On 3 February there appeared in the local paper of record, the Sydney Morning Herald (Independent. Always), a number of letters regarding Israel and Gaza. The first opines:

… the more often people hear lies and see troubling incidents like violence and vandalism associated with Jews, the more likely people are to blame Jews for causing those troubles, regardless of the truth.

A sub-editor attached an AP-credited photograph of a devastated Gaza with the caption ‘Destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Gaza’.

Is this seeming carnage a fabricated Hamas photoshop of a functioning Gaza Strip, a propaganda vehicle to blame Jews for ‘troubling incidents like violence and vandalism’?

No, the carnage is real, as attested by the next letter:

… Israel says it bombed these buildings [homes, schools and hospitals] because Hamas was using them for military purposes. In my opinion, it’s Hamas’s human-shield tactics that were actually intolerable.

Hamas operatives were actually behind every person and every building and edifice (including the bulging cemeteries) so that every square inch of Gaza had to be obliterated! The task continues.

The third letter confirms:

… these schools, hospitals and apartment buildings were used by Hamas to store weaponry and shield their combatants. The IDF claims it did all in its power to mitigate civilian harm but it appears Hamas was quite willing to sacrifice its people in pursuit of their goals.

These statements are preposterous rubbish. But whence do they come?

The Australian Jewish ‘faith’ school system contributes (‘The elephant in the Zionist classroom’, Pearls & Irritations) – where its indoctrination of a ‘love of Israel’ into vulnerable minds competes for supremacy with Jewish ethics, supposedly universal. University Departments of Jewish studies further the indoctrination.

From long indifference to the Palestine-Israel issue, my interest and concern was aroused precisely by a spate of crazy op-eds and letters which insulted my intelligence. The propaganda served not to persuade but to repel me. The occasion was the mortal illness and death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004. I wrote an account of the local mainstream media hysteria at the time (‘Arafat in Australian Media’, ZNet).

The crazy letters are standard fare in the mainstream media – the authors evidently have no trouble getting them printed in tightly controlled letters pages. I have no such luck.

The themes? God promised Israel to the Jews. We were there first and have remained there since. The UN partitioned Palestine in 1947 – the Zionists accepted it but the Arabs rejected it when the Palestinians could have had their own state. The land is ours because we conquered it in war. Palestinians deny Israel’s right to exist. Israel has made myriad peace offers but the offers have been refused. Give them an inch and they want a mile. The Palestinians know only terrorism. Palestinian schoolbooks socialize children into hating Jews. The Palestinians prefer perpetual victimhood. Etc.

Some Orthodox Jews erect eruvs so that they can nip down to the shop during the Sabbath, conveniently in defiance of Jewish law. The letter writers erect a mental ghetto which keeps them inside and immune to the realities of the state of Israel, conveniently in defiance of facts and logic.

Peter Beinart, in his new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza (as recounted by Abba Solomon) claims that Jewish devotion to Israel is one of idolatry. The term is suggestive but doesn’t seem to capture the essence. There is a mass hypnotism at work, reflected in the youngsters seduced to go and train and fight in the IDF – a dangerous delusion.

Why haven’t all these letter-writing zealots made Aliyah? Some others have but the bulk prefer to remain rooted in their native soil. The great Russian Jewish exodus had many of them preferring to go to countries other than Israel, including Australia. The Australian Jewish population is now expanded by Jewish Israeli emigrés seeking a better life.

It is telling that Melburnian Nomi Kaltmann could write an article titled ‘Why I’ll take Melbourne over New York as a place to raise a Jewish family’ (July 2024). Israel doesn’t rate a mention.

Film culture critic Ed Rampell reviewed the now year-old documentary Israelism and interviewed its directors. Rampell notes:

Israelism is about unconditional – in some sense it elides or depoliticizes the actual politics of Israel-Palestine, and it turns Israel into a sort of Jewish Disneyland, a place where all of Jewish people’s wildest dreams can come true.

A sort of Jewish Disneyland is it. Israel as not the promised land but the great holiday camp in the sky? In spite of the stark reality.

Cults are organizations devoted to the harm of their members. The cult of Zionism is devoted to the harm of others – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine now turned to genocide. The built-in and ongoing barbarism doesn’t seem to have dislodged the letter-writing foot soldiers from their ghetto and from their unquestioned commitment to this cause become pathological.

This rank and file is given succor by the ‘official’ Australian Jewish organizations, all unrepentantly Zionist. Among which is the Zionist Federation of Australia, currently headed by one Jeremy Leibler. Leibler is part of Australian Zionist royalty, descended from brothers Isi (Uncle) and Mark (father). Mark Leibler, in particular, has long been indulged and influential amongst the political class and in the media.

Here we have Leibler Jr (‘Labor has failed the Jewish community …’, SMH, 4 February; paywall) defending tooth and nail a make-believe Israel. (Leibler has an impeccable academic record and is a top corporate lawyer – he can’t be that blind.)

The Australian Labor Party, having long been obeisant to the Zionist imperative, has recently cooled its ardor in the face of the Palestinian holocaust, if only marginally. Leibler demands absolute fealty and the comprehensive quashing of pro-Palestinian protest and support.

Leibler rants:

Until Australia’s foreign policy returns to a rational, principled footing (sic) – where the government can unequivocally rebuke these ways in which Israel is being demonised (sic), and Jews who support its right to exist are slurred as racists or genocide supporters – the Jewish community (sic) will not feel that the government is taking the threat of antisemitism seriously. If a government is willing to sacrifice decades of bipartisan support for a fellow liberal democracy (sic) to satisfy certain electorates (sic) …

Ludicrous and grotesque. Meanwhile Australian anti-Zionist Jews, not to mention tens of thousands of dead and wounded Palestinians, have been whited out of the picture.

The post Hasbara’s Foot Soldiers first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Evan Jones.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.