RE: Another Example of the Radical Islam Memeplex

From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Sun 15 Dec 2002 - 22:18:16 GMT

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    Clearly, Scott, the 'blood libel' falsity is horrible and not helpful. There have been many worse things said about Jews, and many worse things said about Arabs and Muslims. Sometimes they are said by each other, and sometimes by Europeans or descendents of Europeans. E.g. the "Jews killed Christ" slander that is periodically revived by those seeking to harm the Jewish people. It is all shameful. Easy to denounce, but much harder to correct, as undoubtedly those who create and circulate these libels are aware.

    The difficulty is not, I think, in finding stupidities that are slung back and forth by the different sides in their desperate struggle to get the upper hand. The difficulty is in finding ways to help those folks move beyond their hatred and toward a negotiated settlement. And it has, as the voices of strident ignorance and malevolence on both sides have multiplied, become much harder to do so. But there are still many people working toward a peaceful resolution, people in both Palestine and Israel, in the Jewish and Muslim and Arab worlds, and people outside those regions who have some understanding of what is going on and wish to help the parties find a solution.

    How can we contribute to the dissolution of those slanders? The anti discrimination organizations of both Jews and Arabs are busy trying to dissolve the worst of the slanders. I wonder what things might be like if they cooperated? I've had a couple of opportunitites to see representatives of both anti-discrimination organizations talk together, and there was a great deal of good-will expressed by both to the other. The more thoughtful Jews and Arabs both realized, it seemed to me, that both would lose if either succumbed to the temptation to pass on the slanders as truth.

    My hope is always to find memeticists who might wish help with this.

    Cheers, Lawry

    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
    > Of Scott Chase
    > What has MEMRI to say about instances of the infamous anti-Jewish "blood
    > libel" in Arab media?
    >
    > That is a disturbing bit of propaganda that has apparently been
    > handed down
    > through the ages (I recently posted on this topic) and would be hard for
    > aplogists to candy-coat just like any instances of the tsarist rubbish
    > _Protocols_ being utilized as anti-Jewish propaganda in Arab media.
    >
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    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

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