The Lobby. A Little Context
Any reasonable understanding of the Israeli lobby necessarily includes an investigation of movements like Israli Apartheid Week (IAW). Otherwise, it’s sort of like trying to listen to the sound of one hand clapping.
Let’s look at one of the loudest groups within the umbrella movement that criticizes the Israel Lobby (and of course, Israel itself).
IAW advocates give Palestinian actions a carte blanche. In doing so, they help justify terrorism, incitement to hatred and Islamist repression of civil rights. In short, they help perpetuate violence.
The motive is to brand Israel as a racist enterprise deserving of political and possibly physical destruction.
When one boils it down to the bare essentials: the Lobby is interested in presenting Israel in a positive light, of course. It recognizes that the honest and effective means of doing this is not by presenting Palestinians as evil, but to show the honest views of all parties with a vested interest in the region.
The anti-Israel gang of activists (I’d call them pro-Palestinian, but what have they ever done for the Palestinians they claim to represent?) strive to show Israel, as a place of intolerance, racism and illegitimacy. And I’ll give this to them: their propaganda methods are effective.
We see an image of a tank versus a child with rock; checkpoints of young Israeli soldiers patting down mothers; border guards rifling through their most personal and intimate belongings.
It’s very difficult for Israel to come out looking alright with those types of images and their related talking points. And I don’t object to people using these examples in order to wage peace.
That’s fine.
I do object to people taking these examples and transposing them onto Israeli society at large to frame that country as a place of intolerance.
It’s all about context. That’s what gets lost when activists try to boil down the situation to a single photo frame or sound byte.
Beyond the empty theoretical rhetoric of human rights that these activists employ, Israel is in fact fighting a war against terror and extremism. This conflict has seen thousands of innocent Israelis perish.
This is Part 3 in a six-part series of essays in The Propagandist confronting critics of the Israel Lobby. Daniel Schloss is a contributing writer and former Israel lobby insider.
- Read the previous essay, The Lobby, Part 2. Reality Check
- Read the next part in the series, The Lobby, Part 4. The Big Picture
