Sunday, November 15, 2009

"1967 was a turning point in global attitudes to Israel"

“I believed it all. When the Life Magazine cover came out after the 1967 war, with the Israelis on the tank, I thought, This is really a miracle. The people who were almost wiped out in the Holocaust have been reborn. They’re so goodlooking, and they have kibbutzes, they’re on the land, and they won’t be defeated. I never thought that it involved displacing other people. I’ve come to think that I was brainwashed.”

6 comments:

  1. Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories, film claims

    50% of MPs in the shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel members, according to Channel 4's Dispatche


    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/16/pro-israel-lobby-conservatives-channel4-dispatches

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  2. My goodness.

    Hague fell out with CFI after describing Israel's 2006 attack on Lebanon – in retaliation for a Hezbollah raid – as "disproportionate" and allegedly faced threats to withdraw funding from Lord Kalms, a major Tory donor and CFI member, the film reports.
    Cameron later gave an undertaking not to use the word again, the programme claims. At a CFI dinner this June the party leader made no mention of the death toll in the Gaza war – 1,370 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. Instead he commended Israel because "it strives to protect innocent life".

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  3. Now that is informed decisiion making: She looked at a picture on the cover of Life magazine before making up her mind about an issue. I guess if an issue is really close to her heart, she may actually open the magazine and look at a few pictures inside before decing where she stands.

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  4. Well joe if you read what Philip Weiss wrote about this woman who's a close friend of his you'd see that he describes her as "ferociously intelligent" or something like that. So maybe the issue is a little bit more complex than just looking at a Life magazine cover.. A brainwashing machine has been working full time before and after. But the upside of the story is that she's waking up now.

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  5. Thanks vza. I made it a post.

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  6. I have to admit that it was the '67 war that changed my opinion. Although the Suez debacle of 1956 had revealed that Israel wasn't the little David menaced by Goliath that we'd been led to believe, and showed her willingness to do the west's dirty work in the Middle East, I still thought there were saving graces. I honestly believed that the Israeli economy was based entirely on kibbutzim. That and the fact that refugees from Nazism were given a chance to rebuild their lives made it all worth giving the Israelis a break. We were also fed the line that the Palestinians had voluntarily left their homes rather than share the land with Jews.
    I don't know, maybe the Israeli propaganda machine was more effective 40+ years ago. 

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