Clueless in Kosland

There is plenty of malice to be found on the Left, as the latest bouts of fire and brimstone from the “anti-war” demonstrators show, but the market on malice is pretty much monopolized by the Muslims, while the Leftists are dangerous more because they are stupid, supporting the Muslims in their stupidity. Some of the Daily Kos anti-Israel diaries make me grit my teeth in frustration, at seeing the vicious lies and callous reproaches heaped at Israel from the commenters and even on the diaries themselves, but what malice the Leftists have is quite latent, them being the cowards we know them to be, hence their preference to let their Muslim allies do the dirty anti-Israel (and anti-Western as a whole) work. I tend to forget this, but last night I read something on the Israel/“Palestine” diaries that brought it all before me in clarity.

It is on the diary Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands, by litho, the ever-dependable Israel-bashing Jew, of the type of Jew who has elevated Marx-given justice above all, not realizing that, even if he were right about the Jewish state being a colonialist project from the start, born of “dispossession of another people”, the reparations he suggests would not bring any peace and justice, but the opposite, more rivers of blood (G-d forbid) and more impetus to Islamic imperialism. He is, like all dhimmi Leftists, stupid, in short. But what takes the cake on that thread is a comment from Heathlander, a comment that goes beyond kumbayistic stupidity and into utter, jawdropping cluelessness.

First, for the record, Heathlander is another member of that group of adherents of the “Zionist Original Sin” doctrine. His belief is the standard fare: Zionism a “European white settler colonialist project”, aiming at dispossessing the “indigenous Palestinians”, the state of Israel an injustice from Day One, the only way to correct that being by turning the clock back to 1947 (i.e. not only withdrawing from the territories taken in 1967, but also permitting the application of the “Palestinian Right of Return”). He also sees “Palestinian” terrorism as entirely justified, labeling it “resistance”, thus: “Just as the French had the right to violently resist the Nazi occupation, just as the Algerians had the right to violently resist the French occupation, just as the West Papuans have the right to violently resist the Indonesian occupation, so the Palestinians have the right to violently resist the Israeli occupation.” (screenshot), from his diary The Boycott Continues, where he sheds tears over the boycott of the “Palestinians” preventing them from (my thoughts now, not his) purchasing the weapons they so need to engage in their “resistance”.

But back to litho’s thread, where Heathlander’s comment left me speechless (something hard to do after all the DKos diaries I’ve read). He says:

I think anyone who supports the right of the Palestinians to return to Israel (and we all should) must also support the right of those Jews who were expelled/caused to flee from the Arab countries to return to their homes.

“The right of those Jews […] from the Arab countries to return to their homes.” This ranks in cluelessness with the comment of an Arab poster on Richard Silverstein’s blog that the Jews of Israel should return to their pre-Holocaust homes in Europe. This type of comment betrays sheer ignorance of Judaism.

The first question that any Jew with even a modest measure of Jewish education asks himself on reading such a thing is, “Why would the Jews from the Arab countries, having reached Israel, want to return to them?!” In all the long history of the Jewish people, the abandonment of the Land of Israel was always forced, either immediately by foreign conquest and exile (as was the case with the Babylonian exile) or gradually by deteriorating economic conditions (the Romans never exiled the whole Jewish population of the Land of Israel, not even after the Bar Kochba revolt of 132–5 CE; but by the 5th century the economic state of the land had grown so bad that the Diaspora already outnumbered the homeland). Leaving the Land of Israel of their own free will was unheard of for Jews until modern times, when the crisis of Jewish education sapped the self-identity of many Jews. For any Jew throughout the ages properly educated on his heritage, the longing for the return to the Land of Israel was sucked together with his mother’s milk; therefore, Heathlander’s mere suggestion bespeaks a lack of even the beginning of the knowledge necessary to make one an evenhanded commenter on the Israel/“Palestine” conflict.

Except for genealogical tourism, the Jews of Europe have no desire to return to their pre-Holocaust homes in Europe, and the Jews of the Islamic world have no desire to return to their pre-1948 homes. This is because those homes were always transitional homes, never what any educated Jew would call Home; for a self-aware Jew, the Land of Israel is the only land that can be dignified with that title. The prophecies and the prayers all herald the time when the entirety of the exile will be ended, with all the Jews of the Diaspora having returned to their one and only land, the Land of Israel. To suggest a “Jewish Right of Return to their original homes in the Arab lands” is to display raw, unadultered ignorance. Hence my verdict that the Leftists, malicious though they may sometimes seem, or even act, are more victims of their stupidity, naiveté and lack of knowledge. All the more reason, then, to give them short shrift, as regards this particular conflict, and as regards the global conflict as a whole.

When Herzl of blessed memory suggested Uganda, not as permanent home but as temporary shelter, he was shouted down by the members of the Zionist Congress, many of whom even walked out of the room. He had suggested Uganda as a temporary shelter, and many of the members were assimilating Jews like him, yet even a meager Jewish education had branded the recognition onto their brains: No other home than the Land of Israel! It is, therefore, the height of stupidity for Heathlander and his like to suggest moving the Jewish population to any other land, or to “right past wrongs” by exchanging a “Palestinian Right of Return to Palestine” for a “Jewish Right of Return to their former homes”. It may not have to be anti-Semitism behind it all: I think there are quite a few on Daily Kos who are not consciously anti-Zionists, yet believe the solution of the Israel/“Palestine” conflict is the key to world peace. In which case we can chalk up another one for ignorance, naiveté and stupidity: ignorance of the Islamic enemy, the naiveté of Chamberlain’s pacifism and Lenon’s “Imagine”, and the sum of it, the stupidity of punishing the good by rewarding the evil.

Or to summarize it all: if people of this type weren’t in positions of influence, I wouldn’t waste a single second on engaging their clueless thoughts. Because they are, we Zionists must realize we are necessarily at war with them. They are aiding and abetting the dispossession of Jews from their one and only, G-d-given land.