NOACH 5784 Moral Corruption Rabbi Andrew Shaw Chief Executive, Mizrachi UK
It has been a week of extremes. On the one hand, I was so comforted by the visits to Israel by Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak. Leaders of the world backing Israel 100%. It should not be noteworthy when people declare their support for a sovereign country fighting against a genocidal terrorist entity that has slaughtered over 1000 civilians in cold blood. However, in the confused world we live in, it is. On the other hand, we keep seeing a proliferation of hatred against the Jewish State on our campuses, in Hollywood, in the media and on the streets. Just yesterday more than 2,000 artists, actors and musicians in the UK, including Tilda Swinton, Steve Coogan, Charles Dance and Maxine Peake, signed a letter calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for “our governments to end their military and political support for Israel’s actions. Our governments are not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them.” This was bad enough, but it did not mention at all the sickening terror attacks by Hamas! As if Israel just decided to bomb Gaza for no reason! Then of course there was the appalling journalism in the aftermath of the explosion by a hospital in Gaza. As Juliet Samuel wrote in The Times:
For some critical number of hours, the BBC, The New York Times and various other globally significant western media declared as verifiable fact that Israel had killed 500 civilians by destroying an entire hospital. Back in reality, it turns out that what had actually happened was that a terrorist rocket misfired and landed on a car park, killing an as yet unknown number of innocent people but leaving the hospital almost entirely intact. When the truth emerged, most of the media outlets did not issue corrections, admit they had relied on Hamas sources for a major news story, send out fresh notifications, review their editorial policies or reverse their emotive headlines to blame the terrorist group for the latest senseless massacre. They prevaricated, added weasel-worded caveats and quietly tweaked phrases to maintain the initial impression so that, for example, a BBC subhead stating “hundreds killed” became “hundreds were taking shelter”. And almost a whole day later, demonstrably false social media posts parroting Hamas’s original lines were