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Home The Liberal Betrayal of Israel

The Liberal Betrayal of Israel

Over the last two weeks, a liberal scholar and pundit named Peter Beinart got a lot of attention by arguing that liberals could no longer be pro-Israel because the country and its people had moved too far to the right. The reality however is just the opposite. In every way, from national defense to the role of religion in public life, Israel has actually watered down its principles and liberalized. But it could not and cannot keep up with the pace at which liberals have slid far to the left.

The key factor in falling liberal support for Israel is not inside the country, but outside it. As liberals have become more radicalized, what used to be the left is now simply liberal. And the delegitimization of Israel is part of a larger package of radical beliefs which extends across the spectrum into every area of domestic and foreign policy. For example the anti-Communist liberal who was not at all hard to find in 1967 when Israel fought the Six Day War, is nearly extinct today. And liberals who support the War on Terror are an endangered species. And if they can't even support America's national defense, it's not surprising that they don't support Israel's own national defense.

Beinart like other left-wing Jewish critics insist that Israel needs to go further to accommodate their support. But how much further is there to go? Israel has worked for 17 years to cut a deal with the Muslim terrorist gangs who employ a constructed identity as Palestinians to leverage international support for their killing sprees. It has withdrawn from large amounts of territory, provided weapons to their militias and even lobbied on their behalf. Will the left suddenly begin supporting Israel, if after offering East Jerusalem to them, Fatah and Hamas still refuse to make peace? We know better than that. No offer Israel could make would suffice to demonstrate its goodwill and the intransigence of the terrorist gangs.

Beinart himself suggests that only when the Palestinian terrorists are happy, and Israel is transformed into an oasis of social justice, (and presumably all conservative parties are banned and the Russian immigrants who voted in Lieberman are deported back to Russia) will his compatriots possibly get on board with supporting Israel again. Which really means that their support for Israel is conditional on the Palestinian terrorists accepting Israel. That is not the way that people who actually ever have any intention of supporting Israel talk or think. It is the way that people who trying to strengthen the terrorists' hand argue. And of course that is the real aim of the left.

The radicalization of liberalism also meant the growing legitimation of terrorism (particularly of those groups backed by the USSR and its left allies) and the delegitimization of those governments resisting them. The left routinely couches its political attacks on those governments in the language of human rights-- but human rights has nothing to do with it. The left hypocritically assails Columbia's Uribe on human rights, while giving Castro, Chavez and the rest of the Marxist gang a pass. Just as it assailed the condition of workers in the US, while giving Lenin and Stalin a pass on an agricultural and industrial system built on the murder of millions. Similarly the left jumps on every Israeli soldier who stops a suspicious Muslim at a checkpoint, while ignoring not only Fatah and Hamas' murder of Israeli civilians, but even their murders of their own citizens.

None of this matters because the left doesn't believe in human rights. It doesn't care about human rights. It never has. Not when Stalin was paving roads with slave labor, nor when Saddam's minions were entertaining themselves in rape rooms. Anyone who seriously thinks that the left is actually outraged about Abu Ghraib because they care about the dignity of man, rather than because they are congenital liars and hypocrites who exploit any misstep by their enemies for propaganda purposes, has not been paying attention. The majority of regimes that the left wing has supported were non-democratic and routinely violate basic human rights. The left not only doesn't give a damn, it defends every one of their crimes.

So let's put to rest the farce that there is anything Israel could do that would win over its left wing critics. The same people who control the dialogue in the press and the melding of minds at universities. To them it is not about justice or doing the right thing or human rights. Those are just words that they use as weapons. Paying attention to those words and trying to demonstrate your innocence only makes you weak and vulnerable. And then they redouble their efforts to cut you to pieces with them. That is what happened to America. It is what is happening to Israel. It is what happens to anyone who stands in the way of their red handed allies.

Of course the left does have a special animus for Israel. And that animus came to the surface when liberalism gave way to the radical left. Because while liberals have been Zionist, the left has been notoriously anti-Zionist. The split goes back to 19th/20th century Europe, where left wing organizations competed with Zionist groups for Jewish support. Both had very different visions of the future. The left wanted to see Jews join in working to create Communism and Socialism in their home countries, before assimilating into them. The Zionists wanted a separate Jewish state. When the left won in Russia, they made Zionism into a crime and the entire Hebrew language was banned as "counterrevolutionary". Possession of a Hebrew dictionary could mean being sent to the Gulags.

The USSR organized and armed entire Arab armies to attack and destroy Israel. And like Nazi Germany had done before it, the Commissars fed Anti-semitic propaganda to their allies in Europe. To their credit, some resisted. Even many French Communists who had seen what the Nazis did to the Jews were disgusted at being given cartoons and messages strongly suggestive of Nazi Germany with orders to incorporate them into their own newspapers. But that resistance is mostly history now. Left wing politicians in Europe think nothing of claiming that Jewish cabals control the government, refusing to publish the papers of Jewish Israeli colleagues and supporting genocidal Islamic groups and countries that vow to wipe out the Jews. That their behavior is an ominous echo of the Hitler era means less than nothing to them. Just as it meant less than nothing to the Nazis.

The left's opposition to Israel has nothing to do with human rights, but with its insistent belief that Jewish separatism is illegitimate and diverts recruits from their effort to build modern socialist states. Beinart indirectly makes the same case, insisting that support for Israel's survival must be subsidiary to the country's compliance with the left's political values. Because of course the same people who agitated against any overthrow of Saddam, when it comes to Israel make their support conditional on passing an impossible test, in which Israel either commits suicide to win their support, or survives and loses their support. I will only love you if you kill yourself .

The left is determined not to allow any redefinition of Israel as legitimate. Its hijacking of liberalism means that once again it feels driven to win Jewish recruits by destroying any independent national and religious identity that they may have. By forcing liberal Jews to choose between their political allegiances and Israel, they are setting up a difficult choice for them. Having the Obama Administration attack Israel was only one of the many forms of strain introduced to create that breaking point. Even while pundits like Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan relapse into rants against Israel that the editors of Der Sturmer would have run on the front page.

This was what the left wanted all along. Consider the following "forecast" of a perfect socialist future from H.G. Wells

And yet between 1940 and 2059, in little more than a century, this antiquated obdurate culture disappeared. It and its Zionist state, its kosher food, the Law and all the rest of its paraphernalia, were completely merged in the human community. The Jews were not suppressed; there was no extermination... but under the Tyranny there was never any specific persecution at all; yet they were educated out of their oddity and racial egotism in little more than three generations. Their attention was distracted from Moses and the Promise to Abraham and the delusion that God made his creation for them alone, and they were taught the truth about their race. The world is as full as ever it was of men and women of Semitic origin, but they belong no more to “Israel”.

To understand Beinart and why the left really hates Israel, read that paragraph very carefully. This is why left wing anti-zionism is anti-semitism. It isn't that they want to wipe out six million people of semitic ancestry. They just want Israel and Jews gone. They would rather do it bloodlessly, with no "extermination" or "specific persecution", but if the Jews don't cooperate, they still intend to fulfill their goals.

People who think this way are not going to be reassured that Israel is a good little country. To them Israel is unacceptable. It is unacceptable because they reject the idea of a separate Jewish national identity. And that robs them of manpower and ties in with all sorts of religious ideas they would like to get rid of, among both Jews and Christians.

And so they delegitimize Israel as a country that has no right to exist. That has no right to defend itself. That has no right to survive. That always does everything wrong. That is an oppressor, that steals organs and is the neighborhood bully. An unjustifiable monster disrupting the entire world. If it sounds familiar, it should. The Nazis used those same arguments to justify a progression of persecution that eventually culminated in genocide. The left is using them today. And it may lie to itself about what its ends and means are, it may even believe in its claptrap about human rights, but blood always tells the truth in the end.

George Bernard Shaw, that corrupt old socialist scribbler, said it simply enough: "Those Jews who still want to be the chosen race... can go to Palestine and stew in their own juice. The rest had better stop being Jews and start being human beings." The Beinarts still unconsciously echo Shaw like a dog howling for its deceased master. And the message remains the same, that a real world Jewish state is incompatible with being a liberal Jew. Liberal Jews can support the rights of any and every people to a state (assuming that the left approves of them) including that of the entirely mythical Palestinian people-- just not the Jews.

Liberals betrayed Israel by allowing themselves to be taken over by the left. Not against their will, but all too often they allowed their own political radicalization to occur without considering the long term implications. The further they went to the left, the more they turned on their own country, and other countries the left considered its enemy, such as Israel. And the left is busy indoctrinating their children against the homelands.

The left does not hate Israel because of Ariel Sharon, but because of Moses and Abraham and King David. It wants Jews to forget that they are not merely cogs in a socialist state-- to forget that are the descendants of kings and warriors. The sons and daughters of the people who faced down Assyrian chariots and Roman legions, the children of a great civilization in a sea of barbarism that changed the world.

They want us to forget, because a people that does not know its own power is already enslaved. In the last century, we remembered that we were the descendants of kings and warriors. Of queens and prophetesses. Sailors and scholars. That we had a better destiny than to escape prejudice by subsuming ourselves into the left's great dream of a universal socialist state. We remembered and we started to become those things again. The left fears this exodus from their power, as that ancient Pharaoh feared the loss of his Hebrew slaves. They want us to forget. To sink down again. To accept their brand of liberalism that denies our rights in the name of their ideology. Their lies are chains around our feet. Those who choose to be slaves will wear them proudly as iron badges of honor. Those who choose to break them will be forever free.

Comments

  1. HG Wells disappeared though, decaying in the ground.

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  2. Exodus or extermination, bloodless or bloody it all sounds identical to Sharia Law.

    Most of what people say when it comes to anti-Semitism is that we should just suck it up and ignore it. But why not fight it?

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  3. Mannie Sherberg31/5/10

    Sir - this is simply a brilliant piece of writing: clear, informed,
    cogent -- and a very real service to the Jewish people. Thank you for writing it. On a day in which the worldwide Left and the worldwide jihad have joined forces in strident condemnation of the Israeli takedown of the flotilla filled with Jew-hating terrorist abettors, yours is a voice of much-needed truth and sanity. Kol tov!

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  4. Thank you Mannie, I hadn't seen this coming, but it needed to be said anyway

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  5. Anonymous31/5/10

    I am not as good as a writter as anyone here.
    Suffice it to say that this is the most susinct article I have ever read about the hatred the left has had for anything Jewish.
    Well written.

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  6. SK -

    Perhaps your readers know you better than you know yourself.

    Because you are at the crossroad of sanity vs insanity, are devoted to exposing the goals of Leftist-ism, you have no choice but to speak the truth.
    .
    Patience, my friend - in this century Man will be stripped of his insolence.

    The Jews will not only survive, they will thrive - but it's gonna get ugly first

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  7. No Apology--you chose the exact words for where the world is right now--at the crossroads between sanity and insanity.


    Stop by for a visit when you get the chance, SK. I fixed my Blogger probs.

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  8. Anonymous31/5/10

    Survival of the fittest: an interview with Benny Morris
    By Ari Shavit

    http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Articles/Story1117.html

    Its as simple as that. Survival in nature is a matter of blood. Israel can start to behave like a normal nation, defend itself with force without any apology, then it will have all the respect.

    OTH if it tries to be a do-goodie nation, all it does is to annoy people.

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  9. Daniel, you have made a correct estimate of the thoughts and motives of the enemies of Israel. But you have missed one major reason for it all, and that is that the Jews, as a people (not just a nation) are living proof that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is who He says He is, and that He will ask for an account from every human being that has ever breathed.

    Because the Jews are standing in the way of the leftist liberal belief that THAT God cannot exist, they will have to destroy you in order to destroy Him. And might I add, those Christians who also believe in THAT God, and stand with the Jewish people, will also be destroyed beside them.

    However, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. He will have His final say. Yet He has conveniently given us His view of history even before it happens so that the world will be entirely without excuse when they are called to account for their treatment of His people. Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord.

    Love your blog, Daniel - it's a daily habit now.

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  10. No Apology,

    I suppose when we deal with things like this, it's like pebbles on the stream of the zeitgeist

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  11. DP111,

    Benny Morris' outbreak of sanity has been fairly shocking for a while now. It's as if Chomsky had suddenly decided to vote Republican. Though arguably his demographic arguments have done more harm than good.

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  12. Thank you Sandy, actually I did mention that though

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  13. Excellent and to the point, as usual.

    Having browsed just a single day of world news, I am thrown to the back of my chair in awe that our leaders and intellectuals, those that ordinary people depend on in times of strife, are unable to perceive the mildest threat to our way of life from Islam and the West's useful inbreds.

    This is something that will make future generations shake their heads in amazement.

    I often wonder if we deserve the treasures of democracy that so many have sacrificed so much to hand down, if we deny the same courtesy to our children.

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  14. "...a constructed identity as Palestinians...."

    Well, well, well. Seems like this was predicted a while back:

    "They have roused Me to jealousy with a no-god; they have provoked Me with their vanities; and I will rouse them to jealousy with a no-people; I will provoke them with a vile nation."

    Deuteronomy 32:21

    A no-people that is a vile nation - sounds just like the Paleoswinians to me.

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  15. Anonymous28/2/11

    Beinart is "smart" but not wise.

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  16. Anonymous28/2/11

    SK, Have you considered making and selling actual knishes? You have a great name and a following....I'm sure they would be delicious and nutritious.

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  17. maybe but they would be explosive too

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  18. Anonymous13/3/12

    1. HG Wells, Bernard Shaw, as then
    and now, the UK is a source of Jew hatred. When that island will plunge into the sea, along with its worthless paper currency, the better we all will be. And safer. Interesting how the UK and Spain are so infested with arab muslims.

    2. Israel cannot afford to be a normal collection of families until at least the palies are annhiliated. To think that Iron Dome, how fantastic it is, will allow them to ignore the palies, could even cause more harm than good. Israel should not tolerate missiles. Sadly, Bibi will use the ID ( Iron Dome ) as a political tool to get him re-elected. Let us hope that a missile will hit the Knesset. Then maybe something concrete will be done.

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  19. Dear SK,

    Beautifully said! If only all the leftists read it. After all, what you wrote is their biography. I often lament, how can we defend ourselves and Israel when there are so many of us (Jews and Israelis) who oppose our right to exist and who continue to support the BS of the left. Case in point- how many Jews voted for Obama and continue to support him? How many Israelis support the 'poor Palestinians' while ignoring existential threats to their country? It's time Israel and the rest of us stood up for ourselves without trying to appease the leftist world. I'm tired of defending us and making excuses as to why we need our own country, fighting IAW at campuses across our continent, identifying the enemies, defending our friends. Why not just ignore it all like most of the world, go to work (if you can find any), cut the grass and stick my head in the sand?

    Why? Because I lost most of my family in the Holocaust. So for people like us, speaking up is the least we can do. Thanks to you and all of the bloggers for doing so!

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  20. Anonymous24/4/12

    I left a post about the sodomites being the hardened, activist voice of the left against Jews and Israel...it's not posted...something wrong? the basis of my analysis comes from Torah...if you think its over the top... maybe so...on the other hand I think its cowardly not to post it...better to fear the Lord than His enemies...and if you are under pressure not to post it for fear of gay of leftist reprisal then you are guilty of the same cowardice that most of this society is now under... for its gay intimidation ( for example, the recent planned parenthood flap) that has brought about the ruin of our society...as the rabbi's say you pull a hair out of a sodomite's head you can hear the scream for miles...this intimidation is a situation they bring about to quell dissent and I REFUSE, before G-d to be a part of it...

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  21. With all due respect this isn't an article on gay rights and multiple comments denouncing homosexuals are off topic. If you read my blog regularly then you know my position on the topic.

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  22. Anonymous20/6/12

    knish, you are profound. the best writer out there

    the left talks endlessly about its worship of diversity. what they mean, of course, is just the opposite: that they love -- demand -- uniformity.

    -- Spanky

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  23. Anonymous10/11/12

    Th Left's visceral hatred of Israel is imho, 'religious' in origin.
    They have seen Israel rise from a 2000 year absence and not only create a state but also beat numerically superior enemies several times...not to mention Jewish military,tech and economic power as never before.
    ...and in their innermost regions they wonder..
    COULD THE SCRIPTURES BE RIGHT AFTER ALL?????
    .....'but no ,cannot be...there is no God'they mumble...
    So they are frothing at the mouth,suport the enemies of Israel...etc etc...
    Israel poses an existencial threat to their house of cards.
    ...because first and foremost they are god-haters and deniers and they don't want anybody to be the living proof that there is a God...
    Israel must die to save their delusions.

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  24. Anonymous14/5/15

    My emphasis on the liberal betrayal of Israel stems from:

    The United Church of Canada and the Presbyterians and the Canadian Quakers all share two things in common...they advocate same sex marriage even though this has caused a major upheaval in their ranks. And same sex marriage is more important to them than more than half your members quitting in disgust. This tells you that the gays have infiltrated and hijacked these congregations and let those who disagreed walk away.

    The second thing they have in common is that these polluted denominations under gay control are the leading voices in Canada in the BDS movement.

    Here if one bothers to put two and two together he will see the link and concur that gays hate Israel and are rabid agitators against the Jews and their holy land. If anyone can come to any other conclusion I'm all ears.

    Its the rise of the powerful, media savvy gay behind the rise in antisemitism in the world. Where you find an organization against Israel it will nesting homosexuals or Muslims.

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