The deranged times we find ourselves in

DAVID SAKS

Since the other’s mind is working along completely different lines, he will not follow your logic – all he will realise is that you are going against something about which he is completely convinced, and will become increasingly agitated.

Some by now have probably guessed where I am going with this. The local response to the latest act in the Israel-Gaza black comedy was underpinned throughout by a spirit of mass irrationality, driven by blind emotion, group-think and heaven knows what other darker impulses.

The media more than did its part in driving the feeding frenzy and yet again university academics, who theoretically should have been the ones to provide a degree of balance and perspective, were among the worst offenders.

How would world Jewry react were the roles of the protagonists in the Israel-Gaza conflict to be reversed? In this scenario, the Jews are the ones living in Gaza and carrying out continual missile attacks against the Palestinian population of Israel.

This they do, despite being hopelessly outmatched in a military sense, and in the sure knowledge that they will get the worst of it when the other side retaliates. Further than this, Jewish militants have based their operations in the very heartland of the civilian population, sometimes even using shuls, yeshivot and hospitals for that purpose.

What this inevitably mean, is that no matter how many precautionary measures the Palestinians take, it will be impossible to avoid civilian casualties when they target those carrying out attacks against them.

The Jewish leadership even calls on the population to ignore prior warnings by the Palestinian military that attacks in their areas are imminent. Then, when the Palestinian counter-offensive gets underway and the body count begins to rise, the Jews appeal to the world at large to punish those who are committing “genocide” against them.

We know very well how Jews would react in the event of such a bizarre situation unfolding. Instead of working ourselves into a seething frenzy against the Palestinians, they would deplore and condemn the reckless, utterly immoral behaviour of the Jewish leaders for having thus brought disaster upon their own people.

There is nothing extraordinary about this. When people you genuinely care about are acting in an irrational, self-destructive manner, the natural reaction is to implore them to desist. No such calls, however, have been made on the part of those purporting to be concerned about the people of Gaza. Instead, they were silent when hundreds of missiles were falling on Israeli cities and likewise failed to express concern over how these attacks were being conducted from heavily populated civilian areas.

Only when the war commenced and noncombatants began dying, did the cries of “genocide” and images of mutilated Palestinian babies start flying around the world. What it demonstrates beyond doubt – and not for the first time – is that those currently howling for Israel’s blood do not care about Palestinian lives at all, but are in reality driven by an implacable animus against the Jewish state. 

Jew-baiters have always found that the most effective way of inciting the mob against the Jews is to accuse the latter of murdering gentile babies. Today, the Blood Libel of Mediaeval times lives on in the “baby killer” charges levelled against Israel.

Hamas, by forcing Israel to respond to their attacks and placing their own people in the firing line, are engineering the deaths of their own children, but instead of being condemned for this, they are being rewarded with propaganda victories.  

This is the “spirit of mass irrationality” I referred to earlier. What has also become apparent over the past month is that far from having an ameliorating effect, the putting forward of counter-arguments in defence of Israel, only provokes more rage. Moreover, it is providing the other side with an identifiable target, namely mainstream Jewry and its leadership.

In my 18 years at the SAJBD, I have never seen anything like the outpouring of raw hatred against our community, which now comes not just from Muslims, but increasingly from blacks as well. In addition to variations on the “Hitler was right theme”, the language against Jews who speak out for Israel, is becoming distinctly threatening.

“How much longer must we allow Nazis masquerading as SA Zionists under the @sajbd in our country?”, a tweet emanating from the Young Communist League of SA, is a typical example.

The Western Cape branch of Cosatu has gone so far as to give the SAJBD an ultimatum: Either to stop propagating its Zionist “lies” in defiance of what the majority of the population believes, or face a Cosatu-led boycott of its members, funders and supporting organisations. A deadline for compliance was even set – August 7.

Shortly thereafter, the branch’s provincial secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, went a step further, calling for an “eye for an eye” response against the SAJBD every time a Palestinian woman or child is killed. That such overtly fascistic threats can be made in an ostensibly democratic society is a reflection of the frankly deranged times we find ourselves in.