This announcement appeared on Ynet a few days ago:
Oprah coming to Israel for solidarity visit
American talk show queen accepts Elie Wiesel proposal to come to Israel, says she sympathizes with Israelis’ suffering
Oprah Winfrey will be arriving in Israel for a solidarity visit in the near future, the queen of American talk shows announced Monday during an event at Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
In the event, Winfrey was honored by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity for her contribution to promoting humanitarian issues.
Wiesel called on Winfrey to visit Israel, where “the major war against terror is currently taking place.”
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Gillerman, who attended the event, joined in:
….a visit of a figure with such influence on the international media could help bring an end to the indifference towards the terror threat faced by Israelis.
What part of this enjoined statement about terrorism is Oprah really expected to condone? It is Israel’s latest propaganda meme: that the Palestinians are terrorists and Israel’s actions on the West Bank and Gaza are intended to fight the war against terrorism. Although such a statement from Gillerman was not unexpected, Weisel’s hypocracy for joining in on Israel’s latest propaganda deception only grows larger.
Weisel Words is the title of an article that appeared in The Nation several years ago describing Elie Weisel’s role in Israel’s attempts to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, when, as a journalist for the Jewish terrorist gang, the Irgun, he falsely claimed that the Palestinians left their homes on their own encouraged by radio broadcasts from surrounding Arab nations. It was all a blatant lie. Since then he has failed to speak a single word against the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians, especially the 40 year long military occupation and still continuing colonization of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Gaza.
This reality was provided by Robert Jensen, professor of journalism, at the University of Texas-Austin, among many others:
In contrast to the international press, in American media, there is a reversal of cause and effect in that the (Israel’s) occupation is framed as a response to the suicide bombings. That all of the Palestinian actions are attacks and Israel actions retaliation is meaningful. Retaliation suggests a defensive stance against violence initiated by someone else. It places a responsibility for the violence on the party provoking the retaliation. In other words, Palestinian violence like suicide bombings is seen as cause and the origin of the conflict. Since the September 11 attack on the US, Israel’s PR strategy has been to frame all Palestinian actions, violent or not, as terrorism. To the extent that they can do that they have repackaged the illegal occupation as part of the war on terrorism.
The documentary from which these statements were transcribed, Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land (also with Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Arik Ackerman, founder of Rabbis for Human Rights, and many others), is a must see for anyone interested in understanding Israel’s current propaganda effort to deceive the American public about the true nature of its colonial intentions in what is otherwise masked as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sometime before the announcement (unable to find the date), Oprah actually visited Auschwitz with Elie Weisel, with whom she toured the extermination camp facility. The first few paragraphs of the story on her site, clearly describe the horrors Weisel experienced and at face value, the presentation was well intentioned and noble.
At the entrance to Auschwitz, Oprah stands in the spot Elie Wiesel began his dark journey into Night. “It is right here, on this railroad track, leading into the camp,” she says, “that a young teenage boy arrived in a cattle car with his family, friends and neighbors.”
Up to 100 people were packed into a single car, with no food, no water, no toilet and little air. In Night, Professor Wiesel remembers his own journey.
There was a woman among us, a certain Mrs. Schächter. … I knew her well. … Mrs. Schächter had lost her mind. On the first day of our journey, she had already begun to moan. … Later, her sobs and screams became hysterical. … “Fire! I see a fire!” … Some pressed against the bars to see. There was nothing. Only the darkness of night. … “She is mad, poor woman…”
Days later, as young Elie Wiesel stepped off the cattle car at the Auschwitz subcamp Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, he smelled the stench of burning human flesh and saw the crematorium throwing its flames into the sky. “[Mrs. Schächter] wasn’t so mad at all,” Oprah says. “She was a prophet.”
“And we didn’t listen,” Professor Wiesel says. “I had a very strange idea [when I arrived at Auschwitz]. I was thinking that maybe it’s the end of history, and I thought maybe it’s the end of Jewish history. And then I thought maybe it means the end of times.”
Not everyone, however, is pleased with Oprah’s projected trip to Israel. Debbie Schlussel, a self-described conservative Republican political commentator, radio talk show host, columnist, and attorney, who claims to be an expert on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism and a host of other issues, and the second largest conservative political personality behind only Ann Coulter, condemns it. This excerpt from an article from her site about the Israel visit makes clear why (sorry I can’t show the pictures of Oprah dressed in Muslim garb).
Oprah Watch: Are Pigs Flying? Oprah Accepts Trip to ISRAEL
I’ve been the most acute observer of Oprah’s constant pan-Islamist programming and constant denigration of Israel and Israeli victims of terror. She’s deliberately used her show and her magazine to promote Palestinian terrorism and apartheid Islamist Middle Eastern countries Read all about it at Oprah Sucks (link not provided here).
But, now, Oprah has agreed to go see Israel and claims she sympathizes with the suffering of the Israeli people. Sort of. Call me skeptical. But, it’s not exactly like she chose to say this in advance. She was put on the spot at an event honoring Elie Wiesel, Monday Night, in New York.
(snip)
Given Oprah’s history over 22 seasons of overt anti-Israel and pan-Islamist, pan-Arabist sentiment, I’m not holding my breath. If she ever does go to Israel–and if it’s not just a nice response when being put on the spot at a public event–you can bet the best we’ll get is a moral equivalency show, where she’ll equivocate Palestinian terrorists with innocent Israelis fighting to live in peace.
If she truly sympathizes with the the suffering of the Israeli people–as she claimed, Monday Night–she certainly has a funny way of showing it. Thus far, for Israel–and for all of us who understand the true extremist nature of the brand of Islam we are fighting, with friends like Oprah, who needs enemies?
Debbie Schlussel, who is also a conservative right wing Zionist, is, of course, also fighting Israel’s war on terrorism with words, i.e., repeating propaganda memes as loud and as often as possible.
From the language exchanges, Oprah’s present trip to Israel is clearly a coup for Israel’s propaganda machine, as it is all focused now on saving Israel from Palestinian terrorism and that is obviously why Israel is now occupying the West Bank. It is all in the name of fighting the greater war on terror for Americans, presumably, or as Sharon liked to say, “to destroy the terror infrastructure.”
But are these people pretending to one another that they do not know the truth about Israel’s 40 year military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, that its purpose has been to further colonize Palestinian lands, that its purpose is to make Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) an equal part of the Israel nation? What would over 150 Israeli only villages, towns, and cities, as well as Israeli industries and agribusinesses be doing in the West Bank, all connected to Israel by Israeli only roads and highways, all protected by the Israeli military, all continuing to be enlarged every day at the expense of lands forcibly taken from individual Palestinians, if that were not the case.
For Oprah, this will be an interesting visit. Will Oprah, a very intelligent woman, take the truthful road Jimmy Carter chose, or will she continue the pretense that Israel is fighting the war on terrorism against the Palestinians?
