The other day I was watching a video from the YouTube channel, The Why Files, entitled "Forbidden Archaeology: Lost Giants of America | The Smithsonian's Biggest Secret." Although the ostensible topic of the video where the supposed remains of pre-historic men of large stature (7 to 8 feet tall) discovered in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the real topic was how the establishment deals with inconvenient or unacceptable facts, with a specific look at the Smithsonian's history of losing, misplacing or just plain not allowing anyone to inspect certain controversial artifacts in its collection that contradict the accepted narrative concerning Native Americans and American pre-history. (Something I've touched upon a few times).
The host of the Why Files, AJ, outlined four tactics or steps that are employed by the government and media to suppress theories or information, and illustrates how each of these were employed against Graham Hancock and his 2022 Netflix documentary, "Ancient Apocalypse". The tactics are:
- Criticize
- Marginalize
- Attack
- Censor
In June 1941 I happened to be in, of all places, Palestine, flying with the RAF against the Vichy French and the Nazis. Hitler happened to be in Germany and the gas-chambers were being built and the mass slaughter of the Jews was beginning. Our hearts bled for the Jewish men, women and children, and we hated the Germans.Exactly forty-one years later, in June 1982, the Israeli forces were streaming northwards out of what used to be Palestine into Lebanon, and the mass slaughter of the inhabitants began. Our hearts bled for the Lebanese and Palestinian men, women and children, and we all started hating the Israelis.Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much-pitied victims to barbarous murderers. Never before has a race of people generated so much sympathy around the world and then, in a space of a lifetime, succeeded in turning that sympathy into hatred and revulsion. It is though a group of much-loved nuns in charge of an orphanage had suddenly turned around and started murdering all the children.
Now why, you are asking, do I ramble on like this about the long ago past when I am meant to be discussing a book just published which is called God Cried? I'll tell you why. It is because I retain such a a glowing memory of the Palestine I saw in those days, of the beauty of the country, of the kindness of the people and of the pride they took in their little farms, and it makes one weep to think about what has happened to it all since then.We all know what that was. The Jews came pouring in with American money and American guns and created the State of Israel and out went the Palestinians. That part of it is already history. We also know about the doings in those days of a murderous young terrorist called Menachem Begin who was blowing up British soldiers in a campaign designed to get more territory for the Jews than treaty obligations permitted. This is the man who now screams 'terrorist' at Palestinians who fight to regain what he has stolen from them. We also know all about the wars with Egypt and Syria which need never have taken place if only Israel had stuck to her part of the bargain and been willing to share the land with those she had kicked out.We know all that. But what we had not seen until June 1982 was a new and violently aggressive Israel whose armed forces moved into Lebanon and murdered more than 25,000 people, mostly civilian men, women and children, and severely injured....
The reaction to the review was far more extreme that we had anticipated. Apart from the overreaction of the Jewish lobby, the friends of Israel in the media became virulent in their onslaught on Dahl, myself and the Literary Review. The attacks came in from every side, even reaching a pitch where many journalists and politicians of high standing called for a boycott of the magazine and anyone connected with it. Every day something more vicious than the day before appeared somewhere, with accusations of anti-Semitism becoming more strident and preposterous as the campaign to discredit Quartet and the book gained momentum. Dahl did nothing to help matters by growing even more combative and being provoked into making outrageous, inflammatory responses. He was not in the least chastened by all that was being said about him. On the contrary, he expounded on his views and riled the press by being abrasive and dismissing their questions out of hand. There was no way of putting a gag on him and no point in asking him to cool things down. He had the bit between his teeth and nothing would stop him giving our adversaries all the fuel they could have wished for to keep their engines firing.
The scale and persistence of the Roald Dahl controversy perhaps deflected some attention from the book itself, which had been the reason for the original upsurge of indignation. When God Cried was published in the United States, its fate was rather different. It was virtually ignored at every level by book editors and reviewers as if it did not exist. The well-known Jewish columnist and blues historian, Nat Hentoff, wrote an article around this phenomenon that was published in Voice on 14 February 1984. ...
So, between Dahl and the book, we saw all four tactics carried out in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the book and the review.
But the matter was not allowed to die down, at least not as to Dahl. Going back to Coren's op-ed for the Daily Mail, he relates that in August 1983, he was a young reporter for a British publication called The Statesman when he was assigned to interview Dahl about his review of God Cried. Coren called Dahl's home and was able to get Dahl on the telephone. Coren recollects:
I heard Dahl say: 'Mike Cohen? What?!' He was then corrected.
I thought I could detect something in his voice that disturbed me. No, I told myself, you're being ridiculous. As I was to discover over the course of the next 15 to 20 minutes, I certainly wasn't.
Far from withdrawing his remarks, the author of blockbusters such as James And The Giant Peach and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory doubled down, giving me quotes so incendiary that — 40 years later — they will feature in a new play to be staged at London's Royal Court Theatre in the autumn.
In the play, called Giant, Dahl and his family meet with his Jewish publisher to navigate the fallout from his appalling review in the Literary Review.
When I phoned him that day, I had no idea, of course, that our exchange would still be being talked about decades later.
If I had expected him to apologise for some of what he'd written, or at least qualify the harshness and inaccurate generalisations, I was soon to be disappointed. The opposite happened.
In his review of a book called God Cried, an account of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, for The Literary Review magazine, Dahl wrote of 'a race of people' who had 'switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers'.
He also wrote that the U.S. was 'so utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions' that 'they dare not defy' Israel.
When I raised the tenor of these observations with the author, he was polite — not unfriendly — and spoke slowly and deliberately.
But it was as if I'd opened the doors on some dark, deep hatred that had been waiting for years to be expressed.
'There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. Maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews,' he said, adding: 'I mean, there's always a reason why 'anti-anything' crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.'
When he spoke about the 'trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity,' I wasn't even sure I'd heard him correctly. I stopped him and asked if he'd meant what he'd said. Could I have possibly misheard him?
No, he said, I'd got it right. No remorse, no embarrassment.
Even though I was sure that a man of his intelligence and worldliness would have known that 'Coren' might be a Jewish name, I told him that three of my grandparents were Jewish.
I've never forgotten his reaction — because there wasn't one.
He paused, clearly having heard what I had said, and then calmly continued with his racist filth as if nothing had happened.
He told me that he'd fought in the Second World War and that he and his friends never saw any Jewish soldiers.
I countered again. I told him that my own grandfather had spent four years on the front lines in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, been frequently promoted and won numerous medals.
I added that hundreds of thousands of Jewish men had been in the British, U.S., Soviet and other Allied armies and, if anything, were over-represented in combat roles and heroic deeds.
This time I could hear him mumbling something, either to himself or someone else who was in the room. He replied to me as though half-way through a sentence and all I heard was 'sticking together'.
I asked him if there was anything else that he wanted to say. Once again, he was disarmingly courteous. 'No thank you, I think I've made myself very clear. Goodbye.' And that was it.
When the call ended, I felt oddly numb and confused. Young and inexperienced as I was, I think I may even have been trembling. How could a man who wrote with such genius, such empathy for the downtrodden, and such care for the difference between right and wrong, be so foul and arrogant in his racism, and so indifferent and cruel towards me?
His friends wondered if Dahl was going through some sort of breakdown or crisis. One of them told me: 'Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean it.' This was nonsense.
Years later Dahl told another interviewer: 'I'm certainly anti-Israeli, and I've become anti-Semitic. It's the same old thing: we all know about Jews and the rest of it. There aren't any non-Jewish publishers anywhere, they control the media — jolly clever thing to do — that's why the President of the United States has to sell all this stuff to Israel.'
So much for 'not meaning it'.
Dahl never apologized for his review or subsequent comments in his interview with Coren, although Dahl's family issued an apology some years after Dahl's death. Too little, too late, apparently for some. Coren, however, seemed peeved in his op-ed that rather than become hated, Dahl's books had become more popular. For instance, Coren grouses:
In the following years, of course, his fame would only increase and, since his death in 1990, his books have been turned into movies year after year.
In 2021, Netflix bought Dahl's entire catalogue for around £370 million and a film called Wonka, the 'origin story' of his 1964 book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, released late last year, has taken £490 million at the box office. He seems to all intents and purposes, 'uncancellable'.
And that seems to be the problem.
Of course, Coren makes clear that he does not want Dahl's books banned (although stealth editing is probably okay): "But I would like people to be more sensitive to those, like me, who are so deeply hurt by someone who hates Jews for being Jews, who was happy to spew lies and racism without any fear of the consequences."
The thing is, Dahl did not make any incorrect statement of facts. While one might disagree with Dahl's comment that "[n]ever before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much-pitied victims to barbarous murderers," it was not baseless but rooted in Israel's actions in its initial expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and in subsequent conflicts, most especially (in Dahl's mind) the invasion of Lebanon.
As for the Coren's accusation of racism, one has to first ask whether Jews are a race. According to My Jewish Learning:
The short answer is no — Jews are not a race. People who identify as Jewish include individuals of enormously diverse geographic origins and physical appearances, making the idea that Jews could easily be designated a race in the sense of shared physical or biological characteristics implausible.
Jews historically have defined themselves as a people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Converts are also considered descendants of these patriarchal ancestors. Colloquially, Jews also sometimes describe themselves as a tribe.
The same article later explains that describing Jews as a race is actually a tool of anti-Semites. So, is Coren an anti-Semite for suggesting that "Jews" are a race?
The basic problem here is that Coren, like many others, wants to shut down discussion of Israel and Israeli policies on the grounds that it is anti-Semitic. Essentially he is saying that if you don't like how Israel has treated the Palestinians, you are an anti-Semite. If you don't believe Israel was justified in invading Lebanon, you are an anti-Semite. If you believe that Israel should be constrained by international law or basic human decency, you are an anti-Semite.
Now there is room to debate the specific points. But people like Coren aren't interested in debate; they want to shut down the debate. Or, more accurately, they don't even want people thinking there should be a debate.
And so, at a time Israel is coming under scrutiny for its actions in responding to the October 7 attacks, we suddenly see a 40 year old book review by Dahl being dredged up, including a play on the subject set to premier in London. This is to make us understand that criticism of Israel will not be tolerated and it will certainly never be forgotten.
Like with so many things in Clown World, noticing is a sin.
ReplyDeleteReally trying to get shut down, eh?
ReplyDelete