Throughout progressive-left venues people are screaming to the heavens about the barbarity of the Jews in the Middle East. Israel is portrayed as a vicious, illegitimate entity that wants nothing so much as to eat little Arab babies for lunch.As soon as this latest round of fighting started we all knew that anti-Semitic anti-Zionists and Israel Haters would come together in order to defame and undermine the lone, sole Jewish state.
However, I am pleased to discover an individual on Daily Kos that is swimming against the current and doing it in a very reasonable and solid manner.
In Mets102's recent diary, we read this from G2geek in the comments:
it would be within the rights.... (5+ / 0-)Ahh, the refreshing breeze of common sense!
.... of the Jewish people, to insist on a state that was exclusively a Jewish homeland, and that alone. Given the history of the world, it would be justified, it would be just, and it would be right, and it would be necessary.
But instead, the state of Israel provides for the citizenship and the rights, religious and civil, of others (those who are not Jewish) as well.
Many are the countries that are majority Christian and are Christian cultures.
Many are the countries that are majority Muslim and are Muslim cultures. And many are those that are Muslim states.
But there is only ONE country that is majority Jewish, only ONE country that is a predominantly Jewish culture, and that ONE place even recognizes the rights of non-Jews as well.
Is it too much to ask, for there to be just ONE place?
We got the future back. Uh-oh.
by G2geek on Tue Jul 22, 2014 at 08:17:18 PM PDT
I have read far too many comments in recent days complaining about the fact of Israel's very existence. Who are these western-leftists who feel that they can just shrug their shoulders and wave their hand and entirely disregard the national aspirations of the Jewish people; a people, by the way, that did more than anyone to advance their very own political movement.
After one particularly heinous schmuck compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, G2geek tell us this:
here's why that's offensive: (3+ / 0-)Here is how it works.
The Warsaw Ghetto was created by the Nazis as part of their means to their deliberate policy goal of genocide of Jews.
The purpose of the Warsaw ghetto was to starve and exterminate Jews.
NOTHING going on in Palestine even REMOTELY comes close to that.
Israel is not herding Palestinians into gas chambers.
Israel is not putting them in trucks specifically constructed so that the carbon monoxide exhaust fills up the rear compartment to kill the people in it.
Israel is not systematically starving them en masse.
Israel is not using them in "medical experiments."
The Warsaw Ghetto comparison effectively accuses Israel of attempted systematic genocide. It does that by way of seeking to legitimize ANYthing that anyone calling themselves a representative of the Palestinian people may do by way of fighting Israel or the Israeli government.
That's disgusting.
There are certainly criticisms to be leveled at the Israeli government in regard to treatment of Palestinians, but there are hundreds, thousands, of historic examples that can be used by way of comparison.
You don't have to use the ONE thing, Naziism, that is the most incendiary and explosive thing in Jewish history. The ONE thing that is the supreme example of distilled essence of evil in all of human history, even though there were other systematic evils in the 20th century with comparable numbers of casualties.
Using the Warsaw Ghetto in any I/P arguement is execrable, detestable, disgusting, and immoral.
If I was running this site I'd make it a bannable offense after disregarding a warning to stop.
We got the future back. Uh-oh.
by G2geek on Tue Jul 22, 2014 at 09:16:18 PM PDT
1) Hamas bombs Israel while hiding behind women and children.
2) Israel endures the bombings for years until finally responding as it is doing now.
3) Western-leftists denounce the Jews of the Middle East as cruel warmongers, which was the entire point of Hamas' bombs to begin with.
They bomb not because they think that they are going to make military gains by doing so, but because they know they can bomb with impunity from criticism on the western-left and as soon as Israel responds those very same people will take the baton from Hamas and denounce the Jews.
And that is precisely what we are seeing in places like Daily Kos and the Huffington Post and the UK Guardian. And for those of you who constantly say things like, "Oh, Daily Kos is irrelevant. They're just a few anti-Zionist extremists." We are also seeing the delegitimization of Israel coming from the EU, itself, not to mention the Obama administration.
If Jewish history tell us anything it is that downplaying threats to the Jewish people, which includes legitimizing Hamas on progressive-left blogs, is always a fundamental mistake.
Comparing Daily Kos to the EU or Obama Administration is a stretch.
ReplyDeleteDaily Kos actors are not only off the wall when it comes to Israel, either, but almost across the board.
Rather than see the voices of reason there, perhaps it is more effective to publicize the worst there, in the hope that more people will become familiar with some of the most illiberal and regressive thinking around, starting at the very top.
School, I would never compare dkos to the EU, at least not in the sense of suggesting equivalence.
DeleteThat's just silly!
And while, of course, I am perfectly capable of silliness I would never suggest that dkos is in any way, shape, or form equivalent to the EU.
However, having said that, as political organizations, one small and irrelevant, the other large and highly relevant, they share certain left-leaning, post-colonial, anti-American, anti-Zionist ideological trends.
It is my contention that when you read the comments in progressive-left venues like dkos and the huffpost and the Guardian the general trends in that movement, as they are expressed on the grassroots / netroots become clear.
This is certainly true in the case of Israel in which the general feeling on the left - except among Jews - runs from indifference to contempt.
Good to hear. I tend to discount the importance of the netroots except in that it keeps some people from actually doing something tangible.
DeleteThe significance of the netroots is that it gives an indication of what people on the ground are thinking within their ideological communities.
DeleteThis is important, obviously, because those trends can spread.
When I look at dkos or the huffpost I do not see the Democratic Party... what I see is the potential Democratic party in the not distant future.
You guys can try to stave it off but, so far, our efforts in that regard have not worked so well and from what I can tell the general trend is in the opposite direction.
That is, the Democratic Party and the progressive movement are becoming more anti-Zionist over time, not less.
Am I wrong?
Not wrong. Just that the participants in these ideological communities trend toward the extreme, and most people besides themselves dismiss them. In this instance, it is becoming more illiberal not just toward Israel. It must be more pronounced for most people to act against it.
DeleteAm waiting for InAntalya to condemn Erdogan for his rancid Jew hate, calling Israel's _self defense_ a genocide and more barbaric than Hitler.
ReplyDeleteOne Israeli minister had a smart retort:
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) hit back at Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, after the latter accused Israel of attempting a "systematic genocide" of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, in his strongest attack yet on the Jewish state over it's self-defense campaign Operation Protective Edge.
In a post on his Facebook page, Katz reminded Erodgan of the Armenian Genocide, when in 1915 more than a million Armenians were murdered by Ottoman troops.
In 1915 the Turks massacred a million and a half Armenians and he accuses us, who are fighting his friends in the Islamic movement, of genocide? Who wants a relationship with such a person?" wrote Katz.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183066#.U8_odblOX5p
An actual genocide has been committed by his/her people. Erdogan has inculcated Turkish gov't and society with Islamism, racism and corruption and all he/she can do is spew at the one liberal democracy in the region.
Get your own house in order you psychotic dolt.
Good on G2Geek. I noticed that they've been standing up strong for us for a couple weeks now, in my next to last diary as well as others. I would like to think that G2Geek represents the mainstream of liberal thought at such places, and I hope I'm right on that.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the sick 'ghetto' comparisons go, I believe the comparison is allegedly banned by 'site rules,' but they're so fucking ubiquitous now that you'd have to ban dozens of people a day. And that site would also have to be interested in enforcing its rules against Jew-haters as it is against those of us who fight back against Jew-haters. Which they are clearly not interested in doing. Obvious Nazi comparisons run rampant at that site now, while nobody says a fucking thing aside from the dwindling number of pro-Israel Jews and the rare decent person like G2Geek. Yet I was screeched at by a dozen people in one of my last diaries there, for calling what's going on in France a pogrom. Which it is. They accused me of using Nazi imagery! This is how these sick fucks work. They, and all those who enable them, are a complete disgrace.
And there are no shades of gray or mere ideological differences here. Using Nazi imagery to describe Israel is straight up antisemitism, period. This isn't an issue of "oh, those crazy I-Pers are going at it again, I wash my hands of all of them!" No, at that point it is antisemitism vs. fighting antisemitism. Which side does Daily Kos generally come down on?
DeleteIt's been pretty obvious for a while now.
You, my friend, are well into the process of recognizing that the game is rigged.
DeleteI don't want to write some friggin' dissertation at the moment, but ponder the fact that some on the left condemned the IDF as racist for refusing to rape Arab women.
Oh, and btw, did you notice the ridiculous and, dare I say, hysterical diary entitled, Israeli Professor Suggests Rape as 'Terror Deterrent'?
DeleteWhile I certainly agree that Professor Kedar's comments were ugly and unhelpful, he made it very clear that we was not recommending this as policy.
He says very clearly, “We can’t take such steps, of course.”
So the entire diary and all the pathos and the rending of garments and the shaking of fists is entirely based on a falsehood.
He did not suggest rape as a deterrent to anything.
What he did say, however, is distasteful.
My suspicion is that he was drawing a conclusion based on the notion of honor-shame society with the idea being that the only thing shameful enough to a Jihadi to get him off his mission might be the rape of a wife or daughter.
It may be an awful thing to say, but Kedar was not recommending rape as a tactic in war.
As Coach Kelly would say, we just won the day. Big fucking time. Fantastic rally for Israel. Hopping the subway home in a minute, will try to put something together tonight, or more likely tomorrow. Many photos to go through...
ReplyDeleteIt is good to see that there is revulsion against likening Israel's actions to those of the Third Reich. What I'd like to know is, what can be done so that comparisons of Israel's actions to Apartheid South Africa would be subject to the same revulsion.
ReplyDeleteYeah, another sick comparison that is not just so demonstrably wrong on every possible level, but there's also the fact that actual apartheid is practiced by many of Israel's enemies, and that one of the demands of Palestinian authorities is ethnic cleansing and a completely Jew-free state.
DeleteDefinitely something we need to work on. At the Israel solidarity rally here in Philadelphia which I just got home from, there were a few 'apartheid' signs amongst the anti's across the street from us. Yet if you looked even remotely close, you'd note that we had the whole rainbow coalition thing going on for us, and their entire crowd consisted solely of about half Arabs and half whites. And they did seem to be kinda segregated neatly right down the middle, when I think back about it...
Dagnabbit! CBS 3 didn't run / air the 5:00-ish segment I was in. They appear to have come back at 6 and done a live shot. At 6, I was on the other end of the park, by the stage.
ReplyDeleteOh, well. I'll have my photos and post on today's Philadelphia Israel Solidarity Rally up by tomorrow evening.
We had at least 2500 people there for us today, and it was a fantastic time.