Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Things You Can Say With Impunity

A Dutch journalist says the Jews have invented Swine Flu as part of some conspiracy. This particular lie has a pedegree going back at the very least to the 14th century, and you'd think it would have disappeared by now, what with our being in the modern world and all that.

Upon reflection, however, why should it? Respectable and otherwise normal-seeming people routinely cast every action Israel takes as a conspiracy against the Arabs - say, designing the Oslo process as a way to strenthen its control over the Palestinians, or leaving Gaza in 2005 as another way of doing the same, and so on ad nauseum. True, not everyone subscribes to these halucinations, but they can always find platforms in respectable media outlets.

When it comes to Jews, sizable segments of Western society, and almost the entire Muslim world, routinely depart from their senses and jettison their capacity for empiric analysis. So why draw the line before stories such as this one? Scheming to murder Palestinian children, yes, but disseminating Swine Flu no? Why?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

some time ago somewhere I read an article with graphs of what reduces world population, neither pandemics nor even WW2 had an effect for any relevant amount of time (not even the Black Death which depopulated Germany for a time) - the only lasting effect had come over the millenia from the availibility or non-availability of food.

so anybody who peddles another reason can safely be discounted as an ignorant spreader of unfounded rumours
- so if the basic conclusion is already wrong, then blaming the fact which was fabricated to begin with on Jews is so stupid that one can only hope that the outfit who published her founders soon.
rgds,
Silke

Anonymous said...

Jew haters. Pure and simple.
"They want to believe." It's like The X-Files.

I take it in stride. It must be a personal hell to hate us so much and to think about us all the time.

Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf said...

Honestly, when I read the title of this post I thought you had finally brought yourself to do a post about former MK Shlomo Benizri, who stated in the Knesset: "A cost-effective way of averting earthquake damage ... would be to stop passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the State of Israel, which anyways causes earthquakes."

Or about Interior Minister Eli Yishai, of "gays are sick people" fame.

Instead, you chose to focus on a thoroughly unknown and irrelevant Dutch journalist, whose only mentions on the Internet are to report her antisemitic remarks.

There's a clear difference between the Dutch journalist and the Israeli politicians. The Dutch journalist represents no one but herself and her words have had no practical consequences. On the other hand, both gay-hating politicians were elected by the people of Israel. No legal actions have been started against them; therefore, their hate is the responsibility of the whole Israeli society.

And their words have had a practical consequence: two people were savagely mowed down at a gay center in Tel Aviv. An event you didn't find it necessary to "ruminate" about.

In Spanish we have a proverb about glass houses and rock-throwing -- does it exist in English too?

Yaacov said...

Actually, Fake-Ibrahim, I had you in mind when I posted this. An instructor in Catalan in far-away Rossario who's blog obsesses with the Jewish State. How odd. Moreover, as this comment of yours demonstrates, you do so with no more than an extremely superficial understanding of your topic - which is to be expected, given your distance (geographic but mostly epistimologial), lack of relevant languages, and paucity of sources.

As for that tragic murder, it fits into no obvious pattern, so I've decided to wait till they catch the murderer before pontificating. Since I haven't the faintest idea who he is, I don't see how drawing lessons from it might be helpful.

Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf said...

For the record, I never said I'm an instructor in Catalan in Rosario, and I'm not one.

Keep on thought-policing people, and disseminating the freedom-hating notion that the place where someone is born determines the topics he should be allowed to write about. This is the kind of doctrine that would make a communist or a fascist very happy.

Yaacov said...

I never thought policed you, Fake-Ibrahim. Why, I haven't even alerted our Rossario branch of the Elders of Zion to your case. True, I once shut down a blog you and I had set up, when it became clear you'd done so dishonestly, but then you started another one which I even linked to. Hardly convincing as a form of muzzling.

No, you mistake justified criticism for an attempt to silence you. I'm of the persuasion that people's decisions have significance. When a far-away fellow with very little relevant education gets the notion he should dedicate a sizable chunk of his time, under a false identity, to disseminating lies, half lies and distortions about the Jews, I allow myself to name him for what he is.

Anonymous said...

Poor wannabe HasbaraBuster/Fake Ibrahim has been banned from Harry's Place and is looking for company...

Yaacov said...

Fake-Ibrahim? Is this true? What did you say to get them so worked up?

Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf said...

Yes, Yaacov, that's true. I didn't say anything particularly outrageous. While my presence there wasn't exactly celebrated, they gave me freedom to say what I wanted and on one occasion I was even allowed to publish a guest post.

Then, all of a sudden, my comments were blocked. When I tried to contact David T, he didn't answer my e-mails or chat requests. I believe the decision may have been taken by one of his co-bloggers and he thought overruling him was not worth it.

Nevertheless, I like David T, and I like how his blog refuses to engage in the denigration of Arabs and blind defense of Israel. Unlike, er, yours.

Yaacov said...

Yeah, but he blocked you, and I let you talk freely, even if I sometimes hold you up as an example of silliness. Go figure.

Anonymous said...

actually the place and the people one grows up with colour one's view
that is inevitable and in my view only for the good
if it were not so othr people's views weren't half as interesting and stimulating than they are - nothing more exciting for the mind than putting yourself in someone else's shoes.
if it were not so why then is novel reading still en vogue

and as to Fake-Ibrahim, maybe he is not Catalan but Basque and his posts and comments are really secret/hidden messages to co-independentionists about the nefariousness of the Spanish state.
rgds,
Silke
no I'm not a fan of Dan Brown, I tried but found him boring