Mike L.
Progressive-left Jewish Zionists are failing the Jewish people.
If the first way in which progressive-left Zionism is failing is in its ostrich-like reluctance to acknowledge, and seriously discuss, the rise of the Jihad throughout the Muslim Middle East, and another way is through their justifying bigotry against their own people, yet another is in the fact that they always play defense.
The Jewish people is the only community within the progressive-left coalition that is constantly under attack by elements within that very coalition. Jews who care about Israel and who wish to engage in progressive politics on the grassroots / netroots are constantly being smacked around by anti-Semitic anti-Zionists who revel in whipping up hatred toward the Jewish people via whipping up hatred against the Jewish state... in the name of "human rights," naturally.
Thus progressive Jews are constantly put on the defensive, but one cannot win any contest if one only plays defense. The problem is that within progressive-left venues it takes considerable cajones to take the fight to the bastards. If enemies of the Jewish people include anti-Semitic anti-Zionists (of the type crawling around places like Daily Kos or the Huffington Post or the UK Guardian) and if radical Islam represents the most serious physical threat to the Jewish people and the Jewish state, progressive-left Jews are prohibited from criticizing those elements by the progressive movement, itself.
One cannot discuss the genocidal nature of radical Islam on progressive-left venues because to do so marks one as an "Islamophobe" within that movement. Therefore progressive-left Jews have a choice. They can stand with their fellow Jews in the face of the rise of radical Islam, which is the most significant geo-political happening since the fall of the Soviet Union, or they can stick their heads in the sand and pretend, along with Barack Obama, that the rise of radical Islam is really the wondrous up-welling of democracy throughout the Middle East and, thus, a good thing.
Sadly, they mainly do the latter and thereby take themselves out of the conversation almost entirely. Any Jewish person who criticizes radical Islam on a place like Daily Kos will quickly find himself either banned or ridiculed into silence. This is the price, but not the only one, that Jews must pay if they wish to participate.
In other words, it is OK within progressive-left circles for radical Islamists to spit hatred at Jews from the mosques, but if I mention this on a place like Daily Kos they accuse me of being a racist rather than face the truth about the degree and meaning of Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism and blood-thirsty xenophobia. And if progressive-left Jews censor themselves on radical Islam, they are likewise bullied and ridiculed into silence about the presence of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists within progressive-left venues.
They are free to point out traditional forms of anti-Semitism when they arise, because the progressive-left fancies itself (all evidence to the contrary) as anti-racist, but they may not discuss the fact that anti-Semitism has taken a place within the progressive movement under the veil of anti-Zionism. Any Jewish person who insists upon having that conversation will not last very long. The best that they are allowed to do is react to the hatred that gets spread toward Israel, but they are not allowed to initiate conversations about the welcoming of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism as part of the larger progressive coalition without facing considerable hostility and censure.
If they wish to be relevant, progressive-left Jews will need to find the backbone necessary to stand the hell up. If they cannot manage that then they cannot be counted upon to represent Jewish concerns and will, furthermore, have little of interest to say on the Long Arab War against the Jews.
Good post.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, it takes them out of the conversation. It is their loss. They are marginalized from both ends.
Until they can address the questions I asked in the other thread, to deal with the fundamental disconnect and other inconsistencies, I think they will continue to spin their wheels by reactionary gestures.
There is fear of being perceived from any utterance as biased against Muslims, by those who are, essentially, anti-Israel. To offset this circumstance, it is incumbent they be seen both as "fair minded" and hyper loyal to Obama. Thus, we see the kabuki where they expose Islamophobes and Republicans as an end unto itself.
Interesting.
DeleteY'know, I've long wondered just why it is that almost all the pro-Israel sites lean toward the right and the conclusion that I am drawing is not so much that the vast majority of pro-Israel sites actually are right-wing, but that the left has concluded that to be pro-Israel is to be right-wing.
If there is truth to that assertion it would mean that pro-Israel people can only be considered "left" or "liberal" if they are somewhere on the far-fringy left, in the ideological neighborhood of J Street or Meretz.
Other than that one is automatically docketed as right-wing and therefore dismissed by progressives who prefer to keep their minds firmly shut, rather than consider alternative points of view, in order to maintain progressive bona fides.
btw, one specific example is Barry Rubin who is sometimes castigated as right-wing despite the fact that he comes out of the Labour party.
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