab Bedu who prey on poor African migrants, desperately seeking a new life in … Israel.

3. Israel is carrying out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

But they are making a real hash of it.

The number of Arab in Israel proper has risen from around 200,000 in 1948 to 1.5 million today (this incidentally is around 60% more than the number living there before the Arabs started the war to expel the Jews in 1947).

The number of Palestinians in the West bank and Gaza has risen from around 1.4 million in 1948 to somewhere between 3 and 4 million today (the Palestinian Authority is not very good at keeping demographics; then again they are rather busy salting away the aid funding they embezzle). Half of Jordan’s 6 million inhabitants have Palestinian descent.

All in all, the least successful genocide in history. But those dimwitted Israelis will keep on treating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in their hospitals. That’s no way to organise a genocide now, is it?

4. Gaza is an open-air prison.

We have Dave the Toff to thank for this one, sycophant at the court of Sultan Erdogan.

Well if by “prison” you mean a place with modern shopping malls, luxury hotels and beach resorts, if I ever get nicked and have to do porridge, it’s the kind of prison I’d like to be sent to.

Though I’d probably be less than delighted with the prison screws. The guys with the beards and Kalashnikovs.

But one thing that bothers me with the analogy. When was the last time anyone launched a rocket out of Wormwood Scrubs?

5. The IDF targeted innocent civilians in the Gaza War.

Well, even Judge Goldstone has retracted that one.

What other army phones you up and tells you to clear off before they arrive?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the UN, next time they launch an inquest into a war actually appointed someone who knew the blindest bit about military matters? Someone like, say, Colonel Richard Kemp, who told the UN how “During its operation in Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.” Goldstone, of course, refused to hear Colonel Kemp’s evidence, preferring to rely on Honest Hamas.

But even over at the New Statesman somebody has woken up to the porkies they were told

6. Israel’s judicial system condones death by torture.

“The MEP [Sir Robert Atkins] visited Gaza last month with UNWRA. In his report, he alleged that death by torture was acceptable in Israeli courts, and described Hamas MPs as much more far-sighted than Fatah”

Could we have something as banal as, say, a shred of evidence for this libel, Sir Robert?

And Hamas “far-sighted”? “Gun-sighted” or “rocket-sighted” I could’ve understood. Or do you mean they can throw the Fatah people further off the roof than vice-versa?

7. Israel “steals Palestinian water”.

Well, actually, Israel supplies the Palestinians with water. (Also, see here)

Along with electricity, food, you name it. Probably the first time in the history of warfare that a nation gives aid to a country whose government is dedicated to wiping it out.

After 40 years of UN “refugee” status, living off donations, of refusing to make peace and of being kept in limbo by their Arab “brothers”, the Palestinian economy has become aid-dependent. Most of that aid is either provided by or channelled through Israel.

8. Israel is an Apartheid State, just like South Africa. Worse, perhaps.

Yes, Desmond, you’re the one spreading this fib. Do tell, how do you account for those Arab Knesset members, Arab High Court judges, Arabs keen to serve in the IDF and getting promoted? Not to mention that Arab and Jewish Israelis shop together, go bathing together, play sport together. And VOTE together.

Oh, and what about all those sub-Saharan blacks, many of them Muslims, who risk their very lives to seek refuge in “apartheid” Israel?

But if apartheid is your cup of tea, then just look around the region and you’ll find plenty of cases to interest you. Just ask the Kurds in Turkey or Syria, or the Copts in Egypt, or any non-Muslim in the Oil States. Or indeed, the Palestinians in Lebanon.

9. The United States is run by a shadowy Israel / Jewish / Zionist lobby. (Consistent with classic antisemitic tropes involving the injurious effects of Jewish power, and codified as antisemitic by the EU Working Definition)

Actually, the United States is currently run by a tall, African-American with rapidly greying hair. The clue is in the name they give him: “President”.

Of course there is an Israel lobby. In fact more than one. And there’s absolutely nothing secretive about them. They are funded domestically by American citizens, submit yearly financial reports to the federal government, have websites, hold dinners, give interviews and press releases. J Street even raises money for worthy Palestinian causes.

And what do they lobby for? Peace in the Middle East and security for Israel. And that is precisely why they are so hated by the Zionophobes, whose last wish on earth is to see real peace in the Middle East.

Lobbying, as Denis MacShane MP recently pointed out, is both an everyday and an essential component of democracy. Washington has Green lobbies, an oil lobby, a nuclear lobby, a gun lobby, an anti-gun lobby, a tobacco lobby, an anti-tobacco lobby, you name it someone is lobbying for or against it. There’s an Italian lobby, an Irish lobby and, yes, a foreign funded Arab Lobby. I wonder what’s so special about The Jewish, sorry, Israel Lobby? What could it be that makes it different?

10. Mossad is responsible for:

…deadly shark attacks at Sharm-al-Sheikh

…training vultures to spy on Saudi Arabia

…dumping aphrodisiac gum on Gaza (to corrupt the young)

…the Norway massacres

and just to show the Arab world has no monopoly on conspiracy nut jobs…

…police crackdowns on the “Occupy” protesters in the U.S.

and of course

9/11 (I don’t need to link to this. Just type “Israel responsible for” into your SE)

It isn’t difficult to see why Israel has become the Arab world’s whipping-boy. It’s much easier to castigate someone else than recognise your own responsibilities for under-achievement

As for the western Zionophobes, well, some are just plain old-fashioned antisemites, the kind who’ve blamed the Jews for everything down the centuries. Others, in particular the Zionophobic PC groupthinkers, are ideologically obliged to find a “western” whipping-boy for the ills of the Middle East and Israel is their convenient candidate.

One can’t help wondering, though, whether the Arab uprisings have taught them that there was much amiss in the Arab world that Israel had nothing to do with (how for instance do you pin Sunni-Shia hatred, the real Middle East conflict, on the Jews)?

Has it finally dawned that there’s plenty in the Middle East outside of Israel that needs whipping into shape?