“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
_____________
#####
Sally Rooney: A Quintessential Millennial
Sally Rooney is a 30-year-old novelist from Dublin, Ireland. I read an article about her in the BBC. It said that 2 of Israel’s biggest bookstores are refusing to sell her books, because she would not allow the books to be translated into Hebrew.
See “Israeli bookstores pull Sally Rooney’s books in boycott row”.
According to the article, Rooney decided not to allow her books to be translated into Hebrew “in support of calls to boycott Israel over its policies towards the Palestinians”. I was not familiar with Rooney, so I googled her. I also watched an interview with her on YouTube during which she explained how she wrote her novels.
See the video below:
In the interview, Rooney said that she has never been able to write about worlds that she doesn’t know very well. That’s typical. Writers either focus on things they know a lot about, or they make up worlds and talk about them. Rooney chose the former.
That was a good decision. Very few novelists measure up to the likes of Jules Verne. He wrote about make-believe worlds. That requires creativity and imagination. By comparison, writing about familiar surroundings is a piece of cake. All you have to do is describe things that you can easily detect with your 5 senses: eyesight, hearing, taste, touch and smell.
In the interview, Rooney also said that she has lived only in Ireland and that she has never ventured far from home. The world that she described in the interview, her world, is very restricted. It’s not the type of environment that lends itself to drawing sweeping conclusions about a part of the world that is completely foreign to a narrow person.
Everything Rooney has written about so far is based on her perceptions of reality in a small world from a narrow perspective. That has brought her fame and fortune. Rooney should stick to her knitting.
In the interview, Rooney was honest about her limitations. Problem is she doesn’t recognize those limitations in her other endeavors. She certainly doesn’t recognize her limitations when she delves into the Israel-Palestinian problem. Her naivete and ignorance are on display for everyone to see, and her sophomoric conclusion concerning Israel’s policies related to Palestinians tells us a lot about her lack of investigative and analytical skills. It may also tell us a lot about her unwillingness to work. It’s easier to sit in your room and write than it is to immerse yourself in a culture that is completely foreign to you at first. That takes time and a willingness to learn. It also involves some degree of risk. In other words, it costs you something.
As things stand now, Rooney may write well, but she doesn’t have a lot to say beyond the narrow confines of Dublin, Ireland.
I doubt that Rooney has ever seen or read anything about the Israel-Palestinian problem that doesn’t have a pro-Palestinian spin. If I’m right, she isn’t capable of discerning that she is reading and watching Palestinian propaganda. I also doubt that Rooney has ever been to Israel and seen for herself what is going on there. I’m as close to positive as I can be about that assumption. I would need to see conclusive evidence to the contrary to change that opinion.
The New York Times and the Washington Post have described Rooney as “one of the foremost millennial writers”. That’s probably true. She brings to the table the millennial habit of drawing sweeping conclusions from very little if any factual information. That bad habit leads to terrible conclusions.
A few years ago, my niece, Danielle, visited with Katie and me in Israel. It was during the summer between her junior and senior years at Boston University. She was with us for a week. That was too little time to show her the whole country, but it was enough time to expose her to reality in Israel.
BU is a very “liberal progressive” school. Danielle had learned everything that she thought she knew about Israel from BU professors. It turned out to be pure BS.
What Danielle saw in Israel opened her eyes. While she was with us, she must have told me at least a dozen times, “Neil, this is nothing like what I have been told.”
Danielle is a millennial, too. I don’t know exactly what her BU professors told her, but simply exposing her to reality was enough to change her perspective. Danielle is smart enough to change her opinions when she sees that the facts don’t line up with the things she has been told.
Where Israel is concerned, Danielle is now able to recognize the difference between fact and fiction. She is head-and-shoulders above her BU professors in that regard. They are stuck in a fantasy world that’s based on Jew and Israel hatred emanating from malcontented Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians”.
One of the Palestinians’ stated objectives is to “drive the Jews into the sea”. Their chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” refers to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. That is practically all of Israel.
Vladimir Lenin coined the phrase “useful idiots” to describe liberals who are willing to buy communist propaganda without doing their due diligence. People who buy Palestinian propaganda without doing their due diligence are useful idiots, too. They have anti-Semitic proclivities; they gobble down Palestinian propaganda; and they repeat it as fact.
Palestinians have made great progress in spreading their propaganda at colleges and universities all over the world. BU is one example. They have also made great headway among smug “liberal progressives” who are intellectually lazy.
This is the long and short of it: Danielle’s BU professors lied to her. I’ll bet that not one of them has ever set foot in Israel. They are like Sally Rooney in that regard. They should stick to their knitting, too.
Like Danielle, Rooney needs a healthy dose of reality. If she knew what was actually taking place in Israel, she would change her tune unless she is an anti-Semite. I can’t rule that out. As things stand now, Rooney has joined forces with other small world, ignorant spreaders of Palestinian propaganda. Regrettably, in Europe it’s an easy sell. It’s an easy sell at colleges and universities as well.
Interestingly, Rooney is “a self-professed Marxist”. See “It’s Marianne’s fault we can’t get a government to satisfy Normal People”.
People who adhere to Marxist/communist beliefs are ignorant about reality. Every Marxist/communist country has failed miserably, because Marxism/communism doesn’t work. It can’t work, because it goes against human nature. Marxism/communism doesn’t solve problems. It creates problems and leads to starvation and violence that staggers the imagination.
That’s not my opinion. It’s a fact. See “Don’t celebrate Karl Marx. His Communism has a death count in the millions”.
It is a shame that a gifted writer like Sally Rooney doesn’t recognize her limitations. To solve her problem, she needs to expand her horizons. She can’t do that in her room in Dublin. She needs to see the world before she writes about it.
#####
_____________
#####
“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
