{"id":53112,"date":"2017-06-18T17:05:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-18T15:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=53112"},"modified":"2017-06-13T08:46:16","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T06:46:16","slug":"19-00-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=53112","title":{"rendered":"RIGHT FROM WRONG: QUESTIONS OF SOCIETAL CLUELESSNESS"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>RIGHT FROM WRONG: QUESTIONS OF SOCIETAL CLUELESSNESS<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

RUTHIE <\/strong><\/span>BLUM<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Most of the country\u2019s filmmakers are afflicted with societal cluelessness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Israelis dance with Israeli national flags during celebrations marking Israel’s 68th Independence Day in Jerusalem. (photo credit:REUTERS)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, I was contacted by a young woman conducting background research for an Israeli documentary on the socio-political fabric of the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeking average Israelis of all stripes and sectors for the program,\u201d she said, asking me if it is true, as she had been told by the person who gave her my phone number, that I am a right-winger. The delicate way in which she broached the subject \u2013 as though careful not to cause offense \u2013 made me giggle.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I answered, stifling a full-blown laugh. After all, she was merely performing a task she had been assigned.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, like, really? You\u2019re actually on the Right? I just have to know, so I can chat with you to find out whether you\u2019re appropriate for the program,\u201d she said, revealing she had never heard of me and had not thought to do a Google search before calling.<\/span>
\n I replied again in the affirmative, adding that I am secular, rather than religious.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven better for our purposes,\u201d she said, noting my supposedly sui generis status with satisfaction.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not the first time I have been approached by media outlets to fill the \u201cconservative woman\u201d slot. Nor is it unusual for millennials in the journalism business to ask me to explain who I am and what I think, rather than doing a bit of investigating on their own.<\/span><\/p>\n

This particular \u201cinterview,\u201d however, was noteworthy, because it gave me an additional glimpse into the secluded intellectual and cultural castle many Israelis inhabit without even realizing it, let alone venturing beyond its carefully constructed moat. The woman with whom I spoke \u2013 let\u2019s call her Maya \u2013 is such a person. Like an anthropologist studying a primitive tribe member considered dangerous by the rest of the civilized world, she advanced with caution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow do Israelis view right-wingers?\u201d Maya began, apparently unaware that a majority of the country keeps electing what the Left refers to as a \u201cfar Right\u201d government. \u201cHow are you different from left-wingers?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cIs there any left-wing position that you would be willing to consider as valid? Have you ever attempted to look at the world through left-wing eyes?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I could hear Maya jotting down fragments of my replies, mostly without rebutting them. After about 15 minutes, however, she was unable to refrain from protesting the positions she had requested I articulate. Key among these were my assertion that political conservatives tend to oppose big government, high taxes and the notion that the West is responsible for Islamist terrorism, while championing individual liberty and a free-market economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maya was stunned. It clearly had not occurred to her that she was in favor of interference by the government, particularly not one headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nor would she ever have said she was happy to take home only half of every shekel she earns to fund such a government\u2019s activities and priorities. Above all, she was certain that only the Left cared about individual liberty, which is why she practically gasped when I referred her to the gay caucus of Netanyahu\u2019s Likud Party.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it was my description of the right-wing view of free speech that seemed to surprise if not disconcert her the most. Using Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev\u2019s pronouncements about withdrawing government funding from certain plays \u2013 either for their content or for their creators\u2019 refusal to perform in Judea and Samaria \u2013 I explained that people like me believe in the right of all citizens to express themselves as they please (with the exception of support for or incitement to violence); we just don\u2019t think this presupposes financing anything and everything with our hard-earned money.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo you\u2019re saying that the Right doesn\u2019t really support freedom of speech,\u201d Maya concluded.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOn the contrary,\u201d I said, to no avail.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before wrapping up our chat, Maya suddenly discovered she had neglected to ask a key question on her list: whether I think the Right is more Zionist than the Left. Oy.<\/span><\/p>\n

My long answer, which involved an overview of the decades since Israel\u2019s establishment \u2013 and the way even the definition of Zionism has evolved \u2013 led to my short answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maya thanked me profusely for my \u201cinteresting perspective,\u201d which she seemed to consider an oddity or an aberration, rather than a perfectly common, mainstream point of view. It is this aspect of Israeli society \u2013 the ability of a small yet prominent segment of the Jewish state to be ignorant of and baffled by the mindframe of the far less visible masses \u2013 that would make for a good documentary. Alas, most of the country\u2019s filmmakers are afflicted with precisely this kind of societal cluelessness.<\/span><\/p>\n

The writer is an editor at the Gatestone Institute.<\/span><\/p>\n

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twoje uwagi, linki, wlasne artykuly, lub wiadomosci przeslij do: webmaster@reunion68.com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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RIGHT FROM WRONG: QUESTIONS OF SOCIETAL CLUELESSNESS RUTHIE BLUM Most of the country\u2019s filmmakers are afflicted with societal cluelessness. \u00a0Israelis dance with Israeli national flags during celebrations marking Israel’s 68th Independence Day in Jerusalem. (photo credit:REUTERS) Last week, I was contacted by a young woman conducting background research for an Israeli documentary on the socio-political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53112"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53119,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53112\/revisions\/53119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}