{"id":74668,"date":"2017-06-09T21:53:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T01:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=74668"},"modified":"2017-06-09T21:56:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T01:56:00","slug":"you-really-have-to-wonder-about-this-israeli-wonder-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=74668","title":{"rendered":"You really have to wonder about this ex-IDF &#8216;Wonder Woman&#8217;."},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Wonder Woman and the Trump Administration<\/h2>\n<p><!--more-->By Jonas E. Alexis<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/author\/alexis\/\"><br \/>\n<\/a>Veterans Today<\/p>\n<section class=\"post-lead\">\n<p class=\"subtitle\">In Wonder Woman, Diana cares for the innocent. She loves to protect them. She defends them against tyrants. But in real life, who really are the tyrants? Well, if you ask the Israeli regime, they will tell you that they are the Palestinians or anyone who stands against the Neoconservative ideology in the Middle East and elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<article class=\"entry post-453821 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-book-reviews category-government-and-politics tag-entertainment tag-hollywood tag-israeli-regime tag-palestinians tag-perpetual-wars tag-racism tag-steve-mnuchin tag-wonder-woman last_archivepost\">\n<h3><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-453826\" src=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/wonder.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/wonder.jpg 960w, http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/wonder-320x183.jpg 320w, http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/wonder-768x440.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/wonder-640x367.jpg 640w\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"550\" \/><\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steven_Mnuchin\">Steve Mnuchin<\/a>, a member of the Trump administration, is an executive producer of <em>Wonder Woman<\/em>, the recent blockbuster movie that has garnered all kinds of accolades. Mnuchin is also the executive producer of movies such as <em>Lights Out<\/em>, <em>Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice League<\/em>, <em>Suicide Squad<\/em>, <em>Annabelle<\/em>, <em>Edge of Tomorrow<\/em>, etc.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It may surprise you to know that Mnuchin, who used to work for Goldman Sachs, is \u201cthe 77th and current United States Secretary of the Treasury under the Trump administration.\u201d What is this guy doing in Hollywood? And why is he still working for the Trump administration? Well, as the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving those issues aside, Gal Gadot, who plays Diana in <em>Wonder Woman<\/em>, has recently come out and said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/movies\/wonder-woman-d-c-universe-includes-treasury-secretary-steve-mnuchin-producer-195103744.html\">Wonder Woman is a feminist, of course.<\/a> I think people have a misconception about what feminism is. People think hairy armpits and women who burn bras and hate men. That\u2019s not it. For me, feminism is all about equality and freedom and [women] choosing what we want to do. If it\u2019s salaries, then we get paid equal to men. It\u2019s not men vs. women or women vs. men.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Interesting, isn\u2019t it? Gadot used to serve in the Israeli military, and she would never tell the Israelis that they need to stop oppressing Palestinian men, women and children. She knows very well that the Palestinians have no equal rights in Israel.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> Migrant workers, for example, have been treated like animals in the region.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a> Sometimes they work \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.algemeiner.com\/2014\/01\/15\/who-wants-israeli-migrant-workers-to-remain-in-horrid-conditions\/\">at 25% below the minimum wage, without medical or social benefits, and without any work permit whatsoever<\/a>.\u201d Listen to a 10th-grade girl in Israel:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, personally, Arabs are something I can\u2019t look at and can\u2019t stand, I am tremendously racist. I come from a racist home. If I get the chance in the army to shoot one of them, I won\u2019t think twice. I\u2019m ready to kill someone with my hands, and it\u2019s an Arab.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my education I learned that \u2026 their education is to be terrorists, and there is no belief in them. I live in an area of Arabs, and every day I see these Ishmaelites, who pass by the [bus] station and whistle. I wish them death.\u201d<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>You may think that this is a disgruntled and deranged high school kid and her abiding hatred toward the Palestinians does not represent a significant voice in the country. But you will be wrong. In an article entitled \u201cIsraeli Teens Gripped by Virulent Racism,\u201d the <em>Jewish Daily Forward <\/em>reported in 2014:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe student\u2019s comments appear in a chapter devoted to ethnicity and racism among youth from a forthcoming book, \u2018Scenes from School Life\u2019 (in Hebrew) by Idan Yaron and Yoram Harpaz.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe book is based on anthropological observations made by Dr. Yaron, a sociologist, over the course of three years in a six-year, secular high school in the Israeli heartland \u2013 \u2018the most average school we could find,\u2019 says Harpaz, a professor of education.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe book is nothing short of a page-turner, especially now, following the overt displays of racism and hatred of the Other that have been revealed in the country in the past month or so. Maybe \u2018revealed\u2019 isn\u2019t the right word, as it suggests surprise at the intensity of the phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut Yaron\u2019s descriptions of what he saw at the school show that such hatred is a basic everyday element among youth, and a key component of their identity. Yaron portrays the hatred without rose-colored glasses or any attempt to present it as a sign of social \u2018unity.\u2019 What he observed is unfiltered hatred.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne conclusion that arises from the text is how little the education system is able \u2013 or wants \u2013 to deal with the racism problem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot all educators are indifferent or ineffective. There are, of course, teachers and others in the realm of education who adopt a different approach, who dare to try and take on the system. But they are a minority. The system\u2019s internal logic operates differently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMuch of the chapter on racism revolves around the Bible lessons in a ninth-grade class, whose theme was revenge. \u2018The class starts, and the students\u2019 suggestions of examples of revenge are written on the blackboard,\u2019 the teacher told Yaron. A student named Yoav \u2018insists that revenge is an important emotion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne student relates that he heard in the synagogue on Shabbat that \u2018Aravim zeh erev rav\u2019 [\u2018Arabs are a rabble,\u2019 in a play on words], and also Amalek, and there is a commandment to kill them all,\u2019 a reference to the prototypical biblical enemy of the Children of Israel. Another student says he would take revenge on anyone who murdered his family, but would not kill them all.\u201d<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bob Dreyfuss of <em>The Nation<\/em> reported:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFully one-third of Israelis say that unlawful, vigilante violence against non-Jewish African immigrants is fine with them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEqually, 86 percent of Israelis who voted for the right-wing Shas party and 66 percent of Likud voters agree with the statements of far-right Israeli politician Miri Regev that African immigrants, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, are a \u2018cancer\u2019 in the Israeli body politic\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsrael is building refugee camps\u2014let\u2019s not use the loaded term \u2018concentration camps\u2019\u2014for many of the estimated 55,000 Eritrean, Sudanese and other African refugees from civil wars and conflicts who\u2019ve entered Israel, mostly undocumented, over the last decade or so.\u201d<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Racism, as Gideon Levy has shown, is ingrained in Israel\u2019s society.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a> Gadot\u2019s maternal parents, we are told, are <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gal_Gadot\">Holocaust survivors<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, <em>Wonder Woman<\/em> is another propaganda film that is designed to keep the Goyim docile. It is another film that is congruent with the Neoconservative ideology. As one writer has recently put it,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe big \u2018lesson\u2019 of Wonder Woman resonates with a common tendency to identify weapons themselves as the key problem to be dealt with in matters of violence\u2026And with war atrocities, many see the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) as the problem, and so advocate foreign policies ranging from sanctions, to strikes, to invasions of countries that possess or seek WMDs\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn more recent years, hawks have called for military intervention in Syria based on unproven allegations that its government possesses WMDs and has used them against rebels and civilians in that country\u2019s civil war.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBoth the Obama and Trump administrations have declared the use of chemical weapons to be a \u2018red line.\u2019 Obama nearly enforced that red line in 2013, after an alleged sarin gas attack by the Syrian regime, and in April of this year Trump launched airstrikes following another such allegation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGas weapons are also the chief threat throughout Wonder Woman. Steve Trevor\u2019s mission from the beginning was to prevent the Germans from developing and using a new weaponized gas that can eat through Allied gas masks: a chemical WMD formulated by the disfigured scientist Isabel Maru (aka \u2018Doctor Poison\u2019) under the supervision of the evil General Erich Ludendorff.\u201d<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In <em>Wonder Woman<\/em>, Diana cares for the innocent. She loves to protect them. She defends them against tyrants. But in real life, who really are the tyrants? Well, if you ask the Israeli regime, they will tell you that they are the Palestinians or anyone who stands against the Neoconservative ideology in the Middle East and elsewhere. Israeli politician and Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked put very nicely when she said unequivocally:<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cWho is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them\u2026The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war. Words have meanings. This is a war.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cIt is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cBehind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThey are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.\u201d<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In order for wars to stop (particularly in the Middle East), those \u201clittle snakes\u201d must be destroyed by any means. Perhaps this is one reason <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/movies\/israels-love-homegrown-wonder-woman-gal-gadot-181409106.html\">why Wonder Woman has been well received in Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B85dF_1Hdj8?feature=oembed\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> See for example Ilan Pappe, <em>The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel<\/em> (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fidh.org\/IMG\/pdf\/il1806a.pdf\">http:\/\/www.fidh.org\/IMG\/pdf\/il1806a.pdf<\/a>; Bill Van Esveld, \u201c <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2010\/10\/08\/israel-should-respect-rights-migrant-workers\">Israel Should Respect Rights of Migrant Workers<\/a>,\u201d <em>Human Rights Watch<\/em>, October 8, 2010.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Or Kashti, \u201cIsraeli Teens Gripped by Virulent Racism,\u201d <em>Jewish Daily Forward<\/em>, August 23, 2014.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Bob Dreyfuss, \u201cRacism in Israel,\u201d <em>The Nation<\/em>, December 23, 2013.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Gideon Levy, \u201cEthiopian Student Affair Shows Prevalent Racism in Israel,\u201d <em>Haaretz<\/em>, September 3, 2009.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> Dan Sanchez, \u201cIs Wonder Woman War Propaganda?,\u201d <em>Antiwar.com<\/em>, June 7, 2017.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> Ishaan Tharoor, \u201cIsrael\u2019s new justice minister considers all Palestinians to be \u2018the enemy,\u2019\u201d <em>Washington Post<\/em>, May 7, 2015.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/\">http:\/\/www.veteranstoday.com\/2017\/06\/08\/wonder-woman-and-the-trump-administration\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wonder Woman and the Trump Administration<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}