Majoring in Aliyah: My friends are the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East

NOTE: 'Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem' has since been removed from YouTube due to "terms of use violation."

UPDATE: I made a video response to the video I mention in this entry. Check it out!

Sometimes, when someone says or does something idiotic, even if you find it personally offensive, the best policy is to ignore it. However, when it gets over 200,000 (and rising) hits on YouTube within four days, it's hard to ignore. "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem" is not a video that I could just live with.

I was trolling the Internet the other day, looking at some of my favorite blogs, when I came across an interesting video. Max Blumenthal, a blogger on several left-wing websites who recently wrote a book slamming the Republican Party, decided to post what he called "the most shocking footage I have ever filmed."

Image from the video

Blumenthal went around the Ben Yehuda Street area in Jerusalem with Joseph Dana (an American-born Israeli who writes a pro-Arab blog) after Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world in Cairo. They interviewed young people in bars and cafes on their reactions to the speech. Most of the people in the video are American, dressed like frat-boys, and visibly inebriated.

The video (it's too expletive-ridden for me to embed) shows the subjects using obscene language and racial slurs to describe the President of the United States. Dana wrote that "the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city."

Here are some choice quotes from the video:

"He deserves to be shot."
 
"White power! (censored) the n*ggers!"

"My grandma was in Auschwitz, Obama! We're not going to take any Nazi BS!"

"Oh, he's a Muslim for sure, and who even knows if he was born in the United States? We haven't seen his birth-certificate yet...He's like a terrorist!" (The same girl, a Political Science major, was asked if she knows who Benjamin Netanyahu is. Her reply: "I don't know who Benjamin Yahoo is!")

This video was posted on popular blogs such as Gawker and The Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan's blog at The Atlantic's). Popular rapper 50 Cent posted the video on his blog, and wrote: "Isn't it sad, in 2009 people still think like this." The Huffington Post put up the video, and then took it down because it "had no news value."

I have to agree with The Huffington Post. Had the video shown Israelis speaking in this way, that would be one thing. To show Americans in Israel, most of which look to me like 18-year-olds on their gap year, and say that they represent the opinions of young Israelis, is absurd.

I wouldn't even say that this reflects the views of most young Americans in Israel! Sure, sometimes we can get drunk and loud - anyone who's been in downtown Jerusalem on a Saturday night can't deny that. Of course, one also cannot deny that alcohol often makes people behave in a more extreme and belligerent manner, a fact that Blumenthal and Dana chose to ignore.

In any case, I'd like to think that my peers have a little more class than the few people shown in the video. I'm no fan of Obama's, but you wouldn't catch me saying any of those things even in the privacy of my home. Most of my friends - young new olim - do not speak like this, either. Usually, the words I hear describing Obama's presidency in relation to Israel are "depressing" and "scary." I've never heard any of my friends use the n-word, nor have they discussed killing the President of the United States or any other political figure, even as a joke. 

This video did not just personally offend me by defaming the "group" that I am a part of. It inflames anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments that are on the rise around the world. A person who has never been to Israel may watch this video, and get the following mistaken impressions:

1. Young Israelis hate Obama.
2. Israelis have no reasonable defense of their country and it's policies. Rather, they say things like "It's Israel, you mother! Stop it!"
3. Israelis are racists.
4. Israelis speak perfect, unaccented English, including proper usage of expletives.

Yet Dana and Blumenthal insist that

the answers in this video reflect the education and worrisome perspectives that many American Jews harbor towards Israeli politics. The sense of entitlement that the American Jewish community has when it comes to Israeli policy is on full raw display in the words of these young adults…These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against."

Now we know what Netanyahu is up against: People who produce idiotic videos, and ignore the real threats to peace in Israel, such as Hamas, Hizbullah, Iranian nuclear weapons, etc. One of Israel's biggest problems today is Hasbara [Public Relations], and young Jews like Dana and Blumenthal are only aggravating the problem. Too many Jewish people have forgotten what Israel has done for their people. Instead, they try to fit in with the American liberal intelligentsia. Never mind that most Arab countries do the exact opposite of what the American left is fighting for. It's one thing for Obama to turn a blind eye for diplomatic reasons (not that I agree with that, either). It's another for Jewish people to act as if Israeli bigotry is the problem. 

Israel's not perfect, and I see no problem in criticizing the country when it's justified. This video, however, is not a warranted criticism. I'd like to remind Blumenthal and Dana that this is Israel, not Iran; therefore, people can get drunk and express their opinions without fear of persecution, even when their opinion is the minority.

On top of all that, I think the video's producers are giving my peers too much credit. Really, guys? A bunch of drunk Americans are to blame for the Israeli-Arab conflict? I'll try to remember that next time I drink a Cosmo.