Michael Burd and Alan Freedman have these exceedingly interesting individuals up for conversation today.Jeremy Jones (AIJAC), Uri Silberman, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, Gary Mallin, Mike Lumish, and Isi Leibler.You should definitely give it a listen.
The guys have been generous enough to give me five minutes per week to have my say in the world and we'll see what we want to do with it.
This week, as part of my series concerning the failures of progressive-left Zionism, I focus on the tendency among hard-left Jewish Zionists, like those of the J-Street variety, to blame Jews who building housing for themselves and their children beyond the "green line" for Arab-Muslim refusal to make peace.
I think that we need more in the way of Jewish community radio, which is precisely what these guys are up to in Melbourne.
Update:
Here is my bit with the raw, unedited transcript below:
Heya guys, this is Michael Lumish of Israel Thrives, that Israel dash thrives dot blogspot dot com as well as Shirlee Finn's place over at Jews Down Under and a regular contributor to the Elder of Ziyon blog.
And you spoke with the Elder just last week and I was very interested to listen in on that conversation. The Elder definitely has his pulse on the cutting edge of Jewish political concerns and concerns around the security of the State of Israel.
I don't know exactly from where the Elder does his work, but I am speaking with you from Oakland California and I want to thank you guys for the opportunity to continue this series and want to discuss some fundamental criticisms that I have with the western Jewish left.
Last week I spoke about my first criticism of the western Jewish left, and really the western-left more generally, and that is an ideological inability to acknowledge the rise of the Jihad as a political movement not only throughout the Middle East, but throughout the world.
Orlando was a Jihadi attack and anyone who imagines otherwise is burying his or her head directly in the sand... like an Ostrich.
If Donald Trump manages to wander into the White House it will, at least in part, be because he is willing to acknowledge the enemy and SEEMS willing, at least, to take the fight to the bastards.
However, my second criticism of the Jewish Left, and the one that I want to focus upon today, is in the Jewish Left tendency to whip up hatred toward other Jews.
This is precisely what the comfy-cozy Jewish progressive-Left does in places like San Francisco or the Upper West Side of Manhattan or ensconced within any number of universities throughout Europe and the United States when they bitch and moan and whine and complain about Jews daring to live in Samaria or, excuse me, Judea?
The very land where Jewish people come from?
So I am to understand that both Mahmoud Abbas and US president Barack Obama think that it is something akin to a war crime if Jews build housing for themselves on the very land of our ancestors?
I mean, if the Jewish Left honestly believes that Israel - between the river and the sea - is conducting an Occupation - with a capital O - as if it is the Great Mother of all Other Occupations - an occupation of the peace-loving, olive-growing, indigenous Arab population then the conversation is over.
There is no conversation to be had because what much of the Jewish Left, essentially, is telling the world is that the Jews of the Middle East are a bunch of land thieves and their supporters throughout the diaspora are corrupt and heartless beneficiaries of an unjust occupation and of the persecution of the indigenous owners of quote unquote historic Palestine.
What this means, of course, is that as the diaspora Jewish left tends to hold our friends beyond the green - such as, for example, Yosef Hartuv who operates the Love of the Land blog out of Hebron - in contempt they are simultaneously providing both the Arabs and the rest of the world with a justification for Arab-Muslim bloodlust toward the Jewish people.
This is a deadly mistake.
Y'know, the Elder was in Israel last week and for all I know he is still there but he has a piece from Wed July 6 entitled The American Jewish community has already embraced BDS against "settlements"
In that article he discusses Ariel University which he describes as a beautiful campus with about 15,000 students, including many hundreds of Arab students who regularly dialogue with Jewish students through various student organizatons.
It has the only free electron laser particle accelerator in the entire Middle East.
How do you like that??
I don't know what it means, but it certainly sounds all scientific.
free electron laser particle accelerator, huh?
I had no idea that there were such things as unfree electrons.
In any case, the point of the Elder's article was to point out that pro-Israel Jewish groups from the US refuse to visit Ariel University.
Why?
Because it is beyond the green line.
Ariel University, even for AIPAC even for Birthright, represents those bad Jews over there.
J Street, which is essentially an enemy of the Jewish state, dropped in for the purpose of getting a gander at their ideological foes.
Christian groups from the US visit when they are in Israel because, unlike J Street, they actually are friends of Israel but the supposedly pro-Israel / pro-Jewish left seemingly cannot bring itself to.
If even we do not think that we have any real right to our ancestral homeland, why would anyone expect anything else from the Brits or the Democrats?
Those of us old enough to have lived through the six day war can never have anything but a deep contempt for progressive leftist Jews who have no idea at all and no excuse for their bleeding cowardice except arse kissing sanctimonious ignorance.
ReplyDeleteThat's the kindest way I can put it.
I suspect it is much worse than that