TROLLS ON A ROLL: THE ANTI-ISRAEL HATE CAMPAIGN IN THE MEDIA

Whenever there’s a serious conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, especially the Hamas Islamic terrorists who control the Gaza Strip and used it to fire rockets into Israel from the moment they took over the territory, out come the Israel hating trolls of the British Left along with part of the British media, and not only in Britain but also in Europe, especially France, Scandinavia, and more recently Holland. This trolling is characterized by a ferocious vituperation, especially when United Nations backed Palestinian civilian targets such as schools and hospitals are hit. Whenever such things happen the fury of the Left and its media trolls knows no bounds and allegations of War Crimes and barbarism make the rounds like an accusatory finger pointing at the right of Israel to exist.

Such incidents and the loss of civilian lives can be looked at another way. Anyone who knows anything about the history of the Jewish people and the humanitarian ethics that guides the personal conduct of Israel’s defence forces as a whole would immediately understand and accept that Jewish people in general and the soldiers of Israel in particular bear no malice whatsoever towards Palestinian civilians, whether men, women or children, and would never countenance or support any deliberately harmful or malicious attack upon them. In other words they would appreciate and realise that such deaths in schools, hospitals or municipal centres are entirely unintentional and accidental.

The Israelis have said that that the Hamas terrorists, freedom, fighters to many on the Left, are using the civilian population of Gaza as human shields, storing large quantities of rockets and other military hardware in municipal premises which they use to attack Israel, also building tunnels to reach and enter its territory to kidnap and murder civilians. In this they are probably correct, but such allegations cut no ice whatsoever with their fervent supporters from the British Left and sympathizers in the British media, though War Crimes in themselves they may be, particularly when using Israeli army uniforms as a disguise for engaging in such infiltration. 

You don’t need to look far for this trolling. It’s not just spread across the press or television but widely all over the Internet with a small army of active anti-Semitic Israel hate trolls perennially busy on Facebook and Twitter. Taken together they’re a miasma of infantile filth that’s individually crawled up out of their toilet bowls with the aim of infecting the public mind with their virulent bigotry. And among this Internet army of hate trolls not a few Jews themselves may be included. Those of the self-hating kind along with others who kid themselves that the Palestinians are an oppressed people and therefore a worthy cause for socialists who believe in liberty and social justice. And with this in mind both they and the whole spectrum of the socialist left think it’s correct to give their support to Hamas, a Muslim group with a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. One that has no interest whatsoever in social equality, social justice and human rights… in political parties, trades unions or workers’ rights.

Indeed, Hamas has no interest whatsoever in either socialism, liberalism or democracy of any form whatsoever and the reason is simple enough. It’s an organisation rooted in religious extremism. The structure of social organisation throughout most Arab countries today is feudal. There’s no conflict between labour and capital because there’s simply no capitalism to speak of, or where it exists it’s small scale at best. Likewise there’s no large scale working class because there’s no large scale industrial production. In short the contradictions between labour and capitalism common to modern Western industrial society is unknown. Religion prevails as the dominant ideology so organizations such as Hamas can have no political agenda for social change outside the Islamic faith that might appeal in any way to Western liberals or socialists. Marxism, revolutionary socialism or even social democracy are utterly alien notions to such Islamic fundamentalists who don’t believe that women have a right to an education, support judicial practices that are barbaric and abhorrent let alone taking the view that homosexuals are animals best put to death.

There are indeed countless areas of ideological difference between the so called freedom fighters of Hamas and the British leftist trolls of the Internet along with sections of the British media and supporters of the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats. Their support for Hamas therefore cannot be based on any rational ideological confluence of views, so what then is it that draws them together in a broad church of support for an Islamic terrorist group and its armed fight against a democratic Jewish State with its wide range of political parties and trades union movement? It’s a simple question to answer. What unites them to one another is their loathing of Israel as a Jewish State. Only scratch this a little more and it’s a fundamental loathing of Jews. Many of these trolls may never have met any Jews. Just seen them in the standard televised showing wearing beards and round furry hats and found their appearance utterly alien much the same as Hitler once did of those orthodox Jews he saw in his youth. After all there aren’t many Jews around in the UK and the orthodox is used to typify them all. Indeed, their actual number is tiny so most people get what they see from the television.

But never mind that! They’re all thought to be rich! Got loads of money which they make in dubious ways and only too often ostentatiously splash it around. Others perhaps hang on to the ever popular historic accusation that they’re responsible for the death of Jesus. They murdered Jesus, I heard it said on a fairly regular basis during early morning assemblies at the Church of England School I once taught at. However never mind the reasons. One thing’s for sure. Those who are hostile to Israel and support Islamic terrorists fighting to destroy it aren’t likely to hold out a hand to any Jew anywhere!

Another set of trolls, those more ‘respectable’ than the nasties who dole out their spleen on the Internet busily stirring up hatred and condemnation of Israel, are the BBC and Channel Four Television media monkeys best typified by Jon Snow, that most regular and venomous long term critic of Israel in the entire British media. Strangely enough his hostility to the Jewish State seems to have given him a certain credibility. Not only was he recently allowed into Israel to broadcast a snide anti-Israel diatribe, he was also given the courtesy by the Israeli ambassador to Britain of a lengthy interview during which he just couldn’t hold back his bile. Alas, the man hasn’t yet realised that when his views are countered with a calm, logical and moderate response it only reveals his bias all the more. Makes his frustration in having his hostile views countered with tolerance ever more clear so that he always seems to end up nonplussed, bitter and twisted. Oh dear, oh dear, you’ve failed to ruffle their feathers and those damned moderate Jews have got the better of you on the box all over again.

Jon Snow apart, and I’ve never heard a good word about the Jewish State from him, BBC Television has its own very special kind of bigotry and hostility towards Israel. Their so called academic experts, presented as ‘independent’ are invariably pro-Hamas terrorist and hostile to Israel, slandering that country endlessly. Their journalists are based in large numbers in Gaza and specialize in presenting photo images of sick or injured Palestinian children accompanied with unanswered accounts of Israeli aggression… of allowing various United Nations Palestinian support organisation staff to give unchallenged accounts of events… of giving lengthy interviews to leading members of this internationally recognized terrorist organisations while only occasionally allowing Israeli politicians to present the viewpoint of that country. BBC Television also specializes in seeking out and interviewing Israeli anti-war soft targets for its very own pro-Hamas propaganda purposes! Naïve members of Israeli Peace Campaign groups are a special target for these highly politicized so called correspondents.

No, in most part, BBC Television is an endless snide enemy of the Jewish State while Channel Four doesn’t even bother to disguise its bigoted hostility. It’s little different in much of the press with the Guardian, Mirror and Independent leading the way. Only the Murdoch press and Sky Television is fair and moderate, a major enemy to all those on the Left. Imagine then the contradictions of being a genuine Israel supporting British socialist today! You don’t like the anti-trades union Left baiting Murdoch yet you’re grateful for his support for Israel, the Jewish State! So make up your minds, Jewish socialists… what the hell are you? Are you a Jew or are you a socialist? This seems to be a contradiction presented to the minds of so many British Jews today. It’s not enough having to deal with the bigotry of the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel trolls on the internet. They’ve got personal ideological contradictions and questions of allegiance in their heads as it is!

If the anti-Israel trolls serve any purpose it’s to deflect such Jews from the more serious issue of what they are ideologically and where they stand. And it’s an emotional issue just as much as it is intellectual. If you’re a genuine socialist then you can’t support the oppressive Israeli State… Or if you’re a dedicated supporter then you can’t be a socialist! That’s how it’s presented to so many Jews these days. You can either be one thing or another but not both.  

Quite frankly this creation of such a dilemma is fraudulent and something invented to go along with the notion of an oppressed Palestinian cause. Much of the agrarian structure of modern Israel is indeed collectivist and socialist. It’s Labour Movement has powerful historical roots. Never mind its ever demonstrative religious minority, secularism is widespread throughout Israeli society. Thus the perennial question. Is it possible to be a Jew and a Socialist at the same time? It’s a question I’d like to answer this way. In Israel it’s easier than it is today in Britain and most other countries in Europe. It’s a dilemma deliberately presented to those who are born Jews, who are often not religious in any way, who believe in a Socialist ideology but still remain Jews because it’s not something they’ll just give up and abandon. Ideological critics of Jews tell them they can’t have it both ways. No you can’t have it both ways!

It helps give Jews an easy disposition! Nobody’s going to tell me anything! And truth to tell they can be both things at the same time with a simple shrug of the shoulders! It’s another case, another example of fiddling with your intellectual and daily existence on the roof! Not a case of being absolutely one thing or another but being both at the same time and somehow dealing with it! Trolls are dogmatic and full of hate. Jews are flexible. And by Christ, they need to be in a modern world only too hostile all over again.

Yes, you can be a Jew and a Socialist at the same time. Liberal minded and secular. A man or a woman of the big world we live in and fair minded with it. Someone who cares about the rights of minorities while knowing your own history and remembering that you too are part of a historically oppressed group that’s had to find its own way to freedom over thousands of years and won’t be gulled by dogmatists and their snide hangers on who try to put you in a corner and make you feel bad about this, that or the other.