WarSclerotic

1.

Who said anyone is legitimizing Kim Jong Un, the notorious leader of North Korea? Did someone hand him a mysterious $150 billion dollars, the way the world did with Iran? Are any European conglomerates planning on doing business with broke North Korea, the way they did with Iran? Did the North Korean foreign minister (does anyone even know who that is?) worm his way into every living room in the world, for hours on end, as part of a cruel regime’s charm offensive and with the support of a sycophantic media, the way Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif did during the nuclear talks? Has anyone seen U.S. President Donald Trump get down on his knees and kneel before the North Korean tyrant, the way his predecessor, former U.S. President Barack Obama did with the Saudi king?

A bear hug. That’s what the North Korean dictator, who was fully aware of the balance of power, received from Trump. He was given an offer he couldn’t refuse: If you want to feed your people, if you want commodities for you and your country, if you want to do business with us, give up your nuclear weapons. And as Trump indicated during the two leaders’ meeting in Singapore this week, he is trying. If Kim fails to deliver, the stick will come back out. The difference between Trump and Obama is that in this instance, there was a stick before there was a meeting. And it wasn’t just any stick, it was a heavy club.

But what does any of that matter, when a substantial portion of the global media, including in Israel, is not interested in the truth. Many in the media are still sore that Trump won the presidential election in the first place, and they are having trouble accepting reality. The media has many faces, it is not limited to television studios and newspaper offices. There is also the film industry – hundreds of millions of people see the movies that come out of Hollywood. Most of what I’ve personally seen from Hollywood in the last 20 years has been magnificently stupid, perfectly implausible and disconnected from reality or any real discussion of life. Hollywood, the champion of political correctness, cheered deliriously when one of its biggest stars unleashed profanities against the president of their country.

With his address at the Tony Awards this week, Robert De Niro reminded me of Israeli personality Assi Dayan, who, at a film industry event, lashed out at Benjamin Netanyahu some 20 years ago. Netanyahu was serving his first term as prime minister at the time, and like De Niro, Dayan used some choice expletives in his tirade. He, too, elicited the applause of his audience, which was stricken with blindness. They embraced the PLO’s Yasser Arafat and his gang of terrorists, ever since the Oslo Accords, but felt contempt for their prime minister.

2.

It wasn’t the pursuit of truth that guided many of the commentator who showered us with insights and reservations about this week’s Singapore summit. Where were these reservations during the Oslo Accords that ended in bloodshed? Where were they when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005? Where were they during the nuclear talks with Iran? All of a sudden, the media is wary of the harbingers of peace. All of sudden, it cares about the rights of the North Koreans.

Why didn’t we see a similar onslaught on the White House when Obama turned his back on the Green Movement in Iran? After the election was stolen from them, the members of the Green Movement took to the streets and literally gave their lives for the sake of freedom in their country. But all Obama cared about was Pax Americana – that cosmic world peace that he dreamed up in his famous Cairo speech – and didn’t want to upset the ayatollah regime and the Muslim world.

During Obama’s term, I don’t remember any “brave” actors declaring that the emperor, the messiah of the Left, has no clothes. Just like I don’t remember any Assi Dayan type sending Arafat and his disciples to hell, the way Dayan did Netanyahu, after the recklessness of the deal that was signed with him became apparent. Trump, however, is accused of legitimizing a cruel tyrant. Netanyahu, who fought tooth and nail against the Iran nuclear agreement, was accused of jeopardizing Israel’s relations with the U.S., even though he was fighting against an American president who understood the Middle East about as much as the commentators do. What glorious hypocrisy.

3.

I have been writing for years that every viewer and every reader understands the reality just as well, if not better than, these commentators. They don’t have access to any significant information that the average viewer is denied, nor do they carry any special kind of cultural or intellectual baggage. They have a microphone and a suit and they appear on our screens. That’s all.

By virtue of their celebrity, the talking heads on the small screen, and the big screen too, enjoy an aura of undeserved importance. There is no need for this. Think of the second commandment, the one that has been etched into our people’s history for all eternity: “You shall not make for yourself any graven image. … You shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” Now, the biblical image has taken the form of commentators, actors and celebrities.

We were commanded at Mount Sinai to destroy these images. To abandon the idols. To take them at face value rather than attributing to them more worth than they deserve. The cultural and artistic elite do not have a monopoly on iconoclasm. It is all of us who share the responsibility. Because the goal is freedom of the spirit and the mind, and if, when we look at the summit in Singapore, we see one thing and hear something different in the voice-over, it is incumbent on all of us to lower the volume and make up our own minds.

It was quite entertaining to see an Israeli reporter trying to teach the president of the United States what kind of tyrant the North Korean leader really is. Trump’s response reflected the sentiments of many viewers – he snapped at the reporter, waving him away and muttering, “I understand much better than you.” But have no fear. Within the media cult, the reporter was widely applauded for his “courage.”

4.

The leftist discourse does not confront its rivals’ worldview. It rejects the rival altogether. Much to our disgrace, some of the intelligent members of the Right have internalized the Left’s criticism and learned to turn around and similarly criticize their own camp while humiliatingly cozying up to the very people who treat them with contempt. The Left is not very good at reading reality with any degree of accuracy, but it holds the key positions in academia, in the media and in cultural power centers. Therefore, it (still) has the power to blacklist artists, researchers and media personalities that rub them the wrong way.

The right-wing newspapers and social networks are filled with in-depth debates on remarks, articles, theories and ideas from the Left, but the opposite isn’t true for the Left. Most of the counterarguments in the left-wing media boil down to childish dismissals of any ideological or cultural rival. Many who look down their noses at the Right are in fact ignorant in many areas, and by avoiding any serious and healthy discussion with their opponents, they are sentencing their camp to ideological atrophy.

The cultural realm cannot become enriched by internal conversations within the echo chamber. The current reality is essentially a form of ideological incest, which inevitably leads to genetic mutations in the offspring. The toxic result is that we are seeing significant sectors in the Israeli Left adopting anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic ideologies.

5.

There is no pursuit of truth. There is hatred for Netanyahu and there is hatred for Trump. That is why so much effort is being invested into turning the public against Netanyahu with corruption allegations. Off all the police investigations and media circuses that have been flung at the prime minister in recent years, the biggest one has been Case 3000 – the one that launched the wildly unfounded allegation that Netanyahu was involved in illicit submarine deals to line his pockets and the pockets of his associates.

“I pray that this was not a case of treason fueled by greed,” Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid said on Nov. 22, 2017 without batting an eye. This week, Lapid complained that he was being maligned…

Demonstrators protested at the attorney general’s home every week, with the submarine case at the top of their agenda, and the investigative reporter who has hounded Netanyahu with this case may as well have been nominated for a Pulitzer. The case seemed poised to become the biggest scandal involving an incumbent prime minister the country had ever seen.

But ultimately, it was much ado about nothing. Much to the conspirators chagrin, the case evaporated this week with not so much as a whimper. But no drama was recorded. Actually, there was a bit of drama: A Channel 10 reporter exposed an even bigger controversy than the submarines – the Prime Minister’s Office ordered a new desk for the bureau and sent the old desk out to be repaired. “So what’s the problem?” the genius reporter asked. “There is now one desk too many.” Maybe there is just one commentator too many.