I’ve written before about some of the loons – antisemitic and otherwise – who sometimes leave peculiar comments on my blog.
Yesterday I received the funniest remark in response to my blog that I’ve had for a long time. Someone told me that he doesn’t understand the Israel/Palestine issue..but that I’m wrong. Wow, that’s some superpower!
To be fair, he’s far from alone. There are plenty of people who don’t understand the issue, don’t live in the region, but have the lazy arrogance to believe they are better than the people who understand, deal with and are affected by the issue on a daily basis. They are the modern-day equivalent of the colonial Brit of old, with his cultural, intellectual superiority complex.
Because he was one of the ‘there are two sides to it, it’s all very complicated’ types. It’s so hopelessly inane. Yes, there are ‘two sides’ to the argument, as there are to every issue. There were ‘two sides’ as to whether the Nazis should murder millions of Jews in Europe. There are ‘two sides’ as to whether women should be executed for being unfaithful to their husbands in the Middle East. People on both sides of those issues believe strongly their position is right. So what? So the right thing to do is sit on the fence, fold our arms and look down our noses at them all? The existence of two sides to an argument does not make the absurdity of one of those sides any more valid.
It reminds me for some reason of another cranky commenter: the person who said to me that he didn’t mind the Jews having a state – so big of him! – only it should be not in the land of Israel but “a contiguous region taking in parts of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine”. This begged too many questions to bother with at the time: Which part of Poland did he have in mind – Auschwitz? How would displaced Poles be any better off than displaced Palestinians? Why would it be better to establish a Jewish state anywhere other than on Jewish land?
His other quibble was that he believes Israelis should should speak Yiddish, not Hebrew. Thanks for that. Let’s just say there are two sides to that argument and leave it there! 
Anyway, I am curious about your experiences. What is the crankiest thing anyone has ever said to you about your support for Israel?
During Cast Lead I mentioned ‘Pro-Israel’ in a sentence, I was actually talking about the BNP, and was accosted by someone who claimed that I supported ‘evil’. The argument was that innocent people were dying in Gaza, murdered by Israel. I mentioned the obvious facts about defensive war, human shields etc etc and then when I kindly pointed out that thousands of people were actually dying in Sri Lanka, Darfur the Congo etc in state sponsored violence all I got was a blank look.
Someone told me I was wrong and it turned out she thought Israel was in Africa. Lol.
I love it when idiots whine about Israel practising “collective punishment”, but they themselves favour boycotting Israel. Pointing out that the Arab states have been no friends to the Palestinians also gets you blank, stupefied looks from Israel-haters.
Many people think it’s entirely desert……..
I’ve heard many stupid things Chas. At least your man admitted he knew nothing.
Someone told me that Israel is twice as big as Russia geographically.
However I will nominate the Goldstone report, and Tim Frank of the BBC’s embarrassing unprofessional response to it http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/bbc-exposes-itself-to-ridicule-in-preposterous-analysis-of-latest-un-report-on-israel-and-gaza/
“If Israel withdrew from the occupied territories, I truly believe all the world’s conflicts – Kashmir, Chechyna, Darfur – would end within no time”
The same man explained that he was surprised Iraqi terrorists fired on black soldiers, because he would have thought there would be solidarity.
A good one was my son’s lecturer in Architectural History (at a British university) who, like many others I have encountered, could not bring himself to actually say the word ‘Israel’ and instead contorted himself into saying ‘modern-day Palestine’ whenever the need arose.
I’ve been told that Gilad Shalit was inside the Gaza strip when he was kidnapped and that Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser had illegaly entered Lebanon when they were abducted and murdered.
I’ve been told by pro-Hamas demonsrators that I’m the extremist in the equasion and screamed at in the street in Manchester for being a child-murderer.
My daughter, then also a student, was told whilst on work experience in the media industry in London that in fact the 2006 second Lebanon war never happened. Apparantly Hizbollah never fired any rockets at Israel at all- it was all clever photomontage by the Israelis in order to justify our bombing of Lebanon. Unfortunately for the holder of this theory he happened to meet one of the million Israelis who saw, felt and heard those Hizbollah missiles for more than a month, but of course this fact did not upset his theory -apparantly my daughter was simply brainwashed by the Israeli government into thinking that missiles were being rained upon her.
Of course we are regularly told that the language we speak is “Israeli”, which is different from the language in which the Bible was written.
My favourite though, for comic content, has to be the British student who told my daughter that she is guilty of ‘slaughtering lambs in Hebrew-land’.
No shortage of whakos out there it seems!
I have had many people explain to me that all six million Israelis could neatly be relocated in a new state ‘somewhere else’ and the whole thing would be ok. Not sure how they would go about transplanting *an entire country* as developed and big as Israel, or what they’d do with the old one (hand the keys over to the neighbours to destroy like they did with the greenhouses in Gaza?). Or how the world would cope without all the Israeli exports (technology, medical, food, art, etc etc). And that’s ignoring the idiocy of the actual ‘logic’ of the idea!!
When I made aliya I was asked if I was getting a Jewish passport.
However, I think these stories are excellent examples to use a simple technique to prove th lack of knowledge amongst 99% of the people out there who express attitudes like this.
If someone says that Israel breaks international law, you can politely and calmly ask them which law has Israel broken. They may then say that Israel has broken UN resolutions. So you ask them to identify which UN resolutions. fewer than a few per cent of people might actually be able to name one, but even if they can, you should then ask them where in the resolution does it make claims that Israel has not fulfilled. I can guarantee that 99.999999999% of people have no evidence to support the statements they make. All one has to do is push thm further ad further back to support their own statements until you can demonstrate to them that their premise is based on shaky foundations. By doing this you can impress on them how maybe other premises are also based on shaky foundations and enter into a dialogue.
Can you believe this worked on a Spanish government minister?
” I don’t care what anyone says, ‘they’ stole that land in the 1960s. ”
I was able to empathise with The Incredible Hulk when this was said to me, it still annoys me to this day.
I am always hit with the predictable barrage of the perenial claim from both the Arabs I know and the post college speudo-intelectual crowds that: Israel stole the land of Palestine.
Although I must admit that land issue was not in the mind of Hertzel it became one later on… I always recognized that MAYBE some injustices might have happened but they are not inclusively Israeli or Jewish in nature. I always send the self-moralizing crowds to read the long history of humans on earth and land grabbing (intentional or not)that insued in this short geological history of homo-sapiens.
If one reads his political history and retains all the information and because their ideal solution to the problem is for Israel to give up all the land and leave, here is what one of those harrasing self-righteous crowd should conclude:
1. White Americans should pack their suitcases and return to Europe and Africa, well this latter can stay because they were slaves, they can build a just Native American society. By the way this includes all of Brooklyn diverse crowds even jews and Native American from Equator.
2. All White South Americans should pack and leave for Spain, Italy and the rest of Europe
3. I forgot the Canadians, French or British. They should know where their destinations are.
4. All Arabs in North Africa (my birth place) should also pack (I am sorry) and return to Arabia and leave the Amazighen (Berbers) leave in peace and harmony…In fairness and to make these post-college graduate shut up, I might even include the Jews of made it there after the destruction of the first or second temple.. I presume these jews will have to get back to their original country.. I guess this answer cam true after all for different reason.
4. The Han Chinese, I am not going to Tibet, but I can use the dry sesert Xia province and Inner Mongolia, I think those with Chinese ancestry should consider packing for better and sunnier place like Hunan and Cheshuan? these guys should at least leave Tibet
5. Russia, Now he is a giant of 7 time zone… They should at least consider leaving Siberia to the white ethic groups, I am not going to Kazakstan, and Chechnia?
6. Australia, now in this one, all white of British ancestry should consider packing and going back to jail in Britain. Sorry Australia started out as a penal colony… leaving the Aboriginal people in thier Dreamtime world..
7. I am not going to Ireland..or am I? South Africa? Well you know where I am going with this…..
Like the saying goes: “We all live on stolen lands”
One suggestion: The Kurds SHOULD steal the land that once was theirs.
Thanks for your comments. Really enjoying them.
I just remembered a hilarious remark I received when I came back from my first trip to Israel in 2006. I returned from a week in Israel in the middle of summer, and he said: “Did you get that tan off a sunbed? I can’t believe you’d get a tan in Israel.”
Dear readers, he was serious and he was Jewish!
I cannot top the “Poland, Belarus and Ukraine” one. Priceless!
I understand your frustration with the “two sides” man. Like pathetic ones who say “I don’t agree with you about Israel but I don’t want to discuss it”.
The ‘two sides types’ [as you call them] only care about sounding clever.
Oh I pressed Send to soon. I meant to add: ignore people like that Chas. Don’t waste your time because we need your energy in more important ways.
I was at the “Tel Aviv Beach” in Central Park back in June and kind of got into it with one of the 20 or so “demonstrators” (Interesting sidebar — the cop agreed with me that they only seem to be ANTI-things, never PRO anything). ANYWAY, this chick was trying to convince me that in 1948 there was no call from the Grand Mufti for Muslims to leave their home. They were, in fact, according to a Mrs.-Arafat-wannabe, ALL forcibly removed from their homes. I really believe sometimes that they think that if they continue to make up their own facts, that it will somehow change history.
I’m getting this frequently right now, as I gently ease my clients into the idea that I am going to live in Israel…
“What do you want to go there for?”
Shall I start the list here????……………
Well, there was this commenter in my blog who always posted long comments disparaging Israel, Zionism, and (later) Judaism.
He came with the theory of the Khazars once, you know, that Jews are not really the same people that was expelled by the Romans from Jerusalem, but actually Turks, and of course the land belongs to the “true Semites”, which are the Palestinians, of course.
But that was not the craziest.
Then he said that he wasn’t against Jews or Israel per se, but that I was a stupid because Israel apparently, was the servant of Saudi Arabia. And that we (Israelis), are mistakenly proud of the liberation of the Jews that Zionism brought about. Apparently, we are slaves to Saudi Arabia and we don’t know that. I am still trying to understand that one.
Here are some of the insane things I have been hearing just lately about Israel:
That the IDF captures people to remove their organs;
That apartheid in Israel is worse than it was in South Africa;
That the IDF fired nuclear-tipped rockets into Gaza;
That Israel invented the story about Gilad Shalit – there is no such person;
That Israel is diverting all natural water supplies away from the West Bank;
That Israel’s jails are 90% full of black people who are picked up in the streets ‘for being black’ (I read this one in London’s main Black newspaper, Black Voice)
…and some of these madcap ideas are practically mainstream viewpoints now.
I particularly liked being told that as Israel was about the same size as the USA, that it would be easy just to give the “Palestinians” what they want and still have plenty of room for the Jews to live. The Jews could then rebuild all their holy places in new sites. When I asked how many Jews lived in Israel, there was a shrug of the shoulders and a stab in the dark. “About 200million?” When I asked said, supposedly well educated, person to point out Israel on a map, he showed me Australia… So much for education!
Why would he want a Jewish state in a “contiguous region taking in parts of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine”?
So all the Jews are assembled together in the continent that tried to eliminate them. Makes it easier to finish the job.
Yes Jack. That man Chas wrote about does not want us in Israel, where we are strong and free, speaking Hebrew the language symbolising our rebirth – he wants us back in the Shtetls of Europe, where we are weak and opressed, speaking Yiddish, the language of our days of submission and near annihilation. It is Jew-hating mentality like that which prove the need for the state of Israel.
As to the ‘crankiest’ thing I have heard: I was asked by someone in Boston whether it was true that Israelis were sent to jail if they ate squid!
Shana tovah and shabbat shalom everyone. Kol hakovod Chas. *Hug*
Keep telling the truth Chas.
Well yes keep telling the truth indeed but as I’ve already said – don’t waste time on the kind of idiots you mentioned in your post. It very well might be fun to laugh at them but don’t waste time taking them serious.
A long time ago, probably early 1980s, someone I knew described Israel’s then relatively recent occupation of the Palestinian territories as a “land grab”, forgetting altogether that shortly after the war in which they were aquired, Israel offered to withdraw in exchange for recognition as a state, an offer that was promptly and resoundingly rejected.
Someone else, no longer a friend for a variety of reasons, tried to defend Arab persecution of Jews in Israel and Islamic countries as a natural and understandable response. When I pointed out to her that if someone had told her that she had no right to live in Canada because she was born elsewhere (Italy), she made a complete idiot of herself saying that she would have quietly accepted being rejected for being an Italian Catholics were unwelcome, and also if the land her house was built on was subject to a First Nations claim, she’d give it up. Yeah. Right.
Thank you for all the comments so far. Really interesting!
On the question of whether to engage with people who say such mad things, I think each case is different. For instance, the first guy I mentioned is a great guy. He’s even been to Israel and spoken favourably of some elements of Israeli society.
But the second guy I mentioned is – as some have already identified – far less worth spending time on, to put it politely. To start from such an insane, antisemitic premise as he did put me off engaging with him. There are people with more time, patience, inclination than me. I would salute any efforts they make!
I remember getting really annoyed with someone saying “Oh, so I see you’re a Zionist” as if with that very (to him pejorative) line he had solved everything so conveniently when I happened to point out that things weren’t as BLACK and WHITE as he was making them out to be during Operation cast lead (you can already guess which side he thought was completely in the wrong).
“So do you think Hamas are in any way to blame for this?”
“Look they’re a terrible organization, and I don’t support them but…”
And with that word “but” you already know that an otherwise intelligent person is just another to see things through his blinkered, moronic “as long as Israel is always wrong” glasses, and another thing is that you can be always be sure that no other issue gets these people quite so rattled or frothing at the mouth.
Anyway, f**k ‘em.
Hi Chas
I’ve asked American, European and Middle Eastern friends of mine where they would rather live: Riyadh, Tehran, Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, or Tel Aviv? Nine times out of ten – when they are not pretensiously deluding themselves – they will admit it would have to be Tel Aviv. Why? Because Israel is the only functioning democracy recognisable as such in the whole region; one where women’s equality is not held in contempt (unilike in most predominantly Muslim countires) and one’s sexuality is not an issue worthy of being stoned to death for! Israel is also the only country in the troubled region that has a free press, something often conveniently overlooked in the hypocritical West by liberals who seem to loathe and hate their own culture so much they would happliy lay down and let the Taliban take over London! Not the most poular of views, but who gives a shit when the course of The River Crap runs ever more torrential day by day!!
On a personal note: Chas, get in touch. I haven’t seen you for years and it would be great to catch up with you and shoot the breeze over a beer, real soon. My email’s attached.
Chris Burne, Putney SW15.
Here is one of the dumbest things I just heard: Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, natch) wants Obama to shoot down Israeli jets if they cross Iraqi airspace on a strike against Iranian nukes.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-18/how-obama-flubbed-his-missile-message/
The worrying thing is that considering Obama’s actions so far I fear it may come to that.
They sound like idiots Chas
I was told that I sounded like an official spokesman for the Israeli Defence Ministry, and felt curiously honoured. I have also been accused of being a war-mongering Zionist with no respect for human life, which given that I have always been against any violence, except as a last resort (which it plainly was in this case), again tickled me. I was accused of abandoning my non-violent principles, and when I pointed out that I would have felt the same if the IRA had bombarded mainland Britain with missiles during the Troubles, was told that it was different. I pointed out that it was – the IRA never did attack us with missiles.
It is funny that, when you point out how Israel has always honoured any agreements made in the peace process, and how the Palestinian leadership (especially under Arafat)never did, the Israelis are always demonised, even though their commitment to a lasting peace has always been real.
For some reason, some people are totally against Israel, which I can only put down to anti-Semitism. Not all of us non-Semites feel that way, and to any Israeli’s reading this – love and peace to you.
I also have had people insist Israel is in Africa.
I heard all Israeli men want to do is chase women and have sex. I have no idea if this is true or not, and don’t really care.
But the worst I heard was when I was a kid growing up everyone said the Israeli soldiers would march into the classrooms of Palestinian children and poke out their eardrums with pencils. We were really told this. I was around 11 or so and I thought Israelis must be the most savage people on earth–but I then I was also very confused because this didn’t sound like the people from the Bible. I remember being devastated that it might be true. And so happy later on when I found out it was all a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie.
Oh, and the biggest lie I ever heard about Israel is that there’s a place in there called “Palestine”.
*snort*
That Israel has not tried its hardest to make peace with the Arabs. So lets check this out.
1. The nascent state of Israel, supported the idea of partition, the arabs said no.
2. Israel fought every war and gave away land ofr peace every time.
3. We gave the Egyptians back the Sinia, even though Jewish blood was spilled trying to defend the state, and what did they give back – a promise not to attack the Jews again. Big fuckign woop.
4. We gave them back land for peace, when Rabin signed the deal under Clinton. Leased land back from jordan, paying them money for the privalge of land we won again with blood.
5. We gave back gaza only to have Hamas take power and throw missles into Southern Isreal.
6. After all this, we are now told we need to give more back, under some waffer thin assurance these rabid anti–semites, wont breal their word.
7. The one thing the jewish people are not, is stupid. and we dont need to give back anything. We give land back, after jewish bblood has been thrown across the land, because we cherish peace and want peace. The Arabs hate Jews and want us dead.
This is a battle between not what is right or wrong in the end, but the survial of the jewish people.
We choose to engage in this land for promise swap because we love and want peace, and we will give them land back that young Jewish men and women died to secure. BUT let this be a warning to the world, there will be no second holocaust and no Jew will die foe the sake of politics.
Id the Arabs want war, they will get it, and in the end, if its a battle to the death, if we go, they will as well.
Never ceases to amaze me how people vilify Israel, but then will tell you how much good places like Saudi and Syria do. Do these people not realize that those two countries finance and encourage terrorist operations?
Then there are those who criticize Israel for “oppressing” the Palestinians, yet why is it never said that when the Palestinians fled Israel, at the orders of the Grand Mufti, no other Arab Nation would take them in. Israel had issued a statement to all of her Arab citizens not to leave that they would be granted full citizenship in the new State.
In yesterday’s Guardian, in OpEd, “The Rosh-Ramadan roadmap for peace”, the author wrote, “It was easy and natural for Jews and Muslims to live and work together. Beyond their kinship, nothing in either religions’ tenets prohibits or discourages it. That may seem counterintuitive, since religious conflicts are such staples of history and current events. But religion isn’t at the root of those conflicts: politics is. What we call religious conflicts, from the Crusades to the modern Middle East mess, are really political conflicts dressed in religious clothing.
Invoking religion is a good way to inflate the importance of a cause and win broader support. Israel has been playing the Jewish card since its foundation, while its rivals now wave the flag of Islam. Religious texts tend to be rambling, ambiguous and frequently contradictory, so most political causes that look hard enough can uncover chapter and verse to prove God is on their side. Religion, rather than patriotism, is truly the last refuge of scoundrels.” Beggars belief…
Great post. It’s funny how stupid some people are about Israel.
Stupid? Or willfully ignorant?
I used to post regularly on the message boards of a well-known UK site. The message boards have since closed and have been reopened in a different format, but few of the “old gang”, me included, use them. Anyway, there was a small hardcore of people, mainly if not entirely lefties, who loved to denigrate Israel and its supporters. The silliest thing one of them ever posted was the assertion that Jews – whether British, French, whatever – automatically hold dual nationality: British, French, whatever – and Israeli. In other words, we all have two passports. I told her that this is not so, that she was obviously thinking of the Law of Return. But she persisted. It took many posts arguing otherwise before she let the canard that we are all Israeli citizens drop. These same people (there was a pack of them) also insisted that British Jews have a separate legal system under which they operate, like sharia law – again, they were very resistant to my explanation regarding Batei Din and that Jews abide by the tenet “the law of the land is the law”.
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