Sort Our Your Guilt

I have related to the Native Americans numerous times on my blog. From some of those, the reader may have gotten the impression that I hate Native Americans, but that is not so, nor is it exactly the opposite of that. I will say forthright that my attitude toward Native Americans is neither of love nor of hate, but simply, “incapable of having an unbiased opinion on the matter”, the reason for that being, of course, the use of comparisons to Native Americans by the anti-Zionist Left for scoring their points. The usual talking point of the anti-Zionists is that the Pretendestinians are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel just as the Native Americans are of North America, and therefore, by dint of logic, the Jews are colonial invaders and dispossessors of the former just as the Europeans from the Old Word are. As I have shown, this view is utterly false, and of such offense to us Jews that, if we Jews were in the habit of reacting toward offenses the way the Muslims do, we would make the Danish Mohammed Cartoons riots look like a kindergarten playground scrap. We do not, and we leave it mostly to God to scorch the anti-Zionists in His indignation, speedily in our days, amen. But from this brief account alone it can be understood why I could never deliver a fair and reasonably unbiased stance on the Native Americans, and for that I apologize for a likely bad impression.

What is clear, however, is that I am not impressed by the anti-Zionist Leftists’ self-righteous stance which they justify by that comparison. Their claim of “standing up for the rights of indigenous peoples’ rights” does not wash with me, for they are selective as to which indigenous peoples they support, the criteria being, always, appeasement and anti-Americanism. What has the oppression and the dispossession of the Tibetans on and from their native lands by the Chinese colonial invaders won them but a few perfunctory “Free Tibet” stickers? Some maverick (the Kossacks would say, “troll”) had this to say on the Daily Kos diary Jews, Neocons and Democrats, on August 1, 2007:

I will listen to your lament for Palestinians (6+ / 0-)

When you give your own home keys over to a Native American family from among those who are the rightful inhabitants of your little valley of hypocricy [sic]. Like the Sioux, the Comanche and the Iriquis who's [sic] land you have stolen, the Palestinans [sic] will just have to adjust to life among a different people. In land tenure might makes right. Your decision to object to that grim reality only in the case of indiginous [sic] people without a claim to your house and a few thousand miles away makes for exquisite hypocricy [sic].

[…]

by SmithsLastWord on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 05:59:01 PM PDT

Pointful. It appears the anti-Zionists are not overly swept by guilt feelings for what happened—at least not so much that they would bring themselves to take the plane back to the Old Word, for the sake of “Justice, without there is no peace”:

Genocide that occured by my ancestors,,, (0+ / 0-)

not contemporaries. BIG difference.

by theralph on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 06:43:55 PM PDT

And in a little longer formulation:

Such an act of sophistry. The Indian situation... (3+ / 0-)

is what it is. There is still time to stop the same from happening to the Palestinians.

Israel should have a state and Palestine should have a state.

by theralph on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 06:09:16 PM PDT

And even more clearly, in case the reader still didn’t get his point:

They weren't alive and neither was I. The.... (2+ / 0-)

Israelis are actively, even as we speak, taking lands from the Palestinians. Not to mention they almost started WWIII last summer. Oh, don't think about that though. Just blindly defend them with stupid arguments about Native Americans. Man you are pretty stupid huh?

by theralph on Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 06:43:09 PM PDT

Now after my caveat that the reality behind the Leftists’ fixation on the “Palestinians” is nothing but appeasement and anti-Americanism, I still wish to go with what they say—their declared feelings on the matter, even though they are lies. I could put their stance this way: “We do feel guilty for the Native Americans, but that is now water under the bridge; we stand with the Palestinians because that’s a repeat happening in real-time, and if we prevent that we’ll have made up for the past wrong”. In this we can find a sentiment that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (may he go to hell soon, amen) has astutely exploited.

His arrival at New York had been protested on account of, among other things, his Holocaust Denial. He came nevertheless, and in his visit he scored a propaganda coup de grace against the Jewish people by cleaning himself of the accusation of Holocaust Denial, which he did by substituting Zionism Denial (the denial of the Jews’ scriptural, ancient and rightful connection to the Land of Israel, and the portrayal of Zionism as a “White European Settler Colonialist Movement”) for it. His question, “Why should the Palestinians pay for something done to the Jews in Europe, by Europeans?”, has found welcoming hearts in the anti-Zionist Left.

In fact, I do not think there is a logical fault with that question. As my blogosphere friend Bar Kochba says, the argument against “setting up a Jewish state on Palestinian lands” as compensation for the Jewish Holocaust in Europe is logically flawless, whereas it is the premise itself that is not only fallacious but totally erroneous—neither the Holocaust nor any of the wrongs suffered by the Jews for the past 2,000 years are justification for a Jewish state on the Land of Israel; it is the scriptural mandate that justifies that. And when the Jews took the Land of Israel for the first time, under Joshua’s command, it was not the 400 years of slavery in Egypt that justified the vanquishment of the Canaanites, but the repeated statements by HaShem that, on condition of following His Torah, the Israelites are entitled to the Land of Israel, even to take it by force from its long-time residents. “Righting past wrongs” and “compensation for past injustices done” never figured into it.

But I find Ahmadinejad’s statement (perfect in logic, flawed only in its premises, as I said) very useful in order to counter the anti-Zionist Leftists who muster comparisons to Native Americans in order to make their point. You saw above how the Leftists are (taking their narrative at face value, ignoring the Machiavellian reality of appeasement and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” for the sake of the argument) intent on assuaging their guilt over the dispossession of the Native Americans by opposing Zionism. In which case we Zionists have a good opportunity to take Ahmadinejad’s good logic and ask, in a loud and clear voice: Why should we Jews be paying for what you did to the Native Americans a long time ago? Why should we bear the burden of compensating for something done to other people far away and at least a century ago? In like manner as Ahmadinejad implied the question, “What has the Holocaust to do with the Palestinians?”, we ask: What has Manifest Destiny to do with us?

Again, going along with their stated feelings of guilt, of overwhelming remorse for past wrongs done on their own continent, in fact very probably where they are standing right now, I offer, as a free gift, two offers for dealing with those feelings of guilt:

The first is the real-world solution: pack your bags and get your hineys where your ancestors came from in the Old World. Leave the Native American lands you’re dispossessing and colonizing in order that their Right of Return may be applied, thus satisfying the requirements of justice, without which, as you do not cease saying, there can be no peace. But of course, as commenter “SmithsLastWord” extracted from them with his probing comments, those are ideals to be preached at others from the comfort of one’s armchair, rather than be followed by oneself.

So I have a second, less demanding solution: therapy. It’s all the rage today, when having guilt feelings, to try to quash them by means of numerous sessions on the shrink’s couch. Sometimes it even works. Call your friendly neighborhood therapist, fix your appointments with him or her, and talk at length about your problem, as in, “My guilt feelings over what my ancestors did to the Native Americans is causing me sleepless nights and a lot of lost productivity at work!” If you’re in competent hands, then in a few months you can expect to feel pretty OK about what happened in North America in the 19th century.

Cynical? Insensitive? Callousness on my part? You could make that case, but as with most of my blog, I’m addressing, reacting to, participating in a battlefield on this war of minds. My form may or may not be the best, but the message ought to be clear: my message is for the Leftists to get off our backs. In the view of their perfunctory tributes to (if not blithe ignorance of) the real and acute ongoing injustices in Tibet and Darfur, my agreement to take their narrative (of guilt over the Native Americans) is an act of generosity. They really do not deserve other than to be called on their hypocrisy and their opportunism for their choosing to elevate the Israel/“Palestine” conflict above all others. But I have done them the courtesy of addressing their guilt complex as is, and I have shown that their argument is thoroughly felled by the logic of none other than their strange bedfellow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “No compensation for a wrong on expense of those who had nothing to do with it”—if that logic is good against Zionism (or more accurately against a strawman thereof), then it’s good against American Leftist anti-Zionism as well. And in fact it is worse for the anti-Zionists, for, as I said, in Ahmadinejad’s case it stands on false premises (the misconception that Zionism is about compensating Jews for past anti-Semitism), while, in the case of the Leftists, the premises are sound by their own admission (see the Daily Kos comments above).

Anti-Zionists on the Western Left, hear now this:

You will not appease the Muslims on our expense. You will not vent your anti-Western, anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-Capitalist or anti-anything-else steam on our expense. And you will not assuage your guilt for past colonial wrongs on our expense. Either repent of your actions completely or at least change to a neutral stance toward the Israel/“Palestine” conflict; if not, then may God destroy you all, speedily in our days, amen.