You nailed it. The root antisemitism is the exclusive standard applied to Israel. No matter what Israel does, it’s wrong. It’s not humane enough. No other country is held to this standard.
It doesn’t help that the hostages and Oct 7 are barely a footnote for most and for many it’s something to applaud. When you see with your own eyes videos of Hamas behavior and the crowds around them and how proud they are, how could any rational person conclude that these are outliers? Or more incredibly yet, fakes. The Jews are also hiding videos by not posting everything even without the consent of the families involved. There’s no escape from criticism bc every standard applies even conflicting ones.
Then you spread out the antisemitism by alleging that any Jew who supports Israel or doesn’t dramatically denounce it is likewise depraved. The Jews who renounce Israel entirely may temporarily be useful or escape the tornado of a pitchfork mob but we’ve seen how exclusionary the forces of self proclaimed decency can be for anyone in the Star of David crowd. Having lgbt or socialist bona fides doesn’t even help.
Hamas butchered and mutilated and raped and tortured a group of dancing young people. They beheaded Thai workers. They shot Muslims. They took infants and grandparents as hostages. Other than drinking blood, not sure what was left to be done in this barbaric orgy which served no military purpose. And what a place to take revenge- the peacenik kibbutzniks on the border. The analogy would be Israel going into Gaza and targeting the dissidents.
Just being a native Israeli is an indictment. Sell your soul to the devil and he’ll renegotiate the terms. I have never met or encountered or read about an anti Zionist with anything close to a consistent standard. Israel is the big Satan always. The eternal other. Communist capitalist. Both and. A tiny country made to symbolize the blackness of history to swallow all the current problems in the world into its blob and to embody every angry resentful and conspiratorial sentiment.
I listen to well intentioned people read the land statement for the native Americans but don’t see anyone giving up that land or offering anything resembling real compensation. The offense of the Jews is Jewish nationalism. They’re surrounded by far more nationalistic Muslim entities. The rage at jewish nationalism makes no sense outside the scope of anti semitism.
Jews were sent into exile from Israel making them the opposite of settlers which makes one ask when native Americans will not be worthy of a land acknowledgement. When does a land claim expire? Palestinians have been used as pawns and have against the tide of history’s generally relocated or resettled refugees become multi generational long term refugees. Why not the Jews then? We also have expulsion from Europe and the Middle East on our belts. But we never prayed to return to those places. People are offended if you say there was never a Palestinian country or anything resembling it and that the term is Roman. But that is the truth. There’s an entire mythology created around Palestinians and it is a mythology. The truth is more like natives conquered/dominated by different groups over the course of history and some having relocated at the time of heavy jewish migration. Most Jews arrived with the expectation of coexistence. Frankly they were in no position not to.
The idea that a country should be there was floated multiple times rejected every time typically with war and it’s simply not true Palestinians have only been unhappy with the Jewish presence. They are treated horribly in Lebanon. Rebelled in Jordan. Obviously not referring to every Palestinian. Everyone knows that the ideal solution would be for the region to have a deep buffer for Israel and the rest controlled by Egypt and Jordan securely but that’s the rub. They don’t want the area and the people who’ve come with it. Egypt has shut its border (Israel checkpoints a border for good reason and this is never weighed against Egypt entirely closing it) but it’s an insecure border as far as weapons smuggling is concerned. Why would creating a Palestinian state end the warfare? If someone can’t answer that why advocate it? It’s no more ridiculous than advocating a separate country for ISIS so they stop planning attacks. The Palestinians aren’t supporting Hamas so they can get a state. They’re supporting Hamas to obliterate Israel. Did someone other than Hamas write their charter? Where was the yearning for a state before Jews came? The Middle East was carved up horribly by colonial powers. I have no problem seeing why Israel is linked to this past bc about half were of more recent European descent but assigning a small sliver of land to Jewish refugees including many middle eastern Jews who ultimately were forced to flee Arab lands was no more arbitrary than other population transfers like when India was partitioned or the horrible impractical lines the colonial powers cut through the Middle East to placate unelected royals.
I don’t see a deep spiritual connection to most of Israel on the part of Palestinians but no doubt some were native to the region and were there before Jewish people arrived making much of the land more arable and malaria free. The attachment to all of Israel is an invention and the Arabs could’ve settled every Palestinian decades ago. They want the wound of Palestinian limbo open and theres a phoniness- they don’t want to absorb this population they call brothers. I honestly don’t get it.
People have a very mistaken idea of the relatively small size of the population even then and how much it’s grown thanks to the foreign aid that helps allow for it (even with the Hamas theft to build tunnels and weapons)
The entire ottoman and Muslim conquests are erased from history. The same way we’ve had people dangerously try to erase the idea that biological sex exists (not to advance science but to compel a social political agenda to decree under threat of real punishment that if someone feels a certain gender and have had surgery then they are that biological sex. But there’s a difference between entirely or selectively accepting someone’s life choice or tolerating it in all or most domains(most Americans are really live and let live)and having to say something you don’t believe at all or to endanger someone medically because you can’t acknowledge there are biological sex based differences. Right now we simply cannot change most of our dna barring some small advances in genetic engineering. Maybe one day in the far future that will change.
How society deals with this issue shouldn’t be based on the idea that biological sexual dimorphism doesn’t exist for almost all humans. The more demonstrably false ideas come into the fore with a guarding ax against those who disagree the more contorted the debate becomes the more humans are divided into rigid cliques. Definitions matter.
Likewise, genocide can’t be redefined to mean literally any aspect of war decontextualizing allowed or it’s an entirely useless term and it’s nothing short of evil to accuse Jews of this and reeks of holocaust whitewashing especially because Hamas has made its genocidal intentions clear in word and deed and has unfortunately garnered a large amount of support among Palestinians who’ve been educated in this mindset since birth. There is no aha because no matter how genocide is defined the anti semitic crowd will just say that’s Israel’s goal and no amount of reality will change that.
It’s vague and nebulous in the logic world but crystal and rigid in the world of feeling. If Hamas throws people off buildings, if they steal aid from their people, if they use their own as human shields, if they deliberately put others in harm’s way, this is all part of the Oct 7 non genocidal resistance. Bc by this definition resistance means everything one does literally everything is justified and never read as part of a sequence but rather as the reaction to pinpoints (including highly exaggerated distorted or false calamities) on a timeline. To adapt to that sinister mindset you really have to demonize the other to a point of impossibility. The fantasy of the resistance is you’ll vanquish the demon. What then? What society would Hamas build? A fascist terror kleptocracy where Palestinians suffer on the whole. I’m all ears to hear otherwise.
I don’t sympathize with Palestinians generically. Having Palestinian civilians cheer Hamas brutalizing women and children and even holding them
Hostage themselves means something is grievously wrong in the society as a whole and won’t change except through resistance.
I sympathize with Palestinians who are innocent and stuck in this hell. But it’s not a majority and that needs to be said. Of course no one applauds or should applaud the death of civilians just bc they support an evil cause. Hamas aims to maximize civilian casualties. It’s human sacrifice of your own on a wide scale. The west won’t look this in the eye. For shame.
I just have a very different idea of how it needs to work. The west should want absolute defeat of Hamas and predicate any aid on the total denazification of Palestinian schools. They can still receive aid from places like Qatar which sadly support nazification.
It’s not difficult to see a Middle East with Israeli Palestinian collaboration to some extent but it absolutely cannot happen without major change. The west is floating mindlessly in fantasies and status quo conformity. Embedded in this is a total disregard for human life Israeli and Palestinian for useless expediency. Anti semitism will continue to grow in this moral fog.
The Palestinian cause was invented by the Arab world which enlisted the help of Marxists to "sell" it to Western audiences. A famous Palestinian activist, Edward Said, who was a self-admitted Marxist educated at Harvard, made the case in his book "Representations of the Intellectual". It was a huge success amongst left-leaning media and so-called intellectuals who already had far too much influence in Western society. This book was the subject of a term paper I wrote 24 years ago for a propaganda course in university. In it, I specified the tactics Said used to influence his Western readers. Those tactics have since become the playbook for Palestinian propaganda. Unfortunately, this false playbook is now so entrenched in the public psyche that nothing short of a miracle will change it. Which is why I believe Israel should just do whatever it takes to survive and rid our land of the Pallies through termination of Iran's proxies, policing, Jewish settlement of Gaza/Judea/Samaria and gradual deportation or termination of Pally civilians who practice Jew-hatred and violence in whatever form. If Israel is smart and tough, I don't think anyone will attack her to "save" any Palestinians because in the end, they were never a true "cause". They were (and still are) just a propaganda tool of the Islamo/Leftist alliance.
was he truly "Palestinian" or like Arafat, Egyptian....once his family saw that the civil war and the greater war were inevitable they hussled young Eddie out of Jerusalem. Orientalism the bible of mid east studies is unreadable tripe.
Aha....seems he really was Palestinian. According to Wikipedia, "Born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine in 1935, Said was a United States citizen by way of his father, who had served in the United States Army during World War I." After 1948 he relocated to Egypt, then to the United States, where he attended a number of universities, including Harvard. (Sorry about the Oxford thing. My memory is a bit sketchy. It's been 24 years since I visited this guy and his book!) He was certainly a Marxist. "His principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor W. Adorno." I remember remarking - in my paper - about his attitude towards Jews in the book. They were the only individuals he labeled as "Jews" (he didn't identify anyone else by their religion). Moreover he seemed to view us as either "good niggers" or "bad niggers", depending upon our politics. For Said, Henry Kissinger was bad because he embraced capitalism. But he held "an endless fascination" with Theodor Adorno because well...you couldn't get more left-wing than old Theo! In any case, while the leftist press was gushing over "Representations of the Intellectual" my prof (a former Jesuit priest) urged me to have my paper published to provide an opposing view. I avoided doing this because my professional writing at the time was staunchly apolitical and I never dreamed Said's arsenal of propaganda weapons (including universalism and Western sentimentality) would ever be so effective. I was wrong.
Good question. I will look into it. Actually everyone who lived in Israel pre 1948, including the currently contested territories, was called Palestinian - Jews, Muslims, Christians. In a documentary about Golda Meir, she asserted that before Israel became a modern state, her passport said "Palestinian". Muslims living there were often originally from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon. Their "ancestral homelands" are rarely Israel.
Your percipient essay made me want to stand up and clap. This showed such keen insight into the abnormal psychology of those obsessed with all things "Palestine." Each point you made was better than another. I agree that it is a social sickness that has no cure (at the moment), and all we can do is acknowledge it. The only problem for me is hearing or reading about these "Progressives" causes great discomfort, but you helped to bring the reality back in knowing their motivation, and that I can digest.
I always enjoy your intelligent, well thought out essays, but this one was superb. I also appreciate your loyal support of Israelis and the Jewish people.
The disorder is progressivism. Once you have a faulty cognitive reading of reality, moral collapse follows. As Ms. Hirshorn points out, if you start with Said's orientalism, which is an intellectual travesty - ever read of schools of occidental thought in the Arab Muslim world? - you wind up with crazy hatred of western society which has given queers their freedom, women their supposed rights, and all the other deprived actors of history their place in the sun. And then you finish with the oldest hatred - antisemitism! If the Palestinians are the scumbags of the world, the anti-Israel left people are the condoms.
I think there are far too many people being taught social science and other such related topics in universities. Their heads are full of social justice and injustice as they rewrite history to condemn success as evil.
The "palestinian" movement has NEVER EVER been about peaceful coexistence, it was created solely as a means for the obliteration of Israel and is a movement originating from the USSR and adopted by western communists. So-called "progressives" are Marxists and Marxists hate Jews.
"queers" was invented by the radical progressive left so as to differentiate from people like me who helped create the modern Gay rights movement and are now pegged as bourgeois reactionaries....insufficiently radical and insufficiently anti western and anti white and now anti Zionist and largely and brazenly unashamedly antisemitic .....especially when two of the most lethal Judith butler and sarah shulman are virulent haters of Israel and are themselves antisemites.... so watch when you use "queers" ......it has nothing to do with my life and my ideology, my values. my faith, my identity is Jewish.
This article is again excellent. A pervasive blaming of Israel and Jews. Why? It is not only elite progressives. I have visited and quickly fled, numerous sites of political truthers who identify as rednecks, good ol’ boys, etc, who literally blame everything on ‘the Jews.’ Touting their dogeared copy of the hoax, Elders of Zion, they claim to be Christian. Their savior according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is Jewish but never mind. That is largely who is in the American streets and on campuses yelling for Palestinians and against Jews. But even Dershowitz won’t say it. From the ivory tower to the feral there is the same exact hatred. The argument of, ‘gee wait, we have not dominated the world with religion, Rome has; we have not ruled an empire, or even our own, single nation for 3,000 years until recently—how are we the reason for wars…’ etc., doesn’t dispel the hatred or false narrative. I believe the bottom line hatred is that Judah was given the blessing/prophecy to be the Lawgiver. Genesis 49. To carry the Torah. That word is used only for Judah or YHWH Himself. Even in the Psalms. My transliteration, Mekkoqeq, six times I counted. That fear from every nation, no matter how assimilated or secular we become, is the reason for hatred. It is what separates us from other people and binds us as family. It is the Torah. Even in the end of the NT claimed by Christianity, the end of days wrap up is Jewish and in Eretz Yisrael. The Judge, the military leader, the One Who makes war with the nations, happens to be standing on Mt Zion.
Jews are Scapegoats for Liberals in The West and these people's unadmitted Racism.
If you ever wondered why the most libellous and vicious Hate is levelled against Jews, then look no closer than the Psychology of the Conflicted Liberal.
This is a classic case of what Psychoanalysts call Projection, that is to say, blaming bad characteristics which are true for yourself on others in the Out Group.
Anti-Semitism in The UK and their support for Palestinians, is a cover for deeper held racism against all the other groups too, including the Black and Asian communities.
Yes, indeed we do not hear the same people condemn The Syrian civil War or Iran's Capital Punishment and Judicial killings, or Turkey's treatment of The Kurds.
Press them too on uncontrolled Migration across Israel, the only Land Bridge into Europe.
So we hear the Shrill Shame of Cognitive Dissonance, which is the real reason for their vitriolic Hatred, as their heads try to hold onto Liberal values whilst understanding and actually wanting tough border control which in fact means safety in a Europe protected from Mass Migration by Israel. Thus Jews become the scapegoats for these contradicted and Racist sentiments in Liberals, once again.
I would add that Social Media’s Alt News gurus such as James Corbett have greatly contributed to a completely warped understanding of Israel. While he is certainly on the buck with some of his analysis re big oil, big pharma etc, he loses the thread completely when it comes to Israel and the Jews. He is not the only one; there are many. It’s is a 1:1 copy of “we the oppressed against the Elites” to “Palestinians oppressed by evil Israel”, a projection that is so full of glorious shit it just beggars belief. He is Canadian by the way. And an Anarchist…
Keep writing. For all our sake, keep saying the obvious in the most amazing clear way as you constantly do. My hats off to you and your pen 🙏🏻
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Progressives hate their own culture. Hamas hates their culture. Therefore progressives and Hamas make strange bedfellows. In history we see this with Marxists. Also, progressives don’t desire to build, they lust to destroy! Theirs is a politics of hate, jealousy, and envy. Hamas et al are predicated on destruction. Burn, Baby, Burn! The two sick philosophies go well with each other.
You nailed it. The root antisemitism is the exclusive standard applied to Israel. No matter what Israel does, it’s wrong. It’s not humane enough. No other country is held to this standard.
It doesn’t help that the hostages and Oct 7 are barely a footnote for most and for many it’s something to applaud. When you see with your own eyes videos of Hamas behavior and the crowds around them and how proud they are, how could any rational person conclude that these are outliers? Or more incredibly yet, fakes. The Jews are also hiding videos by not posting everything even without the consent of the families involved. There’s no escape from criticism bc every standard applies even conflicting ones.
Then you spread out the antisemitism by alleging that any Jew who supports Israel or doesn’t dramatically denounce it is likewise depraved. The Jews who renounce Israel entirely may temporarily be useful or escape the tornado of a pitchfork mob but we’ve seen how exclusionary the forces of self proclaimed decency can be for anyone in the Star of David crowd. Having lgbt or socialist bona fides doesn’t even help.
Hamas butchered and mutilated and raped and tortured a group of dancing young people. They beheaded Thai workers. They shot Muslims. They took infants and grandparents as hostages. Other than drinking blood, not sure what was left to be done in this barbaric orgy which served no military purpose. And what a place to take revenge- the peacenik kibbutzniks on the border. The analogy would be Israel going into Gaza and targeting the dissidents.
Just being a native Israeli is an indictment. Sell your soul to the devil and he’ll renegotiate the terms. I have never met or encountered or read about an anti Zionist with anything close to a consistent standard. Israel is the big Satan always. The eternal other. Communist capitalist. Both and. A tiny country made to symbolize the blackness of history to swallow all the current problems in the world into its blob and to embody every angry resentful and conspiratorial sentiment.
I listen to well intentioned people read the land statement for the native Americans but don’t see anyone giving up that land or offering anything resembling real compensation. The offense of the Jews is Jewish nationalism. They’re surrounded by far more nationalistic Muslim entities. The rage at jewish nationalism makes no sense outside the scope of anti semitism.
Jews were sent into exile from Israel making them the opposite of settlers which makes one ask when native Americans will not be worthy of a land acknowledgement. When does a land claim expire? Palestinians have been used as pawns and have against the tide of history’s generally relocated or resettled refugees become multi generational long term refugees. Why not the Jews then? We also have expulsion from Europe and the Middle East on our belts. But we never prayed to return to those places. People are offended if you say there was never a Palestinian country or anything resembling it and that the term is Roman. But that is the truth. There’s an entire mythology created around Palestinians and it is a mythology. The truth is more like natives conquered/dominated by different groups over the course of history and some having relocated at the time of heavy jewish migration. Most Jews arrived with the expectation of coexistence. Frankly they were in no position not to.
The idea that a country should be there was floated multiple times rejected every time typically with war and it’s simply not true Palestinians have only been unhappy with the Jewish presence. They are treated horribly in Lebanon. Rebelled in Jordan. Obviously not referring to every Palestinian. Everyone knows that the ideal solution would be for the region to have a deep buffer for Israel and the rest controlled by Egypt and Jordan securely but that’s the rub. They don’t want the area and the people who’ve come with it. Egypt has shut its border (Israel checkpoints a border for good reason and this is never weighed against Egypt entirely closing it) but it’s an insecure border as far as weapons smuggling is concerned. Why would creating a Palestinian state end the warfare? If someone can’t answer that why advocate it? It’s no more ridiculous than advocating a separate country for ISIS so they stop planning attacks. The Palestinians aren’t supporting Hamas so they can get a state. They’re supporting Hamas to obliterate Israel. Did someone other than Hamas write their charter? Where was the yearning for a state before Jews came? The Middle East was carved up horribly by colonial powers. I have no problem seeing why Israel is linked to this past bc about half were of more recent European descent but assigning a small sliver of land to Jewish refugees including many middle eastern Jews who ultimately were forced to flee Arab lands was no more arbitrary than other population transfers like when India was partitioned or the horrible impractical lines the colonial powers cut through the Middle East to placate unelected royals.
I don’t see a deep spiritual connection to most of Israel on the part of Palestinians but no doubt some were native to the region and were there before Jewish people arrived making much of the land more arable and malaria free. The attachment to all of Israel is an invention and the Arabs could’ve settled every Palestinian decades ago. They want the wound of Palestinian limbo open and theres a phoniness- they don’t want to absorb this population they call brothers. I honestly don’t get it.
People have a very mistaken idea of the relatively small size of the population even then and how much it’s grown thanks to the foreign aid that helps allow for it (even with the Hamas theft to build tunnels and weapons)
The entire ottoman and Muslim conquests are erased from history. The same way we’ve had people dangerously try to erase the idea that biological sex exists (not to advance science but to compel a social political agenda to decree under threat of real punishment that if someone feels a certain gender and have had surgery then they are that biological sex. But there’s a difference between entirely or selectively accepting someone’s life choice or tolerating it in all or most domains(most Americans are really live and let live)and having to say something you don’t believe at all or to endanger someone medically because you can’t acknowledge there are biological sex based differences. Right now we simply cannot change most of our dna barring some small advances in genetic engineering. Maybe one day in the far future that will change.
How society deals with this issue shouldn’t be based on the idea that biological sexual dimorphism doesn’t exist for almost all humans. The more demonstrably false ideas come into the fore with a guarding ax against those who disagree the more contorted the debate becomes the more humans are divided into rigid cliques. Definitions matter.
Likewise, genocide can’t be redefined to mean literally any aspect of war decontextualizing allowed or it’s an entirely useless term and it’s nothing short of evil to accuse Jews of this and reeks of holocaust whitewashing especially because Hamas has made its genocidal intentions clear in word and deed and has unfortunately garnered a large amount of support among Palestinians who’ve been educated in this mindset since birth. There is no aha because no matter how genocide is defined the anti semitic crowd will just say that’s Israel’s goal and no amount of reality will change that.
It’s vague and nebulous in the logic world but crystal and rigid in the world of feeling. If Hamas throws people off buildings, if they steal aid from their people, if they use their own as human shields, if they deliberately put others in harm’s way, this is all part of the Oct 7 non genocidal resistance. Bc by this definition resistance means everything one does literally everything is justified and never read as part of a sequence but rather as the reaction to pinpoints (including highly exaggerated distorted or false calamities) on a timeline. To adapt to that sinister mindset you really have to demonize the other to a point of impossibility. The fantasy of the resistance is you’ll vanquish the demon. What then? What society would Hamas build? A fascist terror kleptocracy where Palestinians suffer on the whole. I’m all ears to hear otherwise.
I don’t sympathize with Palestinians generically. Having Palestinian civilians cheer Hamas brutalizing women and children and even holding them
Hostage themselves means something is grievously wrong in the society as a whole and won’t change except through resistance.
I sympathize with Palestinians who are innocent and stuck in this hell. But it’s not a majority and that needs to be said. Of course no one applauds or should applaud the death of civilians just bc they support an evil cause. Hamas aims to maximize civilian casualties. It’s human sacrifice of your own on a wide scale. The west won’t look this in the eye. For shame.
I just have a very different idea of how it needs to work. The west should want absolute defeat of Hamas and predicate any aid on the total denazification of Palestinian schools. They can still receive aid from places like Qatar which sadly support nazification.
It’s not difficult to see a Middle East with Israeli Palestinian collaboration to some extent but it absolutely cannot happen without major change. The west is floating mindlessly in fantasies and status quo conformity. Embedded in this is a total disregard for human life Israeli and Palestinian for useless expediency. Anti semitism will continue to grow in this moral fog.
The Palestinian cause was invented by the Arab world which enlisted the help of Marxists to "sell" it to Western audiences. A famous Palestinian activist, Edward Said, who was a self-admitted Marxist educated at Harvard, made the case in his book "Representations of the Intellectual". It was a huge success amongst left-leaning media and so-called intellectuals who already had far too much influence in Western society. This book was the subject of a term paper I wrote 24 years ago for a propaganda course in university. In it, I specified the tactics Said used to influence his Western readers. Those tactics have since become the playbook for Palestinian propaganda. Unfortunately, this false playbook is now so entrenched in the public psyche that nothing short of a miracle will change it. Which is why I believe Israel should just do whatever it takes to survive and rid our land of the Pallies through termination of Iran's proxies, policing, Jewish settlement of Gaza/Judea/Samaria and gradual deportation or termination of Pally civilians who practice Jew-hatred and violence in whatever form. If Israel is smart and tough, I don't think anyone will attack her to "save" any Palestinians because in the end, they were never a true "cause". They were (and still are) just a propaganda tool of the Islamo/Leftist alliance.
was he truly "Palestinian" or like Arafat, Egyptian....once his family saw that the civil war and the greater war were inevitable they hussled young Eddie out of Jerusalem. Orientalism the bible of mid east studies is unreadable tripe.
Aha....seems he really was Palestinian. According to Wikipedia, "Born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine in 1935, Said was a United States citizen by way of his father, who had served in the United States Army during World War I." After 1948 he relocated to Egypt, then to the United States, where he attended a number of universities, including Harvard. (Sorry about the Oxford thing. My memory is a bit sketchy. It's been 24 years since I visited this guy and his book!) He was certainly a Marxist. "His principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor W. Adorno." I remember remarking - in my paper - about his attitude towards Jews in the book. They were the only individuals he labeled as "Jews" (he didn't identify anyone else by their religion). Moreover he seemed to view us as either "good niggers" or "bad niggers", depending upon our politics. For Said, Henry Kissinger was bad because he embraced capitalism. But he held "an endless fascination" with Theodor Adorno because well...you couldn't get more left-wing than old Theo! In any case, while the leftist press was gushing over "Representations of the Intellectual" my prof (a former Jesuit priest) urged me to have my paper published to provide an opposing view. I avoided doing this because my professional writing at the time was staunchly apolitical and I never dreamed Said's arsenal of propaganda weapons (including universalism and Western sentimentality) would ever be so effective. I was wrong.
Good question. I will look into it. Actually everyone who lived in Israel pre 1948, including the currently contested territories, was called Palestinian - Jews, Muslims, Christians. In a documentary about Golda Meir, she asserted that before Israel became a modern state, her passport said "Palestinian". Muslims living there were often originally from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon. Their "ancestral homelands" are rarely Israel.
Your percipient essay made me want to stand up and clap. This showed such keen insight into the abnormal psychology of those obsessed with all things "Palestine." Each point you made was better than another. I agree that it is a social sickness that has no cure (at the moment), and all we can do is acknowledge it. The only problem for me is hearing or reading about these "Progressives" causes great discomfort, but you helped to bring the reality back in knowing their motivation, and that I can digest.
Thank you so much Diane. I appreciate your kind words!
I always enjoy your intelligent, well thought out essays, but this one was superb. I also appreciate your loyal support of Israelis and the Jewish people.
The disorder is progressivism. Once you have a faulty cognitive reading of reality, moral collapse follows. As Ms. Hirshorn points out, if you start with Said's orientalism, which is an intellectual travesty - ever read of schools of occidental thought in the Arab Muslim world? - you wind up with crazy hatred of western society which has given queers their freedom, women their supposed rights, and all the other deprived actors of history their place in the sun. And then you finish with the oldest hatred - antisemitism! If the Palestinians are the scumbags of the world, the anti-Israel left people are the condoms.
The oh so progressive woke crowd has succeeded in marketing anti-Semitism to their useful idiots as hip, cool, and respectable.
I think there are far too many people being taught social science and other such related topics in universities. Their heads are full of social justice and injustice as they rewrite history to condemn success as evil.
I’m pretty sure progressives were always anti-semites. It’s just the veil has been removed and we’re able to see it for the social sickness it is.
Brilliant! I love this. It explains a lot.
The "palestinian" movement has NEVER EVER been about peaceful coexistence, it was created solely as a means for the obliteration of Israel and is a movement originating from the USSR and adopted by western communists. So-called "progressives" are Marxists and Marxists hate Jews.
Excellent article.
"queers" was invented by the radical progressive left so as to differentiate from people like me who helped create the modern Gay rights movement and are now pegged as bourgeois reactionaries....insufficiently radical and insufficiently anti western and anti white and now anti Zionist and largely and brazenly unashamedly antisemitic .....especially when two of the most lethal Judith butler and sarah shulman are virulent haters of Israel and are themselves antisemites.... so watch when you use "queers" ......it has nothing to do with my life and my ideology, my values. my faith, my identity is Jewish.
This article is again excellent. A pervasive blaming of Israel and Jews. Why? It is not only elite progressives. I have visited and quickly fled, numerous sites of political truthers who identify as rednecks, good ol’ boys, etc, who literally blame everything on ‘the Jews.’ Touting their dogeared copy of the hoax, Elders of Zion, they claim to be Christian. Their savior according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is Jewish but never mind. That is largely who is in the American streets and on campuses yelling for Palestinians and against Jews. But even Dershowitz won’t say it. From the ivory tower to the feral there is the same exact hatred. The argument of, ‘gee wait, we have not dominated the world with religion, Rome has; we have not ruled an empire, or even our own, single nation for 3,000 years until recently—how are we the reason for wars…’ etc., doesn’t dispel the hatred or false narrative. I believe the bottom line hatred is that Judah was given the blessing/prophecy to be the Lawgiver. Genesis 49. To carry the Torah. That word is used only for Judah or YHWH Himself. Even in the Psalms. My transliteration, Mekkoqeq, six times I counted. That fear from every nation, no matter how assimilated or secular we become, is the reason for hatred. It is what separates us from other people and binds us as family. It is the Torah. Even in the end of the NT claimed by Christianity, the end of days wrap up is Jewish and in Eretz Yisrael. The Judge, the military leader, the One Who makes war with the nations, happens to be standing on Mt Zion.
Zion. There we have it.
Jews are Scapegoats for Liberals in The West and these people's unadmitted Racism.
If you ever wondered why the most libellous and vicious Hate is levelled against Jews, then look no closer than the Psychology of the Conflicted Liberal.
This is a classic case of what Psychoanalysts call Projection, that is to say, blaming bad characteristics which are true for yourself on others in the Out Group.
Anti-Semitism in The UK and their support for Palestinians, is a cover for deeper held racism against all the other groups too, including the Black and Asian communities.
Yes, indeed we do not hear the same people condemn The Syrian civil War or Iran's Capital Punishment and Judicial killings, or Turkey's treatment of The Kurds.
Press them too on uncontrolled Migration across Israel, the only Land Bridge into Europe.
So we hear the Shrill Shame of Cognitive Dissonance, which is the real reason for their vitriolic Hatred, as their heads try to hold onto Liberal values whilst understanding and actually wanting tough border control which in fact means safety in a Europe protected from Mass Migration by Israel. Thus Jews become the scapegoats for these contradicted and Racist sentiments in Liberals, once again.
Another brilliant one Pat.
I would add that Social Media’s Alt News gurus such as James Corbett have greatly contributed to a completely warped understanding of Israel. While he is certainly on the buck with some of his analysis re big oil, big pharma etc, he loses the thread completely when it comes to Israel and the Jews. He is not the only one; there are many. It’s is a 1:1 copy of “we the oppressed against the Elites” to “Palestinians oppressed by evil Israel”, a projection that is so full of glorious shit it just beggars belief. He is Canadian by the way. And an Anarchist…
Keep writing. For all our sake, keep saying the obvious in the most amazing clear way as you constantly do. My hats off to you and your pen 🙏🏻
Jews are Scapegoats for Liberals in The West and these same people's unadmitted Racism.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Progressives hate their own culture. Hamas hates their culture. Therefore progressives and Hamas make strange bedfellows. In history we see this with Marxists. Also, progressives don’t desire to build, they lust to destroy! Theirs is a politics of hate, jealousy, and envy. Hamas et al are predicated on destruction. Burn, Baby, Burn! The two sick philosophies go well with each other.
M