Israeli injustice

An Angry Arab Moment

By which I mean that it is either a superb example of Prof. AbuKhalil's cognitive dissonance* or a confirmation of my own on-going suspicion that the blogger is actually in the service of the Zionist World Conspiracy. How else can you explain this fulmination:

"Friday, November 18, 2011

Israeli injustice

"Many liberals, who feel they are a waning minority in Israel, fear that the bills will weaken the judicial checks and balances that have prevented a judicial slide into populism or religious zealotry. They particularly worry about the rise of judges such as Noam Solberg, a religious-nationalist from Alon Shvut, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, whom right-wingers want appointed to the Supreme Court. In judgments in Jerusalem’s district court, where Mr Solberg sits, a policeman was controversially acquitted of the manslaughter of an unarmed Palestinian." I hate the reference to "Israeli liberals" or "Israeli leftists". They are akin to saying: a moderate and reasonable white supremacist."

The intention is to demonstrate the levels of illiberalism and "white" supremacy in the ethos of Israeli public, you know, in the style of South Africa's Apartheid and America's Jim Crow South before the civil rights movement. It is so bad, in fact, that Abu Khalil jeers at the notion of Israelis being liberals and Leftists at all. Yet as you click on the link and begin to read the article he relies on for his "news", this is the first thing recounted:

"WHEREAS Israel’s voters have been moving to the nationalist and religious right, most of its top judges have clung to a more liberal and secular view of the world. On November 10th Salim Joubran, one of three Supreme Court judges deciding the fate of the country’s former president, Moshe Katzav, upheld his conviction for rape. Almost no Israeli batted an eyelid, even though the judge who dispatched the eighth head of the Jewish state off to jail was an Arab, from a community that now makes up one in five of Israeli citizens"

So one wonders how the point AbhKhalil is making is proven or demonstrated by this article. It is obvious that the gist of the article contradicts AbuKhalil's reading of it or his summary judgment about the impossibility of Israeli liberalism or Leftism. Surely as a learned professor who teaches political science at California State University, Stanislaus and as a visiting professor at UC, Berkeley (so he claims on his website), he would realize that this type of juxtaposition does not add up to what he is trying to push but rather undermines not only his own argument but also his credibility both as a reliable reader and reporter of "news". It's as if he deliberately acts as a witness against himself.

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* "Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions.^[1] Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying."