The birth of a myth

Today I have become aware of two seemingly unconnected affairs that, upon second thought, are related - in a spiritual way.

The first is the "mysterious" disappearance of the original tapes of Apollo 11 moon landing. The reason is clear - NASA's archiving system is simply sticking old stuff where it will not impede the safe passage of a rocket scientist carrying a coffee mug. But imagine the field day all the conspiracy nuts will have with this innocent case of slovenliness!

Anyhow, the affair of the "fake moon landing" is old. It hardly tickles anyone's funny bone these days, what with the slew of much more popular 9/11 conspiracy theories.

But today another interesting case that, most probably, marks the real birthday of a brand new conspiracy theory, has taken place. I am talking about George Monbiot's odious piece titled: Israel responded to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah, right? Wrong. The title clearly mirrors the moment of truth experienced by the man, some kind of celestial enlightenment that suddenly makes everything absolutely clear. Akin to the feeling one gets a few moments before falling asleep after one has had too many glasses of whatever poison one prefers. Usually the feeling gets forgotten in the morning, replaced by a terrible hangover.

Unfortunately, in Monbiot's case the feeling of a momentous discovery did not pass. He is even ready to announce "mea culpa" regarding his previous meandering in the dark:

I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots".

Discarding in this elegant way the heavy weight of past mistakes, our valiant George rushes into the (almost) uncharted territory, to prove that the Lebanon war is nothing more but a result of yet another long-term Zionist conspiracy. I say "almost", because there already was a similar bleating, by incomparable Pat Buchanan. Isn't it interesting how two personalities that should, in theory, hate each other's guts, are so charmingly in agreement?

Well, let's cut to the chase: Monbiot, like Buchanan, claims that "The assault on Lebanon was premeditated - the soldiers' capture simply provided the excuse."

Leaving aside a potpourri of facts, mistakes and fakery (after all, it is a long article, probably paid by word), the whole house of cards is based on the following:

So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail".

The house of cards collapses very easily when that "premeditation" card is trumped, of course. And the best (and only) answer is that, like any other military in the world, our IDF has detailed enough plans for dealing with countries or other entities that may potentially be a military threat to Israel. Same as US, China and Russia keep plans for almost every country in the world, same as UK and France have plans for their respective neighbors (yeah, I believe that Chirac and Blair do like to play with their sandboxes once in a while - a harmless vice, not to be sneered at). So the whole story is pure bull, and not worth to go in more details.

But the true/false criteria is hardly applicable here. Even the gullible nature of the general public is not of importance. Yes, there are enough people (of the same kind that indulges in the fake moon landing wankery) that will jump on this conspiracy bandwagon out of stupidity. But in case of Jooz in general and Israel in particular, the new myth will attract huge numbers of supporters of a different category. All the Jew-haters, the Israel-haters, the uncounted scribes of anti-Israeli (or so called anti-Zionist) MSM, the characters in the Muslim (and other) areas that are permanently hungry for garbage like this. Especially when both the ultra-right and the super-left are in full agreement...

The success of the new myth is guaranteed, and in my opinion Monbiot should apply for a patent. The royalties will be enormous.

Yeah, and there is not much to add aside of a quote from here:

And this is the ugly face of third-worldist propaganda.

And a quote from the article discussed here:

This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done?

The answer is simple George; hell will offer budget winter sports getaway retreats, before any sane Israeli asks for your fuckin opinion, plonker.

Cross-posted on Yourish.com