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Why the Support for Hamas? The Germans call it ‘Leidensneid,’ and it explains a lot
American Thinker ^ | 11/18/2023 | Patricia Jay

Posted on 11/18/2023 7:53:37 PM PST by SeekAndFind

Americans were horrified at the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli villagers on October 7 this year. The brutality and futility of the attack rocked the imagination.

Yet within days, we witnessed huge protest marches in U.S. and world capitals and universities in favor of Hamas. Their favored chant, “from the river to the sea,” means only one thing, and that is the annihilation of Israel and all its Jewish inhabitants.

Such support for terrorism exploded in the 1970s as well in European cities and universities, and people wondered then about this same gleeful valorization of revolution by comfortable, privileged youth. One might expect campus teach-ins or op-eds on either side of a political conflict today too in elite educated spaces like Harvard and Columbia, but why do we again see such unchecked street rage there?

Why do we hear absurdly hyperbolic accusations like “genocide” and “apartheid,” and why do news outlets accept unvetted news reports and ludicrous casualty counts from Hamas itself?

The Germans had a word for it: Leidensneid, or an envy of suffering, first described by authors such as Jillian Becker, the chronicler of the Baader Meinhof group.  The youth of this formerly Nazi nation thought of their old country as irredeemably evil, and they were not entirely wrong.  

They came to envy the romanticized and righteous suffering of oppressed peoples, whose plight seemed authentic and meaningful.  As they lived a soft life under the new democracies, their hatred of the old order grew.  Eventually, they demanded nothing short of a utopian standard of justice for the new.  They developed an ideology of hypersensitivity to wrongdoing, including any they saw in their new nations.  And so, bereft of a nation to identify with, they identified with the victims of the post-war world,

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Israel; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: donatefreerepublic; gaza; hamas; israel; jimknows; leidensneid; stopantisemites
Similarly, today, protesters believe that Gazans live in an “open air prison” and thus suffer nobly.  Therefore, they deserve our pity and support.  Their struggle is heroic; their lives are significant and noble, unlike the Western student’s comfortable middle-class, or even upper-class, existence, purchased with the wrongdoing of their country.
1 posted on 11/18/2023 7:53:37 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Many of these peeps need to be taken out back and Che’d.

Too bad in some respects that Che is still down for the count.


2 posted on 11/18/2023 7:56:56 PM PST by Paladin2
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To: SeekAndFind
And most people do not know anything about Israel.

They have the concept that the Jews came in and threw all the Arabs out.

That about 20% of Israeli citizens are also Arab does not compute to them.

3 posted on 11/18/2023 8:02:30 PM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Keep America Beautiful by keeping Canadian Trash Out. Deport Jennifer Granholm!)
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To: SeekAndFind

bfl


4 posted on 11/18/2023 8:14:52 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (They say "Our Democracy" but they mean Cosa Nostra.)
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To: SeekAndFind
"The Germans call it ‘Leidensneid,’ and it explains a lot ..."

I just call it good, old-fashioned self-righteousness.

5 posted on 11/18/2023 8:58:48 PM PST by The Duke (Why do I think that the cynicism gene is going to be prevalent in future generations?)
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To: The Duke

It is naive sentimentalism emanating from the lack of a moral foundation.


6 posted on 11/19/2023 1:36:38 AM PST by Lou Foxwell (It takes a uniquely Marxist mind to deny Trump's call to patriotism.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Bfl


7 posted on 11/19/2023 1:43:48 AM PST by RoosterRedux (A person who seeks the truth with a strong bias will never find it. He will only confirm his bias.)
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To: Lou Foxwell
"It is naive sentimentalism emanating from the lack of a moral foundation."

Right on! Moral confusion is the fundamental folly of the Left/"liberals"/"progressives"--at least of the ones who are also benevolent--who are determined to drag the world down that well known Road to Hell.

"The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Take a look at the hell-hole of San Francisco where druggies openly defecate on city sidewalks and children cannot play safely in public parks because of ever-present contaminated needles!

Or Chicago, where every weekend reveals the number of people shot and killed but the gun laws are strict!

Or the entire USA where half the population is in an advanced state of moral confusion and consequently the greatest nation in history is sinking into a quagmire of decadence!

Moral confusion and intellectual confusion produce an extremely dangerous combination.

The justices of the US Supreme Court suffer from this dangerous combination and have thus seriously endangered the American People and the Republic at a time when moral and intellectual clarity are essential.

8 posted on 11/19/2023 6:42:04 AM PST by Savage Beast (TRUTH is a terrifying thing to behold when trapped in a web of delusion.)
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