The video shot recently in central Jerusalem by Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana allowed young American Jews, apparently somewhat sloshed, to hold forth on their views of President Obama, prior to his speech last week in Cairo, Egypt.Â
On his blog, Max Blumenthal comments:
We encountered rowdy groups of beer sodden twenty-somethings, many from the United States, and all eager to vent their visceral, even violent hatred of Barack Obama and his policies towards Israel. Usually I offer a brief commentary on my video reports, but this one requires no comment at all. Quite simply, it contains some of the most shocking footage I have ever filmed. Watch it and see if you agree. (This video was removed from the Huffington Post on the grounds that it had “no news value” and “did not move the conversation forward.”)
(WARNING: The video clip contains profanity, vile racist epithets and rampant stupidity.)
In his commentary on the video, M.J. Rosenberg, of the Israel Policy Forum, writes:
It’s painful to watch.
But no more painful than the vitriolic hate campaign against Barack Obama in this country which emanates not just from drunks but from a former Vice President, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, to name a few.
There is hate everywhere. And there are plenty of Israeli racists. But that is not who these people are. These kids are American Jews visiting Israel. And, like all but ultra-Orthodox American Jews, they are totally American. They are full of fratboy American swagga, even using hip hop inflections to spew racist hate. And they are drunk.
Simply put, they are not Israelis. And viewing them as representative of Israelis is like filming American kids studying in Berlin, asking them about the Holocaust, and using their reactions as saying something about Germany.
The video does say something about the kind of trips Jewish organizations are promoting. Maybe these kids came on their own. But if they were sponsored by any pro-Israel organization, it better consider what it is doing. After all, these kids are under age and someone is responsible. We need to know if any pro-Israel or Jewish organization’s “education” program is producing such utter vileness.
