Being 'pro' Israeli does not mean lambasting it at every opportunity

The Elder of Ziyon who often gives excellent analysis of current events has published a couple of thoughtful posts as to what it means to be 'pro' Israel. Those who use this term about themselves whilst serving up criticism of Israel don't seem to belong in that category.

Howard Jacobson the writer and critic has dealt with this theme a number of times, using the analogy of writing a critique of a book. When doing so he will not just inform the reader about the bits he disliked, but will also say what he liked about a book. Someone who just denigrates Israel without being able to contemplate anything positive about it is not a critic but a demoniser.

Although you mustn't allow yourself toever call a demoniser an anti-semite, they all to often are just that.

Jacobson takes an anti-semitic playwriter Caryl Churchill to task over her play updating the blood liber for a new era in her ‘Seven Jewish Children’:

Thus lie follows lie, omission follows omission, until, in the tenth and final minute, we have a stage populated by monsters who kill babies by design – “Tell her we killed the babies by mistake,” one says, meaning don’t tell her what we really did – who laugh when they see a dead Palestinian policeman (“Tell her they’re animals … Tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out”), who consider themselves the “chosen people”, and who admit to feeling happy when they see Palestinian “children covered in blood”.

At least Churchill doesn't portray herself as being somehow 'pro' Israel. Although it would be an uphill task considering she has about as much credibility as Dr Joseph Goebels. Similarly any 'pro'-Israel critic who has nothing good to say about Israel is merely attempting to use a false flag in order to better to demonise Israel. The line of thinking of this type of person runs along the lines of “if even someone who is pro-Israel/a jews could say XYZ about Israel, then Israel must be really bad. Arab accusations must be right if even 'pro' israelis/jews confirm their stories.”

In the past I was prepared to listen to the evidence, even give credence to arab claims against harsh treatment at the hands of Israel, but nowadays my default mode is first that "they are lying, Pallywood, invented.....". Only after those thoughts do I even begin to consider the claim, such as just where they are lying, whether there is any kernel of truth in the story at all. Normally, once i've checked the allegation out it turns out to be yet another interminable arab gripe, part of the old hatred of the jew and an inability to emerge from it. It is bound up with arab and islamic culture, of blood feuds, revenge, aspirations of the great myth of a muslim/arab 'nation', of honour and its associated killings, and shame and............

The latest attack on jews living in Judea and Samaria is to accuse them of burning mosques. And again gullible journalists even Israelis swallowed the story hook, line and sinker. It is so easy to demonise jewish settlers.

But in this recent case it is becoming increasingly evident that settlers were not involved in the zangaria mosque burning. A claim written on the burnt Zangaria mosque that it was a 'price tag' attack was malicious.