The Progressive-Left Betrayal of the Jewish People

Karam

There are certain political realities that are so large that they fade into the background like wallpaper. One of the more obvious recent political realities that is doing so is the progressive-left betrayal of the Jewish people. The main argument, here, is that the progressive-left, as a movement, has betrayed its Jewish constituency through the acceptance of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism as part of that broader movement.

Since the more recent convulsions and rioting and revolution in the Arab world, foolishly labeled the "Arab Spring," progressives have gone on to justify the rise of political Islam (or the Radical Jihad) as democracy in action and therefore something that the west should welcome. The main beneficiary of this shake-up has been the Muslim Brotherhood which is now in the process of taking power in much of the region, particularly in Egypt.

Many on the progressive-left welcome the Muslim Brotherhood because, like Hamas (not to mention the Nazis), they gained power through democratic means. This, however, does not prevent the Brotherhood from being a virulently anti-Semitic and genocidal organization.

As Robert S. Wistrich (Professor of Modern History and Director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) writes:

In a sermon during Israel’s Cast Lead Operation in Gaza (9 January 2009), broadcast to millions on ‘al-Jazeera’ TV, he (Muslim Brotherhood leader, Yusuf al-Qaradawi) referred to the Jews as “treacherous aggressors,” a “profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people.” He fervently prayed to Allah to annihilate these oppressive, Jewish Zionist criminals. Not a single Jew, he declared, should be spared by the Almighty. “O Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”13 A few weeks later, in a statement on ‘al-Jazeera’ TV (28 January 2009), the leading Sunni Muslim cleric in the world added the following gloss on Hitler and the Holocaust:

Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption... The last punishment was carried out by [Adolf] Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them—even though they exaggerated this issue—he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them... Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.

That's the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, yet western progressives do not seem to mind the coming into power of his organization or political movement. Since Barack Obama has come into office political Islam went from being a heinously genocidal movement that controlled Iran, Lebanon, the Gaza strip and the Sudan to one that now controls, or is gaining control of, Iran, Lebanon, the Gaza strip, the Sudan, and Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, and Egypt, among other countries.

What we are currently witnessing is the most significant geo-political development since the fall of the Soviet Union and progressives are ignoring it entirely, despite the genocidally anti-Semitic nature of this movement. Calling this development the "Arab Spring" is something akin to calling the rise of Nazi Germany the "German Spring," about as cruel a misnomer as one can imagine.

As Wistrich notes:

If this is not genocidal anti-Semitic incitement, then the term has little meaning. The current supreme leader of the Brotherhood, Mohamed Budi, undoubtedly shares such views on Israel, Zionism, and the Jews. His advice in 2010 to the Mujahideen in Gaza to continue to “raise the banner of jihad against the Jews, [our] first and foremost enemies” was essentially echoing an undeviating gospel of hatred.

Yet we are to welcome this development in the name of the "blessings of liberty."

I say this is betrayal. It is a betrayal of the Jewish people by the progressive-left because the progressive movement is welcoming of these genocidal fascists.

Like Sheikh Qaradawi, the current leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood clearly believe that loathing of Jews and the destruction of Israel is mandated by God himself. Every Jew in the world is thereby designated an enemy within this ideology. Nor is it an accident that Qaradawi, like other Egyptian clerics, should quote an anti-Jewish saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in a notorious hadith on the preconditions for the Day of Judgment. In his commentary, Qaradawi emphasized that the coming apocalyptic battle will not be “between Arabs and Zionists, or between Jews and Palestinians, or between Jews or anybody else.” His conclusion could not be more explicit. “ This battle will occur between the collective body of Muslims and the collective body of Jews, that is all Muslims and all Jews.”

This is what progressives are welcoming in the name of "democracy." It is this that president Obama welcomes when he calls the riots and revolutions something akin to the Revolution of '76 or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s.

Since 1928, when Sheikh Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brothers in Ismailiyah, the notion that Jews are by nature evil and can never peacefully co-exist with others has been axiomatic for the fundamentalist organization. An equally self-evident corollary is the denial of any possibility of Jewish self-rule (let alone a Jewish state) or even of civic equality with Muslims.

So, why in this world should Jewish people continue to support a political movement, the progressive movement, when it is so accepting of these fascists in the Middle East? Why are so many Jewish liberals so afraid to stand up for themselves?

With regard to Israel and the Jews, the fundamentalist attitude has never deviated during the past few decades, closely linked as it is to a truly paranoid fear of “Judaization”—often a synonym for secularism, westernization, liberal modernity, or “globalization.” Paradoxically, Brotherhood ideologues, despite their rabid anti-Westernism, have no problem in drawing liberally on non-Muslim sources for their radical anti-Semitism—whether it be the Russian Tsarist Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery, Henry Ford’s The International Jew, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, European antisemitic propaganda about Judeo-Masonic conspiracies, Christian anti-Talmudism, blood-libel slanders, or Western Holocaust denial.

The Muslim Brotherhood owes an ideological and historical debt to Nazi Germany, yet good, well-meaning, western liberals are welcoming the organization with open arms.

How this can be characterized as anything other than betrayal is beyond me.

Today's progressives are stretching the palm of friendship to the current iteration of Nazi ideology in the Arab world and, yet, they still expect our support? Ridiculous. It is long past time for Jews to drop this movement and see it for what it is. While claiming to stand for anti-racism and universal human rights, the progressive movement has thrown both those concepts into the garbage entirely.

The progressive-left stands for nothing and has sold the Jews down the river. The first thing to do now is simply acknowledge that fact.

You are betrayed.

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