It seems that being jewish means never being wrong, let alone incompetent or even evil. And only someone who hates jews would note that someone who happens to be jewish does in fact appear to be wrong, incompetent, or evil.
That seems to be the premise behind a recent Agence France Presse (AFP) story misleadingly titled “Ukraine run by ‘miserable’ Jews: rebel chief”.
One has to scroll down to the second paragraph, however, for the complete quote, which shows how nefariously the title presents it: “Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, claimed that Kiev's pro-Western leaders were ‘miserable representatives of the great Jewish people’.”
Now he may be deluded about the “jewishness” of the Kiev government and/or their facilitators and cheerleaders, but his statement clearly suggests a respect for “the great jewish people”, the greatness of which is betrayed, not exemplified, by those running Kiev.
But AFP reported it otherwise with not only the headline, but also the first paragraph: “Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebel chief on Monday branded the country’s leaders ‘miserable’ Jews in an apparent anti-Semitic jibe.”
That paragraph already displays its bias/propaganda in how it describes Alexander Zakharchenko. Yes he is a rebel against Kiev, but the government in Kiev is the result of a coup against a democratically elected government (whose crime was not so much signing a trade deal with Russia before one with the EU was finalized (and obviously intended to be exclusive somehow), but rather its willingness to renew Russia’s lease on the Sevastopol naval base – it has been a goal of Turkey and Europe for 200 years to get Russia out of the Black Sea; Putin knew what the coup was really about and acted swiftly to secure not only the base but all of Crimea, much to the embarrassment of Nato and the US).
And Zakharchenko is not “pro-Russian” but simply a Ukrainian speaker of Russian, like most of the people of the Donbass region of the east. One of the first decrees of the Kiev coup was to outlaw the Russian language. It was shortly revoked, but the spirit of the coup was made clear (in case the crucial involvement of neo-Nazi groups hadn’t been enough).
Finally, Zakharchenko is called “chief”, evoking something less civilized than western society. In fact, he is the elected prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Our thanks to Moon of Alabama for first writing about this.
