Freedom from "the Group"

Mike L.

Demanding partisan and ideological loyalty is a funny thing.

It is also very often an ugly thing. What I want, though, for Israel Thrives moving forward is to simply rethink the terms of discussion around the Long Arab War against the Jews of the Middle East.

That's the main point.

Although I am highly critical of the progressive-left, my purpose is not to promote the conservative right. What "progressive Zionists" need to understand, and what progressives, in general, need to understand, is that any and all criticism of them cannot be simply dismissed as "right-wing." In fact, no criticism of anything can simply be dismissed by slapping a defamatory label on that criticism. If you want to discuss intellectual laziness, it gets no more intellectually lazy than the ad hominem smear.

This is, in fact, one of the most pernicious aspects of political criticism. The notion that if one criticizes the Left one must automatically be dismissed as coming from the Right. Or, conversely, the notion that if one criticizes the Right one must automatically be dismissed as coming from the Left.

The challenge is to think about what we care about in a manner that is as honest as possible. This is exceedingly difficult if one also cares about the approval of "the group." Politics, obviously, is not just about political ideas or ideals, but also about the social. To be a political apostate carries a social burden... although not nearly the social burden of being an Islamic religious apostate which sometimes results in murder.

This particular political moment cries out for apostates, however. We need Jewish people, and friends of Jewish people, to stand up and say, "NO." We need Jewish people, and friends of Jewish people, to not allow themselves to be intimidated by "the group," by the mob of ideological zombies.

Because the Arabs and the Palestinians absolutely refuse a negotiated end of hostilities in a two-state solution we must think about the conflict in ways that are post-Oslo and certainly post-Obama. We have got to move on, but we cannot do so if we remain stuck in the ideological past. The current moment, this specific year, is a crux. Political sands are shifting and we need flexibility of thought so that we can adapt to changing political circumstances.

The first best way to do that is to throw away old and useless categories. "Right Wing" and "Left Wing" are almost entirely meaningless at this point. The only thing that matters is the survival of the Jewish people via the survival of the Jewish state. If Israel is to survive, which I am confident that it will, it must counter aggression against it. In the past this aggression... an aggression that has come from the Arab and Muslim communities... has taken the form of riots and pogroms during the years of the Mufti, conventional war during the middle of the twentieth century, terrorism since the rise of the PLO and Hamas, and delegitimization at the current moment.

The effort to eventually liquidate Israel via delegitimization before the world community should not be underestimated. It is the foremost challenge of the Jewish people at this time. The only way to counter the international effort to delegitimize Israel, which is in fact an effort coming out of the progressive-left in an alliance with the Islamist right, is to present our case within the larger historical context.

Acknowledging the larger historical context means recognizing the long centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Arab and Muslim imperial rule in the Middle East. Acknowledging this obvious truth does not constitute hatred. It constitutes a recognition of the history of the conflict without which no understanding of the conflict is possible. Just as one cannot understand the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States without understanding the history of Jim Crow and African slavery in America, so one cannot understand the war against the Jews in the Middle East without reference to centuries of Jewish dhimmitude.

What we need to do, if we honestly care about the well-being of the Jewish people, is to rid ourselves of the Oslo Delusion and to think about the situation in a fresh manner.

That's all I want and no one should be persecuted or ostracized, particularly by other Jews, for understanding this.

Nevertheless, Israel thrives and for that I am very grateful. Some call me a conservative, but the truth is that I am a hippie at heart. If anyone cares to honestly disagree then I welcome them to show some guts and do so, here, in a public way and in a respectful manner.

There is only one person banned from this blog... and he was banned for exceeding nastiness... but I welcome any of those lurking in his shadow to tell me how I am wrong.