This little video clip produced by the armed wing of Hamas is going around the rightwing Jewish blogosphere. A virtual reality, this is what it looks like when the victorious Hamas fighters clear all the Jews out of liberated Palestine, and send them packing back on the boats for Germany. Not to make a political point, I’m posting this nasty little clip here at JPP simply for its inherent interest. It’s a peculiar combination of computer generated graphics, photographs of dead Palestinian babies, iconic figures from Israel, art historical images from the Roman destruction of the Temple, and so on. Everyone gets to feel good about it, everyone gets what they want. Supporters of Hamas can look forward to a future that they want to imagine. Rightwing Zionists get to gloat and to feel self-righteous. It’s a parody sung in Hebrew to Ha’tikvah, the Israeli national anthem.
You say that everyone gets something out of the video.
What about pro-Zionist liberal American Jews?
What do we get?
We get to squirm, and feel really bad. Perhaps more interesting, I wonder what the Electronic Intifadah-Mondoweiss crowd get out of it.
I think you already answered it — the Mondoweiss crowd is aligned with Hamas thinking. (I don’t know Electronic Intifadah well-enough to opine.)
There is a smug gloating ill-willed viciousness in Mondoweiss consistent with Hamas. You think I am exaggerating about Mondoweiss? Read the comments. Maybe Phil Weiss deliberately uses plausible deniability: let the rabble say what even Weiss would be embarrassed to say. Maybe he is channeling Meir Kahane about the commenters on Mondoweiss — “I say what you think”. That’s how it sounds to me.
And people like me are horrified.