Reply to a commenter at “Growing pro-Gaza movement exposes US hypocrisy”, who quotes the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (whose exhibition we saw in Paris around 2016).
“G6二”:
Hear what Ai Weiwei had to sayafter he was "cancelled" for what he said on this platform X....👇
Me:
Ai Weiwei has swallowed the narrative that the establishment of Israel is just "White European Guilt over Holocaust" at the expense of the (poor, victimised) Arabs. No. Theodore Herzl began the Zionist movement in the 19th century, to REestablish the ancestral Jewish homeland in Palestine (which was the name of the home of the Jews until taken over by Yasser Arafat in 1964).Ai Weiwei has also regurgitated the rest of the anti-Semitic litany: Jews running the world, etc. Not to say his show should have been cancelled. But if you're quoting him, G6二, you're also buying into all that nonsense.Next you'll be quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion!
Another thing: this "growing pro-Gaza movement" is on the streets and campuses around the west. Virtually none of the students know what they're protesting about. We've known this since early on. And it hasn't got any better. A young comedian, Zachary Sage offered $100 to any student who could answer five simple questions.
1. What does "From the River to the Sea" mean?
2. What does "Intifada" mean?
3. What does "Zionism" mean?
4. How long has Israel occupied Gaza?
5. How many Palestinian refugees have Arab neighbours taken in.
Not a single student could answer all five questions and most couldn't answer even ONE correctly.
These are pretty simple questions. Foundational to the war. Which if they're protesting, you'd think they'd at least find out. When we were doing anti Vietnam war demos, we did know who the Viet-Cong were, who the North Vietnamese were, who Ho Chi-Minh was. We even had debates about it, at high school. But these precious young things, at prestige universities couldn’t be bothered to talk to Mr Google for five minutes?
And this student ignorance is supposed to "expose the hypocrisy of US leadership", according to resident Post spokes-genius Peter T. C. Chang?
Not that there's no hypocrisy in the U.S. treatment of Israel and Gaza. But dopey students at elite universities isn't it.
What is hypocrisy is Biden saying that he's "got Israel's back" only to turn around and tell Israel to stop chasing its enemy. He's got Israel's back only to paint a target in it.
