Western Civilization Is No Longer Civilized

Melanie Phillips on the west’s abandonment of the Jews

The west’s abandonment of the Jews

Human rights culture has mainstreamed Hamas lies

By: Melanie Phillips, March 15, 2024:

ADVERTISEMENT

The Palestinian lynching of Israeli soldiers 2000 and the Artists4 Ceasefire pin

With every day that passes, it becomes ever clearer that western civilisation is no longer civilised.

Israel’s war of defence against a genocidal enemy is an inflection point in the seismic battle between civilisation and barbarism. The west is failing that test.

This was illustrated at the Oscars. Numerous Hollywood stars sported red pins supposedly backing a ceasefire in Gaza. The pin depicts the palm of an orangey-red hand on a red background with a black heart in the middle.

ADVERTISEMENT

For some Israel supporters, this image channelled the infamous picture taken in 2000, when a Palestinian terrorist involved in the savage lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah triumphantly displayed his two bloody palms to the frenzied mob.

The group that distributed the pin, Artists4Ceasefire, claims that the hand image “conveys the beautiful community of people from all backgrounds that have come together in support of centring our shared humanity” and that the heart is an “invitation for us to lead with our hearts”.

This asinine froth does not convince. The palm of a hand does not denote community; hand symbols are usually white, a heart is usually red and a red hand signifies a bloody one.

A black heart, meanwhile, commonly denotes evil. And the 2000 lynching involved ripping the heart out of one of the Israeli corpses and holding it exultantly in a Palestinian hand.

Conversely, the image could have been reflecting the symbol used in countless anti-Israel demonstrations to signify that Israel has blood on its hands: a symbol that grotesquely paints the Israelis fighting to defend themselves against genocide as wanton killers of the innocent.

The Oscars ceremony also featured an attempt to transform Israeli suffering into Israeli oppression by Jonathan Glazer, director of the much-lauded Holocaust movie “The Zone of Interest”.

Standing with his two backers, Glazer said, “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.” The victims of the October 7 pogrom and the inhabitants of Gaza, he said, were “all the victims of this dehumanisation”.

ADVERTISEMENT

His ignorance was staggering. Apart from no land being illegally “occupied” by Israel, the cause of the conflict is the century-old attempt by the Palestinian Arabs to eradicate the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel and then the Jewish state. And to accuse Israel of dehumanisation, when it’s going to greater lengths than any other army in the world to minimise civilian casualties, was simply malevolent.

Far worse, though, was Glazer’s abuse of Judaism and the Holocaust to claim that Israel had hijacked both. He implied that Israelis were like Nazis and that their behaviour went against Jewish principles.

This to describe a war caused by the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust and Israel’s attempt to ensure that a second Holocaust does not happen again.

The obscenity of Glazer’s comments can scarcely be exaggerated. The belief that demonising Israeli Jews somehow represents Jewish values is, however, a pathology that has twisted the minds of many liberal American Jews. It is being fed by a venomously distorted presentation of Israelis as child-killers in Gaza that’s being ruthlessly pumped out by western media.

This accusation, of course, channels a paranoid antisemitic trope. It’s also based on Hamas propaganda claims that are patently untrue.

In a notable article in Tablet, Abraham Wyner, professor of statistics and data science at the University of Pennsylvania, has used basic statistical analysis to suggest that the Hamas casualty figures of 30,000 dead Gazans, of whom 70 per cent are said to be women and children, are fake because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real.

Other problems with these figures are that they include as children the many teenagers who are committing Hamas atrocities, as well as the civilians killed by thousands of rockets falling short into Gaza.

Why, though, do so many believe these patent untruths propagated by Hamas? One reason is that the false premises of “intersectional” identity politics automatically turn Israelis into “oppressors” and the Palestinians into their “victims”. This doesn’t explain, however, why so many subscribe to the demonstrably ludicrous belief that Israel is committing “genocide.”

For decades, the Palestinians have accused Israelis of being “Nazis” and committing “genocide” to obscure the fact that their own Holocaust denial runs in tandem with their declared intention to kill every Jew.

Read the whole thing …..