Jews gone wild: Why camcorders and booze don't mix

[scandal 951]

Read the article. Watch the Youtube video. Draw your own conclusions.

To me - it looks like just another day with the radical-right on VJ. You sure you guys didn't all take a field trip to Israel to make this video?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090967.html

Last update - 15:51 09/06/2009

OPINION / Jews gone wild: Why camcorders and booze don't mix

By Benjamin L. Hartman, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: Obama speech Cairo

The night before Barack Obama thrilled Cairo, two cameramen strolled through downtown Jerusalem and filmed a handful of drunken American kids doing their best David Duke impressions. Forty-eight hours later, the video has gone viral, linked from a hundred political blogs, and is circling the internet at a critical velocity on a mission to humiliate the Jewish people.

As someone who lives on and off in the American bubble in Tel Aviv and came to Israel on a Birthright tour like some of the kids in the video may have, this is embarrassing, shocking, bizarre, but familiar. And as someone who spent many nights grimacing at similar overheard conversations from American Jews in town for the week from Long Island, the booze-fueled hubris and uber-Zionism is not so strange at all. In the Jewish homeland for the first time, on a free trip, fleetingly experiencing a place gripped by a visceral realism and powerful sense of purpose, it's easy to let the beer overtake you.

While documentary filmmaker Max Blumenthal rejects this argument ("No amount of alcohol could make me express opinions that were not authentically mine," he says. "If anything, alcohol is a crude form of truth serum that lubricates the release of closely held opinions and encourages confessional talk."), many American Jews understand how hubris and chutzpah can flow much freer in Israel. Spared the political correctness, decorum and social mores of America (or Britain, South Africa or Australia), many find that they walk taller, step louder, and even sprinkle their speech with words they'd never say back home.

Not to excuse the behavior of those in the video, I don't believe this idiocy reflects the values of young American Jews or their opinions on Obama, but rather the way that Israel, in particular Jerusalem, can radicalize the young to the left or the right. It also proves (once again), that fools and alcohol and camcorders do not make a good match.

Coincidentally, the video comes about a week after Haaretz reported on the campaign launched by far-right Israelis called "No, you can't," meant to persuade their countrymen of the dangers of the "anti-Semitic" Barack Hussein Obama - with the emphasis on "Hussein." So far, the campaign appears to consist of sparsely attended rallies and posters of Obama in a kaffiyeh, much like those of Yitzhak Rabin before his 1995 assassination.

For many, the video is shocking because they think Jews aren't supposed to be racist. Especially not nice Jewish boys like those in the video, showing off the hip hop gear bought on the mean streets of Great Neck, their hats cocked sideways as they survey the city they profess to own.

There are really only two types of young American Jews in Israel: the ones who head for Jerusalem, and the ones who go to Tel Aviv. I hope Blumenthal films his next segment in Tel Aviv, though the results would probably be far less salacious. On a balcony in Florentin, he would ask the drum circle what they think of Obama and through the purple haze would hear only praise for the president, before being forced to listen to a 30-minute account of a recent trip to Nepal.

This video either proves that drunk Americans are starting to resemble Kahanists, or Israeli far-rightists have achieved the rhetorical brilliance of drunk American Jewish yahoos. Talking to drunken American Jewish 19-year-olds to gauge Israeli opinion on Obama is like using far-right conservatives to measure American public opinion on gay marriage. You're speaking to the wrong crowd and at the wrong time of night, only in a country where there is no closing time or public drinking ordinances. One can only imagine what would be caught on film in an American college town under these circumstances.

[Heracles 417]

Jewish homies, now that is funny.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

[scandal 951]

I liked the Haredi (ultra Orthodox) guy with the beard and payos (sidelocks), drinking his tallboy can of Goldstar (####### Israeli beer), and mumbling about whether Obama was "good for the Jews". Oh, and the girl who's a poli-sci major so of course "she knows what she's talking about", but had no idea who Bibi Netanyahu is. Loser n00bs. That could easily have been a Jaywalking segment.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

There's a lot of racism in Israel - its no different to anywhere else really.

Their politics fluctuate between the center right and the far right (basically contingent on whatever is happening with the Palestinians) and they have religious fundamentalist groups (also terrorist groups) who literally believe that they are God's chosen people.

[scandal 951]

There's a lot of racism in Israel - its no different to anywhere else really.

Their politics fluctuate between the center right and the far right (basically contingent on whatever is happening with the Palestinians) and they have religious fundamentalist groups (also terrorist groups) who literally believe that they are God's chosen people.

The youtube video and associated article were about American Jewish teens in Israel for a summer program. They're not Israelis. And they were primarily speaking about the American President.

Yes, there is extremism, and racism in Israel, same as everywhere else.

Many of those on the right are there from a sense of religious fundamentalism, and a belief that the entire land of Eretz Yisrael belongs to the Jewish people as a God given right.

But there are many others on the right who are secular, and see it as a matter of national security and defense and more pragmatic reasons, not at all religiously inspired. There is also a very real sense that attempts to negotiate and come to a peaceful land for peace compromise (as in the Oslo talks) have failed, so why bother?

I hasten also to note that there is still a large and vibrant 'left' to the Israeli spectrum, to which I belong, which believes that ultimately the only possible way to resolve matters is with a two state solution and a land for peace formula. It may take time, the time may not be now, there is no partner on the other side with the authority and mandate to make a deal, and the Israeli political pendulum is in a rightward arc. But that doesn't mean change won't come at some point. Obama be bringin' on the change.....

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I hasten also to note that there is still a large and vibrant 'left' to the Israeli spectrum, to which I belong, which believes that ultimately the only possible way to resolve matters is with a two state solution and a land for peace formula. It may take time, the time may not be now, there is no partner on the other side with the authority and mandate to make a deal, and the Israeli political pendulum is in a rightward arc. But that doesn't mean change won't come at some point. Obama be bringin' on the change.....

commie

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

You get the same sort of militant attitudes among American Jews that are apparent amongst some Israeli nationals - I think a lot of people regard Israel if not as a second home, then certainly as a spiritual one. Saw much the same thing in the UK as well - unquestioning support for Israel's unilateral military incursions.

That said there are liberal-minded people everywhere - even in Iran. Though you wouldn't know it from the news media.

[scandal 951]

I hasten also to note that there is still a large and vibrant 'left' to the Israeli spectrum, to which I belong, which believes that ultimately the only possible way to resolve matters is with a two state solution and a land for peace formula. It may take time, the time may not be now, there is no partner on the other side with the authority and mandate to make a deal, and the Israeli political pendulum is in a rightward arc. But that doesn't mean change won't come at some point. Obama be bringin' on the change.....

commie

.. for Christ !

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I read somewhere that for Jewish nationalists, it is necessary to see themselves as continuously under threat from enemies, which makes sense because that's essentially the same line of thinking as the neo-cons like Cheney.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I read somewhere that for Jewish nationalists, it is necessary to see themselves as continuously under threat from enemies, which makes sense because that's essentially the same line of thinking as the neo-cons like Cheney.

Its a pretty common phenomenon - applied to this country too after 9/11.

[almaty 19]

I hasten also to note that there is still a large and vibrant 'left' to the Israeli spectrum, to which I belong, which believes that ultimately the only possible way to resolve matters is with a two state solution and a land for peace formula. It may take time, the time may not be now, there is no partner on the other side with the authority and mandate to make a deal, and the Israeli political pendulum is in a rightward arc. But that doesn't mean change won't come at some point. Obama be bringin' on the change.....

commie

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I hasten also to note that there is still a large and vibrant 'left' to the Israeli spectrum, to which I belong, which believes that ultimately the only possible way to resolve matters is with a two state solution and a land for peace formula. It may take time, the time may not be now, there is no partner on the other side with the authority and mandate to make a deal, and the Israeli political pendulum is in a rightward arc. But that doesn't mean change won't come at some point. Obama be bringin' on the change.....

commie

Who could resist that red dress? I sure couldn't.

[scandal 951]

I read somewhere that for Jewish nationalists, it is necessary to see themselves as continuously under threat from enemies, which makes sense because that's essentially the same line of thinking as the neo-cons like Cheney.

Its a pretty common phenomenon - applied to this country too after 9/11.

I don't know if it's "necessary to see themselves" as under constant threat. It's a pretty obvious reality that they are. There is still a state of war between Israel and Syria, as well as other Arab states, that dates back to 1948. Hamas and Hizbollah continue provocative rocket launches onto Israeli towns, and instigated the 2006 Lebanon war by kidnapping Israeli soldiers who were patrolling the border. Iran continues its violent anti-Israel rhetoric even as it ramps up its nuclear program. You don't need paranoid conspiracy theories to see that Israel is surrounded by nations that are either actively at war with it, or whose regimes are tacitly at "peace" even while the popular sentiment in their population is to confront Israel with force. The threats are perfectly real. What to do about those threats is what's under active debate between left and right.

I hasten also to note that there is still a large and vibrant 'left' to the Israeli spectrum, to which I belong, which believes that ultimately the only possible way to resolve matters is with a two state solution and a land for peace formula. It may take time, the time may not be now, there is no partner on the other side with the authority and mandate to make a deal, and the Israeli political pendulum is in a rightward arc. But that doesn't mean change won't come at some point. Obama be bringin' on the change.....

commie

Boobies!!! :dance: