Shalom Talk

Our interview with international businessman Richard Irving about AIPAC (the American Israel Public Action Committee) touches on issues that are far more volatile now than they were fifty years ago. 

As I have said on the air more than once, fifty years ago, Israel was universally perceived to be the underdog in the area.  Now even a former American President, Jimmy Carter, labels Israel the oppressor, in his words, "an Apartheid state."  Has Israel changed?

Not exactly.  Three factors are working together resulting in Israel's bad image and bad press in our day. 

1. Representatives of the Palestinian cause have been very skillful in presenting themselves unremitingly as victims, with Israel as the oppressing force. This is no accident: it is propaganda.  My friend Dr. Michael Rydelnik points out how conspicous it was that Hanan Ashwari, right hand woman to Yassir Arafat and member of the Palestine Natiional Council, would always refer to the Palestinians as "the victims."  Repeatedly linking this word to the Palestinians frames perceptions. 
2. Israel is now stronger than it was fifty years ago, and those who are perceived to be weaker tend to be perceived as oppressed underdogs, while the more powerful parties are assumed to be the victimizers.  But the answer to this is a sentence I once heard from Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. who said:  "The weaker party is not necessarily right, and the stornger party necessarily wrong."
3. Antisemitism and antijudaism, like a mold, infest Western Civilization. Under certain conditions, the mold grows and casts off its spores.  One condition when the mold grows is times of financial instability. For centuries it has been common to blame "those damned Jews" for the problems.  This is an old canard, frequently unearthed. It is virulent and pervasive under our current unsable conitions. 

Make no mistake, all of us have been propagandized.  But the truth is out there.  It is always a good idea to discover and reexamine one's deepest assumptions. Sometimes we will discover we have been harboring an untruth or half truth that has skewed many of our judgments.  Let's open our eyes, and weigh things carefully, rather than being suscepible to the latest wind of change.