Flotilla sickness and the ‘progressive’ mind

Posted By Melanie Phillips On June 11, 2010 @ 3:23 pm In Daily Mail | Comments D
isabled
Jewish Chronicle, 11 June 2010
The flotilla episode provided the trigger for a frenzied demonstration of the wo
rld’s collective loss of mind over Israel.
Israel did what it was entitled to do and what any other country at war would do
: intercept boats that might be carrying weapons for an aggressor regime. Since
six out of the seven intercepted boats then proceeded peacefully to Ashdod where
their cargo was checked, this was demonstrably not an Israeli ‘attack’.
Conversely, as everyone could see from the video evidence, on the main boat the
attack took place against the Israelis — who then killed nine of their jihadi as
sailants solely to protect themselves from being lynched, kidnapped and murdered
.
Yet, for this, Israel has been hysterically denounced across the world for an ac
t of aggression and even piracy — an onslaught, in effect, upon Israel’s right t
o defend itself, without which no country can exist.
The claim that Gaza is starving is the opposite of the truth: its markets are st
acked with produce, and every week Israel allows in thousands of tons of aid acr
oss the border.
As its organiser admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian aid at all bu
t was designed to break the sea blockade — and thus open up a weapons channel fo
r Hamas. This manipulative and mendacious exercise was but the latest attempt to
weaken Israel ready for the slaughter through an ever tightening noose of lies,
demonisation and delegitimisation.
We have endured the fabricated claims of Israeli massacres in Jenin, the 2006 Le
banon war and Cast Lead; the charge that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state, that it
has committed genocide, ethnic cleansing and is starving the people of Gaza; th
at it is the aggressor in the Middle East.
How is it possible that so many believe all these lies? How can so many Jews bel
ieve them? As I have described in my new book, The World Turned Upside Down (ple
ase forgive the commercial) the witch-hunt against Israel is the pivotal example
of the West’s repudiation of reason itself, leading to a widespread inversion o
f truth and lies, justice and injustice, right and wrong.
The ‘progressive’ left-wing intelligentsia now subscribes to a world-view that,
over a wide range of issues, subordinates truth to ideology. This manifests itse
lf in utopian creeds that hold that the world would attain a state of perfection
if only it wasn’t for capitalism/America/ industrialization/men/the nation stat
e/those damned Jews.
Since these creeds are axiomatically the embodiment of virtue, all who dissent m
ust be treated as moral outcasts and their views stifled.
From this Manichean mindset, which decrees that all who are not the left are a)
the right, and b) intrinsically evil, it follows that anyone who challenges the
lies generated by ideological dogma is by definition right-wing and evil. As a r
esult of this knee-jerk name-calling, people dismiss such inconvenient truths ev
en when they stare them in the face.
This terrifying mindset is the left’s default position. That is why this madness
towards Israel is not confined to gentiles. Indeed, even Jews who consider them
selves to have the interests of Israel at heart sometimes tragically end up beli
eving the lies and supporting positions that would destroy it.
Which partly explains why some communal leaders busily suck up to the enemies of
Israel in the faith or political worlds, even telling them on occasion that ‘in
private I agree with you’.
So we find ourselves in this nightmare situation. The Great Flotilla Derangement
has created the impression that, as Iran moves towards completing its genocide
bomb, the rest of the world senses an endgame and is moving in on Israel for the
kill.