A couple weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Eat The State (Seattle area liberal newspaper). The cover said “free from influence by the Israeli lobby.” Ha, ha, ha, nice pun. The inside contained an article by Alexander Cockburn, which they print weekly, where he romantically portrayed Hezbollah and Hamas as freedom fighters, bent on bringing down the evil Nazi Israel Empire.
About 50 Eat The States went into the garbage.
I’m Jewish, and quite liberal (very extreme on some issues). I don’t know when it became fashionable for other liberals to hate Israel, but I see and hear it a lot. Michael Moore called Israel part of “the real axis of evil” (though my memory could be way off), and it’s just something you see in forums and in discussions quite often.
I don’t remember so much of it happening before 9/11. Maybe, once the Republicans decided to destroy a couple Muslim countries, the liberal community decided “hey, if the Republicans hate the Arabs, we have to hate the Israelis.” Or something. I’m not quite sure.
Another thing people say is “it’s not anti-Semitic to be anti-Israel.” Yes, it is not anti-Semitic to be critical of Israel. It is anti-Semitic to believe that the killing of Israeli citizens is justified under any circumstances, and it is very, very anti-Semitic to believe that Israel should not exist. Saying that you don’t hate Jews but don’t think Israel should exist is like me saying that I don’t hate the Japanese, I just think that Japan shouldn’t exist.
Maybe there are liberal writers and analysts out there who are offering fair, legitimate criticism of Israel, or who don’t always portray the Palestinians as the sole victims, but I’m not seeing it. I am only seeing two views: the view that we must always support Israel and aggressively attack Islamist organizations no matter what (the conservative view) and the belief that Israel is an evil state and that anything terrorists do to attack them is justified (the “liberal” view).
I’m glad you posted this question. I was going to ask something similar in a different way - what does the left have against Israel? It’s the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, women have equal rights, there is religious freedom for the most part, there is a free press, the nation has universal health care … I could go on. Is it anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism by association (Israel traditionally enjoyed the unconditional support of the United States), support for the underdog, or something else?
I have wondered the same thing but I have thought about it and come up with some plausible reasons. The Religious Right has taken quite a linking to Israel in the past few decades. They, as well as the Jews that live there, believe it is the holy land and must be protected at all costs. Neo-cons really like Israel because it offers a way to gain a greater advantage in the Middle East even if the Israelis don’t always play along perfectly. Therefore, conservatives tend to really like Israel which may force some liberals into the opposite viewpoint just as a counterbalance.
In addition, the Israelis are capable of doing some really bad things themselves. Their treatment of the Palestinians can be less than fair at times if it is viewed from a detached viewpoint. Assuming that someone could look at Israel objectively, it may not seem the shining star that many in the U.S. make it out to be.
Those are just some ideas. I am not really tied to any of them myself.
It’s pretty simple actually. It all has to do with the sort of leftist campus moaning about the plight of this or that wastrel mass: pretty much anything they can fit the “oppressed little guys vs. the big colonialist/corpratist guys” meme. I certainly don’t think it starts out with bad intentions, but it’s generally so blind and single-minded that its treatment of complex situations like the Israeli-Palestinian question is characteristically goofy.
Israel has shown that it doesn’t need The Left to survive and prosper. Therefore they are evil and must be destroyed. Only those entities that kowtow to the yammerings of the Leftists are allowed in this Brave New World. Ever notice how any member of a “minority” that becomes successful outside the aegis of the Left is immediately condemned as a sell-out or a class-traitor? Same thing.
Are you assuming that the views of the Lunatic Left, the extreme fringes, are the views of the Left as a whole? I only ask because I don’t know any Liberals who espouse any of those things, and the only people I’ve heard such things from are not very reputable in any of their expressed views.
Mostly, I think, it’s “support for the underdog” (i.e., the Palestinians). The key event in shaping anti-Israeli attitudes on the left was the Six-Day War in 1967. Before that, Israel was viewed as a tiny sliver of a nation that was in constant danger of being stomped out of existence by any or all of the hostile Arab countries that surrounded it. However, with Israel’s convincing and swift victory in 1967, it was obvious that this belief was not (to say the least) entirely accurate. When you also consider that there were now masses of now-landless Palestinian refugees wandering around the Middle East because of these Israeli victories, it became extremely difficult to make a believable argument that the Israelis were still underdogs (at least to those on the Left).
The whole premise of this thread is a steaming pile of shit. The meme that the left “hates Israel” is nothing but a cheap, right wing race card. Any attempt to recognize that the ME situation is anything more complex than “Israel good, Palestinans bad” is caricatured as “antisemitism.”
My take on it is that in the US this is only the case on the extreme fringes, but that in the current climate, it may be changing.
In Europe much of the mainstream left is and has been for a long time anti-Israeli - not in that it is merely critical of some aspects of Israeli policy (fair criticisms that I, along with many Jews and Israelis might share) but as in questioning Israel’s very right to exist.
When I see my former fellow comrades on ‘peace’ marches in London bearing placards that say 'We are all Hezbollah" and “Palestine - from the river to the sea” which are indirectly or indirectly endorsing a one-state solution, and by not-so-subtle implication, the total destruction of Israel, I can’t help thinking that it is anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semitism isn’t a liberal idea. Where is it claimed that it is? (outside of that one piece).
Hello, my name is eleanorigby and I’m a liberal. I am critical of Israel --I think their treatment of Palestinians is deplorable and wrong. Yes, I realize that Israel is threatened and attacked by Palestinians. I also realize that it does not seem to be in Israel’s best interest to achieve peace with Palestine–lord knows they don’t seem to work real hard at it. If a country wants peace, they need to work for justice–and treating Palestinians like second class citizens (to put it mildly) is not the best thing, longterm or even short-term.
So, yes, I disapprove of Israel’s stance on Palestine. Wow-who knew that essentially made me one with the Hitler Youth. :rolleyes:
I don’t consider not supporting a nation’s approach to foreign policy as “racist”–then again, there are those who would consider my contempt for the current administration to be treasonous and aiding the terrorists. I don’t think much of those people’s intellect.
Is this the next canard to be thrown out by the right wingers? Can we please talk about shit that matters?
I agree, it is an insult to true, thinking liberals or left-wingers, and there are some brave voices on the left in Europe challenging some of these excesses. The expressions of solidarity between so-called liberals/left-wingers and Muslim fundamentalist loons whose ideologies are genocidal, misogynistic and homophobic sound like a bad joke. The logic, if you can call it that, is that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.
I bolded the part of your post I wish to reply to.
I think anywhere I find myself living is going to gain a lot of importance regarding its continued existence, just from my perspective of being there. If IIRC correctly, you are not a native of MA, but would you really go for seeing wiped out while you and yours are there?
Because some small time paper prints this and because the human slug Rush Limbaugh says it doesn’t make it true. Are all republicans anti-semitic because of Pat Buchanan’s views?
It’s ridiculous. Name one democrat that hasn’t supported Israel.
Claiming that being against the policies of Israel’s government must be anti-semitic is as ludicrous as claiming that being against the policies of the Italian government is anti-Catholic.
One could be anti-Israeli because one is anti-Semitic; the converse does not follow.
Also, one can criticize, and criticize fervently, the behaviour of the Israeli government without believing that terror attacks on civilians are justified.
This is not a placard being thrown out by right-wingers. This is another liberal who is tired of the one-sided views of other liberals on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Maybe all of the left-wingers that you know are reasonable people who see that both Israel and Palestine have done some things wrong, but this is not the case for a lot of people in the US left (to say nothing of the highly anti-Israel Europe).
You could say that the terrorist attacks on the part of the Palestinians are in response to the oppression by the Israelis, but you could just as easily argue the reverse. The truth is that both sides have problems. You say that Israel does not want peace with Palestine. Well, I guess, when the Palestinian people celebrate as Hezbollah rockets kill Israeli civilians, those celebrations are about…peace? Hardly.
But I don’t see a lot of people recognizing this. There is a trend of left-wingers victimizing the Palestinians, calling Israel a terrorist state (as if Hamas is not), and ignoring all of the crimes the Arab world has committed against Israel.
Israel is friends with the U.S., and a lot of liberals (including me) have a billion bad things to say about the U.S. But the friend of your enemy is not your enemy by default.
One is the local free newspaper has a more wide-ranging editorial policy than you once thought.
Another is that as the right has embraced Israel more firmly at least some on the left feel free to take the opposite path.
Speaking for myself, at some point Israel became the Bad Guys. (That does not make the others much better.) I suspect that more pro-Israel people are being driven from that position than anti-Israel people are being won over to the cause.
For the first time, Israel seems to be loosing support.
Cite? I don’t think you can generalize like that because it certainly isn’t true. The generalization about ‘left wingers’ is definitely not true. Maybe you should use the term, radical fringe groups. Again, what democratic politician isn’t supportive of Israel?
From the Washington Post-
I don’t think liberals are anti-Israel. Chicken shit left wing radicals, yes. And I agree with NDP that this started after the Six Day War when Israel had the nerve to kick butt.
Most of these people are too young to remember pre-1967, when the Palestinians lived in an Arab state (Jordan,) but were stuck in refugee camps (for 20 years!) and there was no talk at all then of a Palestinian state. They were much more useful to the Arab states as pawns to stir up anti-Israel hatred.