A Jewish friend of mine who posts a lot on Facebook and includes plenty of criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Neyanyahu, but who rarely mentions Israel vs the Palestinians, posted this piece the other day:
House resolution supports Israel’s right to defend itself
Well, okay. Hard to argue with a country defending itself. That seems pretty unobjectionable. But notice where the story begins:
Following the recent rocket attack by Palestinian Islamic Jihad two weeks ago, when terrorists from Gaza fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced House Resolution 727 on Friday, condemning terrorist rocket attacks on Israel and supporting Israel’s right to defend itself.
Missing from this is that Baha Abu Al-Ata, a senior commander of Gaza Strip militant group Islamic Jihad, was killed on 13 November (The Jerusalem Post piece was put out on 25 November). It’s not that Israel doesn’t have the right to kill enemy combatants, it’s that the complete absence of the death of Al-Ata turns this from a reporting piece into a propaganda one. The reader gets the news that a Palestinian group based in Gaza launched a rocket attack on Israel, seemingly without reason or any kind of provocation.
And yes, support for the anti-Palestinian resolution was bipartisan (Jewish Currents describes a “dying bipartisan consensus on Israel”), with plenty of Democrats joining in, thought support among ordinary Democrat citizens generally is soft. Jewish Currents says American citizens generally support the idea of cutting aid to human rights abusers. The big difference between Republicans and Democrats/Independents is that Republicans make an exception for Israel while the other two groups don’t.
