By David Anderson, J.D., in New York City
How the anti-Israel narrative has become so dominant in our era needs explaining, whatever our feelings on the Middle East. Even if you dislike Israel, what if your cause or people are next to be twisted by liars?
That there is a huge bias against Israel is beyond argument. It is backed by data but also obvious: a Western style democracy with full rule of law is painted as a “genocide” state by the great uneducated, and often unwashed, from the campus to street demos, to riots and in all types of media. Often the bias is unseen: Israeli responses to Palestinian violence is all that is reported so Israel is made to look like the aggressor without the predicate incidents publicized: in Hamas ceasefire breaks this very month, in rockets, stabbings, shootings and car rammings. We only get to see the Israeli response. Further, the myth that Palestinian grievance is “about land” is pushed, when Palestinian goals are actually religious.
This is the case with most private and almost all (US, UK, EU, Australian) public broadcasters and on social media forgetahbout it: all Palestine “victim porn” all the time. Some is hilariously absurd: fake “famines”, snow drifts, and one almost expects Zionist volcanoes in Gaza, Mossad trained bees and… sharks (the latter a real story in Egyptian media).
SO HOW DID THIS COME ABOUT?
There are three important factors here, trackable over time. Putting aside ancient antisemitism, modern “anti-Zionism” began in the 1960s with Kremlin propaganda basically magicking the “nation” and word Arab “Palestinian” into existence. Until the 1960s the word applied –only– to Jews, Arabs defined themselves as just Arabs and moreso, by tribe. Then the USSR decided to take up the “anti-colonization” fight and oppose the US/West, especially after Israel won the 1967 Six Day War.
Prior to 1967 the US was less pro-Israel, far from the much closer post-1967 era. From the 1960s the KGB and later East German Stasi went full throttle in favor of Arab states and “Palestine”.
“Third Worldism,*” communism of poor countries and “liberation” were all the rage then and in an unintentional masterstroke Soviet backed (and armed) Arab terrorists won the vibes war by… hijacking. Prior to Islamic suicide hijacking a la 9/11, non-lethal hijacking in the late 1960s and 1970s was insanely frequent: sometimes a hijacking a week. Airport security as we know it dates from that era: Palestine’s cultural contribution to humanity.
Constant photos and stories in the 1960s, 70s and even 80s featured cool, unshaved Arab men with sunglasses and keffiyehs in press conferences, on tarmacs, around planes, all “fighting for liberation” (doing terrorism) with few aviation related deaths. There was a cool revolutionary elan about, encapsulated by Tom Wolfe’s 1970 New Yorker essay: “Radical Chic, That Party at Lenny’s” – where murderous urban thugs and Third Worldism are kind of edgy and sexy to the elite Manhattan set. As an elite Manhattanite, I can assure readers this is still the case: witness Mayor Mandami.
This whole cultural mien and the lefty vibe back then ensured the (already left) polisci courses at universities adored the rebellious charisma (and usually darker skin) of “Palestine Liberation”, so that the 1970s generation of students became professors (mine, mainly) selling myths like “Palestine.” The PLO and other terrorists, all backed by the Soviets, were secular. Hijacking and Palestinian “resistance” took a turn for the religious, like the entire Middle East in the 1980s with the foundation of Hezbollah, Hamas, and later Al Qaida, the Taliban and ISIS. This religious revival in the entire Islamosphere was financed by Saudi Arabia. But hijacking and terrorism was less murderous – so “cooler” – prior to that. Suicide bombing didn’t start until the mid-1980s in Lebanon.
This formational, lefty pro-terrorist bias established the now intergenerational tradition of pro-Palestine university professors reproducing itself over 50+ years. I have personal experience: I came to America in the early 1990s to study graduate level Middle East politics at Georgetown University.
At the time I was advised that further study (say, a Ph.D.) was not really an option if I intended to study at an American university and not reflexively hate Israel. A course advisor and several professors confessed this and it was evident by the wildy pro-Palestinian, very left academy. This was 35 years ago and it continues apace! Investigate any Middle East politics department today. Most are well funded by Jew-hating Gulf governments, starting at Georgetown in the late 80s.
Today’s news executives, editors, “Middle East experts”**, and academics drank their antisemitic pro-“Liberation” milk as impressionable young students and the ideas and fictions have been handed down even to today’s campus youthful, useful idiots, those now sucking on that big Chinese tik tok teat.
In a further unintentional masterstroke, the UN’s terrorism production office, UNRWA and the Arab/Islamic countries have united on this common, unifying cause, when they all actually hate each other. Qatar and Saudi Arabia finance any type of antisemitism they can – with the built-in advantage that the Koran is itself wildly antisemitic. What luck!
Propaganda wise this vast network has expanded into a well-funded industry, including the Boycott Divest Sanction movement, just as the terms “genocide” “apartheid” and “colonialism” were all once a glint in the Kremlin propagandists’ eyes. Billions of Qatari endowment dollars skew Middle East/International politics departments, think tanks, NGOs and “charities”, Islamists and Arab oil states also finance social media “influencers” and buy populist weirdos like Tucker Carlson outright to ensure propaganda reaches the poorly educated and low IQ.
Mentioned above, Tik Tok is the most recent and effective mechanism of the anti-Israel pogrom, and it has been largest cause of (elite, note) university poop encampments, city clogging demos and murderous attacks on Jews worldwide. Even before Oct. 7 attacks on Jewish dressed or appearing citizens were the most frequent “hate crimes.”
Evidence for the TikTok factor is obvious: over the last century there have been many serious Arab Israeli dust ups, most attracting much less attention before social media. Tik Tok is where a majority of Westerners under 30 get their “news”, a platform owned by the CCP that provably skews 98+% pro-Palestine. For campus sheep and activists TikTok is their teacher. For second opinions they go to the wildly false Al Jazeera, or state broadcasters whose “experts” were all trained as I outline above. It is a closed loop ecosystem.
If you add to the above three factors some ol’ timey European antisemitism, tropes about Jews and all manner of crazy Arab conspiracies, large blocks of Islamic immigrants: all these horrors come together and help us explain why so many seemingly normal people have come to hate Israel.
NOTES:
**Most experts in the Middle East politics field are quite left of center: From smart but wrong Tom Friedman to circus charlatans like Peter Zaidan.
More on the Soviet invention of 1960s generated “Palestine.” Defectors from the Eastern Bloc, like high-ranking Romanian official Ion Mihai Pacepa, revealed how the KGB, the Soviet secret service, helped craft the PLO’s charter in Moscow in 1964. The Hidden Agenda Behind the Marxist Palestinian Cause
Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s Tom Wolfe, The New Yorker, 1970. An excellent read.
*