A Response to the Blumenthal Video and My Response

I received the following comment from one of my closest and dearest friends:

I tried to send this through your blog but didn’t seem to get through. So, here is my response to the Blumenthal video interviews in Israel:

I think posting the Blumenthal videos is a disservice that portrays an incorrect impression. Drunk talk is nothing but - drunk talk.

Interviewing drunk young people in bars in Israel is not representative of Jewish people in Israel or in the US.

The Jewish people I know in Israel and in the US for the most part are very supportive of President Obama and the peace initiative in the Mid East.

These videos are not helpful and actually add to the negativism, hatefulness, and divisiveness that our world suffers from. Passing this negativism along contributes to hate and violence. They don't serve any constructive purpose.

Take them off and try a different approach.

Here is my response:

Thank you for your insight and advice.

But, I respectfully disagree.

I agree with Blumenthal.

Did you read what he had to say about his recordings?

"If anything, alcohol is a crude form of truth serum that lubricates the release of closely held opinions and encourages confessional talk . . . The notion that the racist diatribes in my video emerged spontaneously from a beery void is a delusion, but for some, it is a necessary one. It allows them to erect a psychological barrier against acknowledging the painful consequences of prolonged Zionist indoctrination. And it enables them to dismiss the disturbing spectacle of young Jews behaving like fascist soccer hooligans in the heart of the capitol of Israel and the spiritual home of the Jewish people."

These young people are our future. They represent either our guidance or our failure to guide.

I am sick and tired of our government continuing to use our tax dollars ($3-4 billion in U.S. military aid) to support the religious far right agenda of the Israeli government because our representatives FEAR the American Jewish vote. All of the polls in Israel and the United States over the last decade have indicated that the far right's agenda in Israel and in the U. S. is on the increase.

They are still in the minority, but unfortunately, the majority of Israelis and American Jews continue to be either apologists for them or silent, allowing the far right to promote their fundamentalist ideology and execute horrific, inhumane, racist and illegal authority over the Palestinians, subjugating and killing innocent men, women and children.

Using the Holocaust to justify or apologize for immoral and illegal actions is no less inappropriate or egregious than denying the Holocaust.

I agree with you that the majority of the Jewish people I know in Israel and in the U.S. are very supportive of President Obama's peace initiative. In fact that is also what the polls indicate, as well.

I also know that there has been a remarkable change in attitude among many American Jews. The once-tiny American-Jewish peace movement has grown dramatically. Unfortunately, their voice continues to remain muted by the mass media that is controlled by the apologists and the fundamentalists, while the silent majority continue to remain silent.

If you read my Blog, you would know I read and publish countless articles and perspectives about what is occurring in Israel, as well as, my own perspective. Censoring or denying the disgusting and immoral actions of our future (these young people) or the illegal and inhumane actions of the Israeli government will never help to bring about change.

We must stand up and against tyranny, where ever it may occur and who ever may be exercising the cruelty and injustice.

I too, as Blumenthal so eloquently stated:

hope those who have watched [his videos}, especially those predisposed to dismiss it as anti-Israel propaganda or shock video with “no news value,” will at least ask how vitriolic levels of racism are able to flow through the streets of Jerusalem like sewage, why the grandsons of Holocaust survivors feel compelled to offer the Shoah as justification to behave like fascist street thugs, and how the sons and daughters of successful Jewish American families casually merged Zionist cant with crude white supremacism. The willful avoidance of these painful questions by self-proclaimed supporters of Israel is setting the stage for the complete delegitimization of the country they claim to love. As Obama said, “any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it.”