Most folks are caught up in points of view shaped for them by others.
These others can vary from parents, teachers, religious figures, writers of various persuasions, podcasters and ideologically driven politicians of right or left who, in their worse manifestations are wolves in political clothing — a recent example of which now resides in the “Oval Office.”
In other words, there are plenty of would-be sources of inspiration out there, but it is always a good thing to look before you leap.
It is interesting that once a charismatic ideologue becomes a powerful “world leader,” a large number of other less powerful national leaders, to say nothing of their millions of constituents, fall into line.
If there is a political or ideological interest to be served, the less powerful might offer excuses and rationalizations to accept the most barbaric of policies of the principal in power.
This is the case of those Western European leaders going along with the policies of the American-Israeli leadership cabal. A principled stand, or even a stand based on the most cursory knowledge of history, seems to be beyond these subalterns. Yet, taken one by one, they are all “normal” politicians.
‘Normal’ Politicians
Many of the politicians who rotate as elected leaders of democratic nations must learn to reflect an established party line even if it no longer reflects reality. That is, even if it means lying about the present and/or de-contextualizing the past.
Take, for example, the reaction of otherwise normal politicians to the Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian incursion into Israel. The reaction of Israeli politicians was predictable and a good example of ideological distortion.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incursion as “the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Holocaust.” His claim follows the national Israeli narrative that asserts nothing Jewish Israel does can justify such an attack by Palestinians. It must be due to anti-Semitism.
In truth, the 2023 Palestinian incursion and the violence associated with it, had nothing to do with the Jewishness of the majority Israelis, but everything to do with the behavior of the Israeli state: the colonialist dispossession of the Palestinians and the discrimination practiced toward them by an entity that choses to call itself a Jewish state.
The anti-semitic charge might fit into the Israel = home of the Jews narrative believed by just about all Jews in Israel and some in the diaspora, but it is nonetheless misleading.
Until now, the Israeli narrative has been accepted by the West’s “normal” politicians. They have interpreted Oct. 7, 2023, as an anti-Semitic act.
For instance, the British prime minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, called the incursion a “pogrom.” French President Emmanuel Macron called it an “unspeakable horror” which “feeds on anti-Semitism and propagates it.”
U.S. President Joe Biden labeled the attack “unadulterated evil” and connected it to a global surge in anti-Semitism. The U.S. secretary of state at the time, Antony Blinken, condemned the incursion as a horrific dehumanization of Israelis.
Keir Starmer in the U.K., the current prime minister who was then the leader of the opposition Labour Party, termed the attack the “darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for solidarity against a “new wave of anti-Semitism,” while European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the incursion was a unique horror and pain inflicted upon the Jewish people.
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