MUST READ: THE ECLIPSE OF REASON

The eclipse of reason
by Melanie Phillips

Why Britain? As the Jewish community reels under the impact of the boycotts, the wickedly distorted Six-Day War anniversary coverage and the eruption of hatred against Israel, people are asking why this intellectual intifada has surged so strongly in Britain.

Although bad things against Israel and the Jews are happening elsewhere, nowhere else has seen such a relentless concentration of attacks as in Britain, with journalists, doctors, architects and academics declaring open season upon Jewish peoplehood. So why is this country different from all other countries?

Clearly, certain factors are unique to Britain. One is the role of the BBC. While other media share the anti-Israel animus, the importance of the BBC in poisoning the public mind can hardly be overestimated. Afforded unique reverence as a global kitemark of fairness and objectivity, its journalism is therefore trusted as the truth by those who know no better.

But what it actually pumps out day after day is little more than Arab propaganda. Over the past couple of weeks, it has simply rewritten history in its on-line bulletins and broadcast coverage to portray Israelis as brutal aggressors, their Palestinian would-be exterminators as saintly victims — and to excise Jerusalem from its central role in Jewish history.

Next, the leadership of British Jews is uniquely supine. Refusing to make the public case against those spreading the lies, it thus fails to challenge in the popular mind what is perhaps the single most agonising and lethal aspect of this madness — the part played in it by Jews themselves.
For the appalling thing is that there would scarcely be such an anti-Israel movement, with such a devastating impact upon public opinion, if it weren’t for the Jews who are its most numerous and prominent promulgators.

In other countries, leading Jews are not afraid to identify these Jewish Israel-haters as enemies of the Jewish people. In Britain, by contrast, the Jewish leadership maintains a public silence on this as on everything else. As a result, the claim that such a campaign cannot be a form of Jew-hatred since Jews are involved in it remains unchallenged.

...



Pertinent Links:

1) The eclipse of reason