It’s worth taking a deeper look at Simone Zimmerman. She’s the woman who was appointed, for a few days, to perform Jewish outreach for the Sanders campaign. +972 Magazine has just published a long interview with her, here’s their introduction:

Simone Zimmerman screenshotSimone Zimmerman has become an inspiring figure for American Jewish progressives in recent months — and a boogey-woman for the Right.

When the Bernie Sanders campaign fired her over a Facebook post — in which she used some “colorful language” to describe the Israeli prime minister — she became one of this campaign season’s proxy battles in the ongoing Jewish argument over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We sat down with Simone earlier this month for her first interview since being fired from the campaign, where she reveals exactly what took place inside the campaign, the right-wing attack that targeted her, and how the campaign was caught off-guard by the way “the Jewish establishment pounces on [its] youth who dare to say something different.”

I wanted to draw a few messages from it. Lex and others have written at length about US campuses and the tensions drawing US Jewish kids toward views such as those held by Simone. Hillel in particular (which Lex has criticised strongly) plays a part in sending her away from understanding Jewish Israel. I think we can see a big part of what happened from this sentence in +972’s introduction:

But like many in her generation, it was Israel’s recent wars in Gaza that drove Simone to step further away from the mainstream American Jewry’s often-blind support for Israel and begin actively oppose the occupation and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

There’s a giant elephant hiding in that sentence. Read it again and see if you know what it is before I continue.

Here’s the elephant: it wasn’t Israel’s recent wars in Gaza that drove her “to step further away from the mainstream American Jewry’s often-blind support for Israel”. It was her remote perception of the wars filtered through the lens of lethal journalism.

She had been in Israel during Cast Lead, she’d even gone camping in the “West Bank” not understanding geography, but she’d not yet been exposed to non-stop lethal journalism.

It seems her path to that dark side started after the war when she arrived in Berkely: “I started reading Ha’aretz”; attended “a major BDS debate”; and was “hearing Palestinians tell their stories”. The start of the second part of her recorded interview is highly instructive. Peter Beinart’s writing features at a big turning point allowing Simone to feel she wasn’t alone: giving her a movement to become a part of. That preceded a trip to Israel with Hillel.

The Goldstone Report also played a part: no mention of it’s author’s humiliating withdrawal, by the time that came it was too late for Simone. Remember, it was the repudiation of the Goldstone Report by Judge Goldstone himself that had such a huge effect on Roseanne Barr turning her completely in the opposite direction Simone took.

Israellycool readers know just how many of these stories she heard are at least massively exaggerated and in many cases completely made up. That’s just something we’ve shown time and time again. A recent Israeli Channel 10 (not “right wing”) investigation of Breaking the Silence is typical and enough to see this. Our side is quick to admit there is hardship for Arabs, their side is certain never to mention ongoing Arab murderous attacks on us. For better or worse, we’re wedded to the truth and facts: they’re using stories and emotion without a need to bring truth.

The lethal journalism which comes from both elite media and partisan or hate sites like +972, Mondoweis and Electronic Intifada become the primary source of information for people like Simone.

Once those sources have hooked her in, the foreign government funded lying NGO’s like B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence step in to organise tours and feed “the narratives” which these kids have been primed to believe. They’ve bought the indoctrination and now believe the media and main stream politics is run by a shadowy Jewish Lobby which only presents Israel in a positive light.

At the core of all the hardship stories she believes is a replacement ideology of Muslim Arabs as the new Jews. This replacement ideology is stealing our Jewish identity with their fake and invented “Arab Palestinian” claims to obviously Jewish lands. This “Palestinianised” narrative is fed by well funded NGOs into every elite news agency in Israel for their stamp of official approval and then amplified and twisted by the same NGOs out to this lost generation of Jewish youth.

I can’t leave without offering an answer. Just repeating facts and exposing lies isn’t enough. It’s necessary, of course, because it’s a vital weapon in our arsenal. But we need to hit back harder than ever with our own identity story. This Jewish identity story, as has been explained here at Israellycool for a few years, is blind to that nonsense crayon line from 1948 that people like Simone obsess over.

It’s our Jewish story, the one Ryan Bellerose points out to us.

The story that keeps Jews here and Jews coming here.

It’s the story Jews and Christians feel when we step off the plane at Ben Gurion or step back in time in the tunnels under Jerusalem. It is both baked into our DNA and bigger than our DNA. It is part of our consciousness and souls.

Israel is Jewish and Jews are Israel.

7 thoughts on “Lethal Journalism Made Simone Zimmerman”

  1. Unfortunately, the eager little b*tch – ‘scuse me, beaver (well, I mean that in the 1970s vulgar sense) – is proof that our identities are NOT “baked into our DNA.” They must be taught and reinforced as a matter of routine. Otherwise, as you point out, “idealistic” young people eager to play the rebel and/or underdog role (and that’s most of them) are easy prey.
    Let’s get metaphysical and I’ll indulge my yetzer hara for a moment: In her next gilgul, may Miss Zimmerman live the life of of the second wife (of four) of a deeply pious but poor Salafi imam, and bear him only daughters.

  2. lethal journalism? how about lethal jewish leadership and lethal parenting?
    simone is the product of a segment of judaism that has replaced torah and mitzvot with “tikun olam”
    thats why, when she left the bubble of the san fernando valley and went all the way to ucla, she so easily succumbed to the hate israel propaganda she was met with.

    the reform and conservative communities are a lost cause. they can choose to do teshuva, but it seems that they have come to the point where they believe that doing chait is actually a mitzvah…and it is hard to come back from that

    there was a time when this worried me. it doesnt anymore. in a generation, there will not be a single halachic jew in the pews of reform and conservative congregations….and good riddance

    if you dont believe what im saying, then watch this video and see what sort of guidance ms zimmerman got while growing up….shanda

    https://vimeo.com/59682700

  3. Regarding the quoted +972 article, I think it exposes a certain mindset on their part.

    “But like many in her generation…” i.e. they are CLAIMING that it is the younger generation that would tend to agree with their views.

    “the mainstream American Jewry’s often-blind support for Israel”
    i.e. they claim that anyone who doesn’t agree with them means their support of Israel is BLIND, or often so.

    1. “…many in her generation…” so what?
      she represents the lost jews…therefore her opinion and voice as well as the rest…is moot
      .

  4. This article is silly. Simone is insignificant but only retains relevancy for those who can’t handle that there are many opposed to the settlements and are critical of Israel. Who cares? Jewish Day schools need to teach about the history of Israel with balance and nuance so they don’t produce such naive products like Simone who couldn’t handle the one sided propaganda spread on many US campuses.

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