Gaza and Israel, the Frenzy and the Fury

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The recent fighting in Gaza has sparked off a plethora of extremely hostile and aggressive article-writing and comment-posting on various western general-interest public news sites, some of which I have visited today.

First of all, it seems that around 70% of articles are anti-Israeli in orientation, and the comments on them appear to be a little more balanced in proportion, with many pro/anti-one-side-or-the-other ‘discussions’, for want of a better word. Fine.

What horrifies me though, is the sheer quantity and exacerbated extremity of the verbal violence and invective used in criticism levelled at Israel and Jews, as well as anyone who dares to speak up in their defence. My opinion on the Gaza issue is known, that is to say that there is blame to be laid on both sides. However, my opinion is not the subject of this post, so therefore nothing in it is designed to deny any wrongdoing on either side. 

Violent anti-Muslim sentiment also exists, of course, but it is swamped by the quantity of violent Anti-Jewish rhetoric. That is why I have chosen to concentrate on that alone. I am not Jewish.

Terms commonly used abusively or incorrectly include “mass slaughter, genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, facist, nazi, pogrom, third reich, holocaust, imperialist, barbarism and extermination”, to name but a few. Personal insult and invective is rife, lists of insulting qualifying adjectives instead of information are the norm, accusations of ignorance, stupidity, partiality (partiality?!), lying and sympathy with child-killers are commonplace, laughable ‘proof’ abounds of sometimes imaginary incidents, the misuse, cropping and incorrect naming of images is common, people often find their slanderous comments cut or taken off sites where that’s a policy and, finally, some writers even find themselves with their pages taken down. The atmosphere is nauseous and deleterious.

All of this is no more than intellectual facism and terrorism, and I for one want to call it by its name.

But, strangely enough, these people are the same ones who, when writing or commenting on other conflicts, are often polite, informed, balanced and cultivated in their manner of expression. 

So what is it about this conflict that temporarily transforms otherwise sane people into rabid and propaganda-throwing morons?

These writers generally do not use these terms in relation to other conflicts in the world with much higher casualty figures and levels of cruelty, such as the Tamil conflict, the Congo, Somalia, Chechnya, as well as the interreligious conflicts in India and elsewhere, apart from those who, understandably, are from the regions concerned and thus directly affected. Nevertheless, what goes on in some of these conflicts could easily be compared to what is happening in the Gaza-Israel conflict in some aspects, and thus described in the same vicious terms by those writers from other world regions who so readily apply them to Israel. But they deign not to...

Moreover, much of the aggressive criticism comes from people who, according to their web profiles, are not Jewish or Muslim activists, or from Israel or Arab countries, or even Jewish or Muslim!! This is astounding. In fact I’d go as far as to say that the type of anti-semitic sentiment expression used here in the West can often be even more violent than that to be found in some predominantly Muslim countries.

I do know what does NOT constitute an explanation though. The right of Israel (or Palestine) to exist or not does not explain it, because there are many other long-standing conflicts where the phenomena of territorial rights are central to the reasons they started. Nor is the strategic importance of the Gaza conflict an issue, quite simply because those who write so aggressively rarely talk about Gaza’s middle-east impact themselves!! Nor can they say that they are ‘revolted’ by Israel’s conduct. After all, they do not express the same ‘revulsion’ when it comes to other, far more cruel, conflicts. Neither is a wish for peace the reason. I even get the impression that some of these people are going to be really fed up at having to look for someone else to hate if ever the Israel/Palestine conflict is resolved.

So what IS the reason?

I have nothing against criticism of Israel. I have criticised Israel myself, here, and elsewhere, but the purpose of this article was to ask what explains the extreme level of race/religious hatred and bigotry mentioned above. At the end of the day, it appears to me that only those who indulge in such fanatical and hysterical methods when discussing Gaza and Israel could tell us. But they won’t, because many of them do not even understand why they do it themselves, whereas others do, but don’t have the courage to say so out loud…