Why has the Left turned against the Jews?

[Alfred]

To start out with, I do not know the answer. But I would love to hear theories.

Historically, the Left has been very pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. But of late (what, in the last 4 years??) the Left has turned against both Israel, and to a lesser degree, the Jews; and has turned more pro-Islamic. Witness the Berkeley thread etc.

One guess I have is that Israel is being ruled by "conservatives" and that ideology is playing its hand. Would the Left in this country and in Europe be against Israel and the Jews if Barak or Peres were President?

I don't think one can say that the Left has always been anti-semitic, and that it is just coming out. Something has changed. Is it that the Right supports Israel and therefore the Left must not support it? I don't know.

[David_in_NYC]

The left is dedicated to global socialism (a.k.a. "transnational progressivism", or "tranzism", as some have abbreviated it). It has invested its hopes in the UN eventually becoming a one-world government. Arab nations have better than a 20-1 voice in the UN with respect to the Jews. Thus, the interests of the Arabs and the socialists align with regards to increasing the influence of the UN at the expense of national sovereignty.

I do wonder if the Left was ever really pro-Israel. I am trying, but I am struggling to think of something, anything, that the Left has done that is favorable to Israel. (If someone can help me out here that would be great.)

[Mediocrates]

What a big question. For one, there is no 'left.' There are many lefts. I know a few Israelis living in the US who would be quite happy if all the Jews of YESHA were moved out, the wall put in place and they never had to think about anything Palestinian again.

I know American liberals some of them Jewish who wave the bloody shirt like everyone else demanding that Israel simply give back all the the land they stole. I know a few hardcore types like the French communists here who simply hate the fact that of all the revolutions of the 20th C. Zionism is the only one that succeeded whereas theirs failed. I know activist Catholics who honestly just want whats fair for everyone involved and can't grieve over the violence. And I know people who are just sick of paying attention to it all and figure the easiest laziest thing to do would be to just cave in.

So who do you want to talk about?

[Mira~]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
What a big question. For one, there is no 'left.' There are many lefts. I know a few Israelis living in the US who would be quite happy if all the Jews of YESHA were moved out, the wall put in place and they never had to think about anything Palestinian again.

I know American liberals some of them Jewish who wave the bloody shirt like everyone else demanding that Israel simply give back all the the land they stole. I know a few hardcore types like the French communists here who simply hate the fact that of all the revolutions of the 20th C. Zionism is the only one that succeeded whereas theirs failed. I know activist Catholics who honestly just want whats fair for everyone involved and can't grieve over the violence. And I know people who are just sick of paying attention to it all and figure the easiest laziest thing to do would be to just cave in.

So who do you want to talk about?

That's so true.

[Alfred]

Good points.

How about why have the Left in the Universities turned almost completely to the camp of the Arabs? Especially when a large (per capita) percentage of academia are Jewish?

I accept DavidNYC's point about international socialism...and the requirement that the UN be made all-powerful to achieve Tranzism.

Hmmmmm. Wait a second.

If the socialists of the world revolution want the UN to become all powerful, then they must first neutralize the US. That is being attempted from both within and without. Devisive issues are tearing apart the US and hopefully (for the UN) we will fall apart into anarchy. They cannot stand the US because of what we stand for, our money, our influence and our quasi-morality.

Perhaps Israel presents a similar problem to the UN. And it certainly is a partial stop against Islam. But if you get rid of Israel you embolden Islam.....which hates the West. Perhaps Islam will force the rest of the world to unite (under the UN of course) to defend itself against Islam. Or perhaps they believe that without Israel, the Arabs (with their oil money) will help fund a world government dictated out of the UN.

I am probably speaking in circles. Back to the drawing board.

Whatever the reason, I am convinced the French think they will lead the UN someday

[Da Chuckstar]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
What a big question. For one, there is no 'left.' There are many lefts. I know a few Israelis living in the US who would be quite happy if all the Jews of YESHA were moved out, the wall put in place and they never had to think about anything Palestinian again.

I know American liberals some of them Jewish who wave the bloody shirt like everyone else demanding that Israel simply give back all the the land they stole. I know a few hardcore types like the French communists here who simply hate the fact that of all the revolutions of the 20th C. Zionism is the only one that succeeded whereas theirs failed. I know activist Catholics who honestly just want whats fair for everyone involved and can't grieve over the violence. And I know people who are just sick of paying attention to it all and figure the easiest laziest thing to do would be to just cave in.

So who do you want to talk about?

I think that we should focus more on the types who believe that the Jews stole the land from a specific race of people called Palestinians, and that Israel is a colonialist apartheid state. We should also look into why there are Jews who think this way too.

[Mira~]

The Professors are too intellectually lazy to rethink their old colonialist liberation theories, and Israel, although not a classic example of European colonialism, smells and looks enough like a colonialist state to be labeled an “evil oppressor of the native population.” It never occurs to them that roughly the same number of Jews as Palestinians were expelled from the rest of the former Ottoman Empire and that Israel is the only place where those former “Arab Jews” can now live with freedom to openly practice their faith. They don’t want to consider that the situation of population transfer was not unique to this conflict, that around the same time that Israel was created, population exchanges were happening in India and Pakistan, Greece and Turkey and other countries of Europe. The fact that the Jews who ended up in Palestine were refugees fleeing an attempt at their extermination rather than serving the interests of the European motherland is played down. In fact, whenever someone even mentions that if it were not for the holocaust Israel would not have been created, the immediate response is that the holocaust is being used as an excuse to oppress another people. Tell that to the holocaust refugees whose boats were turned around at ports in the UK and the United States. For the Palestinians it was about land but for the Jewish refugees it was about life itself. In any event, they don’t care about that. Almost nobody I have ever discussed the issue with is aware that the early Zionists were invited by King Feisal to settle the land and that the Arabs sold land to the Jews. I could go on and on as I’m sure you know, but the point is that the history of the conflict has been presented in the context of the colonialist model and as we all know colonialism is bad…never mind that the United States was a real colonialist experiment that served the interests of the British and there is no way that any of these “freedom fighters” are about to hand their family’s home over to some Mexican or Native American.

As far as the UN is concerned, there is this mistaken belief that it is a humanitarian organization rather than a debating forum for countries to advance their own political interests. They know the exact number of resolutions the UN has come up with against Israel, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone who could tell you anything about how the UN handled the Falklands crisis, Grenada, the Abu Eain Resolution (which basically paved the way for legitimizing terror) or anything else.

You never hear about what has happened in the Sudan or the Congo, Tibet is really quite passé…basically if it is a conflict that involves internecine fighting (African against African, Asian against Asian…) it doesn’t matter even if the murder rate reaches holocaust proportions, it’s just not interesting enough to warrant their attention. That’s why the same professors who lambast Israel now for its treatment of the Palestinians probably didn’t give a rats tail about the Palestinians when the Jordanians were slaughtering them by the thousands.

[abu afak]

Why is this string "In the News" ? ?

This is "US Politics and Elections" (and it's subject mentioned/discussed in several strings I put there) or "Israel-World Relations".

[NewsGuy]

True, although there are many different kinds of Leftists, the Left in general is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. There are a few reasons for the Leftist leanings, and I should again repeat that not all Leftists fall into any one particular category.

The Left is a movement that considers itself to want to bestow socialist benefits on those who are less fortunate in the world. The problem, as we know, is that the Left wants to save the world with other people’s money, not their own, and to impose their own definition of who is a victim upon all of society. So instead of giving charity to the poor from their own pockets, the Left legislates an unfair tax burden on those are successful in society (many of whom are Conservatives), and attempts to pass laws to impose the Leftist agenda on all of society. I mention this because I am leading up to the Leftist notion of accountability (or lack thereof, actually).

In the Leftist world, there is no individual accountability. If criminals attack and murder innocent families, the criminals are never to blame. Instead “society” is to blame. If entire sections of America’s big cities are off limits to middle class taxpayers who shoulder most of the municipal tax burden, then it is again “society’s” fault.

For the Left, it’s never a problem that the freedom to walk in one’s own city or to raise one’s family in a violence-free society has been eliminated. Instead, again, “society” is to blame, and criminals are of course entitled to more Constitutional protection than the middle class taxpayer.

The Left is convinced that anyone who is an educational or economic failure is surely a victim of our “unjust” society and the rest of society must bear the burden to compensate the underclass. There is no such concept that perhaps some of those who are less fortunate might be to blame for their own predicament, as they might have been unwilling to put in the hard work required to improve themselves. Nor is there a recognition among the Left that some of the criminals might just be plain evil and too damn lazy to be productive members of society, and instead have chosen to use violence and theft to get what they want.

Against this backdrop comes the Leftist perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Left has decided that the Palestinian mass murderers cannot possibly be held accountable for blowing up restaurants and city buses and, instead, like any other mass-murderers, they must be victims. Same thing for radical Islam as a whole, whether in Israel or in the U.S.

For the Left, radical Muslim terrorists are people, too, just like you and me, and therefore, they are entitled to be treated like any other people — and maybe even better. After all, the Islamic terrorists must have legitimate grievances and must be victims, because they murder innocent women and children, they are undereducated, they don’t hold normal jobs, they hate mainstream America, they are anti-Semitic, and they support America’s enemies. All of those characteristics of the Palestinians make up iron-clad proof in the eyes of the Leftists, that the Palestinians are victims and must be compensated at the expense of decent society -- in this case Israel. Hence, the Leftist support for the Palestinian cause.

[merkava16]

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[abu afak]

Unholy Alliance

By J. Michael Waller
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 20, 2003

The convergence of the radical Left and radical Islam continues. Former icons of social tolerance and sexual liberation are making common cause with the most intolerant and sexist social forces on earth. Left-wing American defenders of Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for his ethnic cleansing campaign to exterminate Muslims from the former Yugoslavia, now welcome U.S. Muslim groups as building blocks in their coalitions. Trendy supporters of revolutionary cop-killers like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal link their heroes’ murderous causes (while proclaiming Peltier and Mumia’s innocence) to those of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the various Islamic Jihad terrorist groups.

On February 15 and 16, they joined forces in the streets of hundreds of cities and towns around the world – literally from Boston to Baghdad – in coordinated protests unseen in size and scope since the Soviet Union ran the nuclear freeze movement two decades ago. Remnants of the old Communist Party USA like Leslie Cagan coordinated protests on one end through her United for Peace and Justice entity; the fanatically pro-North Korean Workers World Party (WWP), via its International Action Center (IAC) and International ANSWER front groups, organized on the other, pausing to wish a happy birthday to Kim Jong-il, who turned 61 over the weekend. Kim’s party paper, Rodong Sinmun, exhorted followers to “burn with hatred and hostility in their hearts” toward the United States.

Some of the nation’s most prominent Muslim groups, or more correctly, a collection of small but vocal groups that claim to speak for American Muslims, joined the protests.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), at the state level, endorsed the U.S.-out-of-Iraq demonstrations coast to coast. In Chicago, CAIR endorsed the protests, calling itself “one of the initial endorsers and organizers” for the event. CAIR formally joined the ANSWER coalition in Los Angeles.

Nationally, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) joined the ANSWER coalition, urging the “community” to take to the streets against President Bush’s efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein and liberate the Iraqi people. In a weird February 11 statement, it asked “Americans” to “defend White House employees” – a reference to a low-ranking White House staffer whom critics say has a pattern of clearing pro-terrorist Muslim American activists into meetings with President Bush and other senior officials.

The American Muslim Council (AMC) didn’t make a public show over the February 15 weekend, but it did join the ANSWER coalition’s January 18 protests that marked the 12th anniversary of the Persian Gulf War, or what AMC referred to as the “war against the people of Iraq.” While the AMC joined others, particularly semi-official voices in the Saudi press, calling on Saddam Hussein to resign, it also embraced ANSWER. On January 15 it circulated an ANSWER flyer on its listserv, exhorting followers via e-mail to march on the White House. AMC national board treasurer Ali Khan led a caravan of Indiana and Chicago activists to the demonstration in Washington.

AMC, like other U.S. Muslim groups that have long coveted legitimacy in official Washington, likes to play things both ways. Click to its website, www.amconline.org, and a ghostly image of Malcolm X flashes for a fraction of a second before a very mainstream-looking, red, white and blue homepage appears. That’s just a symptom of how the AMC operates. Since September 11, 2001, AMC has demanded – and received – the highest-level acceptance in the U.S. government. FBI Director Robert Mueller even spoke at the AMC’s national convention last June 28, with an FBI spokesman calling the AMC “the most mainstream Muslim group in the country.”

The FBI media unit, when pressed, could produce nothing to substantiate the claim, but a visibly uncomfortable Mueller addressed the conference anyway. That appearance, with the FBI publicity unit’s imprimatur, gave the AMC more credibility than ever – even though that very month the organization was haranguing the Bureau for its investigation of domestic Muslim groups.

The AMC calls itself an “active member” of the National Committee to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), a William Kunstlerite group founded in the 1960s to provide legal support to terrorists and those who raise money and provide material support for them. Its causes have ranged from members of the Weather Underground to the Maoist Shining Path of Peru, to Abdul Rahman, the Egyptian “Blind Sheik” responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. NCPPF’s executive director is Kit Gage works full-time as head of the old Stalinist National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Its president is Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor who reportedly was a founding leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

AMC founder Abdurahman Alamoudi is by his own admission an enthusiastic supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah Рthe latter being responsible for the 1980s killing of 241 U.S. Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing, and for the car bombing of the American Embassy in Lebanon. Alamoudi recruited young and attractive Muslim political activists and helped them set up spinoff groups to influence mainstream political parties. He provided seed money for one of those groups, the Islamic Institute, which is chaired by his former prot̩g̩, Khaled Saffuri.

The AMC likes to say now that the controversial Alamoudi is no longer with the organization and that it condemns all forms of terrorism. But Alamoudi isn’t alone. AMC’s former executive board president, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, was twice on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Under his old name in the 1960s as H. Rap. Brown, he threatened to assassinate Lady Bird Johnson when she was First Lady of the U.S. He’s now a lifer in a Georgia prison for the 2000 murder of Fulton County Sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Kinchen.

AMC’s new leadership is no less extreme. In the week before the FBI director’s speech to the organization, various television talk show hosts including Alan Keyes, then of MSNBC, and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, tried to get the AMC executive director, Eric Ervan Vickers, to denounce Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda by name. While denouncing acts of terrorism, Vickers avoided denouncing the terrorist groups themselves.

On June 19, 2002, Linda Vester of Fox News asked Vickers, “Do you condemn al Qaeda by name and condemn Hamas by name?” According to the transcript, Vickers would not. Fox News anchor Brit Hume commented, “All right, so, there you go. And she pressed him further, but that’s as far as she ever got with that.”

Journalist Fred Barnes, on a panel with Hume, illustrated the hypocrisy: “These groups are outraged about what the victims are doing here in the United States. Their big effort is to oppose reasonable steps to protect the United States from further attacks. That's where they aim their fire, not at these terrorists who are doing this in the name of their very own religion.”

The night before Mueller addressed the AMC, guest host Mike Barnicle on CNBC's Hardball asked Vickers to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. Vickers would not. Barnicle followed, "How about al-Qaeda?" According to the transcript, Vickers' only response was, "They are involved in a resistance movement......"

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...le.asp?ID=6256

J. Michael Waller is vice president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.

[Boblight]

In an article by Lee Kaplan he states that Saudi-Arabia has donated billions of $$$$ to Campuses and Universities all around the country and world( including UC Berkeley, Harvard) to name a few. Through these Universities Saudis have propagated Anti-Israel propaganda on College Campuses. It is now profitable to be Anti-Israel on Campus.. Time for someone in the White-House to stand up to Saudi propaganda!!! Bob

[Boblight]

Also check out the hatred comming from the Facist right at their Annual meeting in New Orleans this May.. See WWW.Splc.org, Bob

[Mediocrates]

Where is that info?

[wellofvow]

To start out with, I do not know the answer. But I would love to hear theories.

Historically, the Left has been very pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. But of late (what, in the last 4 years??) the Left has turned against both Israel, and to a lesser degree, the Jews; and has turned more pro-Islamic. Witness the Berkeley thread etc.

One guess I have is that Israel is being ruled by "conservatives" and that ideology is playing its hand. Would the Left in this country and in Europe be against Israel and the Jews if Barak or Peres were President?

I don't think one can say that the Left has always been anti-semitic, and that it is just coming out. Something has changed. Is it that the Right supports Israel and therefore the Left must not support it? I don't know.

I will probably be tarred and feathered out of the forum for this, but I really think that it is much, much simpler than anyone has suggested.

The "Left", and especially the media, favor the underdog. That's the "liberal" thing to do. As long as Israel was the underdog ("victim" in LeftSpeak), hey, everyone loved the plucky Jews - who were attacked over and over, and as long as we lost a considerable percentage of a generation, we were great.

Along comes the 1967 war. Israel won big, and it was hard to see it as the underdog. 1973, and it became even harder. Then the Arab propaganda machine got smart, and made Arab terrorists into "guerrilla freedom fighters", even when they killed high school kids at Maalot and sportsmen at the Olympics. Hey, freedom fighters can't be BAD, can they????

I think it's just that simple. Why? Because the media and the so-called liberals are bone-lazy and, well, stupid.

Alfred, did you mean if Barak or Peres were President of the United States or President of Israel? The President of Israel has no real power. Did you mean Prime Minister? Hey, both were, and everyone still hated us.

Anyhow, that's my theory.