Parrots and human Israel haters have a lot in common
For reasons that are too complicated to go into here (and that are, frankly, irrelevant, anyway), a friend has been regularly visiting an animal sanctuary where she has seen – or rather, heard – “rescue” parrots. That is, parrots that have been rescued, not parrots that have done any rescuing. She has been regaling us with stories of one parrot that sings several verses of “The Wheels On The Bus” complete with circular wing movements; another that coughs like an old man and says “Hello Nigel;” and another, she reports, that makes comments such as “Nice day” and “Looks like it’s brightening up.”
To get to where I’m going with this, ahem, flight of fancy, I must first explain what Google says about parrots, which is that they “speak” by a “mechanism of imitation” that “allows them to reproduce any sound.”
In other words, a parrot brain facilitates mimicry so a parrot will say “Hello Nigel” when there is no one called Nigel present, or say chattily “Looks like it’s brightening up” when the wind is howling and it’s pouring with rain. A parrot could therefore easily be taught to declare that “Israel is an oppressor,” “Israel is a coloniser” or “Israel is an apartheid state” because – as we have discovered from Google – it learns by rote and through mimicry rather than through any ability to “think” or reason. And, of course, once any phrases have been learned (including offensive and demonstrably false ones) a parrot would just go on repeating them ad infinitum because a parrot has no ability to discern the validity or truth of any statement.
And that brings me to the serious – or, at least the semi-serious – point which is how much parrots have in common with human Israel haters in that both just go on repeating offensive (and demonstrably false) allegations ad infinitu.
The difference, of course, is that unlike parrots, human Israel haters possess the cognitive ability – in theory, at least, (especially academics and those attending Ivy League colleges)– to discern the validity of any statement, because (again in theory) real humans have the ability to consult first principles (you know, read some actual history, examine some genuine documents. review statistics, authentic maps, population censuses, etc) as well as to recognise and reject propaganda .
If they did any of this, they would surely wake up to the fact that these allegations against Israel that they repeat ad nauseam are based on outright lies and gigantic omissions. But curiously, despite being endowed with the ability to think and reason (once again, especially academics, etc) the human Israel-haters fail to spot the lies, misinformation and manipulation.
Neither do they spot that the “Palestine” myth they cleave to is designed to achieve a geo-political objective (the annihilation of Israel) rather than the more noble objective of helping Palestinians. Instead, like our feathered friends, they just go on parroting ad nauseam their baseless allegations and libels.