Feeling The Hate in Jerusalem-The Censored Video!

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The night before President Obama spoke in Cairo, Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana took a video camera to downtown Jerusalem and asked kids on the street – mainly Americans in Jerusalem over the summer – how they felt about Obama. The answers they heard: mainly hardcore racism enhanced by expletives, homophobia, Islamophobia, Arab hatred, and a lot of ignorance.

Blumenthal posted a video to YouTube called “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem on Eve of Obama’s Cairo Address”. Then, without explanation, YouTube took down the video and has stonewalled all attempts to find out what happened.

Censorship? Yes.

This video is important. We know this kind of hatred and extremism is a real phenomenon in our Jewish communities. It needs to be unearthed and looked at with the same seriousness we want to see in any community confronting its own extremists.

This hatred is a symptom of the false framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an unending war against Jewish people. Instead of seeing the troubles in Israel/Palestine as a conflict over land to which two peoples lay claim, as a struggle against 40+ years of occupation, and as a question of people’s right to self-determination, the young Jews in this video believe and are being taught that Jews should either have absolute power or else they become absolute victims. Videos like this show how working for a just peace in the Middle East requires us to address bigotry and hate within our own communities. People who’ve seen the video agree that it’s important. The video went viral after being released on June 5th. Hundreds of thousands of people have watched it, it’s been covered by Ha’aretz, National Public Radio, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and it’s struck a strong resonance among viewers. Too many of us hear hatred like this among our families, friends and extended communities, where people believe that supporting Israel means hating Arabs and Muslims and – now – hating President Obama, too.

So please:

tell YouTube to put this video back up. If you want to see the video (caution: it’s highly offensive), Max Blumenthal has reposted it to Vimeo, and

it’s also on our petition site.

And use this as a teaching tool in your own communities to confront hatred and bigotry.

Jewish Voice for Peace.

Source: jewishvoiceforpeace.org

June 20, 2009 Posted by Elias