Germany’s leading Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the opposition Christian Democratic Party (CDU) have ordered high schools in Berlin’s borough of Neukolln to distribute brochures titled The Myth of Israel #1948.
The brochure states there are five “myths” around the creation of the state of Israel, which are subsequently refuted in short essays by various authors.
In the first section, debunking myth #1, that Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before Israel was founded, Israel’s pre-state militia, the Haganah, responsible for the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians between December 1947 and the summer of 1948, is promoted as a merely “defensive” Jewish resistance movement.
“Myth #5: Israel is to blame for the Nakba”, includes a text by researcher Shany Mor titled “the UN is distorting the meaning of the Nakba: its view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extremely one-sided”.
In the text, Mor states that “displacement during war - then and now - was nothing unusual”.
He also labels the UN’s attention to the Palestinian cause “obsessive” and the Arab defeat of 1948 a myth.
The brochure.
This is for the most part a very good brochure and the uninformed people here that only read a faulty summary or headline should probably read it, then make up their mind instead of being instinctively angry. Especially the part where it talks about the misconceptions with the typical „expansion comparison maps“ and what they really show was informative.
The very first paragraphs conflates “Israel-oriented Antisemitism” (?), goes on with “Prejudice against the Jewish state” (defining Israel as a jewish Ethnostate / Nationalism and conflating criticism against a regime or ideology with racist prejudice) and then mentions “colonial rule, apartheid state and occupation” as examples of this antisemitism manifesting itself on the street, media, politics, academia.
Whatever else comes after, it’s being framed with that. That is how the propaganda works, say a bunch of conflating nonsense and then justify it with non-sequitur historical facts - which might well be true in order to “validate” the initial point they are making:
Any criticism of Israel’s fascist regime is antisemitism. If that intro isn’t about antisemitism understood as outlined, what else would it be about?
That leaflet is very well crafted fascist apologia / propaganda. No matter how many other points they are making that might be accurate or informative (not that you should trust them either after that intro).
Are we reading the same link? You’re doing quite some mind acrobatics here by picking various small quotes/passages from only the start of the text and putting your own spin on it. This narrative is in your head, not in the article.
Not sure how to argue this better. But how do you interpret these phrases? Like what are they supposed to mean otherwise?
And why is it distributed now? As a seeming response to condemnation of apparent genocide, even just changing the subject is a form of propaganda. Are we supposed to learn and debate history while a people is exterminated?
And what does all that or the rest have to do with criticism against the policies and war crimes of the Government of Israel? None of Israel’s history precludes a fascist government taking over Israel.
I‘m fine with discussion. But I see little value in discussing a text with someone who has not read it. We don’t have to guess their intentions when they already wrote it down quite clearly. Neither do I see a reason to doubt their intentions based on timing. Antisemitism (violence against Jews) in Germany has been sharply on the rise in the last few years and it is the job of the Landeszentrale to debunk some of the myths that foster it.
The main point of the paper is to correct these five myths about Israel and that is what it does. It is very focused on this and one-sided, obviously. One might think it is bad taste to ignore current events. Maybe. But it does exactly what it says and I found it informative.
Yes. That might be a good first step. It takes about one hour. There is much one can critique Israel for - let’s stick to the truths.