Israel Gets an ‘F’

On my trip to Israel in 2015, post Gaza Operation Protective Edge, with media falsehoods coming thick and fast, I asked why Israel does not have its own Public Relations Firm to get the truth out. I was told the Knesset was in fact, quietly approached with a generous offer by a New York City based PR firm, followed by incessant arguing on what to say and how to say it, resulting in a ‘get back to us when you can agree on something.’

As a social worker, I told my clients, being in a crisis, reaching rock bottom is an opportunity for change. If we are not now in an almost irremediable crisis, if we are not now approaching rock bottom, then tell me what rock bottom looks like.

Just a small taste—Quotes & Headlines:

“25% of American Jews agree with the statement that ‘Israel is an apartheid state’, including 38% of Jews under the age of 40. 22% believe ‘Israel is committing genocide.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-finds-a-quarter-of-us-jews-think-israel-is-apartheid-state/
“American Jews, who make up no more than 2% of the U.S. population are the targets of nearly 60% of religious bias crimes.” https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-deeply-troubled-by-fbi-hate-crimes-data-showing-overall-increase-jews-most-targeted
“Anti-Jewish COVID theories top list of worst antisemitism outbreak.” https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/anti-jewish-covid-theories-top-list-of-worst-antisemitism-outbreaks-653599
Canary Mission issued a resource to increase awareness of anti-Semitic and bigoted doctors, nurses, med students and other medical professionals, who threaten their ‘Zionist’ patients. See Medical List–https://canarymission.org/medical
“Kamala Harris Applauds Student Accusing Israel of ‘Ethnic Genocide’…Harris’ niece says those who are neutral on Israel-Gaza have ‘chosen the side of the oppressor’.https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-niece-israel-gaza-oppressor
“Language from the Calif. Ethnic Studies unit on ‘Teach Palestine’ in the ‘liberated’ curriculum links Zionism to right-wing politics, vilifies Zionism as being anti-inclusion and demonizes the State of Israel.” https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/09/jewish-teens-are-already-targets-ethnic-studies-offers-better-aim/
“Ronald Lauder, World Jewish Congress, said acidly of Europe, “It looks more like 1933 than 2015…Jewish children afraid to wear a kippah on the streets of Paris, Budapest, and London…attacks on synagogues.” https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/speech-of-world-jewish-congress-president-ronald-s-lauder-at-the-ceremony-in-auschwitz
“Another Record-Setting Year for Antisemitism in Canada. B’nai Brith Audit Finds Antisemitic vandalism up a whopping 107 per cent in 2017.” https://www.bnaibrith.ca/another_record_setting_year_for_antisemitism_in_canada_b_nai_brith_audit_finds/
“Protesters are seen chanting in favour of Hamas, which recently encouraged its followers to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives.B’nai Brith reported these matters…” https://www.bnaibrith.ca/winnipeg-protesters-get-lost-you-son-of-a-jew/
“Abe Foxman Cancels New York Times Subscription Over Front-Page ‘Blood Libel,’ Anti-Israel Bias”…accusing Jews of killing gentile children is a classical antisemitic trope.”https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/05/28/abe-foxman-cancels-new-york-times-subscription-over-front-page-blood-libel-anti-israel-bias/
“Union representing 25,000 faculty & staff at City University of New York voted to ‘condemn the massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli state,’ demand the school divest from all companies that aid in Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes.” https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/06/baseless-israel-bashing-permeates-science-medicine-and-education-unions/
“Poisoned propaganda trickles down to public grade and high school teachers. Los Angeles Teachers Union: end all aid to Israel, our tax dollars funding apartheid and war crimes.” https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/09/jewish-teens-are-already-targets-ethnic-studies-offers-better-aim/
Alan Dershowitz, “Intersectionality’ is a code word for anti-Semitism” Excerpts:“Intersectionality, the linking of unrelated victimizations, says that all social causes are inexorably linked and has become a code word for anti-Western, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic bigotry. Demonization of “Zionists” often used as a euphemism for Jews must be included, indeed featured, in the package of causes embraced by anyone claiming the label of “progressive.” https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/alan-dershowitz-intersectionality-is-a-code-word-for-anti-semitism
“Fireworks thrown from car in heavily Jewish Diamond District as pro-Palestinians shouted, ‘F**king Zionists’; Jews attacked, one person burned amid pro-Palestinian protests in NYC.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/jews-attacked-one-person-burned-amid-pro-palestinian-protests-in-new-york-city/
“Attack on Jewish diners, Los Angeles: caravan of vehicles, waving Palestinian flags, shouting antisemitic slurs through a megaphone; men jumped out of a car and asked who was Jewish. Two guys said they were and they proceeded to beat them up.”https://ktla.com/news/local-news/jewish-men-allegedly-attacked-by-members-of-pro-palestinian-caravan-outside-beverly-grove-restaurant/ https://www.wlfi.com/content/national/575366942.html
“Vassar Community Stands with Palestinians”, “Israel…apartheid, guilty of ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism.” https://miscellanynews.org/2021/05/25/opinions/letter-to-the-editor-vassar-community-members-statement-of-solidarity-with-the-palestinian-people/?
“Camera: “CNN’s series “Jerusalem: City of Faith and Fury” presents viewers with factual errors and historical revisionism that portray Arabs as powerless victims. Its narrative on the Six-Day War is especially distorted, suggesting that when Arabs shelled Jerusalem in an attempt to kill Jews, it was really Arabs who were the victims.” https://www.camera.org/article/cnns-jerusalem-series-on-the-six-day-war-when-jews-are-shelled-arabs-suffer/?
“Seven Minutes of Hate Courtesy of SJP and UMASS Boston—CAMERA’s Dexter Van Zile was physically and verbally assaulted, spat at, and called a “Nazi,” “bitch,” and “f*cking pig…”I am not a Jew, but what happened to me last week on the streets of Boston, my home for the past 20-plus years, is part of an ongoing campaign designed to drive Jews out of civic life in the U.S. This is not about Israel, but Jews.” https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/seven-minutes-of-hate-courtesy-of-sjp-and-umass-boston/?f

The totality of the failure of collective American Jewish organizations to get even basic facts about Israel printed by mainstream media, or disseminated on campuses, or to the average American, is astounding. I can’t think of a better time to revisit words of wisdom attributed to Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” While the world has always been ready to jump in on Jew hate, the difference today is that in addition to Jews now being attacked on our streets and at pro-Israel rallies, anti-Zionism, anti-Israel, anti-Jew, vicious blood libel lies are part of the accepted narrative, part of the media’s “special features” on Israel, part of everyday speech, from the highly educated to the under-educated, who view themselves as ‘humanitarians.’

When that level of acceptance of The Big Lies is parroted by mainstream media, by students, by teacher’s unions, by elected leaders, you are…in crisis and approaching rock bottom. What comes next, after you are a ‘Zionist, racist, genocidal ethnic cleanser, apartheid Jew?’ You tell me. If there is no longer a Jewish state of Israel, we will be once again scattered to the ends of the earth, at the mercy of our host countries, with no place to run to. Jews will be a minority in their own land. If the unthinkable happens, the world will do what they usually do—outwardly pretend to be contrite but secretly relieved to be rid of that troublesome Jewish State, and those troublesome Jews. As of 2021, we already have to hide any signs of being a Jew when we leave our homes. We will all need bunkers if that day comes.

This is a wake up call for Israel to finally do what it should have been doing since becoming a nation. I love Israel. Love it. But Israel needs to take the funds spent, say, on your outer space program, which is where they will soon be sending all Zionists, put a hefty down payment on a PR firm, get American, European, all Jews to “put aside their differences” and collaborate on getting facts and basic truths out via a PR Firm solely dedicated to this purpose. This has nothing to do with Israel’s policies. This is about refuting inaccurate smears, biased, sloppy “reporting”, re-writing and erasing us from our history, and demonizing Zionists, Jews and Israel into the subhuman. We need to expose the open, virulent Jew hate speech of the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs, and the Islamic Jihad of Hamas, funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I have a dream. I wake up and see and hear, in every city in America, in Europe, in the UK, huge, illuminated billboards, like the ones in Times Square, telling: how many times these so called ‘Palestinian’ Arabs refused fair and generous peace offers; never once made a counter offer for peace; Abbas in his own words stating they will never accept a “Zionist entity” in the Middle East; their genocidal, Nazi speech exposed for all to hear on Palestinian Media Watch, training children to hate and kill Jews, to never accept Israel. Ever.

Let’s Light Up these Arabs in their own words:

https://palwatch.org/:

“Murder of Israeli athletes in Munich is a “heroic operation” according to Abbas’ Fatah.”
“Palestinian children recite poems on official PA TV stating that “our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail,” Jews are “the most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs.”
“For International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Palestinian ‎Authority, in a program on official ‎PA TV, the host taught viewers that the Holocaust was the price the Jews paid for their ‎evil behavior – their “conspiracies and wickedness.”

https://palwatch.org/page/17284

“All content is from the Palestinian Authority’s official TV and Fatah’s official Facebook page”:

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, PA TV: “The hatred of the Jews is not due to their religion… but due to their social role that was connected to usury, and banks.”
Sheikh Osama Al-Tibi, PA TV: “These malignant [Jewish] genes and cursed characteristics continue in them…They inherit it from father to son.”
PA Shari’ah Judge Muhannad Abu Rumi, PA TV: “There is no global corruption that they are not behind.”
Boy tells what he was taught in PA school, PA TV: “Fight the Jews, kill them, and defeat them.”
Sheikh Osama Al-Tibi, PA TV: “These are the Jews… always plotting against humanity…”
Dr. Iyad Abu Zneit, Fatah documentary “The Children of Israel,” Fatah Facebook: “In Europe, the [Jewish] tribe established… crowded ghettos in order to separate from other people out of arrogance and disgust for non-Jews…”
Sheikh Osama Al-Tibi, PA TV: “At the end of time the Muslims will fight the Jews… [Allah] count them and kill them one by one, and do not leave even one.”

‎”The international community’s decision to ignore the PA’s Antisemitism has enabled the PA to turn Palestinians into the most antisemitic people in the world.” https://palwatch.org/page/17292

Let’s Get These Facts Up in Lights:

Israel’s Founding Declaration affords full legal, civil and religious rights to all, while having to maintain full security against terrorism. Arabs sit in the Knesset. Israel is the only state in the Middle East ranked ‘Free’ by Freedom House, which evaluates countries according to their political rights and civil liberties. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant absorbing nation on earth. Tiny Israel’s land comprises just 0.25% of the entire land mass of the Middle East, the approx. size of New Jersey. Since 1947, Israel has been seeking a two-state solution. But the Arabs refuse to accept the reality of the Jewish state, refuse peace offers and refuse to negotiate. That is the true obstacle to peace.

Let’s Light Up Hamas’ Calls to Kill Jews:

Algemeiner, “Israel and Hamas in Their Own Words” by Lawrence J. Siskind: (https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/05/19/israel-and-hamas-in-their-own-words/)

“Hamas: Sheik Ahmad Bahr, a top Hamas official: “Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.”
“The Hamas Covenant ”: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
“2019, Hamad declared: Seven million Palestinians outside, enough warming up, you have Jews with you in every place. You should attack every Jew possible in all the world and kill them.”

Let’s Light Up Israel’s truth and beauty:

Israel’s medical and technological contributions; humanitarian disaster teams helping people all over the world; the filth of the apartheid myth dispelled by images of the true diversity of Israel, where people of all colors, all diverse backgrounds, and all religions live and thrive; where sacred Christian and all religious sites are protected; where gay pride parades are held. Images of Israel’s celebration of life, it’s beauty, are powerful and speak a thousand words.

‘The truth will set you free’ is no longer operative in our insane world where victims are oppressors and oppressors are victims. Listen to Elie Wiesel, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” What we are presently doing is…not working. It is already perhaps too little, too late, but still we must try. We can and should do this. Now. Before it really, really, really is too late.

Ginette Weiner