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Yoav Baram – ‘It’s a very complicated matter. In which the Jews are to be blamed’

Let me start by saying I love John Oliver. The British comedian who started his career as a journalist, did some comedy and then became a writer/actor in John Stewart “The Daily Show” has been hosting one of the best investigative and informative shows since 2014, “Last week Tonight” aired on HBO, and available on Youtube. Last week tonight is known to be covering some serious topics ranging from the horror’s the Uyghurs suffer under Chinese rule to the horror’s Americans suffered under Donald Trump rule.

Admittingly, in the past year I’ve mostly watched Seth Meyers (Sorry John, but Seth is way more funny, can do impressions, and has yet to voice his opinion on matters he knows nothing about), yet I was still disappointed with Oliver’s latest episode in which he clearly oversimplified a complicated matter such as the recent round of violence between Israel and Gaza, only to present a biased and one-sided conclusion.

Oliver full segment can be seen here, starting on 1:10.

This follows Trevor Noah – John Stewart’s replacement in The Daily Show since the latter retired in 2015. Both Noah and Oliver brought up the same talking points so instead of analyzing both I’ll briefly address each main claim, this article will NOT attempt to analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole, because I’m still relatively young and don’t want to waste my entire life on a helpless cause.

 

Both Oliver and Noah actually started their videos pretty carefully and convincingly, by explaining that the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ridiculously complicated, layered with a million different variables, and quite rightfully – depends on what point in time one wants to examine the conflict. But pretty quickly both Noah and Oliver fail to heed their own warnings about over-simplifying complicated mattes, doing so by choosing two main arguments, both of which vastly favored the Palestinian side:

1)  That it’s all a numbers game, meaning we should examine how many injured and dead are on each side, to pretty much determine who’s the “bad” guy. Such Grose accounting is quite shockingly inhumane coming from people who I thought to be huge advocates for life and who hold every single life as precious. They choose not to mention that one-third of Gaza’s population is comprised of minors (a big factor in the chance of them being accidentally hit), or the fact that Hamas uses them and the densely packed Palestinian population as human shields to store, cover and launch rocket attacks into Israel.

Against such stupid claim I can pull what John Oliver himself hates so much that it led him to dedicate an entire show to: “Whataboutism”, that’s right because against this claim I can inform Oliver and Noah that Hamas rockets threaten about half of Israel’s territory or just over 5 million people, while Gaza only houses roughly 2 million people, so under the same stupid logic of how many people have to wake up at night and run for cover with their infant children to the sound of sirens and exploding bombs – more people are subjected to that stress and terror in Israel than in Gaza. Sounds stupid? all i did was implying the same logic as Oliver and Noah.

Oliver and Noah then add insult to injury when they claim that:

2) Israel has a huge technological advantage and can repel Hamas rockets before they cause harm, Palestinians obviously don’t have that kind of protection, and that’s just not fair.

Excuse my insensitivity to PC culture but this argument is simply retarded.

Holding the defensive “Iron Dome” system against the Israelis to show their technological superiority and make them the assholes is a bit like blaming the US for utilizing its stockpiles of Covid-19 vaccines and trying to protect its citizens instead of I don’t know – not bother to invent them, or use them, or maybe just send them to less fortunate countries, something that the US avoided doing up until now. It’s an invalid argument.

If any – the development and use of Iron Dome only serves to prove Israel’s resolve and ingenuity in protecting its citizens lives, something that can’t be said for Hamas terror organization who’s one third of its rockets fired on Israel end up landing in its own territory, killing and injuring Gaza civilians, while holding Gaza’s Palestinians and millions in Israel as hostages.

On this same point, Oliver and Noah defy all logic when they hint that a superior military and technologically power such as Israel could just level Gaza in an instant (Noah’s words), but fail to explain why Israel has avoided doing so up until now, being such a cruel aggressor that it is.

Oliver makes it even worse when he mentions the method in which the IDF notifies the occupants of a building in Gaza to evacuate, before it levels it with bombs, as well as calling it a war crime, but he fails to mention – where else is that method used in war, anywhere in the world? throughout history, in any conflict, ever?

Also surprising for an investigative show which is supposed to engage its audience and bring up alternate views – Oliver fails to mention why a building would be targeted for such an extreme measure in the first place, it’s a bit like making a show on the drop of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki without giving any context on the Second World War or the preluded events that made Truman green light the bomb.

Of course, the two hosts refrained from proposing any solutions of their own, nor mentioned how their government would react in such a scenario, maybe because historically speaking that would include one of three available options: enslavement, use of atomic weapons, or full-scale ground invasion that lasts for at least a decade. By the way, none of which were used after American or British cities were attacked by rockets from terror organizations bordering its cities.

The one-sidedness of Oliver and Noah is not just appalling, disgraceful to their job, or holds their credibility in serious question, it also diminishes their perception as people who can derive logical and objective conclusions without falling to bias. Both have miserably failed in doing so with their respective videos, and only mentioned Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens in a few brief words, failing to explain its doctrine or deeply religious and murderous motives (the last two are sadly deeply intertwined).

Sure you can say “Hey man, you’re a F’ing Israeli and the last authority on the matter to voice an opinion or call himself objective” and to that, I’ll answer “take a second to check out my latest articles or FB profile (unfortunately most of which is written in Hebrew)”, as I am not a huge advocate of the Israeli indicted PM, who is the main beneficiary from this current round of violence.

Truth be told, both Israel and Hamas leaderships and citizens are to blame, because both sides refuse to face up to the fact that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again while expecting different results, but now I’m oversimplifying it…

My Facebook cover. As you can see I have no problem criticizing Israel, but Oliver and Noah’s arguments are one-sided, contradicting and illogical.