Al-Shorouq
December 2003

Given their influence in government and media, one would think that North American zionists would feel rather contented.  For example:

• Media and government both genuflect before the canonical verities of “Israel’s right to exist,” “anti-Semitism” and “the six million”;
• Palestinian victims make up 75 percent of deaths, but Jewish deaths account for 75 percent of media coverage;
• Muslims are said to commit “terror attacks,” whereas Israeli soldiers commit “incursions”;
• anti-Israeli comments are vehemently denounced, but anti-Muslim comments are often ignored or downplayed; and
• general reporting about the Middle East is reactive—free of any historical context that could embarrass Israel or challenge basic zionist myths.

This comfort zone should be especially wide in Canada, where the Asper family’s newspapers and television stations disseminate pro-Israel/anti-Arab agitprop to more than 97 percent of English-speaking households. Even Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail presents an Israel-friendly face, albeit of the softer Labour-zionist variety.

Only the CBC and print columnists like Eric Margolis and Rick Salutin are brave enough to put journalism ahead of jingoism, but even they keep criticism of Israel within limits. Nevertheless, zionists are clearly disturbed. For all of their clout, they have lost credibility and influence, especially among younger Canadians.

It used to be that a “Maginot Line” of media filters and propagandists successfully prevented North Americans from learning what most of the world knew about Israeli sadism and Palestinian suffering. This information jamming was necessary to prop up the fiction of Israeli/Jewish victimhood so that Jews and Christians would feel no qualms about giving money to prop up the zionist state. No civilized person would willingly give money to help an expansionist colonial empire wage unprovoked war on an occupied civilian population.

When the World Wide Web went live in 1993, however, the Maginot Line became obsolete. Anyone with an Internet connection could bypass the zionist gatekeepers to read unfiltered reports about the Middle East. Thanks to the BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, Agence-France Presse and al-Jazeera, Canadians have become well informed about the Middle East, and inured to the official media diet of propaganda and half-truths.

Nobody with an IQ above room temperature seriously believes that the Palestinians are to blame for the violence; that Israel is a democracy; or that the Israeli military is a humane occupier. Some of the best evidence for this populist enlightenment is found in the letters section of newspapers and callers to radio talk shows. Time was, a pro-Palestinian voice was as rare as a vegetarian at a barbecue. Now, they dominate the debate and Israel apologists are routinely pummeled.

Take the strange case of Vancouver writer Pat Johnson, a reporter for the Jewish Western Bulletin who wrote a Nov. 8 commentary piece for the Vancouver Sun condemning the Nov. 9 worldwide day of protest against Israel’s Apartheid Wall:

“This year’s 65th anniversary holds particular poignancy because many Jews around the world feel isolated and vilified by the tenor of criticism aimed at Israel. If tomorrow’s ‘day of action’ is any thing like similar events in the past, we will hear critics of Israel equate the policies of Ariel Sharon’s government with those of the Nazis. We might see, as we have previously, signs equating the Star of David with the swastika.

“The language and imagery used against Israel in this ‘debate’ have become increasingly extreme and cavalier. When concerned Canadians express the view that the anti-Israel rhetoric comes alarmingly close to traditional anti-Semitism, these worries are dismissed as either wrong or inflated.”

This shameless display of cognitive dissonance and outright dishonesty demonstrates the new defensiveness that pervades the zionist propaganda machinery—deny reality and attack those who know the truth.

Every point that Johnson tries to disparage or dismiss is in fact a truth. Israel is doing to the Palestinians what the Third Reich did to European Jewry. For example, in January 1998 Jewish violinist Lord Yehudi Menuhin made this exact point to the French newspaper Le Figaro: “It is extraordinary how nothing ever dies completely. Even the evil which prevailed yesterday in Nazi Germany is gaining ground in that country [Israel] today.”

For that matter, it’s well known that the zionist Jews who built Israel openly colluded with the Nazis at the expense of untold numbers of Yiddisher Jews.

The equation of anti-Israeli rhetoric with “anti-Semitism” is also easily refuted. In New York, Hassidic Jews openly equate Zionism with Nazism, and consider the state of Israel to be a blasphemy. Are these people anti-Semitic? (Of course this epithet has no meaning, since Arabs are also a Semitic people.)

All Johnson did was regurgitate hoary fictions that the Internet had long since debunked. He made no attempt to research his facts, or present an informed point of view, as three letter writers succinctly pointed out four days later. You see, Nov. 9 happened to be the 14th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was the reason for the demonstration. Johnson’s entire piece was a rant at an imaginary affront that maligned innocent people.

Yet this is the depth to which zionists have sunk--if they cannot find a legitimate cause to argue, they invent one. All that matters is that they turn up the volume on the Jewish holocaust to drown out the reality that is gradually redefining North American attitudes.

In a postscript to his piece, we learn that Johnson is writing a book on Canadian attitudes towards the Middle East. From this sample of his writing, one can only imagine the rigour of scholarship that will go into this tome.

To quote a popular phrase, “The truth is out there,” and no amount of dissembling, dishonesty or denial can alter that fact. Nevertheless, we may always have people like Pat Johnson who will march a post on the Maginot Line to defend a point of view that was never defensible in a battle that is already lost.