Monday, July 11, 2022
From Ian:
Alan M. Dershowitz: Why Does the Palestinian Cause Get So Much Attention?
Alan M. Dershowitz: Why Does the Palestinian Cause Get So Much Attention?
Why does the Palestinian cause get so much attention, when there are much more compelling causes around the world such as those of the Kurds, Uyghurs, and other stateless and oppressed people? There are more demonstrations on university campuses against Israel than against Russia, China, Belarus and Iran. Why?The Liberation of the Arabs From the Global Left
The answer has little to do with the Palestinians, and everything to do with Israel, as the nation state of the Jewish people. It is a political manifestation of international antisemitism. It is only because the nation accused of oppressing Palestinians is Israel.
It has little to do with the merits and everything to do with antisemitism. It calls itself anti-Zionism, but it is only a cover for anti-Jewish bigotry.
A recent example is the decision of Ben and Jerry's ice cream to boycott parts of Israel, while continuing to sell to countries in which far greater abuses occur. When asked why Ben and Jerry's limits their boycott only to Israel, its founders admitted they had no idea.
Who is leading the crowd of antisemitic bigots? The movement to single out the nation state of Israel for boycott, known as BDS, was originated by a Palestinian radical named Omar Barghouti, who does not hide the fact that his goal is the destruction of Israel....
Do the Palestinians deserve a state? Yes, but no more so than the Kurds and other stateless people. Why no more so? Because the Palestinians have been offered statehood numerous times and have rejected it.
Palestinians were offered a state on the vast majority of arable land, as part of a United Nations proposed two state solution; the Jews were offered a state on a far smaller area of arable land. The Jews accepted the compromise two state solution. The Arabs rejected it and went to war against the new Jewish state seeking to destroy it. It was this act of unlawful military aggression that resulted in the Palestinian refugee situation, which they call the "Nakba" ("catastrophe"). But it was a self-induced catastrophe. And many current Palestinian leaders and followers fault their predecessors for not accepting the two-state solution offered by the United Nations 75 years ago.
The Palestinians could have had a state in 1948, 1967, 2000-2001, 2005 and 2008. They still preferred no Jewish state to a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel. They can have a state now, if they would negotiate a compromise instead of fomenting terrorism.
I wonder how many of those who demonstrate against Israel have any idea of this history.
Leftist intellectuals such as Judith Butler and Noam Chomsky are therefore not wrong when they declare that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran are part of the international left. A journey of philosophical inversions started from a Hegelian inversion of Christian theology, then a Marxist inversion of Hegelianism, a fascist-Nazi inversion of Leninism, the globalization of European thought, the conversion into Arab nationalism, its fragmentation into Arab Marxism and Palestinian radicalism, and their inversion back into theology, creating an ideological tornado with antisemitism as its vortex. The aggregate result was the gradual decivilization, and moral and social erosion, of entire Muslim and Arab societies, many of which collapsed unto themselves in spirals of self-destruction.Jerusalem bridge displays Japanese flag in solidarity after assassination of ex-PM
The dissolution of religious thought of otherworldly transcendence into a political transcendence inside history fundamentally transformed and restructured the identity of Islamic religious piety into the piety of struggle. Muslim identity was remolded into an eternal struggle that in its origin is not the jihad of classical texts, but the German dialectic world made by Marx. A religious doctrine of martyrdom and eternal life in the hereafter merged into a cult of the eternal revolutionary glory and hero worship of the Che Guevara type. This is the best explanation one could offer for the peculiar phenomenon of Muslim societies becoming more religious since the late 1970s in a way that only translated into more rage, more rebellion, less moral restraints on violence and sexuality, and conspicuous pagan worship of pain, blood, and misery. This is also the best explanation for why the societies of the Arab Gulf, which did not modernize during the 20th century, seem to have a much smoother transition away from antisemitism into social liberalization and peaceful worldviews.
Let’s assume I’m correct, and Islamists got this idea by way of a global revolutionary culture that got it from Lenin who got it from Marx who got it, not by way Plato as Popper assumed, but by way of rediscovery through inverting Hegel’s inversion of Christian theology. Doesn’t this theory naturally fall right back into the religious dogmatism that is associated with Marxist intellectuals? Raymond Aron rightfully thought so in his Opium of the Intellectuals. Theory then reverts into a theology that becomes a political religion waging religious wars, schisms, ancestral worship, and textual fanaticism. Theology made philosophy by Hegel, philosophy made politics by Marx, and then politics was made into a religion. So naturally, Qutb’s and Khomeini’s conversion of the Marxist inversion reverted back into theology. But what does theology lose by this double inversion and what does it gain? Much. It becomes a religion of atheistic politics. It loses all its basis of religious justification and with it its entire moral structure and becomes an immanentist atheistic theology that leads to no redemption, no transcendence, and nowhere.
I want to emphasize what this article is not saying. I’m not saying that any form of Islamic fundamentalism could be attributed to modern revolutionary thought. Indeed, all religions have their own forms of modern fundamentalism as a response to modern liberal social organization. But Islamic fundamentalism proper means a rigid and ultra-conservative social ethos that is resistant to social change, as best exemplified in the Salafism that until recently dominated the Arab Gulf.
What the union of imported European ideologies like Marxism, Nazism, and existentialism with Islam accomplished was to profoundly alter the entire conceptual scheme and epistemological foundations of Arab societies so that even Islamic fundamentalism, unbeknownst to itself, could no longer provide a pre-revolutionary reading of Islam. European moral philosophical traditions and their language managed to make a tectonic shift that resulted in the development of a modern Islamic political theology that is totalitarian, dystopian, and revolutionary. The Islam of Iran, ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaida is simply a regional variant of progressive Western revolutionary thought.
Yet I am not saying that the West is to blame for this development. For if this article seeks to affirm anything it is that the West-Islam dichotomy is not only meaningless but delusional. Cultural and moral relativism are meaningless when the foundation of all our modern moral and political thinking comes from the same place. Europe has managed to create a truly global human culture that no longer has ideational barriers and in which fashion, style, fads, and ideas form global mimetic contagions.
This is a story of a global nightmare constructed by intellectuals from all religious and national backgrounds. The Enlightenment and its aftermath are now just as solidly a part of Islamic intellectual makeup as they are in Western cultures, and if the Muslim world is to move forward it would be through the recognition and not the denial of this fact. If the moral and social destruction of the region resulted from incompetent Arab intellectuals sleepwalking in the orbit of a global culture, the solution is competence. The exploitation of the intellectual, social, and political energies of impoverished and pre-modern societies for use as cannon fodder in the great ideological battles of the Western left has had disastrous effects on the social, economic, and political development and progress of many Arab and Muslim societies. In this regard, the Western left’s theology of how the West destroyed other societies has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, from which it is now our duty and obligation to liberate ourselves.
Jerusalem’s Chords Bridge was lit up to show the Japanese flag alongside the Israeli flag on Sunday evening as a sign of solidarity with the Japanese people following last week’s assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
“The city of Jerusalem sends its condolences to the Japanese people and mourns the death of a friend of Israel, a great leader of his people and the entire world,” Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said in a statement.
Abe was shot from behind minutes after he started a speech Friday in Nara in western Japan. He was airlifted to a hospital for emergency treatment but was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was pronounced dead later at the hospital.
The 67-year-old Abe was Japan’s longest-serving leader before stepping down for health reasons two years ago. He served in 2006-2007 and again from 2012 to 2020.
Israeli leaders were quick to express their shock and condolences on Friday at the assassination of the former Japanese prime minister.
“On behalf of the government and people of Israel, I send my condolences to the Japanese people and their government on the tragic death of former prime minister Shinzo Abe,” Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement. “Abe was one of the most important leaders of modern Japan, and a true friend of Israel who brought about flourishing and prosperous relations between Israel and Japan.”
