Actually, almost no one should be surprised that a member in high standing of the “human rights internationale” and a Scandinavian besides resorts to such scummy language when talking about Israel. The London headquarters of the world-wide organization seemed to be in a panic, as reported by Benjamin Weinthal in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post. AI’s spokesperson took umbrage at the criticisms and said that the culprit, Frank Johnansson, had only said that Israel was a “creep state,” as if that were much of an improvement.
In any case, Finnish experts said that the “highly derogatory term” is most often translated as “scum” or “scum bag” or “douche bag.” Oh, how the human rights internationale contributes to a better world. By the way, Johansson relies on extraordinary evidence for his views. His opinions are “based on my own visits, which occurred during the 1970s and for the last time in the 1990s.”
This news from the pretentious and portentous NGO establishment came on the same day that Tony Blair, coordinator of the Quartet’s efforts at peacemaking, denounced the “delegitimization of Israel” as an “affront to humanity.” This speech was reported by Herb Keinon in the same issue of the same newspaper.
You know exactly what he means by this affront. And the affront filters down to the American press and the British press, in which there are blogsters (including, alas, former editors of this magazine) who have been seized by the putative evil that Israel does. If you think that I am fixated on Israel please consider that it is only in response to the idée fixe of a whole commando squad of fashionable and mostly, but not all, ignorant writers about the Jewish state. Let me assure that, however inadequate their knowledge of Israel and the Jews, they are far more ignorant of Palestine and the Arabs of Palestine. Still, ignorance does not stop them from issuing moral dicta. Take, for example, Nicholas Kristof. But in what else does Kristof deal than such dicta?
But let me give you an example. The hysteria that followed the flotilla confrontation on the Mediterranean -in which nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed- has now resulted in two, yes two, probes by the United Nations. Israel is cooperating with one of these. The other (the one that is being conducted by the Israel-obsessed and Israel-possessed U.N. Human Rights Council) expends almost all its efforts on the conflict. It is as if truly ghoulish and unprovoked atrocities are not being carried out by Arabs and Muslims, both in power and out, every day in at least half the world. It is as if the lives of these victims of fierce and religiously sanctioned hatred are worth nothing.