THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

"IT'S NOT ISRAEL" MEDIA BLITZ IS PAYING OFF | 2001-10-20

Islamic fundamentalists are inward looking people. Normally they have no interest at all in people outside the Moslem word. In fact, the only time they show interest in Americans is when we do something that explodes inside the Moslem world.

For two generations, the full weight of American power and prestige has been thrown behind carving out a piece of Moslem land and turning it over to another religious group, the Jews.

It takes a truly moronic mindset to get people to overlook this painfully obvious fact.

Most Americans normally have no more interest in Middle East policy than Middle Easterners normally have in us. Exactly like Moslems in the Middle East relative to America, most Americans had no interest in the Middle East until the results of some Islamic attitudes literally exploded right in our own back yard.

Polls taken right after September 11 showed that most Americans were suddenly demanding that we reconsider our whole approach to Israel.

These polls were reported by Reuters news agency: http://www.reuters.co.il/news2000/N2S6IO60.HTM

These polls were not mentioned in the American press.

After the terrorist acts, a majority of Americans wanted to have a whole new review of our enormous payments to Israel and those who are nice to Israel. That attack threatened to cause them to question our whole established routine. We routinely act as the guardians of Israel's borders while we refuse to police our own (September 9, 2000 - AIR DEFENSE FOR ISRAEL, BUT NOT THE US).

I described the unanimous media push to get everybody saying, "Well, all this is not because of Israel." (September 27, 2001 - HINT 2: THE UNITED MEDIA MESSAGE IS "ALL THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ISRAEL").

I have heard those words and others like them at least a hundred times on television in the last couple of weeks. All of the discussions talk about everything BUT Israel as the cause of Middle Eastern hatred of America.

Meanwhile, almost every Middle Eastern spokesman says it's mainly about Israel.

Suddenly we are told that Islamic fundamentalists just hate us because we're rich. We've been far richer than they are for centuries. In fact, it is only now that there is a fair number of rich Moslems, too.

But the religious people of Islam ignored America all that time.

Until the creation of Israel.

But it can't be Israel. So the media tell us Moslems just hate us because we are free.

We have always been freer than they were.

So it takes a true moron to drool and repeat, "Oh, it ain't Israel."

And since everybody knows the press lies all the time, a press blitz should have no effect on public opinion, right?

Wrong. The only poll of Americans on the issue -- reported abroad but not here -- showed that, before this "It's not Israel" blitz got underway, 68% of Americans said that the major cause of Middle Eastern hatred of this country was our generations-long one-sided support of Israel. A week later, that had dropped to 58%.

Now that this "It's not Israel" blitz has gone on for weeks, every regular conservative "expert" I talk to gives me that same wise old "Bob, I'm going to say something popular and idiotic" look and then pontificates: "Don't be Simplistic. It's a Complex Matter. It's not Israel. In fact, it's got nothing to do with Israel."

You don't see surveys of American popular opinion on this matter in the America media. That's because the propaganda machine still has a lot of work to do on the "It's not Israel" front.

58% of Americans are still not drooling and repeating "It's not Israel." Until they do the media's job is not done.

We will hear nothing about public opinion on Israel until it is exactly what the establishment wants it to be.

It will be. Soon everybody will be saying, "It's Simplistic to say this has anything to do with Israel. It has nothing to do with Israel."

Until then, you are going to hear nothing about Israel in discussions of the present crisis.

I know all about how you get the public to say what it's supposed to. I've been there WHERE they did it and I've been there WHILE they did it.