The Failures of Progressive-Left Zionism: Jewish Pioneers (Michael Lumish)

Michael Lumish, of the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under, continues his weekly column here at EoZ.

---

Thus far, I have developed six main criticisms of the Jewish left, particularly the diaspora Jewish left.

These include:

1)  A general disinclination to publicly discuss the rise of political Islam and the role of the Obama administration within that political development.

2)  A tendency to demean and denigrate those Jews who choose to live beyond the "green line" in the land of Israel, which is what I will address today.  The reason for that, as people like John Kerry constantly tell us, is because the "settlers" are viewed as an obstacle to peace.

3)  The tendency to forever play defense.  This was a criticism that I had even before my Daily Kos departure.  The pattern was almost always the same.  They attack.  We defend.  They attack.  We defend.  This is true throughout western-left venues, more generally.  It is not merely a matter of Daily Kos, but of the western-left political media, including places that I tend to highlight like the Huffington Post and the Guardian.

4)  The inclination to buy-into what I call the "moral equivalency canard."  The idea is that Israel's measures of self-defense are painted as reprehensible as Arab efforts to kidnap or kill Jews.

5)  Ignoring Jewish history.  I am a broken record on this issue.  We must place our discussion of the conflict within thirteen centuries of Jewish submission to Arab-Muslim and Turkish imperial rule until the fall of the Ottoman Empire.  Discussing the Arab-Israel conflict without that frame of reference would be like discussing the history of African-Americans without reference to either slavery or Jim Crow.  Lacking the necessary historical context, the entire discussion becomes incoherent, unhelpful and unjust.

6)  There is the very strange and unique tendency among diaspora left Jews to partner with those who spit hatred at the Jewish State while contemptuously disdaining those who are terrific friends.  Maybe we should call this the Obama Syndrome.  The Evangelicals, of course, immediately leap to mind.  While I disagree with them on... well... practically everything, I definitely acknowledge that they are true friends to Israel.  The reason that I acknowledge that they are true friends to Israel is because they are true friends to Israel, although recent reports suggest that may be changing.

I do not expect that these concepts are the least bit unfamiliar to the Elder's readership and they are hardly original to me.

Nonetheless, this Sunday I want to talk about number two, the tendency among western-left Jews to demean and denigrate our friends and family that live in Judea and Samaria.  One of the pleasures that I have as a pro-Jewish / pro-Israel blogger and writer is that I get to promote others.

The Jews of the Middle East are a people under siege and we are only now beginning to grapple with the kidnapping of Naftali Frenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrach.

What I truly resent, however, is the defamation of our fellow Jews in Judea and Samara by progressive-left disapora Jews who blame Arab intransigence on people like my friends Yosef and Melody in Hebron.

This was originally cross-posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.)

Progressive-left Jewish Zionists are failing the Jewish people.

If the first way in which progressive-left Zionism is failing is in its ostrich-like reluctance to acknowledge, and seriously discuss, the rise of the Jihad throughout the Muslim Middle East, another way is through their justifying bigotry against their own people.

Progressive-left Jews are encouraging hatred toward their fellow Jews.  Jews who dare to live in Judea and Samaria are targets not only of Palestinian terrorists, but of progressive-left diaspora Jews who spit hatred at those people.  What is most galling, perhaps, is that these "settlers" are living under exceedingly difficult circumstances, while their Jewish persecutors usually live in clean, safe apartments and houses in Europe, Australia, and North America.  Those of us who live in the United States need not worry that a crazed Jihadi will sneak into our 3 month old baby daughter's room and chop off her head.  Yet, progressive-left diaspora Jews feel free to malign these people.

If Israel is the Jew among nations then the settlers are the Jew among Jews.  I think that it is a disgrace and I've written about this before in a 2010 piece entitled, Liberal Jewish Suckers:

I personally do not care whether Jews live there or not. I am not in favor of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Nor do I oppose Jewish settlements in the West Bank. For that matter, I also do not oppose Episcopalians living in Skokie, Illinois, nor Rastafarians living in Kathmandu, Nepal, nor Ethiopians living in Walla Walla, Washington. What we are being told, though, is that Jews living, and thus building, in the West Bank is an impediment to the peace process. This is nonsense. How can the mere presence of Jews in the West Bank prevent Mahmoud Abbas from sitting across the table from Benjamin Netanyahu? All they need to do is agree on Israel's final borders, and thus the borders of the forthcoming Palestinian state, and then those Jews who live in the newly formed state of Palestine will be living under Palestinian rule. Presumably many will leave under those conditions because, or so I guess, most would prefer not to live under Palestinian sovereignty. But should that not be up to them?

Of course, it should. The problem is that when Barack Obama demanded "total settlement freeze" then Mahmoud Abbas was put into the position in which he could demand nothing less, thus ruining any potential there may have been for a negotiated peace. Now, this is, of course, terrible enough, but what compounds the problem is progressive-left Jewish hatred toward those very people who Abbas and Obama do not want living, and thus building, on historically Jewish land.

To my mind there are few things in this world more revolting than Jews who whip up hatred toward other Jews. I do not like it when anti-Semitic Jewish Israel Haters spit poison and hatred at the Jewish state of Israel and I do not like it when progressive-left diaspora Jews spit poison and hatred at the so-called "settlers." It creates bigotry and it justifies violence against us. It gets used by anti-Semites to justify the very hatred that necessitated the creation of the Jewish state to begin with.

Why must any future state of Palestine be Judenrein? Israel does not demand that their Palestinian population pack up and move out, yet not only does Abbas and the PA insist upon the dismantling of Jewish settlements in their areas of jurisdiction, but even liberal American Jews do so. This is not only a form of unjust bigotry, it is, itself, an impediment to the peace process. Let me be clear. It is not Jewish settlements in the West Bank that are an impediment to the peace process, but the insistence that Jews must not be allowed to live, and thus build, in the West Bank that is the impediment to the peace process.

In this way progressive-left diaspora Jews, who complain bitterly about Jews building housing for themselves in Judea, end up justifying the conflict. If the very idea of Jews building housing for themselves in Judea is so horrendous, and if diaspora Jews whine and bitch and moan about it, how can we blame the Palestinians for refusing to accept Jewish people on that land?

I know that some will say that it's not about Jews, per se, but about Israeli nationals. This is nonsense. Does anyone honestly think that anyone else would care if those people were Muslim? Of course, not. The problem here is not that they are Israelis, but that they are Jews.

Pretending otherwise fools no one.