Jonathan Freedland to Israel: I love you, I love you not.

Good article, but perhaps you overcomplicate, Israelinurse?

Perhaps Freedland is little better than many Guardian hacks in that he lacks both spine and moral compass when push comes to shove. Rather than go out on a limb he toes the party line and dishes out the Guardian world view because he needs his job.

Part of my post to the “Guardian vindicates CiF Watch” thread repeated here because it is relevant:

“…. For me, the sheer hypocrisy of the Guardian and its zoo of journalists/hacks is summed up by the behaviour of Jonathan Freedland. We are told that he was shocked into the realisation, at the recent debate about BDS in which he participated and which is reported elsewhere on this blog, that the machinators of BDS don’t just want the end of the occupation but the end of Israel’s very existence (and to deny the right of Jews to self-determination is also an antisemitic act). Freedland is a journalist and is, one assumes, worldly-wise, both of which beg the question of why the Israel hatred in the debate was so shocking to him, given that he is employed by the most anti-Israel newspaper in the UK, which also gives space above and below the line to antisemites. Could it have been shocking only outside the Guardian environment and because, as a result of Freedland having worked for so long in the toxic anti-Israel environment of the Guardian, he was inured to it there?

“Even so, he was brought to his senses, we were led to believe, and was visibly shaken by the reception the BDSers gave to speeches in opposition to their views.

“Now, here’s the rub: One might assume that, having been shocked into reality by such an experience, Freedland might convey something of them in his future articles about Israel, but no, he is so much the Guardian’s man that he has been able to split off the cognitive dissonance his experience at the debate must have caused him, and achieved consonance by denying to himself that he had had that experience.”

“Israel is not the perfect being he put on a pedestal and so his affection
becomes conditional”

Speaking as a Brit, I dislike the Jonathan Freedland’s of my country (and elsewhere) because they can’t take time out of their finger-wagging at Israel to spare 5mins looking around their own country. They embarrass me.

Do they not realise that an Israeli journalist visiting the UK could descend on our inner cities and highlight the issues theirein? We have alcohol and drug problems; knife and gun crime, and some children who leave school barely literate. Throughout the UK we have poverty, run-down areas and hopelessness. We have thousands of homeless people living on our streets – some of whom are there because of violence, many who are trapped by bureaucracy Perhaps Israeli journalists might also make some mileage out of some of our young people when they go out on the razzle of a weekend? Or when they riot, steal, trash and burn – as they did this summer.

We have prejudice against some of our minority groups and we have some members of one specific group who hate us to the extent that they carried out 7/7 – and we have hundreds of others whose intent is similar. We have marches in the street by a handful of them whose slogan is ‘Bomb, bomb UK’ and ‘UK you will pay – Bin Laden is on his way’ (although they will now need to change that particular placard !). We have Travellers who we move on the moment they park up – for very good and legal reasons but even so; evictions carried out in the UK every day of the week somehow pale into insignificance for the Freedland’s of my country when compared to the eviction of an Arab in Israel. And then we have Tower Hamlets and the ‘Sharia Zone’ posters..

But the truth is, if an Israeli journalist did report on these particular situations most Brits would be up in arms – and rightly so because these examples are certainly not representative of the UK as a whole: Britain is a decent country in which the overwhelming majority are tolerant and sympathetic , where the kids are well-behaved, are not permanantly guzzling alcopops, rioting or taking amphetamines and are in decent schools. There is considerable effort ploughed into changing the lives of those in inner cities and on the streets. In short. we are not perfect – because no society is – and we shouldn’t be seen or judged only by the failings that we work hard to address. And neither should Israel.

Finally (and with apologies for the lengthy comment!) I dislike the notion that Israel should be ‘better’ than any other nation. It poses an impossible burden on both Israelis and disaspora Jews. Let’s just focus our attention on getting to the stage whereby Israel is ‘normal’: judged by the same standards as every other darned country in the world before we start attempting perfectionism.

SarahLeah – I agree with your analysis of us Brits inasmuch as many feel enough is enough.

Freedland, Sherman and other journalists maintain a disproportionate focus on Israel’s problems and by their biased reporting, infer that amongst all Western societies it is Israel and only Israel that deals with these problems in a way quite removed from the Western mind. This leads some ordinary, everyday people of the West into a belief that Israel and its citizens are uniquely and negatively *different* from themselves. As if only the Europeans, Americans, Australians (etc) could go about this whole Palestinian business in a way far more *civilised* than the Israelis. It’s an arrogance born of lack of introspection and our good fortune in not having to face the same awful issues.

We have a minute number of jihadists in our midst, yet they have managed to affect our lives in various ways that are disproportionate to their number and more of us are affected than was the case with Northern Ireland. (There were few politicians telling us we were Irishophobic and intolerant then, though!). Given our current viligance and fears over a relatively tiny clutch of Islamists, how would we deal with a hypothetical scenario of, say, Brighton being overtaken by jihadists launcing rockets into neighbouring Hove?