The hypocrisy of the empathy

by Lev. Tsitrin

Here’s a paradox — the very same people who demand empathy from us, have none of it themselves.

Consider Hamas — they will put a video of a starving Gaza child, and scream at the Westerners: “have pity! demand a ceasefire!” And yet, they do not have any pity for that child themselves, for they could have easily achieved a ceasefire and alleviated the suffering of Gazans by releasing all Israeli hostages they took, and surrendering. Empathy from you, but not from them!

The bleeding-heart westerners oblige. NPR’s On the Media, under obligation to feel bad for the Palestinians, rushed to defend western news organizations against Israeli accusations of pro-Palestinian bias — by filling an hour with stories of Palestinian suffering, including a long interview with a Hamas mouthpiece Mehdi Hasan who was kicked out of MSNBC at the end of November.

And while On the Media puts its empathy on display by spewing pro-Palestinian garbage, it also demands empathy from its listeners by asking them for money (this being NPR’s fundraising week). It does so by claiming that NPR is an epitome of honest journalism that fights for democracy by — as On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone put it in her pitch — “asking tough questions” and giving the public “even tougher answers.”

Which is, as I know first-hand, utter hogwash — none other than Ms. Gladstone adamantly refuses to consider reading the material on judicial fraud she herself suggested I give her, and won’t hear about doing a report on it — or at least a journalistic explanation of why, for the sake of democracy she so much cares about, one third of US government that is federal judiciary should be off the radar of the press. When I emailed Brooke pointing out to outright hypocrisy of her pitch, she bristled at my calling out her lies by replying, “I do not lie, I believe in what I say.” This is straight out of 1984’s — its double-think. So artful a liar and a hypocrite is she, that she apparently doesn’t even recall our conversation and email exchanges. The Palestinians deserve her empathy — but not the deplorables like myself, treated with disdain (apparently, rightly in Ms. Gladston’s opinion) by federal judges who feel that falsifying parties’ argument so as to arrive at a desired outcome is but a “classic exercise of judicial function” (as Judge Garaufis ruled in Tsitrin v Vitaliano), and that federal judges should be entitled to acting from the bench “maliciously and corruptly” (as the Supreme Court put it in Pierson v Ray.)

So here we have, in two examples, the instances of those with no empathy, demanding empathy from others — Hamas, by pressing for a ceasefire that would allow it to survive, thus perpetuating its rule and ensuring its victory over Israel, and, closer to home, Brooke Gladstone and NPR who want our empathy in the form of our money.

Unfortunately, it works. I would have expected anyone who pledged during NPR fund drive, to call back and cancel their gift upon listening to Hamas propaganda spewing out of On the Media — but this is unlikely to happen. The public is dumb; in fact, according to Wikipedia, the above-mentioned Hamas mouthpiece Mehdi Hasan who is so beloved by On the Media, “During a sermon delivered in 2009, quoting a verse of the Quran,… used the terms “cattle” and “people of no intelligence” to describe non-believers. In another sermon, he used the term “animals” to describe non-Muslims.” Years later, apparently when the conditions of his employment demanded it, he apologized.

But why, given that he was perfectly right? The empathy cynically demanded of the westerners by Hamas that materializes in mass rallies on university campuses and the streets of westerns cities amply proves that we are indeed as dumb as “cattle,” that we are indeed “people of no intelligence,” that we cannot think, and are ready to be manipulated by the likes of Mr, Hasan and his Hamas ilk. Brooke Gladstone’s brazen cynicism proves the exact same point — the “elites” can ride us all they want, and we are just too dumb to want to resist.

This is very sad — but not a reason to give up. The truth must out, no matter how hard the cynical likes of Hamas, of Mr. Hasan, and Ms. Gladstone — people with no empathy who demand empathy from us — try to hide it.

Lev Tsitrin is the author of “Why Do Judges Act as Lawyers?: A Guide to What’s Wrong with American Law”