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Andrew Pessin

Israel Breathes. World Condemnation Instantaneous.

Israel breathed this morning. There was a quick intake of air, and then a gentle exhalation.

World condemnation was instantaneous.

P.A. President Abbas, in the seventeenth year of his four-year term, decried the illegitimacy of Israel’s use of the Middle East air supply and demanded a prompt return to the 1967 air distribution which Palestinian leaders had previously violently rejected. Iranian President Rouhani interrupted his weekly call for the destruction of Israel in order to blast the Zionist entity for its blatant oxygen grab and call for its immediate destruction.

Egyptian newspapers exposed the malicious Mossad plot to exhale germs into the air and then spread the poisoned air via high-tech windmills directly into the lungs of Muslim children. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh announced that in response to the Israeli aggression, Hamas would not let the Red Cross visit captive Israeli civilians, Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu. When it was pointed out that they hadn’t allowed such visits in the seven years prior to Israel’s action, he snorted, “And now you see why!”

Turkey announced it would be withdrawing its ambassador, only to retract that announcement in slight embarrassment when it realized it had already withdrawn him last week, in response to some other Israeli outrage it could no longer quite recall. The United Nations General Assembly, after meeting for an all-night emergency session, urgently called for another all-night emergency session. And the United Nations Human Rights Council demanded an immediate impartial investigation, only to backtrack when it was informed that all its available staff were already tied up in ongoing impartial investigations of other Israeli actions.

Indeed, outrage at Israel’s action was heard around the globe. People everywhere exclaimed that Israel’s aggression was against international law, and then asked for a copy of the newspaper so they could see just what it was, in fact, that Israel had done this time. Others, more intellectually inclined, asked for some links on “international law,” curious to find out, at last, just what was this special code which apparently all non-Israelis had secretly agreed upon. And, of course, there were numerous calls for Israel’s leaders to be brought up on charges of war crimes, beginning with their having been born in the first place.

Loudest of these were from regimes as diverse as China, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and North Korea, which took time off from oppressing Uighurs and Tibetans, women and all religious minorities, and their own citizens respectively to make their pronouncements. In fact, Israel’s action this time was so offensive that the Taliban and remaining ISIS members actually paused from their work installing massive explosives in each others’ mosques in order to condemn Israel’s attacks on Muslim civilians.

The criticisms could even be heard within Israel itself. “How can Israel call itself a democracy,” Haaretz asked in an editorial, “while allowing its Jewish citizens to consume 75% of the air?” Arab-Israeli MKs signed a petition demanding that the Israeli constitution, guaranteeing their right to sit in the Knesset despite their repeated calls for Israel’s destruction, should be dissolved, preferably in favor of something more totalitarian. “On this day I am ashamed to be a Jew,” proclaimed one prominent left-wing leader, a man who had repeatedly urged all peoples to be proud of their ethnic and religious identities, except for Jews.

The only points of light were the progressive members of the U. S. Congress, who briefly broke from the rallies they were leading calling for the destruction of the one Jewish state in the world and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from that region in order to condemn all forms of hatred.

Israel initially attempted to respond to these criticisms, but quickly realized that speaking would require it once again to inhale and thus draw upon itself further global ire.

And so, Israel stopped breathing altogether.

This action, clearly aimed to destroy the regional economy and destabilize the entire Middle East, triggered instantaneous worldwide condemnation.

About the Author
Andrew Pessin is a philosophy professor, Campus Bureau Editor at The Algemeiner, co-editor of "Anti-Zionism on Campus," and author most recently of two novels, "Nevergreen" (an academic satire examining campus cancel culture and the ideological excesses that generate it) and "Bright College Years" (about how college used to be before they all went crazy). For more information, visit www.andrewpessin.com.
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