Not long ago a visitor to Israel Thrives told me this:
Nagaura Apr 21, 2012 09:05 PM
Why can't just admit that you believe the Palestinian's deserve nothing. That they should just leave the West Bank and Gaza Strip because they have no right to be there.
Every once in awhile someone will march onto Israel Thrives and tell me what I reeeeally mean. As a writer, and as someone who has, in my own small way, put himself into the public sphere, I find it fascinating when people tell me that although I may say this or that, what I really mean is something else entirely.
It doesn't matter what I actually think or what I actually say, what matters in the mind of critics such as these is what they want me to believe or think or say. It's an entirely illiberal attitude. It is a way of thinking that is, in my view, entirely inconsistent with liberalism or the left... or the left the way that I once thought it to be.
Nagaura has the chutzpah to tell me that what I reeeally want is the ethnic cleansing of the local Arabs from Israel. To my mind this is something akin to telling Black people that any discussion of the history of African-American slavery is reeeally nothing more than hatred toward White people.
What garbage. What doo-doo. What mierda.
What I object to is the ongoing Arab and Muslim attempt to subjugate the Jews in the Middle East. And if I complain about this never-ending anti-Jewish hostility, it means that I am racist? That what I really want, as Nagaura suggests, is the ethnic-cleansing of Arabs from Jewish land?
Nagaura, no doubt, is a well-meaning leftist who wants what she perceives as "justice" for the Palestinian people. Sadly, she is not the only kind of visitor here that feels more than free to tell me who I am and what I think, in complete contradiction to anything that I have written.
This blog is non-partisan. We may be critical of the Obama administration and the progressive-left, but this does not magically turn us into either conservatives or Republicans... although I may be willing to oblige in the not too distant future. Defining others, in opposition to the way that they define themselves and in opposition to historical truth or one's personal history, is strictly an authoritarian activity. It is, in fact, just what the Nazis did to the Jews before they slaughtered us.
How is it that some people who disagree with my view accuse me of being that most loathsome of creature, a conservative? I favor a woman's right to choose. I favor Gay rights. I favor a tax code more favorable to the poor and the middle class. I opposed and marched against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, yet these obnoxious morons have the temerity to walk onto this blog and in a facile and insulting manner dismiss me as a "Republican"?
Nothing could be further from a liberal sensibility or from the truth.
Nothing.
Progressive does not mean liberal.
ReplyDeleteLiberals are not so prone to shove social change down the throats of society. They are more tolerant to hearing all sides when it comes to understanding and solving complex issues.
Yes, it is frustrating to say something, then be told what you mean. Or to be falsely characterized by people who seem only capable of seeing thing through a partisan or ideological lens, with no incentive to examine their own assumptions to see if they match reality.
No, progressive does not mean liberal, does it?
DeleteSo, what then shall we do, Schoool?
Whatever is done, they must NOT be allowed to gain control of the Democratic party. Heaven help us all, then.
DeleteDoodad, they are already well on their way toward gaining control of the Democratic party.
DeleteWhen the president of the United States, the leader of the party, tells us that the rise of the Jihad in the Middle East is a good thing and when Harvard, Yale, and UPENN stand up against the Jewish state, then you know that the Democratic party is essentially lost.
The thing of it is that they take us entirely for granted. Part of the reason that they do is because progressive-left Jews seem to have a rather slavish nature, so why wouldn't they get kicked in the head by the very people that they support?
What we need to do is balance things out a little.
Let the Dems keep the dhimmis and the self-respecting Jews will move elsewhere.
My point was this. Israel has administrative control of the West Bank and given the political realities within Israel no government will cede control of that land to the Palestinians. Why? Given the fractured nature of Israeli politics and the fact that neither of the major parties can achieve a working majority on their own they need support from the smaller conservative parties to form a working government.
ReplyDeleteEthnic cleansing has nothing to do with anything. It's about political reality.
You have a problem with democracy Nagaura? A lot of people do. That alone can explain the intensity of much of the bloody-minded hatred directed at Israel.
ReplyDeleteYour point is utter nonsense. Israeli democracy did not stop the return of the Sinai to Egypt or the unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Israeli democracy did not stop the establishment of the PA and the ceding of administrative powers to it. It did not stop the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Gaza.
There is a consensus in Israeli politics for a two state solution. Governments from both the centre left and the centre right have offered a state to the Palestinians again and again. The Palestinians say no. They do not want a Palestinian state if it means recognising Israel. They much prefer what they have.
Ethnic cleansing has everything to do with it. The urge to finish the job of cleansing the Middle East of Jews drives the politics of the "Palestinians" and the Arab Muslim states. This is what they want and they say so again and again. That is the only reason there is such a thing as "the Palestinians" .
Y'know, Goeffff, this:
DeleteThe urge to finish the job of cleansing the Middle East of Jews drives the politics of the "Palestinians" and the Arab Muslim states. This is what they want and they say so again and again. That is the only reason there is such a thing as "the Palestinians".
This is one of those unspeakable truths that we are not supposed to notice or comment upon. As liberals we very much want to be fair to all other peoples. And, yet, the Palestinian people came into being as a people strictly out of the Arab war against the Jews in the Middle East.
That's a fact.
This means that in order to be good liberals we must close our eyes to the truth.
I simply refuse and I am glad that you do, as well.