Posted on 10/13/2018 10:44:54 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
In 1985 my family moved to Israel for two years, playing our part in reclaiming a heretofore unclaimed portion of our Biblical patrimony.
*snip*
In those years, Israel was governed primarily under socialist economic principles. Always a democracy, Israel’s governing institutions nevertheless were founded by deeply non-religious and even anti-religious secular socialists who had fled Tsarist Russia in the late 1800s. For half a century, until the Menachem Begin earthquake election of 1977, Israel was governed by coalitions led by the leftist Labor Party. They had built the socialist kibbutzim (agricultural socialist collectives) that the liberal media idealized. These were the darlings of the leftist-liberal media during Israel’s nascent years, names like Ben-Gurion, Rabin, Dayan, Golda Meir. Leftist socialists all.
Today, and for the past several decades, Israel’s kibbutz movement and socialism is all but dead. That is why socialist Bernie Sanders has led the way incorporating anti-Israel policies into the Democrat party. Today’s Israelis despise and reject socialism (outside their academia, mainstream media, and entertainment industry — sound familiar?). The leftist Labor Party is in shambles. Benjamin Netanyahu’s center-conservative Likud coalition reigns.
(Meanwhile, to this day America gets as much or more monetary and military strategic value from its investments in Israel’s defense as it spends. Typically, most American military defense allocations towards Israel must be spent on American-made parts and materiel. American weapons then are battle-tested against Soviet arms, and Israel thereupon shares lessons learned in battle with the American defense establishment and their contractors. Modifications then are made, often with upgrades devised by the Israelis themselves, and that assures American military superiority over Soviet/Russian weapons.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Excellent post. Rock on...
Yes it is a mutually beneficial relationship.
There is something that I don’t understand. Socialism exists in many places of this world. If someone believes in socialism, I have no doubt that they would be welcomed with open arms by one of these countries. Why wouldn’t they just emigrate to socialism instead of trying to implement it here, when there are so many people here who want no part of it?
Only 8% of Israelis are leftists. While that’s true of 50% of American Jews.
Israelis love Donald Trump - 77%. In contrast only 34% of American Jews approve of him.
They’re already like two different peoples.
An interesting article. Over the years I have known a number of people who moved to Israel and lived in kibbutz communities, some of them were not even Jewish. They all came back within a couple years usually telling stories of how much they loved living with all their new friends at the kibbutz, and all the great ways they managed to grow enough food not to starve in a place with almost no water. So the question that I had for every one of them was, “If you loved it so much, what are you doing back here?”
There were various excuses, but it almost always really came back to eking out an existence with barely enough to eat, getting paid almost nothing, and living where it gets hot with almost no air conditioning just gets old pretty fast.
I’ve always wonder about why Jews, especially NY and CA Jews, are so progressive/liberal.
Funny, my year in Israel on two Kibbutzim made me a Red Blooded American Reagan loving capitalist too. But it wasn’t the kibutzim, or their socialism, but that one Communist Australian that hated America who insisted on eating with me every day that did it for me. I loved all those Israeli socialists, and tried to be a servant to them all in Jesus’s Name.
Very good read. Thank you for posting.
Must have been a long time ago.
Only a few percent of Israelis have kibbutz connections these days. Kibbutzim are pretty corporate these days, and are relatively wealthy. Many members are much older than the average Israeli and their kibbutzim seem like retirement co-ops.
But being a foreign volunteer on a kibbutz is something akin to being a recent illegal alien in the USA, mostly hard work and low pay.
“Why wouldn’t they just emigrate to socialism instead of trying to implement it here, when there are so many people here who want no part of it?”
Most of my acquaintances did this during our younger years which was a long time ago. But we have a leftist Jewish acquaintance whose daughter moved to some type of agricultural operation in the past few years. He and his wife went over to visit frequently. They always returned with a bunch of pictures and stories about how wonderful it was, the great farming tech that they employed and how great the people were. They were a little freaked out about the frequent air raid warnings where malcontents were firing homemade rockets at their facility and they all had to take shelter. Most of the people in the daughters Kibbutz were recent emigrants and there were challenges when it came to communicating. The daughter got married to someone she met in the Kibbutz who actually was born in Israel and they have now moved back to the USA to raise their kids.
It all sounded fairly familiar so I assumed up until reading this article that the situation hadn't changed that much.
Why do socialist like Muslims so much? Because they think alike.
They both believe in proselytization by the sword. ‘Our ideas are so good we are going to force you to adopt them.’
Definitely worth reading this article.
People never learn. Socialism is actually government control over everything. And it always fails. And they never give up trying to force us to accept socialism.
Glad you liked it. I thought it was a real gem.
“I’ve always wonder about why Jews, especially NY and CA Jews, are so progressive/liberal.”
That’s because they’re not Jewish. They don’t really worship the God of the Torah. Like all leftists and progressives, they put their faith in government. They believe that government is needed to make the world better through positive forces as determined by progressive leftist ideology. Some favor big government with limited government granted individual rights, and others are full blown Marxist/socialists.
Sure, some may go to synagogue and have a form of religiosity. Many are simply ethic and cultural Jews. The bottom line is their fidelity to the progressive technocratic State.
BTW, we see the same thing with progressive “Christians” that adopt social justice theology and reject parts of the Bible that conflict with their world view.
I know it is a popular talking point among conservatives but economics doesn’t really work that way. Just like you can’t travel to the future you can’t borrow from it either.
How it really works is that capital (money) is diverted from where it would other wise go (productive areas) to where the politicians want it to go (social welfare programs).
This continues until the economy has been so crippled by the diversion of resources to unproductive uses that it can no longer support the social welfare state and the economy falls in to decline.
The ‘Mortgaging our children’s future’ meme also has its counterpoint on the Left ‘Investing in our children’s future’ when referring to things like government subsidized education.
Both are rhetorical tools that are somewhat misleading. Money exist in the now. It can not be taken from the future and used in the now. If you use it in this place you are not using it somewhere else.
It is the Broken Window Fallacy writ large.
It’s pretty simple, really. The overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans are The Descendants of immigrants who fled persecution in places like Ukraine, Romania, Poland and other Eastern European countries.
For 2,000 years, the Jews were invited to different European countries by Kings and Queens. At first they were treated well, as they served the role of the business class since the aristocrats did not want to work and did not want peasants to be educated. So the Jews were the Clerks and the shopkeepers. As each of these countries modernized and gradually drifted away from the feudal system, where everybody was either a peasant, an aristocrat, a member of the priesthood, or a Jewish member of the business class, the Jews were no longer needed and anti-Semitism increased. So they packed their bags and moved to another European country that was inviting them.
In the end, their last stop in Europe was these Eastern European countries that were much more rural and uncultured compared to places like France, Germany, England, Spain, and Italy, which is where the Jews had originally settled before being booted out of these countries one by one. In these more cultured Western European countries, Jews tended to live in big cities and were befriended by intellectuals.
But when they ended up in the Boondocks of Eastern Europe, they were persecuted by people who tended to be religious, Rural, and nationalistic. So that was their last memory of Europe before coming to America. When they came to America, the overwhelming majority of them settled in big cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, etc, etc. They were happy to be back in these Urban areas, surrounded by intellectuals once again. And in America, they had the freedom to become full-fledged members of American culture. That’s why there’s so many prominent Jewish songwriters, comedians, writers, not to mention that Hollywood was invented by the Jews.
And as happy as they were to be back in the big cities, they were equally wary of those rural, religious, nationalistic rednecks in The Boondocks of the American Heartland. My parents, who were the children of immigrants, were convinced that if there was ever going to be a major uptick in anti-Semitism, it would be the Rednecks in the heartland who would be showing up at their doorstep on Horseback with torches. And they believed that the people who would take them in and protect them would be the Blacks, or Italians, or anyone else who wasn’t a WASP.
Meanwhile, the two most prominent anti-semites in America, Father Charles Coughlin, and Henry Ford we’re both from Detroit, a big industrial city up north. Unfortunately, as the decades have passed, more and more of these Jewish American descendants of Eastern European immigrants are more and more willing to forego Jewish theology in favor of jumping on the bandwagon of whatever the urban intellectuals are promoting. It’s gotten to the point where even having a belief in the coming of the Messiah, which originated with Judaism, is now viewed by many Urban Jews as Redneck-y.
So basically, Jewish liberalism comes down to Urban snobbery borne out of their last memories of persecution in Europe, before coming to America. Because even when the Jews lived in the big cities of Western Europe, they were still persecuted, and not all intellectuals liked them, just some. But that happened hundreds of years earlier, and those stories were not relayed to them via their grandparents, or great-grandparents.
This urban snobbery is also the Cornerstone of modern day post 1960s liberalism. And that’s one of the main reasons why it still resonates with so many Jewish Americans.
Why wouldn’t they just emigrate to socialism instead of trying to implement it here, when there are so many people here who want no part of it?
Good post with the link to The American Spectator.
If socialism, Maxism, and the kibbutz actually worked I would be a hard core leftist. It does not work because it does not incorporate human nature. I “ani’t gonna work” for some lazy bastard that does not want to work but will take the fruits of my labor.
Marxism and Socialism always fails. Socialism is but the first step to full blown Marxism and the totalitarian state.
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