Phyllis Chesler: Time Magazine's Latest Blood Libel Against Israel

The September 13, 2010 issue of TIME Magazine arrived yesterday. The cover story is titled “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” and is illustrated by a large Jewish star composed of daisies. Yes, daises—as in “counting daisies, don’t have a care in the world.”

This is precisely the point of Karl Vick’s article. He writes:

Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter [of peace with the Palestinians]. They’re otherwise engaged: They’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of the late summer … they have moved on.

Vick quotes an Israeli real estate agent in Ashdod, one Eli, who tells him:

People are indifferent. They don’t care if there’s going to be war. They don’t care if there’s going to be peace. They don’t care. They live in the day.

According to Vick, Israelis don’t care about peace, peace negotiations, or about the Palestinians because they are simply having too good a time: sunbathing, swimming, café-hopping, profiting from start-up companies, and, according to polls cited by Vick, utterly disconnected from “politics;” indeed Vick suggests that Israelis resemble Californians more than they resemble Egyptians. These are all points which scream: Israel does not fit in; if Israelis were only more impoverished, more indolent, and paradoxically, even more “laid back,” they might be recognizable as indigenous to the region, a true part of the Middle East.

Read the rest at Israel National News (Arutz Sheva)

Prof. Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York. She also is an author and appears often in international media interviews. She lives in New York City.

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Tags: Blood Libel, Chesler, Time Magazine, anti-Semitism

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Permalink Reply by Zarthustra on September 6, 2010 at 7:47pm

This is blood libel? Are you serious?

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Permalink Reply by skimble on September 6, 2010 at 11:07pm

It could be that accusing Israelis of being too laid back to care about peace is not the same as blood libel.

For the sake of comparison, this is an offering on Youtube that introduces the Kabbalah as the occult connection of Rabbi magicians with Lucifer, through the intercession of the fallen angel Raziel. It describes the sexual rituals of the Kabbalists and goes on, in the second part, to explain how Jewish physicists use Kabbalistic code to reduce the so-called reality to a mere illusion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-IQLCgOTpg&feature=related

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Permalink Reply by Mark Storm on September 11, 2010 at 12:41pm

Not a blood libel - but something as dangerous because it is something more insidious. The article suggests that Jews are only "good" Jews when they are; empoverished, disadvantaged, disenfranchised, dispossessed, disorganised, neurotic, uncertain, paranoid, miserable, creeping wretches living at the behest and good-will of powers larger and greater than they.
In short: it's unacceptable (to Vick and others of this ilk) that Jews can be; prosperous, laden with options, free to vote, free to live in their own land, industrially vigorous, composed, confident, attitudinally benign, joyous and happy humans living in a vibrant, successful Land of their own making.

So what's really irritating Vick? It's that Jews have learn the art of being happy because Jews learnt long ago to enjoy the blessings of the day. Palestinians, on the other hand, keep on screwing up their chances to be happy because Palestinians have yet to learn the meaning of the word "compromise".

You think I'm exaggerating? Consider what Abbas has recently announced regarding Jerusalem as a capital in the current round of peace talks. It amounts to "all or nothing". Need I mention Hamas and Hezbollah...?