Stand for Israel

In recent years, media analysts and social commentators haven’t known precisely what to make of the fact that a larger percentage of Americans rely on a comedy program–Jon Stewart’s Daily Show–to get news than any other outlet. For supporters of the Jewish state, this has been particularly troubling since the Arab-Israeli conflict is too complicated to boil down into pithy, funny 30-second “bits.”

(In fact, in her excellent The Other War, journalist Stephanie Guttman argues that the region’s complexity and history are part of why media coverage tends to be unfair to Israel: Journalists don’t intend to side against the Jewish State, they just don’t take–or have–the time to explain the background of issues, and therefore rely on short-cuts and familiar paradigms that end up falsely making Israel look bad.)

And so there’s much discussion over whether Jon Stewart–who every acknowledges tilts to the left–is, in fact, anti-Israel. In one Daily Show segment, Stewart reacts to last year’s Gaza incursion as if it’s just another blip in a “cycle of violence” in which the big, bad Israelis are “disproportionately” beating up the Palestinians, who are no more than a nuisance.

When New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg offers an analogy asking whether Stewart wouldn’t want the NYPD to respond “with all the resources at our command” if an “emotionally disturbed person is banging on your door, screaming, ‘I’m going to come through this door and kill you!’ ”, Stewart responded:

I guess it depends if I forced that guy to live in my hallway … and make him go through checkpoints every time he has to [go the bathroom]! But then again, by removing him by force … I guess if you believe that there are no more crazy people in New York … OK!

What? Israel forced Hamas to be there? Ands , of course, this implies that Israel places checkpoints just because Israelis like to be difficult — not that the checkpoints are literally saving lives. The whole point is that Hamas is bent on Israel’s destruction, so Israel has no choice but to do everything to defend herself — be it restricting movement to catch would-be suicide bombers, or going in full-force to stop terrorists raining missiles onto its cities.

So, this week, when Stewart did a bit lampooning the vicious anti-Semitism Hamas teaches children through cartoons, it makes us wonder if there isn’t something in the zeitgeist that’s a little more truth-focused.

Hamas’ inculcating hate is no laughing matter, but in the tradition of Jewish humor–which prizes laughing when the only other choice is to cry–we’re chuckling along with Stewart (even if we wish he had less of a potty-mouth).