"While America slept -- or rather, while it was going about its business," we wrote last year, "Gramscian thinking [the origin of today's fashionable and pervasive political correctness], like sewage leaking out of a cracked drainpipe into the surrounding soil, has seeped into major sectors of our civil society -- the law, foundations, universities and corporations among others" -- and, as we've written here early and often, fellow travelers in the press, who "sneer at traditional values and patriotism and exhibit pervasive left-wing and anti-American bias." Above, immune to collectivist thought control, Tiny power naps on one of Tuck's custom-made dining room seat covers.
"Perhaps the naming and study of the phenomenon itself has made it easier for constantly scapegoated Jews and Israelis to take their own side," writes Yehudit at Winds of Change in an excellent summary of recent developments in the Israeli-Palestinian propaganda wars, aptlly titled "Pallywood: Getting inside the news cycle." Coined by our fellow sub rosa blogger Richard Landes of Augean Stables, "Pallywood" refers to "the staging of scenes by Palestinian journalists in order to present the Palestinians as hapless victims of Israeli aggression." As Richard explains at The Second Draft, politically correct, multicultural fellow travelers in the MSM are their willing enablers:
They are able to succeed in this endeavor in large part due to the credulity and eagerness of the Western press to present these images, which reinforce the image of the Palestinian David struggling valiantly against the overpowering Israeli Goliath. Pallywood has led to astonishing lapses in Western journalistic standards in which badly staged scenes regularly appear on the news as "real events."
The latest example of "fake but real" Israeli atrocities -- first cousin to Dan Rather's "fake but accurate" news reports -- was that explosion that killed civilians on a Gaza beach last week. Initial "reports" blamed the incident on deliberate Israeli targeting, but the IDF swung into action, collected forensic evidence and showed that "a Hamas mine was most likely the cause of the beach blast." More from Winds of Change:
The Israeli government seems to have learned something from the Palestinian PR manipulations of Muhammed al-Dura and Jenin and Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount, where lies sprinted several times around the globe before truth shuffled out of bed . . .
Now the Israeli government goes on the offense a bit more quickly, getting inside the news media's decision cycle. If it turns out they were wrong [re the Gaza Beach incident], they'll correct themselves and apologize later. Just as the Palestinians have been doing it, long after everyone has stopped listening and moved onto the next scandal.
(Most of the links in the post are to Solomonia [another one of our sub rosa cabalists] who has been tracking this issue like a hawk. Read all of them. And of course, Augean Stables, originator of the term "Pallywood," thoroughly dissects the evidence.)
Kudos to Richard and Sol for their dogged pursuit of the big lie that masquerades as compassion for an approved victim group. For background on how moral relativism and political correctness -- "communist propaganda writ small,' in Theodore Dalrymple's words -- with their insidious"identity politics," came to stifle free thought in the West, check out Norwegian guest blogger Fjordman's many-linked tour de force at Gates of Vienna.
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