Monday, November 28, 2011

The Moral Bankruptcy of the Progressive-Left

Karam

The progressive movement's main claim to political legitimacy is a moral claim. The movement claims to stand for social justice and equality of rights throughout the world. Any legitimacy the left has as a political movement is grounded in the notion of universal human rights. But if the left has quietly abandoned that ideal then it loses both moral and political legitimacy. After all, if the left does not stand for universal human rights, then just what in this world does it stand for?

The sad truth is that the left has abandoned its core reason to be. By holding different people, and different countries, to different moral standards it has effectively abandoned the ideal of universal human rights. You cannot claim to stand for social justice if you only care about the human rights of some people, but not others. If you constantly speak out against alleged Israeli human rights abuses but remain silent about the truly horrific situations in Darfur or Congo... circumstances that make the Arab-Israel conflict look like a picnic on a summer Sunday afternoon... then you cannot claim to stand for universal human rights and, therefore, any claims you may have for moral or political leadership are unfounded.

This is the situation that we find ourselves in, currently, and it probably represents at least part of the reason why Jews are abandoning both the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. Most diaspora Jewish supporters of Israel are people who at one time, if not currently, considered themselves on the progressive-left. Certainly, I did. As someone who grew up in the political aftermath of the counterculture and the New Left, I was impressed with the ideals of those movements. I was impressed with the counterculture for its apparent spontaneity, its anti-authoritarian values, and its sense of community, if not communalism. I was impressed with the New Left for standing against jingoism, for its anti-war agenda, and for its championing of the human rights of women and Gay people and other minorities.

Today, looking back on the movement that was for decades my political home, what I see are the ruins of what was and the rank hypocrisy of what is. The left has essentially broken itself on Israel's back and they don't even know it, yet. The reason for this is that if, as a movement, the progressive-left intends to constantly fire-off Katyushas of Hatred and Qassams of Malice toward Tel Aviv, while snuggying up to Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, then they lose all moral legitimacy. This is particularly true given the fact that the left could hardly care less about the 5.5 million dead in the Congo, about Tibetans living under Chinese occupation, about rape as a tactic of war in Darfur, about the hanging of Gay people from cranes in Tehran, or about an Arab and Muslim world rife with anti-Semitism, homophobia, and gender apartheid.

In this way the left, which claims to be both moral and anti-racist proves itself to be, in fact, neither.

On the progressive-left, Israel is the Jew among nations. Just as prior to establishment of the state of Israel, Europeans tended to ascribe a host of negative characteristics to the Jewish people, so today they ascribe those same specific characteristics to the Jewish state and they do so... gallingly enough, hypocritically enough... under the banner of "universal human rights." For 2,000 years we lived in diaspora, that is, we lived or died according to the pleasure of non-Jews. For 1,300 years we lived as second and third-class citizens under the imperialist boot of Muslim rule, i.e., as dhimmis. And today, directly after the historical moment in which we re-took our freedom, progressives tell us that the institution within which we manifest that freedom, the state of Israel, is a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid country which, if it should not be dismantled as the national homeland for the Jewish people, must jump through whatever hoops they lay down. If Israel fails to jump through each and every one of those hoops then clearly they do not want peace and thus deserve whatever they get.

Well, some of us have definitely had enough of this nonsense.

The Palestinians refuse to negotiate a peaceful conclusion of hostilities and the progressive-left blames Israel. The Gazans shot thousands of rockets into southern Israel for years, but the progressives only spoke up when Israel sought to defend its civilian citizenry from those rockets. Does the progressive movement have anything to say about the Fogels? No, it doesn't. Does the progressive movement have anything to say about Hamas's genocidal charter or the larger Radical Jihadi movement out of which Hamas sprang?

No. It doesn't.

In fact, as Egypt transitions from a military dictatorship to an Islamist dictatorship this result will be, in part, through the efforts of the current president of the United States. But, then, the left has always had a weakness for the very worst actors in world history. Just as leftists often supported the Soviet Union for decades, despite the tens of millions of innocent dead due to that regime, so it now (usually tacitly, but sometimes directly) supports the Radical Jihad.

For me, personally, the real wake-up call came during the Mavi Marmara incident in May of last year. There were two groups of people aboard that vessel. There were the violent Jihadis seeking martyrdom... which progressives referred to as "peace activists." And the second group? Well, they definitely weren't Tea Party people. They were, in fact, progressive-left activists from around the world. Progressive-left activists literally, physically, morally, and financially supporting Jihadis in an effort to kill Jews, while telling the world that their mission was humanitarian.

The irony and cruel hypocrisy could not be more rich.

So, just why would you expect Jewish people to remain a part of such a political movement? The progressive-left may have been our home for a very long time, but clearly their values have shifted away from anything that could possibly be acceptable to the great majority of western Jews. Most of those Jews don't really get it, yet, but people are awakening. There are reasons why more and more of us are leaving the Democratic party and the progressive movement.

Because the progressive-left accepts, if not encourages, generalized malice toward the Jewish state it thereby shows the rest of us the door.

I say we walk through it.

24 comments:

  1. In a previous comment that I posted (on the post titled: PA and Hamas: "No more differences between us now"), I stated the fact that Fatah-PLO-PalestinianAuthority is, in fact, an actual Nazi Arab ideologically racist genocidal anti-Jewish political organization, and I stated that the fact that Fatah-PLO-PalestinianAuthority is an actual Nazi Arab ideologically racist genocidal anti-Jewish political organization needs to be stated by Jewish people, and, most importantly, needs to be stated by the leaders of the government of Israel.

    Yet, furthermore, what is, in fact, the case, and what also needs to be stated by Jewish people, and, most importantly, what needs to be stated by the leaders of the government of Israel is that:

    O Israel (and, in fact, also what is now called "The West Bank" (Judea and Samerwa (Yehouda and Shomron)), and what is now called "The Gaza Strip") is, in fact, Jewish so-called "Palestine". Jordan (which was originally named Transjordan) is, in fact, Arab so-called "Palestine".

    O The Muslim Arab racist intendedly genocidal attack on Israel in 1948 caused more Jewish refugees from Muslim states in the Middle East than it caused Arab refugees from Israel.

    O Since the end of World War II, there have been tens of millions of refugees in the world, almost all of whom have been relocated to, and absorbed into, the countries to which they fled or were expelled (such as several million ethnically German people who lived in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia (Sudeten Germans) who, immediately after World War II, were expelled from the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and who, subsequently, were relocated to, and absorbed into, Germany).

    O The so-called "Palestinian movement", and, as part of that, the existence of an Arab so-called "Palestinian people", is a complete and utter lie - an intendedly genocidal racist anti-Jewish hoax that was purposefully invented as part of an intendedly genocidal racist anti-Jewish campaign to annihilate the nation of the Jewish people.

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  2. Dan, I am not sure about your last point in your first comment.

    The implication is that the Palestinian people are not really a people. The truth is that the Palestinians are the newest nationality on the face of the planet, having emerged as a people out of the Arab-Israel conflict toward the middle-end of the 1960s via the PLO.

    Like many peoples, the Palestinian people were born from conflict. Sure, they were born a quarter past last Tuesday, but nonetheless...

    Having said that, however, it is nonetheless important to note, as I know that you understand, that the "Palestinians" have not lived on that land "from time immemorial."

    That is unless you consider a quarter past Tuesday "time immemorial."

    The Palestinians are brand-spanking new as a people and their forebears came from Israel, from the territories, from Egypt, from Syria, from Jordan, from Iraq, and from elsewhere throughout the Middle East.

    Some had lived on Jewish land for centuries, while others, pribably the majority, came from elsewhere.

    We need to get a look at this book.

    The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate (Institute for Palestine Studies Series), by Justin McCarthy, a a Professor of History at the University of Louisville and a scholar on Middle East demographics.

    What we need to do is counter their propaganda with the truth.

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  3. Karmafish,

    The Arab people who are now called "the Palestinians" are a group of people. The Arab people who are now called "the Palestinians" are not a nationality nor an ethnicity.

    The Arab people who are now called "the Palestinians" are a mix of members of various groups of Arab people (various groups of Arab people who, I think, are Syrian Arab people, and Jordanian Arab people, and Egyptian Arab people, and other Arab people) who, in some cases, are the still living members of, and who, in other cases, are the descendants of, refugees caused by a racist intendedly genocidal attack against the nation of the Jewish people by several Arab states.

    Those Arab refugees, and those descendants of those Arab refugees, have been informally, and formally, falsely defined as being a nationality, and even as being an ethnicity, only for the purpose of denying the nationality of the Jewish people and, therein, for the purpose of denying the legitimacy of, and annihilating, the nation of the Jewish people.

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  4. "Progressive-left activists literally, physically, morally, and financially supporting Jihads in an effort to kill Jews, while telling the world that their mission was humanitarian."

    That pretty much sums up the problem. The hypocrisy; the buying for time; the running interference. Every drop of Jewish blood shed is on them as well. Yet they continue their unholy alliance.

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  5. Then there are the actions of right wing "monsters," like Glenn Beck:

    "The plight of Ahava, which was forced to shut its flagship London store at Covent Garden after a two-year harassment campaign by activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign (BDS) spearheaded by Code Pink and pro-Palestinian activists who demonstrated on weekends outside the shop, by Beck on his radio programme has resulted in a 750% spike in sales and a surge of social media messages from Beck fans wanting to show their support for the company.

    The outpouring from listeners was so overwhelming, Ahava’s American website crashed twice “due to the unexpected amount of traffic flooding the site,” its U.S. assistant manager of marketing Leslie Derderian told The Blaze.

    The anti-Israel boycott activists say they aim to “cleanse” Britain, Canada and the U.S. of Israeli businesses."

    750%. Wow.

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  6. Y'know, Doodad, I am pretty convinced that most of them do not even recognize that their movement is in an alliance with Islamism, what they call on the right the "red-green" alliance.

    They simply do not see it because they are focused on other issues even as their movement serves as the basis for contemporary genocidal anti-Semitism.

    Most progressives do not have ill-will toward the Jewish people. What they have is indifference toward, and ignorance of, the ongoing Arab siege against the Jews of the Middle East.

    They also do not trust us to speak on Jewish issues in the way that they do trust Black people to speak on Black issues or Latinos to speak on Latino issues.

    But, whatever they are, they are not a friend to the Jewish people, not from a political perspective, that much is certain.

    btw, how was your Thanksgiving?

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  7. Agreed with all you say. My Thanksgiving was fabulous, thanks! Son-in Law did the turkey on the smoker and it was delicious (he also smoked some stuffed Jalepenas to die for.) Had a great day with the grandkids and a host of others. Hope yours and everyone's was as fine!

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  8. I started to respond but it turned into a post at my blog. Suffice it to say that while I believe these folks are wholly misguided, the events will determine what happens. The tipping point with the OIC and EU is around the corner and it will influence what happens here, as Americans see for themselves who seeks to coerce and subjugate others. The extremists will look even moreso as they come up against events.

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  11. By the way,

    I just recently received, on my personal YouTube account, humanbeingdan (www.youtube.com/humanbeingdan), the following two private messages:

    ----

    Subject: 82Poland sent you a video: "JEWISH PEDOPHILES"


    PLEASE,SEND THIS VIDEO TO ALL YOUR YOUTUBE FRIENDS AND TELL THEM TO SEND IT TO ALL THEIR YOUTUBE FRIENDS !

    ----


    Subject: 82Poland sent you a video: "Jewish Genetic Disease Consortium .... a short film Part 1"

    Thumbnail7:00
    Jewish Genetic Disease Consortium .... a short film Part 1
    This 13 minute short film, created by the Jewish Genetic Disease Consortium (JGDC) will be an integral part of the JGDCs ongoing educational programs. It is designed to help achieve our goals of educating and creating awareness about Jewish geneti...


    ----

    Also,

    about a year ago, via my other YouTube account, DanielBielak (www.youtube.com/danielbielak), I sent an admonishing private message to a YouTube user (SedonaHealthCoach) who seemed to be a self-identified "Liberal" middle-aged woman and who posted a racist genocidal anti-Jewish anti-Israeli comment on the page of a YouTube user who is a Jewish person who was defending Israel against libels (who, I think, was the YouTube user justicevspropaganda) .

    The YouTube user who seemed to be a self-identified "Liberal" middle-aged woman who posted a racist genocidally anti-Jewish anti-Israeli comment on the channel of a Jewish person who was defending Israel against libels sent me the following private message in reply to my private message to her. The first sentence of what she wrote in the following message is a modified paraphrasing of some of what I wrote to her in my private message to her, but what she wrote in her sentence that is a modified paraphrasing of what I wrote to her changes the meaning of what I wrote to her and replaces the word "Jewish", with, in one instance, the word "Muslim", and, in the other instance, the word "Palestinian".


    ----

    Subject: Re: A Message

    It is shocking and horrifying to see that someone such as yourself holds antipathetic bigoted wrong views about, and feels antipathy towards, the country of the Muslim people, and believes obscene perverse lies that vilify the country of the Palestinian people.


    Please stop sending your filthy propaganda around, no one believes it anymore! I did wake up and I am decent now it's your turn.

    ----

    Also, within, I think, several hours, after my receiving that private message from her, I received the following message from another YouTube user (connielane) who seemed to be a self-identified "Liberal" young woman.

    Subject: connielane sent you a video: "The Israel Lobby"

    Israel is a conspired burden for the United States! Another Exodus is expected soon because of the bad behavior of Zionist and dual Israeli/US citizens in the American government. Are you prepared?

    ----

    What is going on (again) is obvious to all non-delusional Jewish people who have at least normal levels of abilities of social perception, and to all decent (that is: intelligent, and, therein, understanding, and, therein, kind) non-Jewish people who have at least normal levels of abilities of social perception.

    It's time for Jewish people to verbally defend themselves like normal human beings. The survival of the nation of the Jewish people, and the well-being of the whole world, is at stake.

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  12. Karma,

    Thanks for the book recommendation. I've been looking for a good source for that kind of info for years. It's $100 but I'm going to order it.

    I've read dozens, maybe hundreds of population studies. And the one thing that I can never find is the Palestinian population that did NOT live within the borders of Israel prior to 1949. (acknowledging that the label "Palestinian" didn't exist then. The people certainly did.) All the numbers I ever see are how many left Israel. Never how many never ever lived within those 1949 borders. It's as if every Palestinian, regardless of where there parents or grandparents lived, somehow has a claim on Israeli land. Obviously, that isn't correct. Hopefully that book will answer my questions.

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  13. Daniel, I am so sorry you were subjected to such crazies. They are unfortunately everywhere and abundant. One wonders where their craziness started but no doubt the internet has helped stoke it. Funny how free speech, a wondrous concept, is such a double edged sword. The pit of hatred is s deep one.

    Oldschool, good points. I worry though when I see the Obama administration embracing Islamists as long as there is a "DEMOCRATIC PROCESS." Did the election of Hamas not teach these people anything? They have such a disconnect with real world events.

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  14. Doodad,

    Thanks for your support. It's a comfort for me.

    I was really distressed by getting those two hateful genocidal racist anti-Jewish private messages that I got from those seemingly so-called "Liberal" women.

    "Liberal": It's not your father's, nor your mother's, liberal.

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  15. You may have already read all this information, but here is a link to some work by Professor McCarthy:

    http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story559.html

    Here's another useful link:

    http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm

    FWIW

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  16. Regarding Obama, I know the arguments. As I said at my blog:

    "Fortunately, even if one assumes that Obama has proven inept in his foreign policy, among other things, he is constrained because there is deep support for Israel among Democrats that see matters as Americans, first, and know that Israel is perhaps our strongest ally."

    I suspect he is oriented on some level toward the extremists. That said, I think the Palestinians and Arabs will push him toward Israel as they rebuff his efforts and show him their true nature.

    It's Europe and multiculturalism where the greater concern lies with respect to Obama's policies, but there, too, events will overtake the matter, as people lose faith in their current leaders to represent their interests.

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  17. Doodad,

    Yes, exactly.

    What has now become the "Liberal" political movement has become a populist movement. It has become "the mob".

    Very many people who now consider themselves to be "Liberal" are people who would never have considered themselves to be liberal thirty years ago, or twenty years ago, and who would never have been considered to be liberal thirty years ago, or twenty years ago.


    "The liberal project began to fail when it began to lie."

    -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

    "There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations. Historians will do that for us, and it is sufficient for the moment only to note the foreboding fact. A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of anti-semitism--as this year's Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov observed in Moscow just a few days ago--the Abomination of anti-semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty--and more--to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realization that now presses upon us--the realization that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened."

    -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in 1975, during the passing of the infamous "Zionism is Racism" Muslim-Soviet resolution in the United Nations, which, at that time, was presided over by German former Nazi war criminal, and, at that time, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim

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  18. Oldschool, he may be constrained by the party and that's a good thing but I suggest that he and his administration are sending a message to Islamists and those who oppose them. Essentially his administration is giving them a certain seal of approval. And that can't be good as history shows us.

    Daniel, "the mob." I like that. Yes, that spectrum has become a big tent. Certainly such louts as Jeremiah Wright and that whole gang see themselves as Liberals when they are really crass antsemites. There are a lot more subgroups who are in the same situation.

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  19. A week ago,

    the Washington Jewish Week reported that J Street founder and board member Kathleen Peratis met with Hamas......Peratis, however, recounts her experience as a fun-filled joy fest spent with friends. She quotes one smuggler as saying: "Please tell your friends that Hamas people are ordinary people. We are not barbarians."

    Useful idiot. To be fair, after about a week J-street came out against her visit. But the point is she is one useful idiot among far too many.

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  20. Stuart,

    I have not read this one, yet, but it is a scholarly work, which is why it is so outrageously expensive... the market is so small.

    You write:

    And the one thing that I can never find is the Palestinian population that did NOT live within the borders of Israel prior to 1949.

    This is because there was no such thing as a "Palestinian" Arab prior to that year. Prior to 1949 the local Arabs did not consider themselves "Palestinian." the Palestinians were the Jews. Arabs who lived beyond the borders of Israel prior to 1949 simply did not consider themselves Palestinians.

    Am I wrong?

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  21. Doodad,

    Great find. It inspired yet another post.

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  22. I think you missed my point Karma. Your last sentence:

    Arabs who lived beyond the borders of Israel prior to 1949 simply did not consider themselves Palestinians.

    It's true. But prior to 1949, neither did those living within those 1949 borders. And today? It's a single population that calls itself Palestinians.


    We see all the time the number of Arabs/Palestinians that were displaced in 1948/49. Sometimes as high as 1,000,000, sometimes as low as 200,000. These are the Arabs/Palestinians that lived in what became Israel after the war. Their Nakba. I don't know what that real number, I don't suspect anyone does. Probably somewhere in between, maybe 500 to 700,000, that truly became refugees, probably mostly in Jordan. Maybe some to Gaza.

    But what about those that were already in Gaza. They too now call themselves Palestinians. And the probably at least 10's of thousands that already lived in what Jordan decided to call the west bank. Neither of those populations were displaced. None could properly be called refugees. And all are now part of the Palestinian population. Those are the numbers i've never seen.

    The claims all seem to imply that every single Palestinian was displaced. This can't possibly be true.

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  23. Ah, thanks for the clarification, Stu.

    I think in order to perhaps simplify a little and to remain historically accurate, I would say that a certain number of Arabs of the mandate, whatever the number might be, were displaced after they launched a civil war against the Jews in November of 1947.

    That population, along with those who were not displaced, emerged as the Palestinians toward the middle-end of the twentieth century, after appropriating a name that previously referred to the local Jewish population.

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