Israel Thrives: Book Note - Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Book Note - Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization

Mike L.

I have not read this one, yet, and a Tip 'O the Kippa to Oldschool, but I do want to draw attention to Colin Shindler's, Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization.

School claims that the book "parallels some of what seems to be the tensions between Jews and the left wing we experience today."

In a review over at Harry's Place, Alan A writes:

Before I go further, I should say that Shindler’s book is superb: a well-written and meticulously researched history of the horrors and ironies of the last 100 years. He shows how screaming stereotypes and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories developed by Marxists — not by fascists or Islamists or Catholic and Orthodox nationalists, but by the Left — have survived while all around has changed.

Given the cramped nature of British debate, I doubt if it will be widely reviewed. The right-wing press won’t like it because it is not a conventional denunciation of the Left. Shindler is a properly impartial historian, but when his beliefs show through he reveals himself to be a social democrat rather than an Israel-firster or man of the Right. The left-wing press won’t like it for the same reason Caliban did not like the sight of his face in the mirror.

A major part of what we do here on Israel Thrives is analyze and discuss the rise of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism on the progressive-left. Because progressives, as well as "progressive Zionists," generally refuse to address the issue, we will do it for them.

Many thanks to School for the notice on this one.

2 comments:

oldschooltwentysixApril 22, 2012 at 11:51 AM
I do not get how these on the left are such opponents of nationalism, it seems, when it concerns Israel, the collective Jew, but not their own nation states. They can call it anti-Zionism, but such discriminatory conduct is antisemitic.

And no matter how some Jews adopt a class based orientation to existence, they remain expendable in the end to those who see them as representatives of capitalism. The larger struggle has primacy, even if it must be imposed.

So it seems from experience and practice. No wonder some Jews are so conflicted.
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Randall KohnApril 23, 2012 at 10:06 AM
So many folks like to proclaim that Zionism is worse than other nationalisms.

Tell such folks to compare and contrast Israel's interaction with the "Palestinians" to America's interaction with the Native Americans.
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Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" was the brutal rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to?

How's that for a kick in the head to Martin Luther King, Jr.?

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Book Note - Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization

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