{"id":66742,"date":"2015-03-31T12:07:12","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T20:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=66742"},"modified":"2015-03-31T12:07:12","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T20:07:12","slug":"from-ferguson-to-netanyahu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=66742","title":{"rendered":"From Ferguson to Netanyahu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dennis Prager writes<\/a>: Remember the \u201cHands up, don\u2019t shoot\u201d narrative that dominated American media and all of the protests against a white officer\u2019s shooting of Michael Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.?
\nIt was all a lie.
\nNever happened.
\nYet, media personalities, NFL players, and even congressional representatives employed the arms-up gesture and recited the mantra \u201cHands up, don\u2019t shoot\u201d for the television cameras. And even after the Justice Department released a report thoroughly refuting both the lie and Brown\u2019s victim status, President Barack Obama has made multiple references to Ferguson in his speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma march \u2014 as if there were all sorts of moral parallels.
\nThat lie ruined a city\u2019s economy, not to mention the livelihood and life of an innocent policeman. And, of course, it gave those Black Americans resentful toward America another reason to express anger at white America.
\nBut that hysteria is small scale compared to the hysteria fomented against Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel\u2019s voters for his having won an election he was supposed to lose.
\nThis hysteria \u2014 whipped up by the (Jewish as much as non-Jewish) left and especially by the president of the United States \u2014 has allowed this president to weaken the bonds between America and Israel more than at any time in the 66 years of Israel\u2019s existence.
\nThe vitriol directed against Netanyahu and Israel is allegedly based on two comments Netanyahu made in Israel shortly before the election.
\nOne was about a Palestinian state:
\n\u201cThe right-wing rule is in danger. The Arab voters are coming in great numbers to the polling stations. The left-wing nonprofit organizations are bringing them in buses. Go out to the polling stations, bring your friends and family, and vote Mahal [Likud] in order to close the gap between us and the Labor Party.\u201d
\nThe president of the United States and most if not all of America\u2019s and Israel\u2019s left repeatedly describe this as \u201cracist\u201d and
\nanti-democratic.
\nThat is a lie.
\nThere is nothing racist or anti-democratic about the comment.
\nIf \u201cracist\u201d actually means something \u2014 other than being useful as a left-wing epithet with which to regularly describe right-wingers (in America as well as Israel) \u2014 there is not a hint of racism in the comment. How exactly are Arab Israelis depicted negatively in this comment? Do not Democrats in America regularly inveigh against \u201cold white males\u201d?
\nNor is there a hint of disenfranchising Arab Israelis. The message to Netanyahu\u2019s followers was simply an appeal to get to the polls because his political opponents appeared to be ensuring that as many Arab voters as possible got to the polls where they were expected to vote against him and his party.
\nYet, not only is the accusation false, the comment on which it is based is almost universally mistranslated. Almost all citations of the phrase use the term \u201cin droves\u201d or, less frequently, \u201chordes of.\u201d Both terms are far more derogatory than what Netanyahu actually said \u2014 \u201cin great numbers\u201d (kamuyot adirot). But because \u201cgreat numbers\u201d of Arab voters sounds considerably less disrespectful, the Western press prefers \u201cin droves\u201d and \u201chordes.\u201d That\u2019s how they can charge Netanyahu with \u201cracism\u201d never implied in the original Hebrew \u2014 by manipulating his words in translation.
\nOn the day of the Israeli election, March 17, The New York Times correctly translated Netanyahu: \u201cRight-wing rule is in danger. Arab voters are streaming in huge quantities to the polling stations.\u201d But it has since joined the other mainstream media in using the inaccurate and loaded translation, \u201cin droves.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dennis Prager writes: Remember the \u201cHands up, don\u2019t shoot\u201d narrative that dominated American media and all of the protests against a white officer\u2019s shooting of Michael Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.? It was all a lie. Never happened. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dennis-prager"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66743,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66742\/revisions\/66743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}