Europeans certainly have issues with that as well. Plenty of Turks in Germany, Algerians in France, or Moroccans in Spain will testify to how Europeans are just as capable as Americans of despising “the other.”
Another issue is that a lot of people on the left are simply uncomfortable with the idea of a state or nation that defines itself along ethnic or religious lines. Back in the days of kibbutzes and making the desert bloom, it was easy to take a sunny view of the state of Israel being both a Jewish homeland and a modern inclusive state. To a certain extent it still is, but it’s hard to ignore the contrast between the modern state within the border fences and the now decades old refugee camps on the outside.
Also, while I don’t agree with HailAnt’s “anti-American” theory, I do think that after 9/11, opinions on Israel became something of a proxy for discussing terror policies at home. Many neo-cons thought that the US would have to become a locked-down security state like Israel, and thus criticizing Israel became a way to criticize that vision of America’s future.
It’s not the left that changed in this case. They have always been highly critical of discriminatory, militaristic, apartheid-style states. Israel has changed to become a bad actor in the world. It’s unfortunate that things have gone this way but even if its people that used to be your friends you can’t ignore it when they turn into something that offends your ethics.
It’s true that there are plenty of people who dislike Israel because of it being a Jewish state apart from rejection of a religion as central to government. Their are always ignorant people who don’t know why they think something or are bigoted, but this is not the case with the left’s criticism. At least not a left I would recognize as being on that end of the spectrum.
Please explain to me how Israel has “changed”.
Give specific details.
Thanks
Not that I agree with the post’s claims about “the Left,” (“the Left” spent a lot of years ignoring or defending those same abuses in Marxist oriented countries), but I think that, (in relation to the actual topic of this thread), what has changed in regard to Israel is the aftermath of the 1967 war: they they went from a tiny nation defending themselves against overwhelming odds to having demonstrated their overwhelming military superiority to their neighbors along with the subsequent failure to resolve the issue of the West Bank.
(I am not claiming that there has ever been a clear and straightforward resolution to the Occupied Territory that they have refused to take, only noting that a problem associated with human suffering that lingers for 45 years is going to have a bearing on how people perceive the situation and the players in it.)
Based on my experience with Europeans they don’t often take Israels side on that issue and I don’t think it has anything to do with race or religion.
Is it possible to disagree with a nations position and not be a hate monger?
Most Hungarians are notoriously, and openly, anti-Semitic.
I agree with this and would furthermore say that people are going to hold a prosperous democracy to a much higher standard than its generally poor despotic neighbors. Criticism of the Arab world’s failure to address the Palestinian problems in an honest manner I think should always be implicit, but we don’t have particularly high expectations on that end. Israel is much more able economically to take a leading role in addressing the problems and more likely to be swayed by international pressure, so that’s where most international criticism falls.
Moreover, a lot of people are unhappy with the normalization of the situation. Since the peace process stalled in the 90’s and a new generation of leaders who don’t remember a time before the Palestinian problem have taken power, the Israelis aren’t necessarily comfortable with the situation but seem to have accepted it as a permanent reality. The international left was grudgingly tolerant when it appeared to be an unfortunate temporary consequence of history and progress was being made towards its resolution, but as time goes on and nothing happens, the Palestinians seem to be turning into a permanent underclass and the apartheid comparison is becoming increasingly apt. Nothing has “changed” in that regard, but that’s the problem.
As a “Leftist” (I suppose) who wasn’t born until 1974, I think I speak for many of my age mates when I say we’ve never really grokked the whole “Israel thing”. When it comes up in conversation, it tends to get lumped in with “The Whole Mess in The Middle East” that we’d really rather the US wasn’t involved in, and the Israeli leaders are definitely perceived as the powerful aggressors, picking on the Palestinians who just want to live where they want to live with their families, while there’s also an uncomfortable acknowledgement that the Palestinians shouldn’t be, y’know, blowing things up or killing people over real estate, either…and then you change the subject to something safer.
The shift the OP sees may not be the position of the same people (“The Left”) changing over 50 years, but at least partly the fact that there are newer, younger people coming into the demographic with different experiences and opinions, often poorly formed ones.
And now I’m off to go read Can someone explain the whole Israel conflict to me? and see if I can get some of my ignorance fought.
One other point about the American left and Zionism is that in the late-30’s through December '41, the plight of European Jews was a bit of a pet cause for American liberals, pushing for the US government put pressure on Nazi Germany, take more asylum-seekers and eventually enter the war. You might consider it analogous to the various “save Darfur” campaigns today. Even if prewar liberals weren’t necessarilly pro-Zionist, after the horrors of the Holocaust it was certainly a natural progression.