Tags
Ahmed al-Jarba, anti-Semitism, cynical rhetoric, political, politics, propaganda, Putin, Syria, Ukraine
From Syria with No Love for Jews
“The Diaspora” (Al-Shatat), a Syrian-produced TV series, aired last year during the Ramadan on Al-Manar (Hizbollah TV) is now being aired on Iranian TV. The series covers the period of the Zionist movement, and is primarily a depiction of the classic anti-Semitic libel that attributes to Jews the desire for world domination. The series revolves around the “Secret Jewish World Government . . . .”
* * *
The Syrian National Coalition recently released a statement denouncing what it perceived to be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s media exploitation of Israel’s medical care for wounded Syrian in the Golan area.
Calling it “nothing more than a publicity gimmick”, the statement from the SNC’s media center went on to say that “the Israeli entity stood against the Syrian uprising from the start”, and that wounded Syrian civilians were “forcedly [sic] taken to Israeli hospitals and are being employed today for marketing their political agenda”.
For the Sake of Syria, the Political Opposition Has to Grow Up » From Homs to Istanbul – 2/20/2014.
Remember the unholy troika: Putin-Assad-Khamenei.
Khamenei’s regime appears to enthusiastically endorse the most libelous and medieval of depictions of The Jew, but today with a television show.
One may have hoped that the “moderate” revolutionary side would prove itself more enlightened, idealistic, and just in relation to its views about Jews and others in contrast to the rants and slants of Bashar al-Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei — and the helpful Russian who keeps his mouth wisely shut in this regard even as he maintains the post-Soviet architecture that has so far lengthened Assad’s tyrannical stay.
While Syrian National Coalition leader Ahmed al-Jarba calls for arms supply from the west, sustaining the self-defeating anti-Zionist creed and its correlates would appear to sustain also the coalition’s agony.
If Jarba’s begging arms while remaining anti-west, anti-Jew, anti-Israel, he may continue begging because those interests — democratic, modern, west, also informed by Jewish minorities in concert with others, also represented in the day-to-day politics and spirit of the Jewish State of Israel (which treats Syrian casualties as injured persons, ethically disregarding their politics while in care) — may also wish to be represented in the greater international community arrayed against Assad’s dictatorship in its every hideous aspect.
The reader may judge for himself the tone of the “moderate” revolution through the pages of the Syrian Free Press that purports to represent the main base of the revolution: Netanyahu Calls the Whole World “Anti-Semites” | – 2/24/2014.
Russia’s Leveraging of Anti-Semitic Disinformation in Ukraine Can Only Damage Russia’s Prestige
Putin at the global political poker table has strong cards in Russian anti-Islamist experience and, lately, a neutral to positive stance toward Jews, enabling him, cynically perhaps, to claim better defense of “western values” in Syria (while his client’s snipers paralyze children) and in Ukraine.
While pursuing Russian nationalist imperialism — well, I can’t call it “Soviet” — Putin may now amplify, invent, and portray opposition to Russian expansion as coming from fascist religious or nationalist movements.
It’s an awful strategy, relying as it does on political gaslighting — i.e., planting false information to produce some wanted perception.
What kicked off this rant is this from March 14: Kiev Mob Stabs Rabbi Hillel Cohen in Anti-Semitic Attack (IB Times).
True to thesis, or at least echoed by IB journalist Gianluca Mezoofiore: “The attack plays into the hands of ousted president Viktor Yanukovich’s rhetoric and to that of the Kremlin that Ukraine’s revolutionary movement that removed him is made up of Nazis and extremists.”
In Ukrainian uprising reality, Jews, ever among the oldest of liberation theologians, have played another role:
Balaclava-clad far-right paramilitaries fire into the air at the funeral in Ukraine of an anti-government protestor. This is not a tribute to a fellow right-wing nationalist, but to a Jewish construction worker, Alexander Scherbanyuk.
Of the approximately 100 people killed during the protests in Kiev that swept Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich from power in February, three were Jews, according to Vyacheslav Likhachev, a Ukrainian anti-Semitism expert.
Three Jews among those killed in Ukraine uprising – Jewish World News Israel News | Haaretz – 3/18/2014.
Facebook’s Euromaidan page has a note from February 20 on Alexander Scherbanyuk: “12:00 – Chernivtsi Alexander Scherbanyuk, a Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party member, has been killed. He was killed by a sniper bullet to the heart. Alexander Scherbanyuk, an Afghan, has left behind three children. – “LigaNews”
Of Joseph Shiling, the Voices of Ukraine blog notes, “He was 61. He and his wife Anna raised two daughters, and he has four granddaughters.”
That just doesn’t sound very fascist, nationalist, or particularly “thuggy” to me.
May Grandpa Shiling rest in peace.
The national or religious heritage of those who were killed is, of course, not important in truth. Just as their age, gender, political views aren’t important. Everything is unimportant, except the fact that they are Ukrainians and that they are heroes of Ukraine, who died in its honor while fighting against evil and injustice.
The Jewish Division of Ukraine’s Heaven’s Hundred | Voices of Ukraine – 3/11/2014.
The third Jewish martyr to the revolution: Evgeniy Kotlyar, an environmentalist.
Scary man, huh?
I kid, of course.
The Ukrainian revolutionary government knows it inherits an issue in regard to anti-Semitism, but anti-Semitism does not appear to be its problem but rather a common social issue, the same present in measures small and smaller — a little larger with Jobbik in Hungary — in every political community of the west.
During a special discussion called “The growth of extremism, radicalization and xenophobia”, Nalyvaichenko demonstrated to representatives of the parliamentary delegations of European countries examples of anti-Semitic and xenophobic images and publications on “Berkut” pages in social networks and talked about illegal actions of Special Forces. He noted that in the society, especially among law enforcement agencies, dissemination of information that might incite ethnic hatred and encourage violence against minorities, was unacceptable.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko heads Ukraine’s revolutionary security service.
Thank God.
______
Revolutions develop along two fronts: one is outside the person.
# # #
BackChannels 