The New Anti-Semitism
Victor Davis Hanson writes at Hoover.org about how anti-Semitism's been made okay as anti-Israelism:
Over 500,000 Jews have been ethnically-cleansed from Arab capitals since 1947, in waves of pogroms that come every few decades. Why are they not considered refugees the way the Palestinians are?The point is not that the world community should not focus on Israel's disputes with its neighbors, but that it singles Israel out for its purported transgressions in a fashion that it does not for nearly identical disagreements elsewhere. Over 75 percent of recent United Nations resolutions target Israel, which has been cited for human rights violations far more than the Sudan, Congo, or Rwanda, where millions have perished in little-noticed genocides. Why is the international community so anti-Israel?
...With the establishment of Israel, anti-Semitism metamorphosized in two unforeseen ways. First, it became a near obsession of the modern Left, which associated the creation of the Jewish state with a sort of Western hegemonic impulse. That Israel was democratic and protected human rights in a way unlike its autocratic neighbors mattered nothing. To the international Left, Israel was a religious, imperialistic, and surrogate West in the Middle East.
After the 1967 war, when a once vulnerable Israel emerged victorious and apparently unstoppable, Jews lost any lingering sympathy from the horrors of World War II and Israel became a full-fledged Western over-dog, closely associated with its new patron, the much envied and hated United States. Not only were the new anti-Semites no longer just buffoonish skinheads, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen, but they were polished and sophisticated intellectuals. Deploring anti-Semitic illiterates in white sheets was rather easy; but countering Hamas cartoons of Jews as apes and pigs in West Bank newspapers was difficult when they were disseminated in the name of free speech at U.C. Berkeley.
There was a second facet of the new anti-Semitism. The establishment of the state of Israel itself also served as a respectable cloak for anti-Semitism. One now spoke not of disliking Jews, but only of despising the Jewish state and seeing Palestinians as if they were victims analogous to minority groups within the West. From Oxford dons to award-wining novelists, it became socially acceptable to decry the creation of Israel in a way it was not to say that the Jews were again causing trouble. Alleging that "Jews" had too much influence was still retrograde, but worrying about the power of the "Jewish lobby" was suddenly politically-correct.
via Instapundit
I've always support the "right to return" as long as it goes BOTH ways - so there isn't any real chance of it happening.
Charles at March 28, 2012 12:51 PM
The thing that really pisses off the Left is that the presence of Israel, and the example it sets, is one of the things that prevents the other nations of the Middle East from going all-in on communist/facist forms of government. (That, and all the backbiting...) I really wonder: if Israel had never been created, and the Arab nations had succeeded in purging Jews from the region, would the Soviet Union have been able to annex the Middle East in the early '70s? Had they been able to do so, it might have been all over for the West.
Cousin Dave at March 28, 2012 5:36 PM
One of the things that I find most bizzare about the Israel situation is it's own lack of even a basic PR machine.
What is never talked about when discussing Israeli oppression is all that Israel has given the Muslim populations within its borders. I'm talking about electricity, hospitals, and schools which Israel built for them and paid for years. Mostly, without collecting the same taxes that it collects from its Jewish population. And without requiring acclimatization. That isn't something oppressors do.
Now, I think the USA pays for it all.
Michael at March 28, 2012 8:37 PM
The problem is that the Israeli's are so good at defending themselves.
Unfortunately, over the years the U.S. has constantly interjected itself in the internal and regional affairs of everyone.
I personally believe that U.S. should mind its own business. If Israel turns Tehran or Damascus into a glass bowl, fine. War is not always the answer, but when you are turning the fifth cheek, it gets pretty old.
The U.S. is the most powerful military and economic force on the planet. But we are pissing it away on bombing Libya, staying in Afghanistan and all the rest of the crap.
God immediately looks puzzled, and asks "why a kid's birthday party clown???"
Jim P. at March 28, 2012 10:38 PM
"Why are they not considered refugees the way the Palestinians are?"
Easy because Jews are way too successful.
Purplepen at March 28, 2012 11:02 PM
The problem for them is as more people pay attention to what is actually going on with Israel, more and more people are questioning or criticizing Israel.
We can't have THAT, so it must be anti-Semitic.
DrCos at March 29, 2012 4:09 AM
The overlap between the set of people who despise Israel, and the set of people who spell America with a "K", is very high.
Much of the animus toward Israel is really a reflection of a more generalized toward Western civilization.
david foster at March 29, 2012 6:31 AM
I'm not anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. Or pro Palestinian. But I don't like the fact that Israel is accepting so much aid from the U.S. while it does nothing effective to stop the settlement building by Israeli Jews in the West Bank. Or that the U.S. continues to give Israel billions in aid each year despite this. If Israel feels it needs a military presence to patrol the West Bank for security reasons, fine. But when the U.S. gov't gives Israel so much aid while they go on doing all this settlement building, it understandably arouses the ire of Palestinian Arabs. The settlements are like salt in the wounds to people who have lost so much.
Iconoclast at March 31, 2012 6:19 PM
Leave a comment