al jazeera - Glenn Beck is exploiting Israel

[spanone]

If there is one thing that pretty much all Israelis agree on, it is the determination not to be perceived as, or to actually be, a "freier", a Hebrew slang term for "sucker" or "chump". Nobody likes to be taken advantage of, but Israelis seem more sensitive to this than other people, sometimes even preemptively turning the other guy into a freier rather than let him get you first.

Well, guess what? The entire State of Israel is being played for a freier right now, with the actual freier extravaganza taking place on August 24.

That is the day that fired Fox News commentator Glenn Beck will convene his "Restoring Courage" rally at the Teddy stadium. The gathering, the first major Beck event since Fox News cancelled his television show, is designed to restore Beck's image by identifying him with the State of Israel, a country popular across the political spectrum in the United States.

A successful rally in Israel could help transform Beck's reputation from a failed extreme right-wing demagogue to an international figure popular in a country that is special to many, if not most, Americans.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/20118218753702798.html

[Firebrand Gary]

1. Rupert Murdoch exploits Israel.

As does his entire News Corporation.

[Marie Marie]

2. Get in line Israel.. Exploitation is his M.O. You are just the latest.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

3. I heard a caller in Israel on Randi Rhodes tonight

Saying that people in Israel see Glen Beck as a dufus that they wish would not use their country as a prop for his career.

[provis99]

4. these right-wing fundamentalist supporters of Israel amuse me.

They are the most anti-semitic people out there, bar none. The only reason they "support" Israel is so that Armageddon will be jumpstarted, and all the Jews who do not instantly convert to Christianity will be killed. Their aim is complete annihilation of Judaism while posing as "friends" to Israel.

[Marie Marie]

5. BINGO! You nailed it. I've always thought that myself.

They see all the Jews spending their eternity in Hell.

[spanone]

6. ain't that the truth

[DCKit]

7. Thankfully, it's not such a big (polite) secret anymore.

Blech may gain some advantage here at home for this latest PR stunt, but people in Israel turned up to watch a sideshow act. It's like having the USO come to a war zone.

The Teahadii, RW, Conservatives, etc... are seeing their fanatical spokesmodels being picked off and dumped one-by-one. Blech off Faux, OxyRush has lost a bunch of local stations and the rest are on their way out.

Hate speech is being marginalized. As it should be. Without profitable markets and listeners to buy Gold, Gold Bond, hemorrhoid cream, rascal scooters and supplemental insurance, the advertiser dollars are going to dry up, and there won't be anyone to pay for the airtime.

[starroute]

8. "Freier" is originally Yiddish -- but the Israelis take it to extremes

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/comment-page/etymology-of-freier-19.587736

As with much modern Hebrew slang, 'freier' is derived from Yiddish where it originally meant a "suitor" (it's still used that way in Alsatian Yiddish) but came to mean the "customer of a prostitute." and eventually just a 'sucker'. The word was well known in Yiddish speaking circles in New York when I was growing up. When a famous club for actors, The Friar's Club, turned out to harbor a cardshark, one of its members, comedian Phil Silvers, commented that he had not realized that the name really meant 'freier'.


http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/thou-shalt-not-be-a-freier-1.211247

It doesn't just seem that the term freier (sucker), or more exactly - the abysmal fear of being a freier - is a completely Israeli matter. Several local researchers have investigated the Israeli institution of "the non-freier" in depth. One of them, Dr. Linda-Renee Bloch of Bar-Ilan University, explains that the term, which has Germanic roots, exists in other languages, including Russian, German, Polish and Romanian. But in some of them, its meaning is completely different. Even in other places where it describes someone whom others can easily fool, the concept of freier is not a cultural symbol like it is in Israel. Even the English word "sucker" doesn't play as central a role. During her research, Bloch collected more than 1,000 articles that mention being a freier. In Haaretz alone, the word has appeared more than 1,000 times in the last decade. . . .

"'Don't be a freier' is practically the 11th commandment of the Israeli," wrote Haaretz's Benny Ziffer in 2006. How has such a great fear of being a freier developed in Israel, of all places? Bloch explains that this is due, among other reasons, to a desire to be free of the image of the Jew in exile. She says there are five attributes of Israeli character that come together to create the culture of "just don't be a freier": a particularly strong ego and sense of honor, avoidance of law and rules, individualism without responsibility, competition and machismo. There are some people, she adds, who are prepared to kill in order not to come out as freiers. She cites examples of murders for purely negligible reasons, like a fight over dogs or an argument over a lounge chair on the beach. . . .

The Los Angeles Times reported in 1997 that the fear of being a sucker plays a role in every element of life, from performing the most routine task to making peace between countries.

Does the freier ideology really influence Israeli policies related to peace and war? It appears so. Thus, for instance, then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told students at a Ma'aleh Adumim school in 1998: "We are not freiers. We don't give without receiving."