As our global online village continues to grow, the bias against Israel become harder to miss. Stories about “>to criticize Israel while slurring clear anti-Semite words; News channels reporting on terror attacks in Israel “> horrific night of terror in Paris last month. We thought it would be a wake-up call to the world, an unfortunate way to realize the real threat to mankind is other than Israel, and that now – people all over the world will pressure their leaders to fight Islamic terror, and the media will finally start reporting terror attacks in Israel the same way it reports terror attacks around the world. Sadly – it didn't happen, and Israelophobia is still kicking and screaming.
The world gathered in solidarity with France, with the most beautiful, moving gestures, but showed no such treatment to Israel, which is a victim of the recent wave of terrorism as much (and even more) than Europe. That's because when it comes to Israel, there's a “reason” for the terror attacks (frustration from the occupation, of course,) but when it comes to other countries – terror is a vicious act of religious fundamentalism that must be stopped.
With every terror attack, we think “this is it. Now the Western World will unite against terror.” But sadly Israelophobia gets in the way…
I recently stumbled upon a video of a lecture by journalist and public speaker Dennis Prager, at Oxford University. He was sitting in front of a room full of young men and women and asked the following question: “In the 1930's was there a debate over the following proposition: that Great Britain is a greater threat to peace than Nazi Germany, or if Nazi Germany is a greater threat to peace than Great Britain?” Then, he said: “Nazi Germany was to Britain what Hamas is to Israel. Whether you agree with the Israeli policy or not – it is irrelevant.”
With these words, Prager described the very essence of Israelophobia – even though people would dismiss the idea of Great Britain being a bigger threat to peace than Nazi Germany, or the US a better threat to peace than ISIS, they somehow see Israel as the biggest threat to peace, all the times, anywhere.
This doesn't have a logical explanation. Could be a form of Antisemitism (which is often hidden, even from the person expressing such opinions,) could be blunt ignorance. But the bottom line is that when it comes to Israel – people lose their common sense.
“The Israeli people are much more interested in sending their kids to college, and in living a peaceful life, and making a good living, and inventing more medical and technological devices than they are in fighting wars. Otherwise, this would be the first Free State in history to prefer war to peace, and this is highly unlikely.”
A quick look at any terror organization's covenant would reveal that their main purpose is to turn the world into a religious Muslim society, while seeking the destruction of The West, led by the US. The Hamas covenant, for instance, says: “Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” The proof is out there, they don't even try to hide it, but people prefer to comfortably ignore it. For some reason, it has become trendy to go after Israel.
In his lecture, Prager offers two clever answers to this profound question, of why people still don't see the obvious – that Israel wants peace and terror organizations (In Prager's case –Hamas) want to destroy Israel. The first one is: “There has been a broken moral compass in the intellectual world in the west, in the past 80 or 100 years. It truly calls evil good and good evil.”
The second answer is simply – the media. “Gaza starts a war to kill as many as Israelis as possible, and all you see on TV is dead Gazans. That's all you see. I'm shuttered to think if in WWII…You would have seen far more dead German civilians than dead British civilians. But it takes a very frail moral mind to believe that you determine right and wrong by the number of dead.'
For some reason, people are still appalled by memes showing fabricated news reports of global terror attacks similar to actual reports of terror attacks in Israel. When people read “8 Saudi Men Die in Plane Accidents” as a reference to September 11, they are furious, but these feelings go away when it comes to the very similar bias reports on terror attacks in Israel. This is also true for military operations – when it's the US attacks in Afghanistan – it is for peace, but when Israel attacks in Gaza – it's because Israelis are evil.
This is how the Israelophobia logic works. Only question is – is there a cure?
Watch Prager's talk: