July 4th weekend.
We've got a bunch of people coming over today for a party and I've been wracking my brains concerning my usual Sunday EOZ piece.
I thought maybe that I would mine Israel Thrives for some older material and then acknowledged the obvious.
The Elder is featured on this Tuesday's Nothing Left radio show with Michael Burd and Alan Freedman.
I am friendly with those guys and I am friendly with this guy and so it makes obvious sense to plug the Elder's interview.
Naturally it tends to help that I am also on the broadcast.
What I really want, however, is to talk to you guys about fairly obvious criticisms of diaspora Left Jewry.
Besides they bring in Isi Liebler on a weekly basis and one thing is certain, that guy is a tough old Jew.
Smart fellah, too, I get the sense.
In any case, my brief pieces over the coming weeks are not partisan.
It is not about Right versus Left or Republican versus Democrat.
This about what I call, on Israel Thrives, the "Failures of Progressive-Left Zionism." And you can find links to those brief pieces if you scroll-down toward the right-hand of the page.
These are:
1) Refusing to Discuss Islamist Threat
My first piece in this series, which you can hear on Tuesday, is concerned with precisely that.
The progressive-left, and the Democratic Party under Barack Obama, can barely breathe the words "Islamic terrorism." I honestly do not know if they are trying to fool us or are sincerely fooling themselves. I suspect the former, though.
2) Whipping Up Hatred Toward Other Jews
The progressive-left imagination tends to harbor "Good Jews" and "Bad Jews."
The "Good Jews" are those who tend to dislike the "Bad Jews" and the "Bad Jews" are any who live where neither Barack Obama nor his friend, Mahmoud Abbas, want them to live in Judea and Samaria. The "Bad Jews" also include people such as myself - and perhaps yourself - who insist that Jewish people have at least as much right to live anywhere within the Land of Israel as Rastafarians have to live in the Czech Republic.
Obama does not get to tell Jewish people that they may not live in Hebron or anyplace else in the land of Jewish patrimony.
So sorry.
3) Forever Playing Defense
Diaspora Jews are not a very aggressive bunch.
British Jews, in particular, like to keep their heads down and hope for the best... because, y'know, that strategy has worked out so well in the past.
4) The Moral Equivalency Canard
Everything tends to be a little-bit-of-this and a little-bit-of-that in Jewish Left thinking.
Sure, Palestinian terrorism is bad, but what about Kahane?
What about the Occupation? (With the Big O?)
I will dig into it when I get around to recording this one.
5) Ignoring Jewish History
Would anyone ever consider discussing the circumstances of Black people in the United States without at least some reference to the history of slavery and Jim Crow?
The truth, of course, is that any discussion of the circumstances of Black people in the United States would be entirely incomprehensible without placing those circumstances within historical context.
One must at least give reference to both slavery and Jim Crow.
And, yet, somehow, thirteen long centuries of dhimmi status living under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism seems to count for nothing in discussions of the conflict among left-leaning diaspora Jewry.
In fact, I am not certain that even they are aware of it!
6) Frenemies
Many progressive-left Jews have the same inclination as Barack Obama.
They spit on their friends while courting their enemies.
I don't think that I have seen so much contempt for any group of people on the planet than the contempt that Jewish progressives show for Evangelical Christians. Holy Christ! You would think that those people chopped the heads off of Muslims in the streets of Wichita, Kansas, or hung Gay people from cranes in Columbus, Ohio, in the way that the Jewish left spits contemptuously at their Evangelical neighbors.
Those people are allies and we can disagree with them in the spirit of allies.
To do otherwise is, frankly, stupid.
In any case, this is the kind of material that I will be discussing, at the discretion of Michael and Alan, for the next few weeks on Nothing Left.
And the Elder is on schedule for an interview this Tuesday.
Check it out.
Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.
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