There is a moral disconnect between western-left opposition to racism, since the end of World War II, and its general disdain for the lone, sole Jewish state of Israel.For most "liberals" or "leftists" or "progressives," depending on how one defines such terms, this disconnect is veiled and, therefore, sometimes difficult to see.
One way to put a spot-light on it, however, is to note the negative attention that Israel receives from the western press versus the degree and quality of attention that it gives to countries like Syria or Iraq or Sudan or Congo or Saudi Arabia or North Korea. The press knows very well that while about two thousand Arabs were killed by Israel in its operation against Hamas in Gaza last summer, that hundreds of thousands of Arabs have been killed, and millions displaced, in Syria within the just the last two years alone.
The number of war dead in Syria, in fact, already far outstrips - by perhaps four-fold - the entire number of dead in the Arab-Israel conflict since 1948, which amounts to about fifty thousand dead, total. About two-thirds Arab and one-third Jewish.
The fact that the western-left, and the universities, and the UN, and the EU, and the Obama administration focus their disdain on Israel and not on, say, Syria, gives away the lie.
They say that Israel is abusing the local Arab population, yet, somehow, they do not seem to much care about abused Arabs who live anywhere else.
It tells us very clearly that this is a sucker's game and Jews are the suckers.
Israel is propped up, over and over again, to be socked in the mouth by the "human rights" community.
Yet the human rights community - those who stridently and self-righteously call for "social justice" - are blatant hypocrites who care about no such thing. It is very sad, in fact. I grew up believing that if an organization had the word "justice" or "peace" directly within the name of the organization that it probably stood for justice or peace.
This is not the case... if it ever was.
The fact of the matter is that if the "human rights community" honestly cared about social justice and universal human rights then it would care far more about Islamic State atrocities than the efforts of six million Jews to protect themselves in that part of the world.
That so many concerned "liberal" non-Jews excoriate Israel tells us that at the heart of western-left "liberalism" is a bigoted worm, eating away at the very soul of the movement, that intends to do Jewish people harm.
These are nothing more than bellwethers and brands. Progressive is a meaningless term, liberal is a meaningless term, human rights is a meaningless term. They are nothing more than baskets that people toss issues and their feeling about them into. On their own they represent nothing. That's the great confusion. Outsiders believe they mean what they they think they say is meant by them. After all, you have have National Socialism w/o socialism, can you? Just because you call some flaming shit hole a 'People's Republic' doesn't mean it stands for either of the two words in its name.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a marketing person but the problem with Zionism is the name, Zionism. It's time to retire it. I know what it means, many people know what it means but too many people believe it means something entirely different, something evil and toxic. Just like Corvair never really recovered from the Corvair debacle it is time to retire the brand. The brand has lost its value. Because the value of a brand isn't inherent it's whatever people, consumers give to it.
When we banter terms like 'progressive' and 'liberal-secular' and 'high holy day Jews' we think we know what we mean. But that's as far as it goes. We don't know what someone else thinks about it unless we agree with them 100%. That's the great elegance of the BDS movement and Jew hatred generally - it's a MacGuffin, it's ok to let yourself believe whatever you want about Jews and Israel and its ok. It's the ultimate post modernist deconstruction. That is why they never feel the need to defend themselves against claims of Jew hatred - each person will say that's not exactly, precisely what they mean, it must be some other person you're talking about.
So it's time to abandon the term Zionism and take away one of the weapons in the Jew haters arsenal. Again I'm not a marketeer but perhaps a term like 'Pride', 'Beauty", 'Love', 'Progress', 'Inclusiveness' is more apt. Something that's either an action term (like the specific directions implied by the words words in BDS) or something vague enough to be a MacGuffin.
Step 1 might be to just stop apologizing.
DeleteThey have no need of moral agency, since many UN agencies are there to fill the void.
ReplyDelete