What poses an enormous threat to Israel and the greater Western world is the complete and utter hypocrisy disguised as "liberalism" — what I call "fraudulent liberalism."
None of the people you describe are liberal. They are radical leftists. The "fraudulent liberals" are people like Charles Schumer who pretend to support Israel while giving aid and comfort to its enemies.
Where are the "liberal" voices of outrage when it comes to the horrendous tragedies in Sudan, Haiti, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanamar, etc. etc. If the oh, so politically correct crowd's fertile imaginations cannot figure out a way to blame Israel, they couldn't care less.
The Jewish anti-Semites, such as Bernie Sanders must be called out, held up to public scrutiny, exposed, and roundly condemned. The same for Jewish entertainers, such as John Stewart for whom Israel is a butt for jokes and a punching bag for him to market his shtick.
You miss the point slightly. Liberalism has been dead in the water for decades. The few remaking liberals, who don’t remember what they stood for anyway, are sheep taken over by the New Democratic Party dominated by so-called progressives. These closet (or not so closet) marxists have cowed the liberals into submission across the globe, including Israel. They are the principal enemy
Liberalism in this context has become a format for ethnic denialism and strives to portray a contrived and delusional image of moral superiority. A construct that historically portends to dangerous international conflicts and for Jews, more antisemitism.
....and the conflict of these self-delusions sets these (Fraudulent) Liberals up for Cognitive Dissonance in their brains, and the subsequent shrillness of their anti-Semitic discourse which does so much harm to Jewish people in the public political spaces.
I was one of those liberals who spent their lives fighting for blacks, women, queers, anyone steamrolled by the status quo. The betrayal of all these groups on 10/7 shocked me to my core and left me politically homeless. Some close ex-friends have explained to me that Israel in particular and Jews in general are responsible for all evil on the face of the earth, and it's obvious that most of the left — as well as much of the right — believe this. The tiny center, who really don't care either way, they're the closest things we have to allies. I understand why, if you take it as a given that all evil comes from Jews, that you can project all the unresolved sins and issues of your country or culture onto the Jews, but man that is such a convenient and cowardly way to hide from responsibility. When you start reading the depressing cycle of massacre-every-fifty-years that is Jewish history, you realize this scapegoating and cowardice is normal, this is how things have been for 2500 years, why should today be any different.
Sometimes I think of how a plant grows more vigorously when it is periodically pruned. And I think, this is part of the Divine Plan, to prune us every 50 years. During most of my life, the Jewish community was worried that we were so accepted in the US that we would assimilate into extinction. And now this pruning, that sends half of our Jewry to seek out a shul.
It's not fair. It's not just and it's not ethical that this should happen to us, over and over. Our "as a Jew" betrayers will get a lot of us killed and they may prosper or they may be killed along with us. It's always happened. It will continue to happen.
I was raised Orthodox, and a woman raised on the wrong side of the mehitzeh is, of course, not a Jew, she's Jew-ish, her role is to birth, raise, and clean up after Jews and to keep a kosher home and leave all spiritual matters to the men in her life. This insult drove me away from Judaism for years. During the period when I was gone, anxiety about the shrinking Conservative communities led Conservative Jewry to change its rules and become inclusive and respectful to everyone it had rejected before: women, queers, intermarrieds, converts. At 63 I have finally found a Jewish congregation in which I am respected and at home. It's not for everyone but it is for me. This is profoundly life-changing and nothing will convince me that it isn't Good for the Jews to respect and include the people who had been rejected before. I present this as a counter to the depressing narrative that the "as a Jew"s are going to get us destroyed. The "as a Jew"s are going to get some Jews killed and then assimilate away, but the revivified parts of Jewish community are going to survive just fine.
Shelah, I am not Jewish and have no Jewish family. I am also an unaffiliated voter. I unequivocally support the Jewish people wherever they live. And I respect and support Israel. There are many, many of us out here. We don’t demonstrate against the Jewish people or Israel and we tend to avoid the antisemitic and their unhinged rants.
But believe me, we are here and we exist in numbers much greater than the haters here in the USA. Please don’t count us out. We have your back and always, always will. Your lives are precious and we value you. And we take “never again” to heart.
We’re here for you. Believe that because it’s true.
I know there are non-Jewish souls who actually support the Jewish people, and I have some in my life and I treasure them. From the news, from our universities, from our cultural institutions, and from some of my close ex-friends, you would think none exist. It pains me to feel grateful to a stranger for not hating me sight unseen but that is the status quo. I’m grateful. Thank you for speaking up and thank you for being out there.
No thanks are needed. Decent people stand up for one another. And the people I know would never betray our Jewish friends. So I guess you’re kind of stuck with us.
And, while it may not seem that way, there are a whole lot of us out here who have your backs. Way more than the jerks who strut around at these hateful protests. We’re not loud and we don’t wrap keffiyehs around our faces so we can’t be identified, but we’re here. And we aren’t going anywhere.
I still think Israel's most dangerous enemy is Iran but I can see what you call Fraudulent Liberalism a very close second, maybe tied for first. Joshua, you focused this enemy strictly on Israel but this enemy is the enemy of all of Western culture, Democracy and Capitalism. You didn't mention all its tentacles. Fraudulent Liberalism includes Equity vs Meritocracy, Equity vs Equality, WOKE, DEI, Political Correctness, Radical Feminism, Identity Politics, Moral Relativism, White Colonizers and more. These are all Fraudulent Liberal concepts and they are the enemy not just of Israel, they are the enemies of our way of life. I believe Dr. Gad Saad calls it the "Death of the West by a Thousand Cuts" and it is blatantly true. Freedom of speech only if your speech fits this new Liberalism, Truth and science mean nothing if they stand in the way of political correctness. Victimhood outweighs any atrocity you commit, mathematics is racist, and the list goes on and on. What a "sane" person would consider utter nonsense is now correct. Its a completely Bizarro World and it is slowly destroying our way of life. And of course, the Jews and Israel get the brunt of all of it. papa j
"Many so-called liberals believe the most important thing right now is to help the innocent Palestinians in Gaza, and they certainly are not the first people to have this truly noble desire. (I say this seriously, not sarcastically.)"
You can’t argue logic with people who have different goals. It’s like high school cliques, scaled up—say the right buzzword and you’re in. One wrong move? Social suicide. For college students, likes and retweets are the new currency, and finding one real friend in that landscape is tough. Ironically, it’s often the attention-grabbing ones who loathe themselves the most and need the validation. At 36, I get it now—at 22, not so much. We’re bringing facts and logic to the table, but they just want to be accepted. To change the culture, you’ve got to speak their language and inspire them to accept themselves, not lecture them about how wrong they are—is that tactic ever effective?
The author is 100% right that the major and most dangerous enemy of Israel is the Western (far)-left.
However, it seems to me that there's no need to call them "liberals", fraudulent or not, because a substantial part of these freaks called themselves socialists, anarchists, etc.
None of the people you describe are liberal. They are radical leftists. The "fraudulent liberals" are people like Charles Schumer who pretend to support Israel while giving aid and comfort to its enemies.
Amongst other things…
BUT, G-d will square accounts with all such people, according to their works.
“The grindstones of G-d’s justice grind slowly, but they grind very, very fine.” - Unknown
Where are the "liberal" voices of outrage when it comes to the horrendous tragedies in Sudan, Haiti, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanamar, etc. etc. If the oh, so politically correct crowd's fertile imaginations cannot figure out a way to blame Israel, they couldn't care less.
The Jewish anti-Semites, such as Bernie Sanders must be called out, held up to public scrutiny, exposed, and roundly condemned. The same for Jewish entertainers, such as John Stewart for whom Israel is a butt for jokes and a punching bag for him to market his shtick.
You miss the point slightly. Liberalism has been dead in the water for decades. The few remaking liberals, who don’t remember what they stood for anyway, are sheep taken over by the New Democratic Party dominated by so-called progressives. These closet (or not so closet) marxists have cowed the liberals into submission across the globe, including Israel. They are the principal enemy
Liberalism in this context has become a format for ethnic denialism and strives to portray a contrived and delusional image of moral superiority. A construct that historically portends to dangerous international conflicts and for Jews, more antisemitism.
Excellent article Joshua!
....and the conflict of these self-delusions sets these (Fraudulent) Liberals up for Cognitive Dissonance in their brains, and the subsequent shrillness of their anti-Semitic discourse which does so much harm to Jewish people in the public political spaces.
Jewish self hatred has many forms and is of ancient vintage
Joshua - You recently recommended I simplify my writing. Your last two pieces struggled to define our adversaries.
Let me help you follow your own advice.
All you need remember is PRO.
In the Mideast it stands for PROXIES.
In the Western world, it stands for PROGRESSIVES.
But in Israel it stands for
PROTECTING the PROMISE.
I was one of those liberals who spent their lives fighting for blacks, women, queers, anyone steamrolled by the status quo. The betrayal of all these groups on 10/7 shocked me to my core and left me politically homeless. Some close ex-friends have explained to me that Israel in particular and Jews in general are responsible for all evil on the face of the earth, and it's obvious that most of the left — as well as much of the right — believe this. The tiny center, who really don't care either way, they're the closest things we have to allies. I understand why, if you take it as a given that all evil comes from Jews, that you can project all the unresolved sins and issues of your country or culture onto the Jews, but man that is such a convenient and cowardly way to hide from responsibility. When you start reading the depressing cycle of massacre-every-fifty-years that is Jewish history, you realize this scapegoating and cowardice is normal, this is how things have been for 2500 years, why should today be any different.
Sometimes I think of how a plant grows more vigorously when it is periodically pruned. And I think, this is part of the Divine Plan, to prune us every 50 years. During most of my life, the Jewish community was worried that we were so accepted in the US that we would assimilate into extinction. And now this pruning, that sends half of our Jewry to seek out a shul.
It's not fair. It's not just and it's not ethical that this should happen to us, over and over. Our "as a Jew" betrayers will get a lot of us killed and they may prosper or they may be killed along with us. It's always happened. It will continue to happen.
I was raised Orthodox, and a woman raised on the wrong side of the mehitzeh is, of course, not a Jew, she's Jew-ish, her role is to birth, raise, and clean up after Jews and to keep a kosher home and leave all spiritual matters to the men in her life. This insult drove me away from Judaism for years. During the period when I was gone, anxiety about the shrinking Conservative communities led Conservative Jewry to change its rules and become inclusive and respectful to everyone it had rejected before: women, queers, intermarrieds, converts. At 63 I have finally found a Jewish congregation in which I am respected and at home. It's not for everyone but it is for me. This is profoundly life-changing and nothing will convince me that it isn't Good for the Jews to respect and include the people who had been rejected before. I present this as a counter to the depressing narrative that the "as a Jew"s are going to get us destroyed. The "as a Jew"s are going to get some Jews killed and then assimilate away, but the revivified parts of Jewish community are going to survive just fine.
Shelah, I am not Jewish and have no Jewish family. I am also an unaffiliated voter. I unequivocally support the Jewish people wherever they live. And I respect and support Israel. There are many, many of us out here. We don’t demonstrate against the Jewish people or Israel and we tend to avoid the antisemitic and their unhinged rants.
But believe me, we are here and we exist in numbers much greater than the haters here in the USA. Please don’t count us out. We have your back and always, always will. Your lives are precious and we value you. And we take “never again” to heart.
We’re here for you. Believe that because it’s true.
I know there are non-Jewish souls who actually support the Jewish people, and I have some in my life and I treasure them. From the news, from our universities, from our cultural institutions, and from some of my close ex-friends, you would think none exist. It pains me to feel grateful to a stranger for not hating me sight unseen but that is the status quo. I’m grateful. Thank you for speaking up and thank you for being out there.
No thanks are needed. Decent people stand up for one another. And the people I know would never betray our Jewish friends. So I guess you’re kind of stuck with us.
And, while it may not seem that way, there are a whole lot of us out here who have your backs. Way more than the jerks who strut around at these hateful protests. We’re not loud and we don’t wrap keffiyehs around our faces so we can’t be identified, but we’re here. And we aren’t going anywhere.
I still think Israel's most dangerous enemy is Iran but I can see what you call Fraudulent Liberalism a very close second, maybe tied for first. Joshua, you focused this enemy strictly on Israel but this enemy is the enemy of all of Western culture, Democracy and Capitalism. You didn't mention all its tentacles. Fraudulent Liberalism includes Equity vs Meritocracy, Equity vs Equality, WOKE, DEI, Political Correctness, Radical Feminism, Identity Politics, Moral Relativism, White Colonizers and more. These are all Fraudulent Liberal concepts and they are the enemy not just of Israel, they are the enemies of our way of life. I believe Dr. Gad Saad calls it the "Death of the West by a Thousand Cuts" and it is blatantly true. Freedom of speech only if your speech fits this new Liberalism, Truth and science mean nothing if they stand in the way of political correctness. Victimhood outweighs any atrocity you commit, mathematics is racist, and the list goes on and on. What a "sane" person would consider utter nonsense is now correct. Its a completely Bizarro World and it is slowly destroying our way of life. And of course, the Jews and Israel get the brunt of all of it. papa j
There is nothing noble in the intent of these people. Also, there are hardly any "innocents" in Gaza.
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"Many so-called liberals believe the most important thing right now is to help the innocent Palestinians in Gaza, and they certainly are not the first people to have this truly noble desire. (I say this seriously, not sarcastically.)"
Liberals Democrats they think the same way what’s the difference
You can’t argue logic with people who have different goals. It’s like high school cliques, scaled up—say the right buzzword and you’re in. One wrong move? Social suicide. For college students, likes and retweets are the new currency, and finding one real friend in that landscape is tough. Ironically, it’s often the attention-grabbing ones who loathe themselves the most and need the validation. At 36, I get it now—at 22, not so much. We’re bringing facts and logic to the table, but they just want to be accepted. To change the culture, you’ve got to speak their language and inspire them to accept themselves, not lecture them about how wrong they are—is that tactic ever effective?
Great article. The 80’s called. They want their liberalism back.
Exquisitely put.
The author is 100% right that the major and most dangerous enemy of Israel is the Western (far)-left.
However, it seems to me that there's no need to call them "liberals", fraudulent or not, because a substantial part of these freaks called themselves socialists, anarchists, etc.
Why is anyone surprised?