Sanchez is a third-year economics student.
By Armando Sanchez
The most fortunate thing about the submission, “Enough
is enough: truth about Israeli conflict must be told,” (Daily
Bruin, Viewpoint, May 29) by Ben Shapiro is that he immediately
alerted his readers not to expect a balanced analysis by initially
declaring his intention to present only one side of the story.
Indeed, he introduced his piece with the particularly bold
rejection of objectivity by declaring that there literally is no
truth outside of his own position, a rather remarkable approach if
one expects to be taken seriously.
From that point on, the reader expects, and is duly subjected
to, the standard 53-year-old rant against the indigenous people of
Palestine and any who object to their dispossession.
There is little worth responding to in this regurgitation of
Zionist propaganda. The most interesting aspect about it, is how
even young generations of Israeli loyalists in America like Ben
Shapiro continue to suspend the intellectual integrity and
independence normally associated with youth in order to parrot such
outdated and repudiated notions about the Zionist state which are
even largely obsolete inside Israel itself.
Zionists of the sort represented by Shapiro, including their
oblivious and fanatically programmed grist for the settlements are,
in fact, rather disliked in Israel as extremists. They are not
really suitable for internal Israeli society which would prefer to
disassociate their peculiar country from the ultra-orthodox
religious rhetoric of the likes of Meir Kahane and his
reality-challenged ilk, and would rather adopt the western European
nation-state model favored by Israel’s European Jewish
founders, mostly secularists.
As mentioned, there is little need to respond to the specific
claims in Shapiro’s submission; the lack of substantiation,
as well as the initial declaration of bias sufficiently discredits
his piece.
Odd and academically ludicrous references to “the betrayal
of the Jews” reveal Shapiro’s unselfconscious
ideological underpinnings. He refers to broadcasts by “Arab
radio stations” without naming them or a single source. He
quotes an obscure Lebanese newspaper in New York, citing only the
year in which the provided quote is supposed to have appeared,
perhaps because it was an unresearched reference discovered in all
likelihood while hurriedly surfing the Internet to become an expert
on the history of the Middle East.
The most striking features of Shapiro’s submission are
both its intellectual frailty, and in contrast, how thoroughly he
himself appears to be convinced by it; indicative always of deep
indoctrination.
Of course the necessary sense of entitlement is present
throughout, being the fundamental characteristic of Zionism itself.
For example he states that “the nations of the world saw that
the Jews needed the homeland that God had promised them millennia
before.” Shapiro also writes with the ingrained feeling of
Israeli infallibility as well, especially when he refers to
USAC’s discussion of a resolution condemning Zionism and
Israel.
Shapiro writes, “That resolution shouldn’t have had
to be voted down; it should have been immediately struck from the
agenda.” I guess Israel must be beyond scrutiny.
It is worth noting that Shapiro does not in fact refute that the
Palestinian population is indigenous, and was dispossessed of their
land.
It apparently does not occur to him that this dispossession
should actually be regarded as offensive since the Palestinians are
in his view interchangeable with any other Arab peoples, without a
unique cultural identity or connection to their historical
homeland. According to Shapiro, “they were identical to the
Arabs of neighboring states.”
I guess because they are identical, they therefore could be
transferred at will to accommodate the immigrant Jewish population,
who incidentally shared no common characteristics with any other
people in the region ““ not culture, nor language nor
religion.
This is the most telling aspect of most Zionist propaganda; it
very often confesses the brutal truth of the theft of Palestine,
quite simply because the level of indoctrination is such that it
does not appear, to the Zionist, to be a confession.