Posted on 08/08/2006 3:46:20 PM PDT by Dundee
For leftists, Israel is the aggressor and terrorists are the victims, argues Brian Wimborne
IN her book The New Anti-Semitism (2005), American feminist academic Phyllis Chesler writes: "The American and European Left have made a marriage in hell with their Islamic counterparts. The same Left that has still never expressed any guilt over its devotion to communist dictators who murdered millions of their own people in the service of a Great Idea has now finally, fatefully, joined the world jihadic chorus in calling for the end to racist Zionism and to the Jewish apartheid state."
This is an especially interesting comment in view of the fact that, immediately after World War II, this same political Left lent support to the Jewish people and favoured the creation of a homeland for them in Israel. Even the Soviet Union voted in the UN Security Council for the establishment of the state of Israel, albeit for its own political ends. So what went wrong?
To understand why the Left has done a U-turn on this issue, one needs to appreciate that activists such as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and Antony Loewenstein feed on a constant diet of victims and define the progressive cause by hatred of whichever group they hold responsible for victimisation. Hatred has always been an essential characteristic of leftist ideology, providing the motivating force for its theory of dialectical materialism.
Traditionally, the Left's favoured victims were the proletariat or working class who were oppressed by the hated bourgeoisie, aristocrats, landholders, factory owners, small businessmen and managers. Only recently, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the shrinking of the working class in developed economies, have numerous other groups become the Left's favoured victims. These include indigenes, welfare dependents, homosexuals, refugees (especially if they are illegal immigrants) and displaced populations of dysfunctional states primarily in Africa and South America. Failure, in addition to class, has become a desired prerequisite for joining the Left's brotherhood of victims. Through its support of those it deems less fortunate, the Left assumes a moral high ground from which it feels self-righteously justified in attacking those it designates as oppressors.
At the conclusion of World War II, the Jewish people were added to the Left's list of stereotypical victims.
After 1500 years of religiously inspired anti-Semitism that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust, Jews were an obvious choice; they were poor, mainly working class, discriminated against, often landless and powerless. Implicit in the Left's stereotyping of Jews was that, despite incidents such as the Warsaw ghetto uprising, they were incapable of defending themselves. Their history suggested that, although individuals could be successful, Jews might not be as a group.
The image of Jews being persecuted throughout Europe and being led finally into the gas chambers of concentration camps would touch the consciences of people everywhere. As a result, although the state of Israel owes its origins to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a more potent impetus for its establishment was the Holocaust and the need to find a homeland for the remnants of European Jewry. However, the odds of the new state surviving were not sanguine.
Designated a victim-state by the Left, Israel did not live up to expectations. To begin with (and despite being under constant Arab attacks from the day of its foundation in 1948), Israel has been internally stable and politically mature. Unlike most post-war emerging states that followed decolonisation, it did not experience widespread corruption, dictatorship or military takeover. From the beginning it was the only democracy in the Middle East, and through hard work, planning and foreign aid its people built a thriving economy. Worse still, the Left's stereotype of Jews was proved wrong. Jews were prepared to fight back and defend their lives and homes.
Paradoxically, the state's success has been the reason the Left turned against Israel. Within a few years of its foundation, Israel had broken the first commandment of the Left's ideology: "Thou shalt not succeed." Success is anathema to the Left because it puts an end to victimhood; without victims the Left has no reason to exist. In the eyes of the Left's supporters, Israel's great accomplishments meant that the country no longer qualified as a victim. Israel, through being successful, effectively turned its back on the role chosen for it by the Left.
From the Left's rigidly dialectical viewpoint, the world is made up solely of victims and oppressors, and if Israel is no longer a victim it has to be an oppressor. The consequence is that the mantle of victimhood once thrust on Israel now cloaks the Palestinians; it is a cloak they may come to regret.
The deep-rooted problems of the Palestinians are not attributable to Israel but to their own corrupt leadership, culture of mendacity, lack of foresight and duplicity of their supporters (originally Egypt, Jordan and Iraq; more recently Syria and Iran).
However, Realpolitik cuts no ice with the Left, whose preference for ideology over reality means Israel is judged to be the cause of all the Middle East's problems.
For instance, in his 1983 essay Fateful Triangle, American polemicist Noam Chomsky portrayed Israel as a terrorist state similar to Nazi Germany. Chomsky's central premise is that Israel should cease to exist because it is "a state based on the principle of discrimination". That only in Israel have Palestinians enjoyed full citizenship rights for more than a half-century is something he conveniently ignores.
Closer to home, Australia's counterfactual journalist John Pilger argues that Israel's "brutal subjugation of the Palestinians is, under any interpretation of the law, an epic injustice, a crime". This is despite the historical evidence that the real subjugation of the Palestinians has occurred in Arab countries and in Gaza and the West Bank, under the tyranny of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
In short, Israel has become the aggressor; terrorists or so-called insurgents, by contrast, are the darlings of the Left.
In addition to Israel's failure to play the role of victim-state, there is another reason for the Left's about-face in respect of Israel. The Left has long been permeated with anti-Semitism. It should not be forgotten that the Nazis (an acronym for National Socialist German Workers Party) had strong left-wing antecedents. The Nazis' doppelganger, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, not only supported traditional Russian anti-Jewish movements but organised pogroms for its own political purposes.
Socialist parties in Britain, France, Australia and many other countries, despite having Jewish adherents, had a strong anti-Semitic thread running through them. It is not surprising that as the Left's support for Israel faded, a latent anti-Semitic ideology replaced it, with the result that the centre of world anti-Semitism is now firmly rooted in the Left.
If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it is that where morality is concerned, the Left is value free. It draws no distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. Hence, in the minds of leftists, the terrorist becomes a freedom fighter and murderers are transformed into heroes. This should surprise no one. In the past century the Left gave rise to national socialism and international socialism; today it continues to function without a semblance of moral rectitude, offering support of any group it designates as victims.
Brian Wimborne, a retired neuroscientist, is a biographical and historical research consultant.
This guy gets it.
This -- "It draws no distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. Hence, in the minds of leftists, the terrorist becomes a freedom fighter and murderers are transformed into heroes." -- is just sick!
It makes fetishism and cross-dressing seem almost pedestrian by comparison.
But there are important Leftwingers who are personally anti-Semitic and it may be from those personal views that Leftwing anti-Semitism finds fertile soil:
Leftwing anti-Semitism. Where does it come from?
"The Israelite religion [is] nauseating."
Karl Marx's letter to Arnold Ruge
"What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest." "What is the wordly cult of the Jew? Haggling. What is his wordly god? Money!..." "Money is the jealous god of Israel before whom no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of mankind and converts them into commodities...." "What is contained abstractly in the Jewish religion -- contempt for theory, for art, for history, for man as an end in himself..." "The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Jewishness."
From Karl Marx's essay on The Jewish question
"...since the Mensheviks were the faction of the Jews and the Bolsheviks that of native Russians, it would be a good thing to have a pogrom in the Party."
Josef Stalin's remarks reproduced from his 1907 underground newspaper
"In the Doctors' plot [Stalin's final purge to kill the three million Jews of Russia] of 1952-1953, a majority of those accused were Jews, but some were not. The Jewish element was publicly emphasized but it was under the guise of a link with "Zionism...."1 (emphasis added)
1. The Great Terror
pp 66
"The Jews are descendents of of apes and pigs."
Arab textbooks directed to little children who later mouth these obscenities Oscene leftwing, anti-Semitic protests. It's no wonder that even far back as the 1960s that a person who witnessed the Nazi era thought the New Left were the Nazis redux
"Anti-Semitism is the Socialism of fools."
August Bebel (not Jewish btw....)
"Anti-Semitism is the intellectualism of stupid people."
Mary McCarthy
I think you may be getting confused between perversity and perversion.
I find it hard to understand how large percentages of Jewish communities support the mostly leftist political views. Joe Leiberman is an exception in his party. But he is typical of many people who support this "Democratic" party that loathes them in return.
Perhaps so, but it keeps me occupied.
The recent coinage of the phrase that Liberalism is a mental disorder rings especially true these days. These idiots are as wrongly-headed as that Grizzly man, Timothy Treadwell.
And equally unfortunately, it will not be only they who suffer for their delusions.
It's simply delusional thinking. You can see it in action in stage hypnotist shows, where the hypnotist tells his subject that a handkerchief is a chicken.
Their behavior is thenceforward indistinguishable from one who truly sees such a vision.
The Leftists are self-hypnotised by a semi-religious fervor to perceive things irrationally.
If this were a medical problem it would be very reassuring to think that someone might be working on a cure.
Repeat after me: "the Left cannot be trusted". How many times do they have to prove it?
Agreed. Excellent article!
Nice response. Yes, they are deluded and incorrigible. No arguing with them.
Mark
And not just where Israel is concerned either. They are against the USA as well. Fatal? Yes, but they will not realize that in their quest for power until it is too late.
"Hatred has always been an essential characteristic of leftist ideology, providing the motivating force for its theory of dialectical materialism."
Time to reread Whittaker Chambers again.
BTTT
He doesn't need to "argue" that. Just go over to DU and they are stark raving clear about their point of view. No more than 1 in 10 people there will admit to any moral difference between Israel and Hezbollah.
Don't forget Chomsky's area of expertise is linguistics ! These liberal professors are worst when they speak on things they know nothing about.
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