Wednesday, March 5, 2008
There's a remarkable discussion going on back in this thread over a single Hebrew word and whether an Israeli functionary implied that Israeli troops were going to perform a genocide. Native Hebrew speakers and a professional translator are having no luck putting the issue to bed against one dedicated hater. This issue has not only brought out the usual suspects, trashed the journalistic reputation of Tim Butcher, exposed the bigotry of so-called educators and overall separated those who seek the truth from those who really, truly, desperately WANT to believe the worst calumnies against Jews and exonerate their enemies.
To show you just how silly...no, stupid...this obsession over a single word and individual is, I'll even grant you that he, Vilnai, meant exactly what the worst critics are saying he meant, and I raise you the following tiny sample of the hateful, Holocaust Denialist, annihilationist, child sacrificing speechifying and indoctrination over which there can be no serious debate as to meaning and intent. These are all recent examples, there are many, many more...and it all goes back decades. In some ways, even longer.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "...They have created a filthy black germ, known as the Zionist regime..."
Hamas Television (for kids): "...If they do it again [insult the Prophet], Saraa, we will kill them, right?..."
Hamas MP Fathi Hammad: "...oh Arabs, who number 300 million, you cannot allow yourselves to be ruled by four million brothers of apes and pigs..."
Hamas TV (for kids): "...We will liberate Al-Aqsa from the filth of those Zionists..." "...I, Assud, will get rid of the Jews, Allah willing, and I will eat them up, Allah willing..."
Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal: "...The offerings slaughtered by the pilgrims teach us how fathers should sacrifice their sons by encouraging them to wage jihad for the sake of Allah. They also teach us how young people should sacrifice themselves..."
Syrian Cleric Muhammad Sa'id Ramadhan Al-Bouti: "We are in a country from which we want to declare who is the number one enemy lying in wait for world peace." [After reciting a forged speech supposedly written by Benjamin Franklin warning about the dangers of the Jews.]
Hamas TV (for kids): "...We can all be sacrificed for the sake of the homeland...raise your sail for the sailors, and let your lighthouse illuminate the sea of blood..."
Hamas TV (for kids): "...We will wipe out the people of Zion, and will not leave a single one of them..."
Muslim Scholars Debate Apostates in Islam (audience member): "...remember that if you want to convert from Islam, you will be punished by death..."
Ahmad Al-Tayyib, Al-Azhar University President and Former Mufti of Egypt: "...The Palestinian martyrdom-seeker knows that he is free to go to this operation, in order to please Allah and enter Paradise, in defense of his religion, his country, and his land..."
Lebanese TV: "...The Zionists have summarized their destructive principles in what has become known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which contains their secret plan to subjugate the entire world by spreading chaos and promiscuity among the nations..."
Hamas MP Fathi Hammad: "...we swear before Allah that we will not sit idly by, but will continue the method of kidnapping..."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "...the so-called 'crematoria'..."
Hamas TV (for kids): "...We long for martyrdom..."
Hamas TV Music Video: "...In black bags Chunks of flesh of Jews..."
Speaker of Palestinian Legislative Council Ahmad Bahr: "...The liberation of Jerusalem will not be achieved by means of glittering slogans, cheap arrogance, and degrading concessions. It will be achieved by realizing the divine path in the souls of the Muslims, and by raising the generation of the coming victory to lead the battle against the brothers of apes and pigs. By Allah, Jerusalem will be restored only through Jihad..."
Hamas TV (for kids): "...By means of morning prayers, blood, sacrifice, and pain, by means of martyrs, and with endurance. This is the key..."
Hamas Representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan: "...Anyone who comes to live in a war zone is a combatant, regardless of whether he wears a uniform...the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the Earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out..."
Hamas MP Dr. Yunis Al-Astal: "... This Intifada of ours has recorded more than 15 exemplary cases of girls who were martyred for the sake of Allah, But not before making the Jews 'the brothers of apes and pigs' taste the bitterness of death..."
Jawad Nasrallah, Son of Hizbullah's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah: "...We will tell our children the same thing, and, Allah willing, when they grow up, they will not have to see it with their own eyes, because [the Israelis] will be gone, eradicated..."
Friday Sermon in Sudan: "...the most despicable creatures on the face of the earth 'the offspring of apes and pigs'..."
Hamas Kindergarten Ceremony: "...What is your most lofty aspiration? Death for the sake of Allah. What is your most lofty aspiration? Death for the sake of Allah..."
Hamas TV (for kids): "...We will annihilate the Jews..." (Child caller)
Hamas Representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan: "...I will not accept a agreement saying that at the end of the day, Haifa, Jaffa, and Acre are Israeli cities..."
Acting Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Sheikh Ahmad Bahr, From Hamas: "...Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, vanquish the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one..."
Children of Palestinian Suicide Bomber Rim Al-Riyashi on Hamas TV: "...'How many Jews did Mama kill?'...'This many'..."
OK, OK. This could end up taking a very, very long time and never be finished. They're cranking this stuff out over there faster than the world's fastest typist could possibly keep up with. The question is, why don't the people I talked about up top take more notice?
Still want to obsess over the translation of the Hebrew word "shoah" only to use it to Jew-bait? Shame.
Compare the way the "shoah" word was immediately and unquestioningly taken up by the British media to mean only and nothing but a direct threat of "Holocaust' to the Palestinians, with the way the media doubted and argued ceaselessly about whether Ahmadinajad's threat to Israel was formulated this way: "wiped from the map" or that way: "wiped from the page of history", (as though this nuance in any way changed the gist of his expression).
Ahmadin was given the benefit of a doubt, remarkably, he still is. Vilnai was demonized immediately, not only by Palestinians (who are quite predictable) but also by the British journalists reporting it (also predictably, sadly enough).
Natan Sharansky offered, a few years ago, a very simple tool for judging antisemitic practice and intent, the 3D test:
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The first "D" is the test of demonization. When the Jewish state is being demonized... [its] actions are blown out of all sensible proportion... comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis ....
The second "D" is the test of double standards. When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria, is ignored
The third "D" is the test of delegitimization: when Israel's fundamental right to exist is denied - alone among all peoples in the world -
this too is anti-Semitism.
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In this case, the two first D's are clearly present in the way the media treated Vilnai's comment. To what end, if not to continue the criminalizing of Israel?
Jihad? Everybody knows it means striving to do good, no?
Noga's cited contrast, between Ahmadinejad and Vilnai and how their respective statements were treated in so many western media outlets and fora, should be startlingly illuminating. One would have to be willfully, even obdurately incurious and self-blinded for that contrast to fail to register.