Betrayal (Michael Lumish)

The progressive-left, and the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic Party, has betrayed its Jewish constituency through its acceptance of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, and the BDS movement, as part of its larger coalition.

This betrayal is a symptom of the undermining of progressive-left values due to the ascendancy of the multicultural ideal over that of universal human rights within the heart of the western progressive movement and of the Democratic Party in the United States and the West, more generally.

The undermining of universal human rights as a core value within the progressive movement led also to the betrayal of women, the betrayal of Gay people, and the betrayal of Christians throughout Islamic regions of dominance, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, but also in Europe.

It also brought the defamation of Jewish supporters of Israel as something akin to Nazis or "ZioNazis," as is sometimes claimed, in a delicious inversion of historical reality for the purpose of beating up Jews as guilty for the very crime that murdered our families.

The movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Jews of the Middle East (BDS), which has found a home for itself within the international progressive-left and the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic party in the United States, has a history that goes to traditional Islamic Jew hatred, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.

Within traditional Islam, of course, the Jews were mainly considered second and third-class non-citizens for 1,300 years throughout the region, including the Jewish homeland of Judaea and Samaria. The Arab-Muslim boycott of the Jews is derived, in part, from the fact that within al-Sharia no land that was ever under Islamic control can ever be considered anything but part of the vast Arab-Muslim holdings of Dar al-Islam. The Arab boycott of the Jews, in the twentieth-century, was also heavily influenced by the earlier Nazi boycott of Jewish goods which served as an example and inspiration that long outlived World War II; a war that actually never ended for the Jews of the Middle East.

Soviet Communism, of course, allied with the Arab states against the Jewish State of Israel during the Cold War and Marxist ideology, as it expressed itself in the west, opposed all forms of nationalism, but particularly Jewish nationalism.

The rise of post-modernity and neo-colonial theory within western academic fields in the humanities, following World War II, gave rise to important theorists such as the late Edward Said, of Columbia University, and Rashid Khalidi, of the University of Chicago, both of whom represent significant influences on the political ideology of US president Barack Obama.

Meanwhile a new generation of Israeli historians, including Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé, and Avi Shlaim, sought to deconstruct the idealized founding myths of the Jewish State in order to allegedly present a more balanced historical picture.

All of these factors came together in the beginning of the twenty-first century to create a political alliance between "Arab Spring" Sharia Islamists, of the type aboard the Turkish Mavi Marmara, and western progressives, including significant "liberal" politicians, who joined them aboard that ship for the purpose of freeing Hamas to break that blockade and bring additional weaponry into Gaza in May 2010.

Thus, through the final months of 2012, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and their allies could launch hundreds of rockets against the minority Jewish population of the Middle East without any concern by the western progressive-left, including most of progressive-left Jewry. And, yet, when Israel finally hit back the Jews of the Middle East were castigated as something akin to Nazis by many within western-left circles.