The Left Doesn't Care About Palestinians

{Cross-Posted at My Left Wing.}

A casual reader of the left political blogs, such as Daily Kos or the Huffington Post, might get the idea that the progressive-left cares about the Palestinian people. Such a reader would be wholly mistaken. The last thing in this world that the western progressive-left cares about are universal human rights and that definitely goes for the human rights of the Palestinians.

The western left has no interest in human rights and it certainly has no interest in the human rights of the Palestinian people. This is one of those obvious truths that we are supposed to ignore. I keep stumbling upon more and more of these... more and more obvious truths that the ideologically blinded will not allow themselves to consider.

My assertion is easily demonstrated. It has two parts. The first is that the left cares not about universal human rights. The second assertion, which follows from the first, is that the left does not care about the universal human rights of the Palestinian people. Let's take the first part, my claim that the left doesn't care about universal human rights.

I would suggest that if the left did care about universal human rights than we would see activist members of the progressive-left promoting the human rights of Tibetans and Darfurans and Congolese on the major left-wing political blogs... but we do not. On websites such as Daily Kos and the Huffington Post there is virtual silence on the Chinese occupation of Tibet or the truly brutal genocides in Darfur and the Congo. {The Congo, in particular, is horrifying with some 5.5 million dead over the last decade. 5.5 million.}

That the left is virtually silent on these matters demonstrates their lack of interest in human rights. This should be obvious to anyone who doesn't view politics as a team sport. This should be obvious to anyone who is not blinded by partisanship. And it most certainly should be obvious to anyone who cares about the Jewish people, given the fact that Israel is constantly (and hypocritically) hounded on the left over matters of human rights.

That the western progressive-left cares not a whit about the Palestinians is demonstrated from the fact that they only speak up on behalf of Palestinians when Palestinians are in conflict with Jews, but never when they are in conflict with non-Jews. One would think that among the self-proclaimed western defenders of the Palestinian people, that violations of Palestinian human rights, or civil liberties, would be of interest no matter who is doing that violating. One would be wrong, however. They only speak up when they can paint Jews as the villain. They are almost entirely silent otherwise.

Here is a specific example currently in the press. Some young Palestinian Muslim in the West Bank spoofed the Koran on Facebook and is now very deep in the doo-doo among his fellow Palestinians. They've got him locked up for this heinous crime.

In his hometown, the reaction seems to be one of uniform fury. Many here say that if he does not repent, he should spend the rest of his life in jail.

“Everyone is a Muslim here, so everyone is against what he did,” said Alaa Jarar, 20, who described himself as not particularly pious. “People are mad at him and will not respect the Palestinian Authority if he is released. Maybe he is a Mossad agent working for Israel.”

Sure. He could be Mossad. Why the hell not? But for those of us who live in the reality-based world, we might wonder why it is that the left remains silent on this case and the multitudes of ones like it. Why is that when Iran hangs gay people from cranes the left is almost always silent? Why is it that when Saudi Arabia arrests women for the crime of getting raped, western feminists mainly keep a sock in it? And how is it that western-left advocates for the Palestinian people only care about those people when Jews are involved?

How is that?

I submit that it is because the western progressive-left does not really care about either universal human rights, nor the well-being of the Palestinian people.

And I say this as someone who comes out of the progressive-left.

{Sad, but true.}

The New York Times article notes:

Palestinian human rights groups in the West Bank have so far remained silent about Mr. Hasayin’s arrest.

Of course they are silent. There's nothing here to pin on Israel.

Landmarks

As my positions on Israel continue to evolve "landmarks" frequently present themselves. One such landmark, for me personally, anyway, was the Mavi Marmara incident. What most caught my attention about the flotilla-thing was that it was clearly a case in which western leftists literally, physically, and economically, joined with actual Jihadis in attacking Jews. That is what we saw. The Mavi Marmara was a Turkish vessel carrying people, as we saw on video, who wished for martyrdom in a violent confrontation with Jews and they were aided and abetted by western secular leftists. It was the first time that I really came to understand there is, in fact, a Left-Jihadi alliance at work. This is not to say that all leftists are part of that alliance, but that there is a segment of the western progressive left that supports Jihadis over Jews.

Strange, but true.

Another landmark has taken place just recently. With the current failure of the peace talks, a failure that anyone with a pulse saw coming many months ago, the left, including much of the Jewish left, blames Israel for that failure. This shows me that Jewish liberals are generally weak in their support for the Jewish state. There are things that Israel can be blamed for and things that Israel cannot be blamed for. One of the things that Israel cannot be blamed for is the failure of current negotiations. The reason that Israel cannot be blamed for the failure of negotiations is because it was not the Israelis who refused to negotiate, but the Palestinians who refused to do so.

When Netanyahu first came into office he called for negotiations without preconditions. The Palestinians refused. As a compromise in order to demonstrate good faith, Israel instituted a ten-month settlement freeze in the hopes of bringing the Palestinians to the table, but the Palestinians still refused to negotiate. Now that the settlement freeze is over they are demanding an extension of the freeze, despite the fact that they would neither negotiate throughout most of the period of the freeze, nor negotiate without the freeze. But the bottom line is that Israel called for negotiations while the Palestinians rejected negotiations.
And, yet, many Jewish "progressives" blame Israel for the failure of those negotiations. Does that make even the least little bit of sense? How can Israel be at fault when it was the Palestinians who refused to negotiate whether there was settlement-building or not?

To the extent that Jewish progressives blame Israel on this question is the extent to which those individuals suffer from what I call Jewish Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome, of course, means taking on the political outlooks of one's captors. Jewish Stockholm Syndrome is when Jewish people, whether supporters of Israel or not, ingest the so-called "Palestinian narrative" and view the I-P conflict, at least in some measure, through that narrative.

At the heart of the Palestinian narrative is perpetual Israeli guilt and perfect Palestinian innocence. When Jewish supporters of Israel blame the failure of negotiations on Israel they are expressing something that is not only irrational, but that fits the Palestinian narrative of never-ending Israeli guilt.

They thus suffer from Jewish Stockholm Syndrome.

As with so much else, it's obvious, but they'll never see it or acknowledge it.