| SvennoJ said: The theory on You Tube is that she was fired for this interview. The eye roll was just an excuse more easily sold to the pro-Israel crowd while not drawing attention to the video below. Much easier to be outraged over an eye roll than actually listening to what she said. |
Yeah, I am sure the Hill and her detractors were looking for any excuse to get her fired. The eye roll, in context, is not as bad as it seems, I'd say justified even.
The Israel lobby exists - and no one should have to say sorry for acknowledging that fact, writes Ash Sarkar.https://t.co/JG7xkXQBz0
— Novara Media (@novaramedia) June 7, 2024
Derbyshire presented Shaheen with the Jewish Labour Movement’s complaint about this tweet and its attached video, an old Jon Stewart sketch about being hectored online about Israel and Palestine. The tweet made reference to the “Israel lobby”, and how “non-stop harassment” discourages people from speaking out online due to being “immediately assailed by scores of hysterical people who explain to you why you’re completely wrong”. In her interview, Shaheen apologised for ‘liking’ the tweet, and agreed that it made reference to an antisemitic trope.
This is, however, one area where I profoundly disagree with Shaheen. A racial trope is a disparaging repetitive image or narrative, used to demonise a whole community. Had the tweet referenced the so-called ‘Jewish lobby’, or invoked sinister stories about ‘Jewish financiers’, it would be entirely correct to say that it was an antisemitic trope. But it didn’t – it talked about there being an Israel lobby.
Perhaps there isn’t any such thing. Perhaps Israel is the only country on the planet without dedicated lobbyists. Perhaps organisations like We Believe in Israel, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, and both the Labour and Conservative Friends of Israel, simply don’t exist. Perhaps it’s simply untrue to say that people who are critical of Israel online, or supportive of Palestine, are bombarded by hostile replies from pro-Israel accounts.
Or perhaps, there’s a concerted effort by Israel’s advocates to warp and distort the definition of antisemitism to make it impossible to describe their activities. Was Shaheen wrong to apologise? I can understand why she did it. But nobody should have to apologise for liking a plain statement of fact.
https://novaramedia.com/2024/05/31/faiza-shaheen-has-nothing-to-apologise-for/
