Our Children Are The Guarantors

Defending Zionism from its detractors. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. Let the other side apologize for a change.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Response to “The Problem of Anti-Semitism” on Daily Kos

This diary, by Nathan Jaco, dated to Sunday, October 8, 2006, is relatively mild-mannered as far as Israel/Palestine diaries on DKos go, but that may not be to its credit, because soft-spoken anti-Zionism is just a more pleasing package for the hardcore anti-Semitism of old. I’m frustrated at how the media in Israel reports every incendiary remark or violent incident by the Far Right in the West, while ignoring, or at best not giving enough time to, the far more dangerous moves on the Left (and not just the Far Left). It’s high time to realize the mantle of anti-Semitism has passed to the Left, with anti-Zionism its new covering to make it intellectually acceptable.

The address of the diary is:
www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/8/42216/9416

There is a stark differential between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

You mean “difference”. No, there isn’t—Zionism is an inseparable part of being Jewish (take a look at any Jewish prayer book or Passover Haggadah: laced with prayers to return to the land of Israel with Jerusalem, also called Zion, as its capital), so anti-Zionism is inherently a form of Jew-hatred. It’s the same as if you said, “I’m not anti-Semitic, I’m just against kosher slaughter”.

This may be unilaterally appropriate phraseology, as anti-Semitism may be derivative of anti-Zionism but anti-Zionism is not necessarily derivative of anti-Semitism.

If so, then can you tell me why no other state than Israel ever receives such arguments against it? Why is it that Pakistan, a state set up on Hindu lands (including the Indus valley, where the first archeological findings of Indian civilization were found) solely for addressing the demands of Indian Muslims for sovereignty, and involving the dispossession, if not outright butchery, of millions of Hindus in the process, garners nary a peep for the “Rights for Oppressed Peoples” crowd, while Israel is constantly asked, nay, ordered to give up a hefty portion of its diminutive area for an invented nation that hasn’t shown the slightest willingness to uphold permanent peace with the other side?

First you apply your standard toward Pakistan and then we’ll talk about the possibility of anti-Zionism not being necessarily a derivative of anti-Semitism. Until then, I’m going to call you lefties off for that trick every time.

Those of us who oppose Israel's (read: the US's) policies toward the Palestinians are not all racist against the Jewish people […]

That statement is true only if you criticize those policies in context, the context being suicide bombing, launching rockets from areas evacuated for the sake of peace, and a poisonous media and education system. If you just harp on about “occupation” and “IDF brutality” and “the grueling experiences at checkpoints” and “the apartheid wall” without taking the wrongs of the other side into account, then yes, your opposition toward Israel’s policies toward the “Palestinians” does constitute anti-Semitism.

[…] or opposed to the religion to which they adhere.

See above: Zionism is not an accessory to Judaism.

The streams of consciousness that the Jews, in connection with some kind of Masonic conspiracy or the like, are responsible for all significant world events, particularly the events of 9/11, are far from well-founded or even coherently articulated from my experiences.

Then you might want to have a word with your leftist buddies Walt and Mearsheimer, who have given that stream of consciousness a new dressing for our times.

"The Protocols..." was first published in 1905 as an appendix in a Sergei Nilus book "The Great in the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on the Earth." It strikes one as ironic that was is considered to be the central piece of evidence of the Jewish conspiracy by some anti-Zionists was first published in a book about the Christian eschatological beliefs, as those evangelicals who focus on the Christian apocalypse are currently among the most vocal proponents of Zionism.

It doesn’t strike me as ironic at all: the Russians are Eastern Orthodox Christians, and those, to this day, still hold to the belief that G-d’s promises to the Jews were canceled (afra l’fumayhu—dirt to their mouths [of those who say such a thing]) and wholly transfered to the Christians. Whereas the Christian Zionists hold that G-d keeps His promises to the Jews and has the Christians share in them.

I feel this fact serves my personal argument quite well. An argument which goes as follows: the main proponents of Zionism are Anglo imperialists and religious fanatics who wish to use the state of Israel to achieve their own ends, […]

Anglo imperialists”?! If that isn’t a racist expression, I don’t know what is. I thought racism was the cardinal sin among the Left. Ah, but I forgot: racism against Westerners is A-OK.

Imperialism, by the way, deserves some second thoughts. Read the article Message to Islamists: Don’t Tread on Me on The American Spectator, it’s very thought-provoking, wrenching the reader out of the conventional thinking of imperialism as a sign of moral decline. Imperialism of true oppressors like the Communists and the Muslims is evil; but imperialism, even just cultural imperialism, on the part of the West is something you ought to give a few thoughts, for you might not be so in favor of “cultural diversity” if your play or art gallery were shelved just because a certain group considered it blasphemous. Right?

[…] regardless of the dangers it imposes upon the Jewish people.

Please spare me that false air of caring about the Jewish people. If you really cared about the Jewish people, you wouldn’t be calling their defending themselves a “disproportionate response”. And if you really cared about the Muslims, you’d realize their worst enemy is their own religion, not Israeli or US “oppression”.

It is true that some of the founding fathers of American Anglo imperialist, those of the corporate mercantilist variety, were ardent anti-Semites and anti-Zionists, Henry Ford for example, who like Hitler before him, believed "The Protocols..." to be authentic and the Jewish conspiracy to be a legitimate threat to the world. He actually published a collection of racist essays titled "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem".

It should be obvious to a rational and well-informed student of history that there is very little credible evidence to support the claims that this Zionist conspiracy is real. […]

The whole Muslim world still believes The Protocols are authentic, and takes pride in it. For the majority in the West who don’t, there’s The Israel Lobby, a new version to make it respectable in our day. Walt’s and Mearsheimer’s screed is no more credible than The Protocols. All they can show is that there is a lobby for Israel in the US, but they can’t say why that lobby deserves more attention than all the other political lobbies that influence US policy, both foreign and domestic.

The true Zionist conspiracy has been perpetrated by Anglos who wished to use Israel as a staging ground for offensives in the oil-rich region.

To go back on history a bit, the Anglos had involvement in the Middle East long before the state of Israel was born. In fact, those Anglos were quite reluctant to give the Jews land on expense of their Arab friends, as witnessed by the constant backtracking from Balfour’s declaration of 1917 throughout the 1930’s (the White Book and the rest of the decrees closing British Palestine to Jewish refugees during the most critical period—the Holocaust). The Anglos, and the Francos, had no need of a Jewish state in order to occupy the greater part of the Middle East for 30 years—the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I was good enough a pretext, thank you very much. To consider Israel a tool of Anglo-imperialism is little different from Masonic conspiracy theories.

As an anti-Zionist, I find anti-Semitism to be as distasteful as the hatred for the African-American community, for essentially the same reasons. It is the blaming of the disadvantaged group for the evils they have suffered at the hands of others. Perpetuated by the oppressor ingroup in order to alleviate a sense of guilt or redirect the responsibility of the consequences of exploitation and oppression.

This type of Leftist rhetoric carries the semblance of absolute, objective morality, only to be proved relative and subjective because it’s so easily turned on its head, with the oppressed and oppressor being reversed. For which see:

Though I ardently oppose the oppression and murder of the Palestinians and other Arabic nationals at the hands of these Israelis, […]

Perfect: speak about “the oppression and murder of the Palestinians and other Arabic nationals” without taking the context into account. Ignore their incitement to terrorism, ignore their maintenance of an education system that brings little children on the heritage of suicide bombing, ignore their strenuous efforts to sustain the flames of hatred toward the Jews even after receiving lands on which they could build homes and make the desert bloom. And, of course, keep speaking in nationalistic terms (“Palestinians and other Arabic nationals”), ignoring the religion and its world-imperialistic motives behind it all. Leftist blindness at its rawest form. Quod Erat Dhimminstrandum.

[…] I fully realize that these crimes were done with primarily American weapons.

Yeah, you’d have liked them to be done with non-American weapons, because then the USA would be spared the hatred of Muslims. Just like the Germans and Thais are being spared the hatred of Muslims because they aren’t assisting “Israeli crimes” with their weapons. Right.

Just like the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia during the Carter administration.

It was during the Ford administration, but never mind. It was part of the Capitalism vs. Communism maneuvers of the Cold War, before any awareness of the threat of Islamic imperialism, leading to (from our current point of view) bungling on both sides. It was a different age. That doesn’t excuse things, but it does mean the comparison is anachronistic.

Futhermore, it could be feasible that officials in Washington are making the decisions for those in Tel Aviv.

That they are sometimes, and—contrary to the position of The Israel Lobby—often not the best for Israel. Negotiations with terrorists and land concessions have been the frequent results of persuasion of Israel by the officials in Washington, stemming from the Cold War view that those are always preferable to armed conflict, even when the other side is not tied to constraints of minimal rationality and the desire to live as the Communists, for all their faults, were. So, despite the alleged power of The Israel Lobby, the modern Elders of Zion have been surprisingly unsuccessful in getting their Anglo-imperialist lackeys to support their expansionist dreams. Things that make you go, “Hmmmmm…”

This, in my opinion, places most of the blame back on the Anglo community, under the logic of racist conspiracy theorists, who seem to think that the ethnic group of those who perpetrate conspiratorial offenses is an indictment of that ethnic group.

Yet, how are we to deal with the reality that we are that ethnic group; that we are the monsters? (Emphasis mine —ZY)

Ah, the “Backtracking But” (or “yet”, or “although”, or “however”, or any such conjunction), enabling one to condemn an undesirable stance in one breath, and make that same stance in the next.

“We are the monsters”. Yes, we are: not the ones who are willing to kill on account of cartoons, not the ones who consider stoning schoolgirls for religious transgressions a virtue, not the ones who make videos of beheading their victims for all to see… and the list goes on and on, each item the sound of the judge’s mallet declaring the verdict of the Left as morally bankrupt, calling the good evil and the evil good, excusing the perpetrators their crimes just because they’re the underdogs, and blaming their victims just because they are powerful.

In my view, this is all too appropriate and telling about the reality of world history. That the true evil force behind the suffering of the world community is not the disadvantaged outgroup, but the dominant ingroup - the white imperialists.

Nathan just keeps on giving—laying out Leftism in a raw form that everybody could understand. The “Palestinians” are the disadvantaged group, so they could never be blameworthy of their atrocities. The Jews, even if a Leftist finally grants them their being a disadvantaged group (instead of the usual portrayal of Israel as Goliath and the “Israel Lobby” as nearly omnipotent), are still not innocent, for they willingly let themselves be used as tools in the service of the “white imperialists”. “White imperialists”—now here’s an even more blatant instance of racism than the previous “Anglo imperialists”! Hey, ain’t selective anti-racism great?

How timely my post “Race” Over (written one day before this DKos diary) looks now. “White imperialism”—I feel as if I were watching that scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the viceroy of the Maharaja of Pankot Palace complains to Indy of the Britons’ imperialistic obsession with India. Images of Somerset Maugham, the sound of the words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”, go into my head.

Nathan: this is the year 2006. Please wake up. And when you do, wake up the rest of your comrades on the Left.

Those with the power to make all of the wildest fantasy of elaborate conspiracies by repressed peoples a reality using their vast material and political resources.

Yet another implication that repressed peoples are always innocent, by their very nature, and incapable of committing heinous crimes.

I don’t hold to the a priori innocence or malice of any group, whether powerful or weak. It is the facts that lead me to judge if a group is innocent or malicious. Soviet Russia was powerful and evil, the USA is powerful and basically good (at any rate, not of malicious intent), the French Resistance of World War II was weak and good (desiring to liberate their country from imperialistic occupation), the “Palestinians” are weak (though becoming less so with the accumulation of weapons through their tunnels) and evil (because they are not fighting for their own national sovereignty, they are fighting against the national sovereignty of the other side, in the framework of worldwide Islamic imperialism). The Left, instead, goes the easy way of declaring the strong wrong and the weak right, with no further probing into matters needed.

One hopes that this is sufficient evidence that those of us who oppose Zionism for legitimate reasons are not all anti-Semites.

Sorry to disappoint you, but there is no such thing as “opposing Zionism for legitimate reasons”. You may oppose the particulars of Israeli policy for legitimate reasons (but then you need to provide evidence that your reasons are really legitimate), but opposing Zionism means opposing the right of Jews to inhabitation of and sovereignty upon their own land, something to which, in any other case, the reaction of the Left would be a hue and cry over the gross injustice. And anti-Zionism, again, is a form of anti-Semitism because G-d’s order for Jews to inhabit the land He gave them and worship Him there (a goodly number of the mitzvot in the Torah can be carried out only in the Land of Israel) is no different from G-d’s order for Jews to keep the Sabbath. Imagine a non-Jewish employer saying, after firing a Jewish worker, “I’m opposed to Jews switching off their mobile phones on Saturday. That doesn’t make me an anti-Semite”. That employer would be on the receiving end of a religious discrimination lawsuit before you could say “jack”, his “it’s not anti-Semitism” ploy winning him derision in the court at best. Opposition to Zionism is the same.

I try to save my most vitriolic criticisms for those who have the power to exert the greatest influence - for they are the ones who should bear the greatest responsibility.

I find that agreeable. The 1960’s kids who are now in positions of power all over the West bear the greatest responsibility for the present calamity of Islamic infiltration and dhimmitude in the face of it, and they should be called on it.

Here the diary ends. But before I close this post, I just want to bring a savory screenshot from the comments on that diary:

Picture: Commenter ImpeachBushCheney rants about the power of the Israeli lobby, states that supporting Israel is contrary to Progressive principles and calls for the purge of "Israeli lobby operatives" from Daily Kos and the Democratic Party
Screenshot from the Daily Kos diary. Click image to view full size.

To be fair, the commenter has, as of this writing, already received two negative ratings (as well as four positive ones) and a critical comment in reaction. But this goes to show you how intellectually acceptable (in Europe even fashionable) the sentiments of The Protocols have become in Leftist circles. The ADL and other groups monitoring anti-Semitism worldwide had better turn a less sharp eye toward the Far Right and be much more observant of the Left, which, as Victor David Hanson says in his article The New Anti-Semitism (from October 2, 2006), is working in tandem with the overt, classical anti-Semitism of the Muslims, preparing the West for acceptance of a second Holocaust (G-d forbid) as decolonizational reparations for oppressed indigenous peoples.

With a few exceptions (Christopher Hitchens’ type), the Left is indeed the enemy.

Labels:

9 Comments:

Blogger Yoel.Ben-Avraham said...

If you are interesting in following up the subject of the "Left's" bankruptcy, you must see a BBC program available on YouTube.com : "No Excuse for Terror". More than the journalist David Aaranovitch exposes the insidious threat of Islam he exposes the degeneracy of the ideological Left.

October 09, 2006 12:26 AM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

Thanks, I saw one part of it back when it was posted on Hot Air. I'd better watch the rest of it while it's still on YouTube (they've been taking down a lot of anti-Islamic videos lately... craven dhimmis).

Your blogs are interesting, especially Second Thoughts.

October 09, 2006 1:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know how you have the patience to even deal with the nonsense these people spew. I know it is important to confront them, but the avalanche of stupidity and ignorance one is confronted by wading through the MSM, college newspapers, and leftist blogs/websites, is so utterly overwhelming. They are so totally lacking in historical context and repeat this meaningless mythology ad naseum.

For instance, the "Anglos" using Israel as a launching pad against oil rich countries. Ummm, ok, except for the fact that, as you pointed out, Anglos were interested in the ME before Israel had been reborn and before anyone was terribly interested in oil. That and the fact that the US, nor any other "Anglo" nation, has never launched any offensive or defensive military campaign from Israeli soil. Usually launching pads involve launches. But not so in this case I see. That and the fact that these people don't understand how the oil industry works, and don't understand that even if the US did use Israel to attack, oh, Saudi Arabia, that oil could just as easily flow to China as it would to the US (since it would be sold in the international market). There isn't a pipeline that pumps Middle Eastern oil directly to refineries in Texas.

Then they always drop the line "US policies towards the Palestinians." They are parroting something that someone, somewhere read in Chomsky and repeat it like a mantra. But they can't, if pressed, really name what those US policies are probably. The US policy, so far as I can tell, has been to give the Palestinians a state. I'm not really clear why this is upsetting to the Chomskites--other than the fact that the US also thinks it'd be alright if Israel continues to exist, albeit, a bit smaller and less secure and surrounded by anti-democratic, Islamic theocracies.

The really bothersome thing for me, besides is the lack of historical understanding. The leftist mythology is that some Anglo-Imperialist Jews just showed up on the shores of Palestine in 1917 to disposses and opress the mythological Palestinian civilization that already existed there. There was no WWI, no Ottoman Empire, no recognition that the Arabic tribes are not native to Israel, no recognition that the mythological Palestinians were equally occupied by the Ottomans...I mean we could go on and on here. But framing the story of Israel's rebirth as that of Anglo Imperialism is absurd. Moreover, I continuously wonder why these same people, so burdened by their white imperialist guilt, haven't given up their life in America to some "native Americans" and moved back to Europe. If it is wrong for Israel, certainly it is wrong for them. So why don't they take the first one way ticket to France? But logic and consistency are not strong suits of the left.

October 09, 2006 2:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you for another well written article concerning a major problem in this country: Leftist anti-Semitism.

Speaking as a conservative Republican who regularly attends a Southern Baptist church, I can honestly say that I've never heard any word spoken against the Jews or Israel in my church.

In fact, just several weeks ago our Minister and his wife visited Israel and spoke highly of the country; they were most impressed with the toleration and protection by Israel for the religious sites of the Christians.

I find it interesting that two-thirds of the American Jews support and vote for the Democratic Party candidates when clearly some of Israel's most stalwart supporters are conservative Christian Republicans.

You are correct: Anti-Semitism is growing on the Left. It is true that not all Anti-Semites are Leftists, but most Anti-Semites are Leftists in the USA.

October 09, 2006 2:44 PM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

Anon,

You're right, it's something the government of Israel should be doing, using highly-trained operatives, but has instead neglected, leaving the battlefield of hearts and minds open to Muslim conquest. GIYUS, which the Leftists claim to be an IDF-sponsored body, is actually a project set up by a Jewish organization and its members worldwide in response to the crisis, which was at no time more apparent than in the middle of the last Lebanon War, and it was then I decided to set up my own blog as well.

A glaring inconsistency I noticed on the comments on that diary is how the Leftists say, "Your lease is expired!" to the Jews with regard to the question of ownership of the land of Israel, but when the "Palestinians" demand their Right of Return, they say it's good and just. How long does it take for a "lease" on a land to expire? To hear them, 2,000 years does it, while 60 years don't. So what about the Native Americans? Having been made to leave much of their lands between 200 to 100 years ago, do they still get to demand their own right of return? I suspect the Leftists would never be able to give an exact time, but only offer case-specific answers that cater to their own conveniences.

Ronbo,

For much of the second half of last century, the Right was at best lukewarm in its attitude toward the Jews because of the religious rivalry, and the Left was pretty supportive of Israel because it was set up as a socialist state, and because the memory of the Holocaust was still fresh and the "Zionism=racism" equation was still forthcoming. But then the Right underwent the process of jettisoning supercessionism (replacement theology, which holds "Jews in the flesh" to be no longer G-d's chosen), with both Protestant Christian Zionism and the Catholic declarations of absolution of the Jews from the death of Jesus; while the Left bought into the "Palestinians" anti-colonialist narrative and opposed Israel as both a Anglo-imperial colony/beachhead and a center of Biblical reactionism.

There still are anti-Semites on the Right--but only on the far Right, while anti-Semitism on the Left, dressed up as anti-Zionism, is all but mainstream.

October 09, 2006 9:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Since you left dKos (and I am not sure why, were you forced off?), I have continued a discussion with Nathan Jaco. I have not taken up for, but for myself, though there are many, many things upon which we agree. You might find the ongoing conversation interesting, and there has been a discussion of your position as a "troll" by me with Rusty Pipes, who has yet to answer my response to him.

I will not go into what I said there or even the bulk of my thoughts in regards to your personal blog posting, except for two points - if you don't mind.

The first I bring up because Mr. Jaco quotes you, that is the notion that being against Kosher slaughter makes one an anti-Semite. I think this is not only wrong, but trivializes the reality of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. Were this true, every vegetarian is an anti-Semite.

My position regarding anti-Zionism is quite straightforward - every peoples have a right to a homeland, to deny the Jews theirs is a particular affront to an entire peoples' aspirations. To do so while advocating for a Palestinian homeland is the purest hypocrisy. Conversely, to believe in the right of the Jewish people to a homeland requires this same right be acknowledged towards the Palestinian people. I discuss this in greater detail at dKos.

And at the conclusion of your piece, you suggest the left is anti-Semitic - it is with a very broad brush you apply this critique. While it is certainly true of many, particularly in Europe; in the US the left is not so monolithic as to deserve this rap. And it is so categorical as to somewhat taint the rest of your very reasonable arguments. There is certainly a nasty bunch of folks at dKos who are virulently anti-Zionist; they are a small but aggressive minority.

-Eric S

October 14, 2006 4:49 AM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

Eric,

You wrote: "Since you left dKos (and I am not sure why, were you forced off?)"

I don't know if I was forced off. But some of my posts were deleted, and since I don't have all the time in the world, that effectively made the time I took to write them wasted. That's the short of it; in longer form, my post Hypo-Kos-risy.

Being called a "troll" is not offensive to me in and of itself; but that label causes other participants to regard your comments as not worth reading or responding to, so that too made my time on DKos a waste.

You wrote: "I will not go into what I said there or even the bulk of my thoughts in regards to your personal blog posting, except for two points - if you don't mind."

Whatever is in the form of intellectual argument is good in my eyes. I thank you for commenting on my blog.

You wrote: "The first I bring up because Mr. Jaco quotes you, that is the notion that being against Kosher slaughter makes one an anti-Semite. I think this is not only wrong, but trivializes the reality of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. Were this true, every vegetarian is an anti-Semite."

With my argument unqualified, I can see how you reach that conclusion. Well, to qualify it a bit: being a vegetarian, or even just voicing opinions against kosher slaughter, isn't enough to be anti-Semitic; but when someone systematizes it, bringing kosher slaughter as evidence for the degeneracy of the Jewish religion, and further moving to enact laws against the right of Jews to employ kosher slaughter for their own purposes (for Judaism, unlike Islam, keeps to itself; for Muslims the goal is that all of humanity eat halal food), that does constitute anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism gets such treatment; and more, it is the currently acceptable mantle for people to express hatred for Jews without the stigma of classical anti-Semitism.

(Lest it look as if I were stalling all criticism of Israel's policies outright, my post Critics of Israel and the Benefit of Doubt suggests how such criticism can be not anti-Semitic.)

You wrote: "Conversely, to believe in the right of the Jewish people to a homeland requires this same right be acknowledged towards the Palestinian people."

Let me say I'm not a Kahanist (not yet, anyway... the way things are going, with external hostility moving Israeli Jews rightward day by day, this may change in a few years). I go with such rabbis as Ovadyah Yosef (may he live long) in theoretical pragmatism and giving the other side a chance. By that I mean that, if the other side shows a full and actual willingness to live side by side with us, then better to concede some lands than to impair Jewish life with a constant sword.

However--and I suspect Rabbi Yosef too has moved to this point--if the other side keeps going with its "salami program", whereby each land concession is an opening for demanding more, and each piece of land evacuated of all its Jews becomes the site of terrorist training camps, then all those gestures of goodwill are out. In August 2005 the Gaza Strip was totally evacuated of all Jewish presence--totally. From those evacuated territories, Kassam rockets are being fired into Israel's internationally-recognized territorities as we speak. This instead of the Palestinians using those evacuated territories to build homes and solve the problem of their crowded refugee camps.

In my post The Californian Nation I explained how the Palestinians, as a nation, are a modern invention. Now, that's a point I wouldn't have dreamed of hammering back when I was a peacenik in the Hopeful 1990's. But today, both the words and actions of the Palestinians showing an unwillingness to live side by side, permanently, with a Jewish state have prompted me, and many other disillusioned Israeli Jews, to disarm the Palestinian claim that way. I'm not all that happy to do it, but as long as the other side keeps firing Kassams at Sderot, I have no choice--to continue giving the Palestinians a chance wouldn't be merely unjust, it would be unwise as well. The other side needs to give us reasons to trust them.

You wrote: "And at the conclusion of your piece, you suggest the left is anti-Semitic - it is with a very broad brush you apply this critique. While it is certainly true of many, particularly in Europe; in the US the left is not so monolithic as to deserve this rap. And it is so categorical as to somewhat taint the rest of your very reasonable arguments."

Well, I'll admit the current anti-Semitism rampant in the Left isn't isolated from the crisis of the Left, and that anti-Semitism isn't central to the modern Left as it was to the Far Right of the first half of last century. In my post Ichabod: the Departing of Former Glory I elaborate on how the Left has fallen from its past principles. To summarize, among the symptoms of the modern Left's embrace of movements that run contrary to its past ideals, anti-Semitism is one.

You wrote: "There is certainly a nasty bunch of folks at dKos who are virulently anti-Zionist; they are a small but aggressive minority."

A small number of virulent anti-Zionists, but, given the tendencies toward appeasement of the Muslims and the abandonment of Bible-belief, anti-Zionism, even if not virulent, is very widespread on DKos, and in the Left in general. My chief concern is that the anti-Zionists of the Left, headed by Walt and Mearsheimer, are making anti-Semitism acceptable to all people under its new wrapping of anti-Zionism, and, more importantly, are conditioning people all over the world to see the suicide bombings in Israeli civilian centers as just reparations for colonialist oppression, similar to the way Ward Churchill refered to the blowing up of the "little Eichmanns" in the WTC towers as "the justice of roosting chickens". The Leftist narrative of "non-Western oppressed peoples heroically resisting Western oppressors" not only impacts Israel, but has also opened the West wide to Islamic colonialism, the result being what you read on British news every day now.

Eric, thanks again for your comment.

October 15, 2006 12:29 AM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

The above comment began with a lame joke (about a teacher being arrested for boarding a plane with math tools, therefore identifying him as belonging to a terrorist group named Al-gebra; apropos of that theme, one might want to read my post Islamic Science vs. Today's Islam).

Under that, there followed a list of links to websites arguing for the truth of Islam, most of them geared toward Christians, although I'm not a Christian. Also included were three anti-Zionist links.

Since the comment is a hit-and-run, general bomb-dropping, instead of containing reasonably focused arguments which I can address, I have deleted it (see bottom of post here). Before doing that, I saved it to a file, which I can send by e-mail to anyone who's really interested.

October 16, 2006 11:33 PM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

Thanks. :-)

I don't like my time wasted. If it's not positive feedback, then I want to debate it with the poster. I really don't like deleting posts, but hit-and-run posts run counter to the purpose of my blog--intellectual, ideological defense of Zionism.

November 02, 2006 10:41 PM  

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