"Cut and Paste" Hasbara

There's a particularly lopsided article by Tom Gross entitled, "Dead Jews Aren't News" which seems to have been picked up by right wing nuts all over the blogosphere and spread far and wide to coincide with the anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death.

In it, Gross lists many other victims of violence, who are also named Rachel, who have died in the Middle East conflict. He opens with the story of Rachel Thaler, 16, who was blown up in a pizza parlour and states:

But Rachel Thaler, unlike Rachel Corrie, was Jewish. And unlike Corrie, Jewish victims of Middle East violence have not become a cause célèbre in Britain.

The disgraceful inference being that this is somehow indicative of some prevalence of anti-Semitism amongst British journalists. He seems to ignore the probability, that the reason most of us have heard of Rachel Corrie, is because she was an American rather than a Palestinian.

Three times as many Palestinians are killed as their Israeli counterparts. I notice that Mr Gross - in his demand that all the dead should be remembered as Rachel Corrie has been - mentioned the name of not a single one of them.

And why is that? Does the fact that none of them were named Rachel lessen the significance of their deaths?

Of course, the Israelis who are tragically killed in this bitter dispute are almost always named and their photographs are usually published. The same is not so often true for their Palestinian counterparts, who fare only slightly better than the Iraqi's killed who we don't even bother to count never mind name.

If this practice outrages Mr Gross, he fails to mention it. Perhaps because none of them are called Rachel either.

Not content with starting off on this false premise, Gross then goes on to make the scandalous charge that, through the actions of Rachel Corrie and others, the IDF were prevented from getting their hands on weapons that subsequently were used to kill Israeli children. In other words this Rachel Corrie - who the left are accused of deifying - had blood on her hands when she died.

Indeed, partly because of the efforts of Corrie’s fellow activists in the ISM, the Israeli army was unable to stop the flow of weapons through the tunnels near where she was demonstrating. Those weapons were later used to kill Israeli children in the town of Sderot in southern Israel, and elsewhere.

That is simply scurrilous. I also notice that Mr Gross provides no proof to back up this assertion, nor is there any link on his page to lead us to any site that offers corroborating evidence.

Nor does he bother to define what he means by "near" where she was demonstrating. How near? 100 yards? A mile? Five miles?

I also notice that he offers no reason for why these houses have to be demolished rather than simply searched for tunnels.

But, not only is his claim uncorroborated, it is actually disputed. Indeed, in a letter to the Washington Post, Rachel Corrie's aunt and uncle say that there were no tunnels under the house that she was attempting to prevent from being demolished.

There were no tunnels under the Samir family's home. As the Israeli army bulldozer approached the Samir home, Rachel stood her ground in front of it, knowing that the three young Samir children were inside. Six months after Rachel's death, the Israeli army demolished the home and found no tunnels of any kind under it. The Samir family was neither compensated for its loss nor helped to find a new home.

Leaving aside the tastelessness of this attack on a dead girl - the assumption that anti-Semitism is the reason that we have heard of Corrie - and the outright lie that she prevented the IDF from gaining access to weapons that were later used to kill Israelis; what I find astonishing about this piece is how many "copy and pasters" have replicated this argument across the web and blogosphere.

If you want to see what I mean, simply type into Google, "Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up" and look at the sheer plethora of people spreading this totally false argument.

Rachel Corrie's death stood out for the same reasons that the mother of British citizen Tom Hurdnall, 22, concedes are why we have ever heard of him. Because he, "was a westerner rather than a Palestinian".

Hurdnall, Mr Gross may recall, was found by a British jury to have been deliberately shot by an Israeli soldier with the intention of killing him.

Gross and others may feel they are genuinely helping the Israeli cause by attacking the memory of a dead young peace activist. It would no doubt be lost on him that such disgraceful behaviour makes most of us wince.

If he really wants to aid the Israeli cause, I would suggest he stops spreading hasbara and joins the millions of Israelis demanding that Israel stop her illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

Too many brilliant Jewish minds are wasting too much time attempting to find justifications for the unjustifiable occupation.

It is time to free them to do more productive work. And to prevent any more people of any religion, nationality or creed; from succumbing to the dreadful fate of Miss Corrie and the other Rachels.

If we can end the occupation then maybe Mr Gross and others will feel they no longer need to defame the dead.

Tags: Rachel, Corrie, Thaler, Tom, Gross, IDF, Israel, peace, protest, protesters, killed, dead,