Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Max Blumenthal is back with a new video in the Feel the Hate series.  The first was recorded in Jerusalem and featured mostly drunken American Jews spouting racist cliches about Barack Obama.  The video was denounced by the usual right-wing pro-Israel suspects, but also by erstwhile progressives like Gershom Gorenberg who found it distasteful.  The hasbara brigade was on YouTube like fleas on a dog to ban it and they did.  Vimeo banned it too. So much for freedom of expression in Google world (which owns YouTube).

Among the highlights of the new video are the Israeli who calls Barack Obama a kushi (“Nigger”) and proudly admits he is a racist. He charges the U.S. president with not liking Jews because he is Muslim. A Jewish Tel Aviv University student charges that Israeli Arab students demonstrating against an Israeli law that would criminalize observance of Nakba Day “have all been in prison” and are “traitors.”

Blumenthal’s critics claim that he has an anti-Israel ulterior motive in featuring the lowest common denominator in Israeli society. They seem to believe that most Israelis are nice, white liberals like they are and wish the videographer would reflect back themselves in the mirror he holds up to Israeli society. The only problem is that those he interviews ARE entirely representative of the the Israeli Jewish “street.” Public opinion surveys validate these racist attitudes within Israeli society.

Although their are no racist obscenities as in the first video, you better watch the second video here before the hasbaraniks get YouTube to ban the new one too. Max writes a long post which is quite instructive, answering critics of his previous video.

Only one minor quibble about the video. One of the interviewees calls himself a giz’an (“racist”) which Max transliterates incorrectly as gezan.