Blame Israel first

When in doubt, blame Israel that sometimes is called the "blame Israel first" mentality <ref namePodhoretz/> <ref name"Barnhart2007"/><ref name="Chafets2008"/> or "Israel Derangement Syndrome" or simply "Israel did it"<ref name="Israel did it"/> is a tendency that prevails in the Arab world, and is prevalent among Western and Israeli far left and United Nations. They all accuse Israel (known in the Arab world as the "Zionist entity"), whenever anything bad happens in the Middle East including but not limited to the problems in Arab countries own internal affairs.
As José María Aznar a former Prime Minister of Spain says:
In only a few recent examples Israel's "involvement" could not have been "ruled out" in neither disrupting broadcast of 2010 FIFA World Cup by Al-Jazeera network <ref name=ynetnews/> nor in shark attacks in Egypt. <ref nameDiscover/> Israel is blamed for increasing number of incidents of Palestinians beating their wifes,<ref namewifes/> and for Nile basin dispute.<ref name=Nile/>
Even the revolution in Tunis allegedly had Israel's connection. Anthony Shadid writes in The New York Times: "Yet the street protests erupted when Arabs seemed more frustrated than ever, whether over rising prices and joblessness or resentment of their leaders’ support for American policies or ambivalence about Israeli campaigns in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009."<ref name=Tunis/>
Eric Hoffer on Jews and Israel
Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. In May of 1968 about a year after Six Days War has ended he wrote an article named "ISRAEL 'S PECULIAR POSITION.." It was published in Los Angeles Times on May 26, 1968. In his article Hoffer wrote:
Hoffer asks why "everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world" and why Israel, should sue for peace after her victory.<ref name=Hoffer/>
Interview of Ahmed Sheikh in Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche
In 2006 Ahmed Sheikh, a Palestinian journalist and the current editor-in-chief of the Qatar-based television channel Al Jazeera gave an interview to correspondent Pierre Heumann of Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche based in Zürich.
Ahmed Sheikh, who explains that in "Arab culture" a suicide attack is called a "commando attack" and is "precisely not suicide"<ref name=Sheikh1/>. In this interview Sheikh agrees that there are many issues with the state of Arab countries' economies, that "the rich get richer and the poor get still poorer", and that the public schools and public hospitals are in a very poor shape. In Sheikh's opinion Israel is responsible for most of these problems. When asked by Heumann, if he meant "to say that if Israel did not exist, there would suddenly be democracy in Egypt, that the schools in Morocco would be better, or that the public clinics in Jordan would function better?", Sheikh responded without any hesitation:"I think so." Then the interview continued like this:
Victor Davis Hanson, who wrote a commentary about the interview asking:
"Where alone in the Middle East is there his dream of an Arab middle class of sorts? Where do Arabs have good schools? And where is there adequate medical care?" and answers:"Ask the over one million Palestinians who live in a democratic Israel."<ref name="Israel did it"/>
Conference on Middle East issues in Jordan
In April of 2007 the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan and the American Enterprise Institute co-sponsored a conference to discuss the issues of bringing democracy to Middle East. The idea of the conference was the exchange of opinions between moderate Arabs and Westerners on how to improve the situation in Iraq, Iran and Middle East in general. David Brooks, who attended the conference was disappointed by tendency of Arab speakers to blame everything on the Israel lobby. In The New York Times Brooks writes:
Brooks describes how American attendees tried to make their Arab friends to speak about other about the causes of the problems, for example "the Sunni-Shiite split, the Iraqi civil war and the rise of Iran", but Arabs continued talking about Israel: "They mimicked a speech King Abdullah of Jordan recently delivered before United States Congress, in which he scarcely mentioned the Iraqi chaos on his border. It was all Israel, all the time."<ref name="A War of Narratives"/>
Israeli and western left and UN
Norman Podhoretz writes: "Nor did being on the Left entail the blame-Israel-first mentality that by now has become as widespread among Israeli intellectuals as anti-Americanism was in the United States in the days of Vietnam".<ref name=Podhoretz/>
Zev Chafets attributes the "blame Israel first" mentality common in far left Jews to a phenomena that got the name "self-hating Jew"<ref name="Chafets2008"/>
Elhanan Yakira, who is a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, granted an interview to Elliot Jager from Jewish Ideas Daily. The professor, who is against Israeli settlements,could be considered left on his own, yet even he is outraged by some accusations of Israeli left, who are accusing Zionism of being "guilty of "original sin."" In the interview Elhanan Yakira brings the names of a few anti-Israeli Israeli left: "Haifa-born Ilan Pappe, who now teaches in England, completely embraces the Palestinian narrative. There is Yehuda Shenhav, who has a new book out challenging the right of Israel to exist even within the 1967 "Green Line." I devote part of my book to Adi Ophir, former editor of the post-modernist Hebrew journal Theory and Criticism and an academic at Tel Aviv University and the Shalom Hartman Institute. There is also Oren Yiftachel at Ben-Gurion University, who speaks of Zionism as a "colonialism of refugees" and "creeping apartheid." Then there is the Haaretz crowd, including Amira Hass and Gideon Levy."<ref name=left/>
The professor was asked about his incoming book:
Most of the times the left completely ignore the violation of human rights in any other country but Israel. Victor Davis Hanson writes: "Jimmy Carter, silent about Iran’s latest promotion for its planned holocaust, is hawking his latest book — in typical fashion, sorta, kinda alleging that the Israelis are like the South Africans in perpetuating an apartheid state, that they are cruel to many Christians, and, as occupiers, are understandably the targets of suicide bombers and other terrorist killers."<ref name="Israel did it"/>
In her article published in The Daily Telegraph named Toronto International Film Festival succumbs to Israel Derangement Syndrome Stephanie Gutmann describes how Jane Fonda, Danny Glover, Ken Loach, Wallace Shawn together with a thousand other demonstrated against "the festival’s decision to become “complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine”". All that noise was about the festival going to include "a focus on film-making in the city of Tel Aviv." The protestors did not care there was no mention of Israel on the festival's web site. They did not care Israeli film industry has nothing to do with Israeli government. They did not care that in spite of a low budget Israeli films makers were able to make great films, some of which got Best Foreign Film Oscar, Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and other awards. All they cared about was that the festival's organizers would not become "complicit in the Israeli government’s sinister attempts to “change negative perceptions.”" <ref name=Toronto/>
In her book Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law Nonie Darwish asks how United Nations could always blame only Israel for the violations of human rights, if during a few years, when Jerusalem Old City was under rules of Arabs no Jew was allowed to visit the Wailing Wall, the place that is as important for Jews as Mecca is for Muslims. <ref name=Darwish/>
Some other opinions
Salim Mansur, who is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, writes: "It is as if the plight of Palestinian "occupation" by Israelis explains the Sudanese civil wars and genocide in Darfur, or the savage killings inside Algeria, or the long list of atrocities, gender oppression, humiliation of religious minorities, wars, military dictatorships, and with no end in sight of violence and murder in the name of Islam across the Arab world.It is sheer absurdity to hold Israelis responsible for the utterly dysfunctional nature of the Arab world."<ref name=Mansur/>
While writing about Jews Mansur adds: "Their story is a gift to the Arab-Muslim world as it is to be found in the Qur'an if only Arabs and Muslims understood either".<ref name=Mansur/>
Rami George Khouri believes that "allocating blame" is counterproductive. Writing for ' he states that "Zionist colonization, provides an important impetus for opposition movements in Arab countries that seek to resist Israel and its Western backers (Islamist movements, the leading opposition forces in the Arab world, tellingly direct their criticisms equally against Arab governments, Israel, the U.S. and other Western powers). This causes domestic tensions that have seen most Arab countries move toward military-minded autocracies, if not outright dictatorships, which in turn usually results in widespread corruption, misallocation of economic resources, and under-utilization of human capital because most Arab citizens, with very few exceptions, are not allowed or encouraged by their governments to use all their energies, knowledge and creativity." Still he acknowledges that "We end up with a situation in which it becomes easy for Arabs to blame Israel and the Western powers for the problems of our region." and believes that "the truth is in between, with Arab, Israel and Western actors all having to share the blame for contributing to the distressing conditions that define the Arab world."<ref name="Daily Star"/>

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu