Pilgerian propaganda

So, according to John Pilger, 6.5 million Jews on a tiny piece of semi-desert set amongst 300 million Arab-Muslims is the 4^th largest military power in the world (M & G, 14 March). I suppose it all depends on how one defines military power, but Pilger in full propaganda mode couldn’t be bothered with such niceties.

Nevertheless, given the undoubted punch of Israel’s military hardware the death of 120 Gazans (mainly terrorists to give them their proper name) following years of rocket and mortar attacks, represents a triumph of almost inhuman restraint, skill and grim determination to minimise civilian casualties.

Why a single decent car bomb in Baghdad or a crowded Pakistani street market exceeds that. Imagine what Israel could do if it wanted to.

But of course, as any sane person knows, Israel wants nothing more than to be left alone. Contrary to Pilger’s idiotic suggestion that Israel has an interest in the destruction of Palestinian society and the creation of more violent militants on its borders, it prays only for simple normality.

For this reason it withdrew fully from Gaza handing over a host of functional facilities as inducement to the Gazan population to create a viable state. These were promptly destroyed by fanatics and thugs to ensure that such sanity would never emerge to mitigate their apocalyptic vision of endless war until Israel itself was destroyed.

Thus, Israel is constantly goaded and threatened by suicide bombers, rockets and mortars directed indiscriminately at its civilian population so that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the other terror groups flourishing in that benighted region, can present their Western allies and their own population with the necessary civilian casualties for propaganda purposes.

This strategy also suits some of the states in the region who play the dangerous but profitable game of keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the boil in pursuit of their own regional and global ambitions.

And the surviving remnants of the Stalinist Left in the West have a new cause: to reverse the hundred years of heroic Zionist struggle culminating in the creation of a tiny democratic oasis in the Middle East and the recognition of Israel as an independent state by the United Nations. What a glorious victory that would be.

There is little doubt that history will see the systematic demonisation of Israel as a yet another chapter in the long history of anti-semitism, fully consonant with the vile lies and myths preceeding the Holocaust.

But there is one thing that has changed; Jews will never again go quietly to their destruction. Israel will persist despite its enemies and despite the fears, doubts and imperfections of its own people. It will also persist because decent people everywhere will eventually turn against the purveyors of hatred and death.

Mike Berger