Thus is the Democratic Party losing its way on one of the great moral issues of our time.
For roughly the first third of Israel’s existence, Democrats tended to support the Jewish state more strongly than Republicans did. In a compelling new book, “Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel,” foreign-affairs thinker Joshua Muravchik writes that during the run-up to the Six Day War in 1967, “Israel was above all a cause championed by liberals.” So heartfelt was this support that even ardent Democratic opponents of the Vietnam War, such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Eugene McCarthy, advocated US military action on Israel’s behalf.
Only over the last 25 years has support for Israel grown so much greater among Republicans than among Democrats. The reasons for the divergence are many. On the right, they include the high value Republicans have attached to Israel as a stable ally in a very unstable region, as well as the migration to the GOP of evangelical Christians, many of whom support the Jewish state as a matter of transcendent conviction.
But on the left, the Israeli-Arab dispute itself has been redefined. (read more)
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Boston Globe Jeff Jacoby: "Democrats losing moral clarity on Israel"
"[B]elow the surface, America’s Israel-friendly consensus is splitting along the same left-vs.-right fault line that has polarized so many other issues. While support for Israel is overwhelming among Republicans and conservatives, it has been shrinking among Democrats and liberals. “The partisan gap in Mideast sympathies has never been wider,” reports Pew, with 73 percent of Republicans sympathetic to Israel in the ongoing conflict, but just 44 percent of Democrats. Respondents identifying as liberal Democrats were five times as likely as conservative Republicans to sympathize more with the Palestinians."
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52 comments:
I've witnessed this for years. The left stand shoulder to shoulder with the eternal victims.
It's also why the left could easily form an alliance with radical Islam.
I notice the radical left and the radical Islamists use the same scapegoats in their arguments.
A new Islamic Center opened inside of an old Baptist church just around the corner from where I live. I ran into a neighbor who told me a group of neighbors walked over and attended an Open House given by this new Islamic center. I was not aware of it but I ran into a neighbor who went. He said that when he asked about radicalism, the people who run the Islamic Center became immediately stand-off-ish and mentioned "the Christian abortion doctor killer."
(when was that - in the 90's?)
Oddly I have a lefty gal pal here in town and she mentioned the very same example as proof that Christians are just as radical as Islamists.
Riiiight. One abortion doctor killer in America is equivalent to an entire ideology of radical philosophy. All the deaths circa now, all the be-headings, all the mass murder, 9/11 et.al.. is equivalent to the abortion killer doctor. Considering the left hold abortion as a sacred above all else (esp tax payer funded abortion) I understand.
It struck me that my lefty gal pal and an entire Islamic Center used the same argument.
In any case, the Palestinians are poor victims and if only the Jews would agree to walk into the sea. Only then will there be peace.
You crazy Zionists.
And then there's the really old leftwing argument that Christians are selfish in their support of Israel for Biblical end-times.
How about - one side offers peace, freedom and democracy -the other only death cult death cult and more death cult.
The left side with death cult.
Godless communists hate the religious democracy.
Same old same old, but that makes them allies with fundamentalist gay-killing slut-shaming totalitarian theocracies.
Strange bedfellows, but the left will sleep with anyone that hates the US.
A lot like our own Titus, in fact.
They are not lacking in clarity - they are very clear in their desire to destroy Israel.
But "moral democrats" - as if!
It's like the Israelis have to deal with the Palestinians the way Americans have to deal with the blacks.
Well, we all have our cross to bear.
Many Democrats and the left slowly formed an alliance with the natural enemies of the US. They did this because (as John Kerry just reminded Netanyahu) they wanted to "feel for the other side." They probably also reasoned that support of Palestine and pan-Arabic causes will buy them peace. These were not pragmatic choices -- nor were they rational. They were emotional choices which will tear them apart when the consequences of their folly is exposed.
These internecine conflicts between orthodox and liberal Jews make my head ache. I got through about a 1/3 of the article and threw in the towel. Apparently my goyim IQ is not high enough to take pleasure in the arguments of the Ashkenazi.
Part of what's going on here is a black/white/Jewish conflict. Obama, a guy with ties to the Black Muslims and Farrakhan in Chicago, is pretty much on the side of the jihadis versus the Jews. At least, it looks that way.
That black bloc vote is crucial to the Democratic Party. Jews vote heavily Democratic. Jews seem unlikely to quit the Democratic Party. Blacks are hilariously open about their virulent anti-semitism.
Therein lies the conflict.
Sultan Knish handles the orthodox Jewish propaganda, and he does a damned good job of it. His writing is sledge hammer repetitive, but that's propaganda for you.
The US Coexist people, some of them Jews, choose the Die Infidel, Die! fascists over the Israeli Coexist people, most of them Jews.
Our ridiculous administration say... "Why can't you understand what it's like to be in the death cult?"
"For once try to see it from the death cult perspective."
-Magic hat man who spent 4 months and 4 days in Vietnam with his own video camera.
When Coexist marries You-no-exist, is it like matter:anti-matter?
More like a masochist marrying a sadist. A match made in heaven, er, hell.
"Hit me!"
"No."
A little taste of that blue-state flavored leftwing anti-Semitism.
Menachim Begin was every bit as tough as Netanyahu, but Begin was a liberal.
Choosing sides is like choosing sides of a horrific marriage. Israel and Palestine are an intertwined, shared psychosis. Leave them to it.
@Deborah
No, they are not the same. You do Israel a disservice by making it seem so.
That said, we should leave them to it.
deborah said...
Israel and Palestine are an intertwined, shared psychosis. Leave them to it.
Can you explain what the basis is for your determination of a "shared psychosis?"
Keep in mind that with the last 48 hours Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative party, made it v-e-r-y clear, on national television here and abroad, that the Jews are occupiers of solely Palestinian land, which he clearly infers is the entirety of the state of Israel, and that as such the Jews are "laying siege" on Gaza.
The left is always far more sympathetic to victims than victors. If Israel wishes to regain support from the left, it should try losing a war.
There is no moral equivalence between the Jews and the Arabs.
I am 1000% behind the Jews in their struggle to exist. I do agree that we do not need to get involved other than helping Israel defend itself. They don't need us to fight for them. They just need us to get out of the way and let them defend themselves.
The PLO should not get one dollar from us. Or the Egyptians. Fuck them. Let them rot.
ndspinelli said...
Menachim Begin was every bit as tough as Netanyahu, but Begin was a liberal.
Don't confuse domestic policy advocacy with defense ideals. Begin was a fighter from the earliest days of WWII and eventually, subsequent to his deployment from Poland, headed the Irgun in Jewish Palestine, who fought along side the Haganah and the Lehi militia, first against the British and subsequently jointly against the invading Arab armies in 1948...the day after Israel declared her independence.
Benjamin Netanyahu was a member of the Sayeret Matkal, IDF Special Forces so to speak, the same as his brother Yonaton was, when he was killed leading the Entebbe raid in 1976...the ultimate in audacity that succeeded, losing one soldier, Benjamin's brother, LTC Yonaton Netanyahu.
I'd say Begin and Netanyahu have a lot in common.
William said...
The left is always far more sympathetic to victims than victors. If Israel wishes to regain support from the left, it should try losing a war.
I understand your hypothesis, however, in the case of Israel, if they lose one war, they are lost forever. That's not a proposition that would work, victory and death do not make a political victim, in that case, on a national corpse.
The Israelis are the canary in our coal mine. Simply scanning the objectives of ISIS et al should make that very clear.
My attitude is similar to Trooper Yorks's....we need to cease any obstruction of Israeli objectives of mere survival and continuation as the only democratic republic in the entire middle east. WE need to supply then whatever and whenever they need it.
We do NOT to intervene with troops on the ground and we've not been asked to do so. At this point we should quit that fallacy concept...it has NOT BEEN ASKED of us!
However, if the tide turns and Israel is in danger I'd volunteer to go and fight there (or at 71, maybe just do the laundry of the IDF, whatever would help). Under those circumstances we should send troops to defend our last ally in the region, and if we lack that courage nationally, we will soon enough find ourselves defeated from the inside out.
We shirked (against the will of our President FDR in fact) and procrastinated once before and the world erupted in flames. Let's not do that again.
The Israelis can take care of themselves if they do not pull their punches. What they can not do is bow to any pressure that Obama or Lurch might try to put on them. They need to throw Lurch out of their country in no uncertain terms and tell Obama to piss up a rope.
In fact I would call out Obama as an Anti-Semite and friend to terrorists as he so obviously had proven to be by his actions assisting the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama can't hate them anymore than he already does and they need to bring that out in the open. Obama is such a petulant fuck that he is sure to say the wrong thing and give them wriggle room. They need to freeze him in place and not let the United States get involved.
What Israel realizes is that the United States under Barack Obama is not their friend or their ally.
The Israeli / Palestinian conflict is a basic test of your clarity, morality, intelligence, and even your very humanity and love of peace. There is only one right answer, and if you need to look at your neighbor's paper to get it right, you are dangerously dumb, and really need to ask yourself some serious question about your fitness to live among others.
Simply imagine what would happen if the power to destroy the other was switched from Israeli hands to Palestinian. This is why we don't let known pedophiles babysit our children, or convicted murderers run a gun shop, or a failed community organizer run our country.
Very well put bags.
You hit the nail on the yarmulke so to speak.
Trooper York said ...
What Israel realizes is that the United States under Barack Obama is not their friend or their ally.
I have that, precisely, in writing, and by telephone, from several friends in Israel.
Rather sad, really.....
The idea that the leader of the United States is seen by Israelis as closer to the enemy than to Israel, or is even ambiguous about it is embarrassing. Like many on the left, he really does not understand American Exceptionalism and why it matters. It would not surprise me if in an all-out conflict that we might be the only nation clearly on Israel's side. To imagine that we might be anything else is disgusting, but unfortunately under this administration it is entirely possible.
If Israel is eventually destroyed and millions of Jews murdered AGAIN, it will only be with our cooperation. That can only happen if their enemies see that as a real possibility.
The fate of the Jews is THE test of our values, and our people, as it is for the entire human race. I expect the rest of the world to fail that test. Will we?
The title of the article says the left is "losing" moral clarity on Israel. Not so. The left and its big media minions lost moral clarity a long time ago on this subject and have been trying to pretend to objectivity by playing the moral equivalence card ever since. Don't be fooled by the misrepresentations on TV; there is no moral equivalence there. The left and its media minions are prolonging this conflict, and piling up dead bodies, by giving vicious murderous thugs positive press coverage.
As usual, after Bagoh gets into a thread there's not much left to say.
There are teeth to the phrase "Never Again." Israel has the bomb and if necessary will use it. If their backs are up against the wall they will use it.
That is the only thing that ensure their survival.
bago:
"The Israeli / Palestinian conflict is a basic test of your clarity, morality, intelligence, and even your very humanity and love of peace. There is only one right answer, and if you need to look at your neighbor's paper to get it right, you are dangerously dumb, and really need to ask yourself some serious question about your fitness to live among others."
This contains zero nuance and is ad hominem. How about some facts instead of your say so.
I/P and water
Ari:
"Can you explain what the basis is for your determination of a "shared psychosis?""
They pathologically hate each other. Brain drain by Israelis escaping the country has left the fighters and zealots behind.
When the Muslims win you get things happening like the burning of churches and the pogroms against Christians and Jews.
Reason enough to never support the Palestinians.
The Jews don't do that. The only way to have a stable functioning Democracy in the Middle East is if Israel stands strong. There is not one Muslim democracy worthy of the name. They are pure and simple murdering fanatics.
To equate them is moral idiocy.
"This contains zero nuance and is ad hominem. How about some facts instead of your say so."
Yes, I don't believe their is much nuance involved or required to understand it. The facts are endless over decades of conflict, and it was true long before I said it.
This is a dispute where one side openly insists on the death of all of its opponents, and who launches attacks aimed at civilians from behind children and innocents.
The other side takes thousands of these attacks and yet holds it fire and asks for a cease fire which is denied. They then do what they must to protect themselves and still do it morally by warning their enemies to evacuate the targets. Their enemies insist that their own people stay their to die for nothing, because even they know the Israelis are more compassionate and moral and thus may not fire on them.
Even the Palestinians know who holds the moral high ground. They show it by their tactics and actions. That knowledge makes them even more angry, but they count on it for their very survival.
You don't need to listen to me to hear the truth. Everyone on all sides knows the truth. Some just hate what it is.
Which side would annihilate the other if they could, because one side can do that now. Why don't they?
If you think the Palestinians wouldn't do just that if they could, then where do you get that from, because they openly say that's exactly what they want, and they do it as much as they can every day.
Some are so blind they can not see.
deborah - here's a link to an article that might shed some light on the "water conflict," which, like virtually every other attack on Israel, is made out of deceit and double-dealing and dumb.
Your Text Here
How many times must it be said?: You cannot rely on the MSM to tell you the truth.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is entirely manufactured by outsiders - you get that don't you? All those dead children and other civilians are due to other nations in the region which don't want an embarrassingly thriving democracy next door and their guilty anti-Semitic European (and American) Lawrence of Arabia supporters who would so love to see some moral equivalence that would justify their unreasoning hatred of Jews (and their grandparents' embarrassing complicity in/sympathy with the Holocaust). What's a few dead Palis for something that important? THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THESE PAWNS.
(Very similar to the way the illegal immigrants are viewed as political pawns by the establishment in this country.)
ALSO: Always keep in the forefront of your mind that "Palestinians" also lived in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and are housed there in absolute squalor currently. But no one declares an intifada or complains about "occupation" and water rationing in those countries.
Open your eyes and your mind.
Recall that I don't take a side. They're each mad with hate for the other.
It was not cricket for the Palestinians to be kicked off their land at the whim of the Brits, and everything followed from that.
First Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion:
"The British 1939 White paper stipulated that Jewish immigration to Palestine was to be limited to 15,000 a year for the first five years, and would subsequently be contingent on Arab consent. Restrictions were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs. After this Ben-Gurion changed his policy towards the British, stating: "Peace in Palestine is not the best situation for thwarting the policy of the White Paper".[25] Ben-Gurion believed a peaceful solution with the Arabs had no chance and soon began preparing the Yishuv for war. According to Teveth 'through his campaign to mobilize the Yishuv in support of the British war effort, he strove to build the nucleus of a "Hebrew army", and his success in this endeavor later brought victory to Zionism in the struggle to establish a Jewish state.'[26]"
wiki
People need to consider how much propaganda they've swallowed since the Sixties.
Hmm, seems to me that Israel was there 2,000 years ago, or so, so there is that.
Well, no, you have taken a side. You just don't seem to realize it.
Okay, 3,000, whatever it takes. I sound like the dentist on Seinfeld.
He later had a family, later still another family, then he started cooking meth.
But he converted to Judaism for the jokes.
Deborah said...
They pathologically hate each other. Brain drain by Israelis escaping the country has left the fighters and zealots behind.
I won't insult you further by demonstrating how completely untutored that remark is on its face. I am close to several Israelis, none are merely "fighters and zealots."
I'd ask a few things: 1.) How many Jews do you know personally and intimately that have made Aliyah? 2.) How many Jews, Israeli or otherwise, say they wish all Arabs dead? 3.) What is your estimate of what would happen if Hamas ceased the rocketry? 4.) Are you aware of just who collects tax revenues for whom ... and pays it to them when not being shelled by rockets?
If you wish to discuss them further with willingness to learn, email me. I will listen to you. Question is whether you would listen to me.
At this point I doubt it. Your comments stun me and ruin the image I had of you. Sad to say that.
Palestinians can live in peace and safety in the Middle East if they want to. Jews cannot no matter what they do because Palestinians will settle for nothing short of death for the Jews. That's not opinion. That's not propaganda. That's what the Palestinians say themselves.
The point about who belongs there is simple. They both do. If Arabs hadn't wanted and tried to kill every Jew for the last century, they would all still be living where they wanted. I have no problem taking a side in this. Only one side is asking for a moral, sustainable solution.
If Native Americans want to kill every non-native in the western hemisphere, I hope we could takes sides on that too, at least their claim to exclusive historic ownership is based on truth, but it would still be an immoral objective.
d - this is exactly what the article is talking about, the loss of moral clarity on Israel. The article examines how political rationales for support of Israel have changed and eroded via a long campaign of subversive messaging. But another way to lose moral clarity is insisting that everything is morally relative, eg., they are locked in mutual pathological hatred and that's why they're fighting. I know so many people who go this route on Israel. It excuses you from being knowledgeable about the facts (in fact it encourages ignorance of facts) in favor of an easy but dishonest emotional conclusion. It's disheartening to see people excuse themselves from caring, or even knowing basic facts about, the constant struggle of the one decent country in the middle east. The "Palestinians" commit atrocities, amongst themselves and toward Israel, every damn day because they know they can get away with it because it will not be reported and people have been trained like monkeys to not care. It only serves to encourage more of the same by despots and tyrants and terrorists around the globe. Look at the nothing that occurs when the bodies of the dead from Malaysian Flight 17 are abused and the evidence tampered with. Russia and its "Ukrainian" minions know they will get away with it. Etc. etc. etc.
Hey, that sounds just like the Obama administration - do whatever you want, break whatever laws you want, never be called on any of it.
It's almost enough to make you wonder whether Obama is a muslim or something.
About that "brain drain", in The Tablet -- Forget Brain Drain. The Truth Is Israel Gains When Talent Goes Abroad:
"...how concerned should countries like Israel—nations that invest heavily in education only to see graduates move abroad—actually be? Not very, it turns out. In a report I recently co-authored for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, one central insight emerged: For these nations to thrive, they must encourage and facilitate their international knowledge networking capacities. Economic geographers call this concept “brain circulation”—the flip side of the dreaded brain drain. A country’s connectedness, it turns out, directly influences its economic development in a multitude of ways. One example is that skilled emigration is significantly and positively correlated with foreign investment in the country of departure."
And, in Israel's case, they come home:
"In the Israeli government’s own brain-drain figures, there is a certain battle of numbers in play. The national statistics bureau counts as migrants any Israeli living abroad for over a year. But so many of those living abroad stay for just several years, and, when looking at the actual evidence per year, the numbers of returning Israelis is not all that much lower than the number of those moving abroad."
I think this is a pretty good site for getting an idea of how people over there think. You obviously get a diversity of views on the part of the Israelis, and try as the interviewer might to elicit some strongly immoral/illiberal views, that's usually not what he gets. If there are people that open-minded across those borders, it's hard to see where they exist or how they'd go about getting into power.
The land is too small to share, but it seems that at least on the West Bank there's a growing and perhaps unfortunate acceptance of that. And on the plus side, although some Israeli Arabs he interviews are ignorant and hateful as hell, you do run across a few who are intelligent enough to at least rationalize it abstractly as pluralistic libertarians… or just don't care for the fight-against-reality. For some reason, better attitudes exist among Israeli Arab males than among Israeli Arab females. Maybe the more enlightened Arab males will tire of the shrew-like Arabian Israeli witches.
Apparently laws and social mores can make people better.
While it's ironically not as worrying what happens in the much larger West Bank, those million + assholes living in (or at least running) Gaza are the biggest problem.
Other than, of course, the idiotic moral equivalence-enablers. They're unfortunately worldwide and equate powerlessness with moral superiority, and primitive tribal-laws of the jungle with political romance.
Plus, it must be just plain easier to hate the different and smaller kid. If 20+ Jewish states outnumbered and surrounded a single smaller Arab state, the world would yell and scream for those Jews to get this over with and somehow, in all the moral blindness they can scrap together, finish the damn thing.
And they wonder why they're not in charge.
No you don't take a side, you are devout advocate for "Palestinians"...the same people the Lebanese, the Tunisians, and their own fellow Palestinians (in Jordan) kicked off "their land" sequentially. Pray tell me when Palestine existed as a nation-state solely with only Arabs? Answer: N-e-v-e-r.
I think it most simply comes down to a question of which government you'd prefer to live under and/or prosper: One of people who treat each other as well as Israel does or one who treat each other as malignantly as Hamas (and its fellow traveler) does.
R & B....you may have restored my faith in your innate intellect and inherent decency. I am going to try to read and listen to every thing on the site you cited by link. I will let you know if I agree with your premise overall, but you are inclined in the right direction or not looking for blame but for resolution. Maybe I misunderstand? I doubt it.
By sheer coincidence I am personally, intimately, familiar with Jews, both American and Israeli, by choice when I needed a place to live in 1972, with my Asian wife and child,...I found it in the Jewish community here, and found, even as a Goyim, I was welcome as if I was family per se. Jews bent over backwards to give us support, pressed down and running over, everything from cooking assistance to spiritual support, especially my wife, but also me who was still a little nuts from the SE Asian experience. In those days I was doing things very anti-social and ...whatever....better to leave it there. You could say they healed me before I recognized what they were doing. I am forever in their debt. In 1973 one of two of my new found friends, both Israelis, returned to Israel to fight (called up in their reserves) and only one came home to the USA and his wife and child. It nearly crushed me (it was deja vu)...but his wife restored my faith...how odd is that?
Subsequently I re-joined the family of the US Army and dealth with multiple cultures. I moved in to a 90+% Arabic community and found a home there, among those who everyone figures hate everyone else. It is not true. Only the politically aspirant mouthy assholes hate, everyone else want sot just get along.
You cite me one mouthy Islamist schmuck and I will cite you back a couple dozen or more peaceful people of the same persuasion other wise.
I was influenced early by a high school history teacher about the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mid 70's. She was a Palestinian, married to an American. She didn't use a textbook but instead taught US history using supplemental reading that would make Howard Zinn proud. Her position was that the original UN mandate which created Israel was wrong. She was in a position of power and didn't take criticism well. She docked my grade, but WTF was I going to do about it?
My understanding is that colleges and universities have been infiltrated by like-minded teachers and scholars.
Rhythm and Balls said...
Jews and esp. Arabs both have a strong-held tradition of treating guests well.
Dang! You get it. In Ramadan it is especially so...but for some Muslims who ignore their own Scriptures.
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