By Brendan O'Neill

spiked-online.com

The strange reluctance to see Jews as victims

Even the sight of three emaciated hostages was not enough to shake the lie that Jews are oppressors.

by Brendan O'Neill

There was actually something worse than moral indifference following the release of these cadaverous men – there was moral deflection. Anti-Israel activists clogged up social media with images of released Palestinian prisoners. None looked anywhere near as sickly as the three Israelis, yet the message was as clear as it was sinister: ‘Never mind those Jews, look at these Palestinians.’ Like 21st-century Lord Haw-Haws, they endeavour to distract the world’s attention from the crimes of a fascistic army.

The BBC couldn’t resist implying a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. Following the release of the three Israelis, it said there are ‘concerns about the condition of hostages on both sides’. Hostages? It is a scandal that our public broadcaster is referring to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, some of whom are guilty of acts of extreme violence, as ‘hostages’. It later walked back its comments, issuing an on-air correction. CNN, too, seemed incapable of focussing on the shocking condition of the three Israelis. Released Palestinians have also looked ‘emaciated’ and ‘weak’, it rushed to say. You can almost hear the thought process: ‘People are sympathising too much with Israel – quick, dig out an image of Palestinian pain.’

It’s like our opinion-forming classes have an instinctual aversion to empathy for Israelis. It makes them nervous. It threatens to unravel their morally infantile narrative about Israel being the most beastly of states and the Palestinians being the most oppressed of peoples. So they fiercely police public compassion, ensuring that even the dystopic image of Jews starved by sworn Jew-haters is countered by a reminder that Palestinians have a hard time, too. There is a ‘strange reluctance to see Jews as victims’, in the words of Hadley Freeman. Jews, alone among minority groups, are ruthlessly deprived of victim status, in this case to sustain the cultural elites’ self-flattering narrative about problematic Israel and benighted Palestine.

The sick reality is that there are people out there who will have seen those three stricken Jews not as brutalised human beings deserving of our solidarity, but as an unwelcome intrusion into the childish morality tale about Israel-Palestine. As a vexing reminder that things are more complicated than we are told. As stark, gaunt proof of the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas, which were the source of this war that our cultural elites shamelessly blame on Israel. This is how intense Israelophobia has become in influential circles – they are now willing to sacrifice Jews to ideology, to discourage solidarity with wronged, ravaged Israelis in order that their moral narrative might be protected against the impertinence of nuance. In the past, people looked the other way when Jews were dehumanised because they wanted to save their skins – now they do it to save their fake virtue.

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Blink! The Link between Aerobic Fitness and Cognition

Although exercise is known to enhance cognitive function and improve mental health, the neurological mechanisms of this link are unknown. Now, researchers from Japan have found evidence of the missing link between aerobic fitness and cognitive function. In a study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers from the University of Tsukuba revealed that spontaneous eye blink rate (sEBR), which reflects activity of the dopamine system, could be used to understand the connection between cognitive function and aerobic fitness.

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