OCID….OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE ISRAEL DISORDER
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in an oft-quoted line that: “Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction–out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle Eas –is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.” The simple solution for peace in the Middle East may be for Israel to change its name to Norway. Yamit
The Obsession With Israel
FME FreeMiddleEast.com
Overtly Skewed Media Coverage
Gaza vs. Congo: A Tale of Media Double Standards
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder that causes repeated unwanted and intrusive thoughts. An OCD sufferer will engage in repetitive behaviors (compulsions) aimed at reducing anxiety caused by these thoughts (obsessions). OCD is a chronic or long-term illness that can take over a person’s life, hurt relationships, and limit the ability to work or go to school[1].
Scientists have proven that OCD is caused by one part of the brain being unable to receive information from the other.
In the past 20 years the 24/7 cable news, internet and social networking sites have revolutionized the way we receive information. In the shadow of this information revolution lays a disease that has surprisingly not yet received an official diagnosis. The cause is also a restriction of information. The disease is called Obsessive Compulsive Israel Disorder or OCID.
For a country that is thousands of miles away, has a population of just 7 million and speaks a completely different language, the world is obsessively and compulsively focused on Israel.
In January 2009, when Israel launched operation Cast Lead, to root out rocket fire from the Gaza strip, the media covered every minute. There was no shortage of information that often presented Israel as the aggressor and perpetrator of all the violence in the region. Just like OCD stops the flow of information from one part of the brain to the other, OCID, stopped the flow of the rest of the important events going in the world.
While a tiny country was trying to secure its borders from rocket attack the world was going through major challenges.
* The Ethiopian military withdrew its troops from the Somalia civil war. This ongoing conflict has killed 300-400 thousand people since 1991.
* Indian Army continued to battle Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed militants in the disputed Kashmir region. This ongoing conflict has seen countless civilian massacres and terror attacks.
* The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lanka terrorist group, launched major offensives around the northern part of the country including the bombing the state department of defense. 80 thousand people have been killed in the country’s civil war, including 8000 this year alone.
In order to try to understand this disease we have isolated 3 factors that could influence the amount of coverage a country could receive:
1. Its population,
2. Its geography; and
3. Its state of conflict.
As stated earlier Israel’s population is about 7 million. It is roughly the same size as Tajikistan, Papa New Guinea and Honduras, none of which have been able to grab the attention of the world, let alone can most people locate these countries on a map.
What about geography? It is true that Israel’s is in the Middle East but so are countries like Bahrain, Qatar and Oman yet these countries also seldom crack the newsreel, let alone can be located on a map.
That leaves the last category, maybe it’s because of the “disputed” territory in the land. If this is the case, ask yourselves how many stories have there been about Tibet, Cyprus, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the Western Sahara, all U.N recognized cases of disputed territory. There is no logic in understanding this disease
While the media was predominantly reporting only on the conflict in the Gaza Strip as a prime example, the world was going through universal struggle. Their continual criticism and singling out of Israel is baseless in its logic vis a vis its abnormal media coverage. The larger worldly causes of global warming, hunger, aids and genocide have to take a back seat to feed a news aristocracy that clearly suffers from the sociological disease, Obsessive-Compulsive Israel Disorder.
I feel more comfortable calling it “batshit insanity”. Everywhere.
From Debka:
I rest my case.
The UN envoy in Israel issued a sharp rebuke to the Jewish state after the Jewish group Ateret Kohanim evicted Palestinian squatters from a Jewish-owned building in the Muslim Quarter. Ateret Kohanim buys properties in Muslim areas of Jerusalem in a futile attempt to anchor those areas for Israel.
The UN fellow lashed out against the “armed settlers” who evicted poor “Palestinian families.” Why doesn’t the UN mind the civil evictions taking place in 220 other countries?
What fucking business is it of the UN?
Afghanis lack a good sponsor
Nothing much happened after Wikileaks published documents on the US involvement in Afghanistan. Many of the cases detailed in the leaks technically amount to war crimes: careless attacks with civilians casualties, extrajudicial targeting of less-than-certain-terrorists, and the condoning of outrageous crimes by coalition partners.
Still, Muslims did not start pouring money into Afghanistan. They did not condemn the United States. The UNSC did not meet to discuss the normal wartime behavior which the liberals had declared criminal.
This attitude contrasts markedly with Muslim hysterics over Israel’s occasional killing of a few Arabs, or with the support extended to Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. In the last case, America actively promoted the Afghani cause. In the first case, America provokes the Arabs by condoning their verbal and military attacks on Israel (Fatah receives American aid despite continual acts of terrorism against Jews). If the United States had supported Israel unequivocally, the Arabs would have been as indifferent to our operations in Gaza and the West Bank as they are toward Afghanistan.
I agree with this: If the United States had supported Israel unequivocally, the Arabs would have been as indifferent to our operations in Gaza and the West Bank as they are toward Afghanistan. The Arabs couldn’t care less about Gaza.
While we enjoy chit-chatting on line,
http://www.icasualties.org/oef/bytheatre.aspx
lest we forget.
Hymie I thought you were gone?
Yamit on war
The Tanach on war:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
3:2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3:3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
3:4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
3:5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
3:6 A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
3:7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
3:8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
The Middle East conflict is the nearest thing to a Roman gladiatorial spectacle available today. Audiences drive the media’s disproportionate coverage of the conflict. They are fascinated by the storyline and queue up to read about or watch the most recent attack, accusations of atrocities, and news of surrender talks. It’s a blood sport with the world as spectator and Israel as the lone gladiator pitted against hordes of blood-thirsty opponents while it attempts to defend a tiny patch of turf. The hordes employ a midget gladiator which constantly nips at the heels of the lone defender, getting kicked and bloodied in the process and drawing sympathy from the crowd. That Israel has been successful thus far against such tall odds fuels public fascination, cheering (for one side or the other), and demand for more coverage.
Jew fight fair!!
The Romans in full view of the crowds in the Coliseum were going to feed a Jew to the lions. They dug a hole five feet deep, put in the Jew standing up and buried him to his neck, so that only his head was above ground. They then let out the lion that was starved for two days. The lion with his mouth drooling went straight for the Jew and circled his prey before eating it. When it got close, the Jew bit it. It yelped and ran away. From the stands of the Coliseum, someone screamed, “Jew, Fight Fair!”
That Roman now sits in the State Department and the United Nations and every time Israel offers any half-hearted response to an attack on Jewish civilians, he keeps reiterating, “Israel is using excessive force—Jew, Fight Fair!”
What do they want from us? When Joseph’s tomb was ransacked, the yeshiva and synagogue burned to the ground, Jewish holy books desecrated, and Jews barred entry to this holy site, Israel set up a roadblock. Someone from the Coliseum screamed “Jew, Fight Fair!”
When Arabs tried to kill Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall and banned Jews from visiting the Temple Mount, the site of the JEWS’ first and second Temples, Israel again set up roadblocks, and someone from the Coliseum again screamed “Jew, Fight Fair!” Jews still can’t go to Joseph’s Tomb or on the Temple Mount and Israel still resorts to roadblocks and that someone is still screaming “Jew, Fight Fair!”
What do they want from us? When a sniper intentionally targets a baby and kills Shalhevet Pass in cold blood, Israel destroys a few buildings. From the Coliseum, someone screams “Jew, Fight Fair!”
A family driving home from Jerusalem was targeted; the mother and father shot to death and children seriously injured, and Israel “retaliated” by setting up an army lookout at the spot. This lame response only drew a louder “Jew, Fight Fair!!”
Two boys were exploring a canyon on the side of their town when they were beaten, tortured for hours, their faces and heads bashed in so that they were unrecognizable and their bodies mutilated mercilessly. In retaliation, Israel hunted down the leaders that gave the order to commit this atrocity, and the Coliseum is roaring with “Jew, Fight Fair!!”
In contrast, the U.S. sent over a thousand armed law enforcement officers in with heavy equipment and killed, instead of arresting, the Branch Davidians of WACO. Janet Reno admitted it, but called it a mere “show of force.” In retaliation for the undisputed excessive force in WACO there was a bombing in Oklahoma. Soon they will be executing the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh. [My comment-- in other words, even assuming that the U.S. government was guilty of using excessive force in Waco, McVeigh still deserved to die for killing innocent people.]
Yet those bombers that exploded buses and marketplaces in Israel’s major cities—Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Hadera, Petach Tikvah—go free. While Israel’s streets are strewn with scattered body parts, Israel blows up some vacant buildings and sets up yet more roadblocks. The State Department considers that excessive force and George Mitchell and his “Report” screams “Jew, Fight Fair!”
You know what they want from us? They want us to react to the Arab murderers the same way that we did to the Nazis who tortured, mutilated, and killed over six million of us. Do NOTHING! We are too civilized to respond directly to the intentional slaughter of children and we even applaud granting the Nobel Prize to the killer of the Ma’alot children and numerous other women and children.
No, we Jews are civilized and after the Arabs kill the last Jew in Israel we are expected to collect money to make yet another memorial dedicated to the memory of murdered Jews THIS TIME at the hands of fanatic Arabs with genocide on their minds. If we do anything to avert this second Holocaust upon Jews, someone from the Coliseum will scream…
“JEW, FIGHT FAIR!”
I hasten to thank Cecil B deMartel for that riveting analogy.
Keelie: I wish to clarify Ayn Rand’s philosophy regarding religion, rationalism and objectivism. We in this
movement are anti-religious in keeping with our rationalist position. However no one can say in all
honesty, as you have alluded several times, that the movement inspired by AYN RAND IS ANTI- ISRAEL. That would
be a libel of a high order.
Here is the evidence,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uHSv1asFvU
If you think I am pimping for The Rand philosophy you would be quite correct. But if you know something about my
background you would realize that my interest in philosophy in general comes very naturally. It came with my
mother’s milk. Now let me toot my own horn and relate a most fascionating story. A tale that might have
influenced world history (no bullshit). My great grandfather, on my father’s side was Ludwig Wittenstein the
world famous German Jewish-philosopher. Not only was he a great contibutor to Philosophical -now here is where
it gets interesting-he was a classmate of Adolph Hitler. As the story goes his relationship with Hitler was
extremely unfriendly, they hated each other, and some people say that a lot of Hitler’s antisemitism stemmed
from that bitter connection to my father. See wikipedia. I thought you just might enjoy reading this anecdote
totally unrelated to the discussions at hand. Thank you for the attention.
http://bp1.blogger.com/_1DJYJashoT0/R4u8d97FQ5I/AAAAAAAAAuw/pYZRhSOc_vc/s1600-h/wittgensteinhitler.jpg