Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Propaganda brochures

A colleague, Lara, sent me this (I cite with her permission): "A friend of mine who signed onto the U.S. call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel is listed on that website received a package today from the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. It included a letter suggesting to her that her support of the boycott was misguided and could easily be corrected through proper information and that Israel is a democracy that celebrates its diversity in every possible way. It also included a number of glossy Israeli government propaganda brochures and pamphlets, and a book called "The Israelis" by Donna Rosenthal ...that includes chapters with titles like "Dating and Mating Israeli Style" "Oy! Gay?" and "Hookers and Hash in the Holy Land," alongside chapters like "The Bedouin: Tribes, Tents and Satellite Dishes" and "Out of Africa: Ethiopian Israelis in the Promised Land." In all, the package seemed to be cast towards a stereotyped view of a "liberal academic" (as opposed to their propaganda for born-again Christians) who is assumed to know extremely little about the Middle East and who is assumed to be stupid enough to believe this shit."