Sixties Fan
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- Mar 6, 2017
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In the past few weeks, two especially egregious examples of Israel demonisation and delegitimisation have surfaced in mainstream media magazines.
The first, in The Critic, was by Janine di Giovanni which you can read here. The second, by Rian Malan in 2010, was republished in the Spectator and you can read that one here.
Both have been eviscerated by Adam Levick of Camera UK here and here.
Di Giovanni’s article consisted of boiler-plate Israel-bashing, rehashing knee-jerk falsehoods about the “occupation,” air-brushing out of the picture Palestinian war-crimes against Israel and malevolently depicting Israel instead as the aggressor — the kind of lazy malice that you can read year in, year out in the Guardian, New York Times, Socialist Worker or other Palestinian-narrative propaganda sheets.
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Given all this, why did the Spectator re-run this piece?
Two things stand out from this. The first is not just the number of errors in these articles, but their eye-watering dislocation from easily ascertainable reality and factual evidence.
The second is that this malicious propaganda aimed at destroying Israel’s right to exist is the hallmark of elements on the left, which trade on both ignorance and ideological obsession. Both the Spectator and The Critic are supposed to stand against all that by providing intelligent and informed writing that elevates public discourse. Yet with these two pieces, they have joined the ranks of those who instead are corrupting public discourse and closing the western mind against truth and decency.
What on earth were these two editors thinking by publishing them? They appear to have seen nothing wrong with them. Perhaps they thought — if they thought anything at all about them — that they were merely “a point of view” just like any other? A controversy on which these editors need not have an opinion, since all they have to do is hold the ring in suitably Socratic editorial fashion? Valid contributions to public debate?
But these lies, distortions and malicious libels against Israel are not valid contributions to public debate. They are part of a strategy to demonise, delegitimise and destroy Israel through a sustained propaganda campaign that has colonised the collective mind of the western intelligentsia.
A strategy deployed against no other country, people or cause in the world. A strategy that incites hatred, paranoia and murderous violence. A strategy cooked up in the sixties by the Soviet Union and Yasser Arafat to knock the west off its moral compass so that it could be weakened and defeated. A strategy that has paved the way for the hijack of language and destruction of reason which fuel “intersectionality” and identity politics, and which are de-moralising the west in every sense of that word.
(full article online)
melaniephillips.substack.com
The first, in The Critic, was by Janine di Giovanni which you can read here. The second, by Rian Malan in 2010, was republished in the Spectator and you can read that one here.
Both have been eviscerated by Adam Levick of Camera UK here and here.
Di Giovanni’s article consisted of boiler-plate Israel-bashing, rehashing knee-jerk falsehoods about the “occupation,” air-brushing out of the picture Palestinian war-crimes against Israel and malevolently depicting Israel instead as the aggressor — the kind of lazy malice that you can read year in, year out in the Guardian, New York Times, Socialist Worker or other Palestinian-narrative propaganda sheets.
-----
Given all this, why did the Spectator re-run this piece?
Two things stand out from this. The first is not just the number of errors in these articles, but their eye-watering dislocation from easily ascertainable reality and factual evidence.
The second is that this malicious propaganda aimed at destroying Israel’s right to exist is the hallmark of elements on the left, which trade on both ignorance and ideological obsession. Both the Spectator and The Critic are supposed to stand against all that by providing intelligent and informed writing that elevates public discourse. Yet with these two pieces, they have joined the ranks of those who instead are corrupting public discourse and closing the western mind against truth and decency.
What on earth were these two editors thinking by publishing them? They appear to have seen nothing wrong with them. Perhaps they thought — if they thought anything at all about them — that they were merely “a point of view” just like any other? A controversy on which these editors need not have an opinion, since all they have to do is hold the ring in suitably Socratic editorial fashion? Valid contributions to public debate?
But these lies, distortions and malicious libels against Israel are not valid contributions to public debate. They are part of a strategy to demonise, delegitimise and destroy Israel through a sustained propaganda campaign that has colonised the collective mind of the western intelligentsia.
A strategy deployed against no other country, people or cause in the world. A strategy that incites hatred, paranoia and murderous violence. A strategy cooked up in the sixties by the Soviet Union and Yasser Arafat to knock the west off its moral compass so that it could be weakened and defeated. A strategy that has paved the way for the hijack of language and destruction of reason which fuel “intersectionality” and identity politics, and which are de-moralising the west in every sense of that word.
(full article online)
Cracks in the bulwarks of decency
Why are The Critic and the Spectator rehashing inane anti-Israel malice?
melaniephillips.substack.com
