{"id":225,"date":"2014-07-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2014\/07\/21\/post-218-gaza-in-the-mirror-spiegel\/"},"modified":"2014-07-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T00:00:00","slug":"post-218-gaza-in-the-mirror-spiegel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2014\/07\/21\/post-218-gaza-in-the-mirror-spiegel\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-218: Gaza in the “Mirror” (Spiegel) (And the Abyss Stares Back)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Last month, unknown assailants killed three Jewish teenagers in Israel. This month, Israel decided to kill 650 Palestinians (so far) in revenge bombings. “That’ll shown those…unknown assailants.”<\/em>\u00a0 Uhh…

<\/span><\/span>It seems that nobody has determined who killed the teenagers or why. Oh, and between the three deaths and the 650 Palestinian deaths [and thousands of woundings], Israel used gestapo tactics to jail hundreds more Palestinians, killing ten or so in the round-up, which inspired some other Palestinians to launch a few useless rockets in anger.

All the same, the<\/span> “Gaza Conflict” of summer 2014 I view mostly with indifference. I don’t support either side, and see it as senseless and a bit tiring (this happens so often). What does Respectable Opinion say?\n<\/div>\n

<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a>Spiegel “Pressekompass” July 21 2014 on Gaza Conflict [Link<\/a>]<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

Der Spiegel<\/em> (‘The Mirror’ in German), the news and politics magazine, did an analysis of a few newspapers’ editorial stances on the July 2014 Gaza attack. The axes of opinions:
<\/span>
Vertical:<\/em>
(top) Hamas’ actions are understandable
(bottom) Hamas’ actions not understandable<\/p>\n

Horizontal:<\/em>
(left) Israel’s response is disproportionate
(right) Israel must respond in this way

T<\/span>op-right quadrant:<\/strong> “Everybody’s right”.
B<\/span>ottom-right:<\/strong> “Pro-Israel” (Israel justified, Hamas not)
B<\/span>ottom-left:<\/strong> “Everybody’s wrong.”
T<\/span>op-left:<\/strong> Pro-Palestinian (Hamas justified, Israel not).

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> The icons represent different newspapers’ editorial opinions during the July 2014 crisis:
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n

\n
\n
.<\/font><\/a> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Read More<\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/a>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The Guardian<\/strong> is alone in the “everybody’s right”. quadrant (top right). Al Jazaeera<\/strong>, predictably, says Israel is wrong, but is neutral on Hamas. The blue dots are Spiegel users’ unscientific opinions, and the red arrow is the average. My own dot I’d put on the left side somewhere.<\/p>\n

Predictably, all three German newspapers<\/strong> in the survey are on the “Israel is Right and the Palestinians are Wrong” side (bottom right quadrant). (It’s hard to imagine anyone in today’s Germany, other than marginal political radicals [or Muslim immigrants], offering any criticism of Israel.)

<\/span><\/span>I expect all\/most U.S. newspapers would be “Israel is Right, Palestinians are Wrong”, too. This is the default opinion in the USA. We regularly see movies telling us how heroically persecuted Jews are, so that’s a part of it. There is something more going on, though, I think. “Israel is our only ally in the Middle East, surrounded by hostile enemies”. That’s what they say. This image creates a subconscious and powerful “civilizational nostalgia” for eight or nine hundred years ago or so. The Crusader Era. Crusader kingdoms that our ancestors set up in the 1100s-1200s AD in the very same place. Hey, the comparison is there to be made.\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
Crusaders.
(From the “Kingdom of Heaven” movie of 2005 [stolen from here<\/a>]). <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
With the crusades comes the Middle Ages, romantically imagined to have been a golden age of social harmony. Knights. Chivalry. You know.\u00a0We gentiles of Western-European ancestry (still a majority of the USA population, and a large majority in the heartland) are susceptible to “nostalgia politics” just like (I guess) everybody else.\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
“Heraldic Chivalry” by Alphonse Mucha <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Of course,<\/span> the difference between Israel and the Crusader States is that Israel is not Christian, and, inconveniently, many Palestinians are<\/em>: Fully a million, in fact, of the total of 10.5 million total Palestinians in the world are Christian, most of them living outside “Palestine” due to the expulsions, according to Wikipedia<\/a>. (I was surprised to learn that there are even six active Lutheran churches in the occupied Palestinian territories, see ELCJHL.org<\/a>.)\n<\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, unknown assailants killed three Jewish teenagers in Israel. This month, Israel decided to kill 650 Palestinians (so far) in revenge bombings. “That’ll shown those…unknown assailants.”\u00a0 Uhh…It seems that nobody has determined who killed the teenagers or why. Oh, and between the three deaths and the 650 Palestinian deaths [and thousands of woundings], Israel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}