Since the start of Operation Protective Edge I have returned to monitoring Daily Kos' conversation around the Arab-Israel conflict.
What I am seeing this time around - as I am sure that pro-Israel Daily Kos members (and former members) would likely agree - is the near total domination of the discussion by anti-Israel voices.
There are a few random pro-Israel Jews still participating, but sometimes they do their part to spread contempt toward Israel, as well.
One example is an individual who goes by the moniker "Red Sox" who I remember from my own time there.
Red Sox says this:
Israel's actions against Gaza defy even the slightest sense of respect for human life...Do they really?
This is a progressive-left pro-Israel person suggesting that Israel has no respect for human life and doing so in an anti-Israel, and increasingly anti-Jewish, political environment.
Either Red Sox believes this is true, in which case he is ignorant, or he is so dependent upon progressive-left group approval that he would spit at Israel in order to gain credence as a voice to be listened to.
Whatever the reason, the IDF demonstrably does more than any army in human history to prevent civilian casualties when it conducts military operations. Since when are armies in the habit of alerting the enemy civilian population of incoming strikes onto enemy installations in order to limit collateral damage? This was invented by Israel as a general policy and one can argue about the effectiveness or wisdom of the policy, but it clearly shows a respect for human life.
Here is a video of an IDF aircraft calling off a strike on a military target because of the presence of civilians during the current Gaza operation.
So, how is it possible that someone like Red Sox, a supporter of Israel, could defame the Jewish State in front of a hostile non-Jewish audience?
I do not have a definitive answer, but I certainly have my suspicions.
The main one being that when we swim with a school of fish we tend to share their diet.
Yeah, it's something I've of course noticed, too.
ReplyDeleteI feel like a dinosaur there anymore, what with probably something like 90% of my pro-Israel and / or Jewish friends from just a couple years ago there now being long gone, either having been banned or having left on their own due to rampant antisemitism, for which I can't blame them.
I only feel bad that I can't post there more often, because I really don't have the time to dedicate to it.
Once I post a diary, I like to be able to be around regularly for at least the next few hours, and to be able to check in for the next couple days (because as any pro-Israel poster knows, it's between 24 - 36 hours later when the really vicious antisemites creep in and try to take over, when they, mostly correctly, assume that everybody else has since stopped looking). I just don't have that kind of time at the moment, but I do what I can when I can.
So many times I end up 'recommending' a comment after spending a couple minutes going back and forth on it. Sometimes it's like half spot-on, half "what the fuck on earth do you mean by that?"
I would never click 'rec' on the comment you highlight here, but yeah. It's a good example of what we're left dealing with there.
Aside from people like me, of course, who piss off dozens, probably even some of my friends sometimes, with refusing to give an inch to the bigots. Heh.
And I'm at the point there now where I could post a photo diary on a Kensington community garden in fifteen minutes (the kind of stuff I did there for years, before I became A Known Zionist(tm)), and have 16 people screaming at me about how evil Israel and I are within the next 30 minutes.
Haters gonna hate, though, brah. ;)