I think the video is ugly and displays people who might not be otherwise so offensive if they weren't primed on beer.

But I am not going to dismiss it nor give it undue weight. I seem to recall Mel Gibson was highly criticized for being some sort of hypocritcal bastard for making sexist and anti-Semitic comments while drunk, and the long pointless arguments about whether the "real" Mel was the drunk guy or the guy who was sober, or whether there was some deeper problem in his psyche that he really should come to grips with. Publicly.

I know what I said sounds sarcastic. It isn't intended that way. It reflects a basic reaction to this kind of video and challenges how one should "perceive" it and weigh it.

These American Israelis (or Americans in Israel on holiday?) are certainly young, primed for beer and good time, and enjoy being on camera to express themselves. How many people in Israel does that represent? I certainly don't know. But aren't these kids also required to do national service in the Israeli military? I thought that was a requirement---in which case, at some point, these kids have guns in their hands and are surrounded by Arabs. And they seem quite proud of being Israeli and indignantly tell their American cousin to stay out of Israel's affairs. That is a two-way street.

Like I say, I get a mix of reactions when I see this video. It may not represent all of Israeli in a nice little bundle, but it certainly represents something about Israel.

The most entertaining part of the video was the political science major who "knew her shit" but didn't know who Netanyahu was.

Ron Kampeas on Blumenthal's video, which was censored by HuffPo. Read Kampeas and scroll down to the comment by 'Jerry Haber'. Haber's site: The Magnes Zionist

Here's Haber's comment

Ron,
Now that Max’s “immature video” has been witnessed over 100,000 times in the last two days, maybe you can take a deep breath and think a bit.
Let’s assume that 90% of the viewers just stop at Max’s video. That leaves 10% who look into some of his other posts from Israel-Palestine, including his interviews with David Grossman, with members of Liberman’s party, with Israeli activists on the West Bank. That means that more people will get significant information about Israel because of the “immature video” in two days than read your blog in months.
Ron, you’re in denial Even Jeffrey Goldberg was disturbed by the behavior of the students, who were drunk more with the power of being a Jew in Jerusalem than the booze (and some of them didn’t sound drunk at all.
These are not just drunk kids. These are Jewish kids, orthodox kids, who are full of hate when drunk. If you were an orthodox educator, could you just dismiss that? Hey a lot of people beat their wives, why pick on the frummies who do?
Denial, denial, denial

This is one of those things that people will either make too much of or too little of. It's easy in any society I'm sure to find people like those on Max's film willing to make racist statements. I didn't see the movie Borat, but wasn't there some scene in that movie in which Cohen gets hicks from somewhere in the US to spout anti-Semitic vitriol? If Borat isn't the right example, then I'm sure there are others which would suffice to make the point. What's maybe interesting in Max's video is that these kids seem to be from a class where we'd expect them to know better. And maybe that says something disturbing about Zionism as it exists today--that even among the more educated classes racist attitudes are tolerated if not encouraged. But then it's dangerous to generalize too much from the statements of a few drunks in a bar, isn't it? A video like this raises questions about the state of Zionism today--but it certainly doesn't definitively answer those questions.

What does seem unusual to me is the fact that the Huffington Post censored the video. I doubt they would have been so kind if the drunken young men were Southern rednecks. If there is indeed a racist element within Zionism today, the best way to eradicate it is to expose it. By hiding evidence of possible racism, Huff Post does a disservice not only to critics of Zionism but also to those supporters of Zionism who want to keep it free of racism.

This video was linked to in a comment on a prior TPM page, so some of us commented on it already there.

The showing-off youngsters in the Israeli bar in this clip were expressing, in more crude and less polite terms, what most of the U.S. Congress has been saying or endorsing for years. Of course these vulgar drunkards are not representative of either the Israeli or American publics. WHY WHY WHY then is the UNITED STATES Congress voting for again and again for resolutions and policies based on such alien bigoted idiocy? THAT important issue (and what do do about it) are what make this video newsworthy for Americans, and thus legitimate (provided it is not misused by construing it to mean something it doesn't).

MJ - I don't know. I watched this video without ever thinking it was representative of Israelis. I knew exactly who these people were. They remind me of friends of my cousin at whose wedding 27 years ago, I was seated with at a table, forced to listen to their vacuous conversation. They described their time in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem much as they would have described their time in Cambridge or Ann Arbor, the restaurants, the bars, the music venues. Not a word about the political situation. Their sense of entitlement bothered me then. The same sense, much cruder of course today, appalls me now. It has only gotten worse.

There is a defensive shtetl-like "is this good for the Jews" mentality that wants to censor and shield the ears of "low-information" others from something that is all too real. All too often, the cries that you yourself, MJ, raise against various AIPAC-Likudnik idiocy, and the moral case you make that American Jews don't want this done in their name, is met by those who refuse to speak out against it, but weasel out by saying "how dare you say I have an obligation to speak out against it. These people don't represent me." Unfortunately, in some sense, they do. Just as Barack Obama could not avoid saying something about Jeremiah Wright, we Jews are called upon to opine on this phenomenon.

I say the tape is disturbing, regardless of how representative it is, and worth thinking about. It represents something. We can argue about what, but it shouldn't be swept under the rug.

Oh well, I'll give you credit for posting the link to Blumenthal's response, which I thought was excellent. At least you're not calling for censorship.

Also - I'd be interested in hearing what you think of this argument, namely that the video may not be fully representative of Israel, but it does represent Avigdor Lieberman's Israel.

Yeah, they're racists. Racism is ubiquitous.
And Jewish American fratboys who utter such sentiments are racists just as Mel Gibson was.

People need to read Max Blumenthal's response to the criticisms, to which MJ was good enough to provide a link at the end of his post.

The next step for Blumenthal, clearly, is to take his camara into Israeli bars and public places, away from the tourists, so we can see if this phenomenon is indeed confined to arrogant young Americans, or is very widespread in Israel.

We have to be very aware of what is going on in our world, both in Israel and America. I have had some encounters with right wing acquaintances in the past few weeks that have, frankly, scared the piss out of me. They talk freely about such topics as secession, gun hoarding, ammo hoarding and related suggestions of war and violence. Meanwhile they seem to believe there is a vast left-wing conspiracy of blacks, Mexicans, groups like Acorn and the mainstream media to subvert democracy, dispossess and disenfranchise white America, and replace the republic by a socialist authoritarian dictatorship. Seriously.

The most awful legacy of Bush is that he set loose the right-wing id, especially by crossing the taboo boundary of torture, and what were once the views of only a few John Bircher and militia kooks have now become disturbingly mainstream on the right. Meanwhile the ferociously anti-intellectual Republican Party is bereft of respected, mature and dignified leadership, and that has created a vacuum filled by raving lunatic loudmouths who exploit, intensify and prey on the worst, and most violent instincts of conservatives.

I hope MJ and others are right that the Blumenthal video represents only a few drunk Jewish-American brats, and is not representative of Israel. But given the further evidence of Israeli behavior and propaganda regarding Gaza, the rise of Yisrael Beiteinu, the rise of violent extremism in the territories, and the broad electoral shift to the right, my gut tells me that that country is one little spark away from a Kristallnacht. If an anti-Arab pogrom exploded on an Israeli street tomorrow, would anyone really be shocked?

As for America, I am very worried about the impact in this country of the return of soldiers from Iraq, many of whom are brutally hardened, enraged and embittered by multiple tours of duty in an equivocal and controversial war, and who have been trained in and inured to what in many cases amounts to death squad activity.

RE: "...they are totally American. They are full of fratboy American swagga, even using hip hop inflections to spew racist hate..."

MY COMMENT: Yes, I agree. They are just a variant of "the ugly American". They do not reflect so much on Israel or 'Jews' as they do on the United States more generally. Ultimately, they are a product of THIS country! I would nonetheless like to believe that such types are a small minority and not representative of the vast majority of Americans.

FROM WIKIPEDIA: "The Ugly American"

(EXCERPT) The Ugly American is the title of a 1958 political novel...The book takes place in a fictional nation known as Sarkhan. In the novel, a Burmese journalist says "For some reason, the people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious." The phrase "ugly Americans" came to be applied to Americans behaving in this manner...

SOURCE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American

It's imprudent to judge any group of people based on a few minutes of video. It is, however, legitimate to consider from whence these opinions spring. I don't think this is a representative video either of Jews or Israeli Jews. It is valid to acknowledge that to some extent, this stuff is there at all times with some people. These young people didn't simply absorb such opinions overnight. They learned them from someone and it's most likely that this sort of thing is learned in one's family. Such families exist. That's the way it is. It is a great shame and a pity but there you are. The existence of the video is not the problem though I do believe John above is right when he says real antisemites could use this to great propaganda effect. The problem is the existence of these attitudes within anyone. So let's not go overboard and imbue the vid with more meaning than it really has, but let's try and understand where this stuff comes from and do what we can to eliminate it just as we do with all ignorant bigotry, racism and hatred.