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Are American Leftists (especially Barack Obama) anti-Israel?
I suppose this subject has been beaten to death but it still fascinates me. Why is it that the left tends to be unsympathetic toward Israel’s position? I would word it more strongly (why are so many leftists anti-Israel), except I don’t want to get hung up on the question of whether they are really that far out there. But as a practical matter I see little distinction, for I can’t fathom how anyone could be neutral in this conflict, or declare the opponents morally equivalent without a visceral anti-Israel bias. Hamas (and so many other groups) are committed to the extermination of the Jewish state.
There is no question that Bibi Netanyahu was not exaggerating when he said, “If the Arabs lay down their arms there will be no more war, but if Israel lays down its weapons there would be no more Israel.” Israel consistently acts with restraint, warning civilians of its imminent attacks and providing humanitarian aid. It targets tunnels and weapons, not civilians. Hamas, the opposite. In light of these FACTS, how can any objective person believe there is moral equivalence here? Other than their reflexive wrongheadedness on most issues, how can even leftists be so openly off-base on this? I do believe Obama has a deep, abiding affection for Islam based on statements in his books, and his speeches and policies since in office.
As a result I believe he identifies with them on some level and genuinely believes if he treats Muslims as victims they will be more peaceful. It’s all mind-blowing to me. Bottom line: I believe leftists in general are unduly sympathetic to Hamas (and/or the Palestinians) and Obama shares that as a leftist, but is even more so because of his background. Leftists and some others object to this characterization — just like they deny many of their firmly held positions — and Obama does have some cover because he pays lip service to supporting Israel and does support them in some ways. But he surrounds himself with people who are definitely pro-Palestinian and make no secret of it, does he not? He lets them chide Israel, from Hillary Clinton, to John Kerry, to Philip Gordon. Am I unfair to believe Obama, in his heart of hearts, is anti-Israel?
Published in General
Is the Pope Catholic?
David, greetings from Tel Aviv, where I have been since 06 July (pre-rockets — woo hoo!).
I’ve been here on a pre-aliyah (pre-emigration/immigration) visit, a so-called “pilot trip” to do job-search-related networking and the like.
(I originally hail from the Boston area, but I’m thoroughly red-state-oriented in my politics; and as an admirer of Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin, in an Israeli political context I am decidedly to the right as well.)
You are not unfair to believe that Obama, in his heart of hearts, is anti-Israel.
There is a very good reason (in electoral tactics terms) that the LA Times still has yet to release the videotape it has of Obama’s speech at a Hyde Park sendoff party for Rashid Khalidi — recall that the tape’s existence became known during the 2008 campaign!
There is also a very good reason that Robert Malley has been installed on the NSC staff recently — recall that Malley’s advisory association with the 2008 Obama campaign had to be terminated for PR purposes.
I could go on (Iran, anyone?), but I think you get the idea.
I submit that they are unquestionably anti-Israel, and would be more forthright about it except for the two varieties of concern for being called anti-Semitic; namely correct accusations and incorrect accusations.
I would further submit that a great many of them are actually anti-Semites, and those who are not nonetheless do not wish to confront or even expose those who are.
And so evil propagates from the core to the edge and expands.
There’s a transparent reason the LA Times won’t release the Khalili tape. It would look like a meeting of The Friday Club at the White Feather. See Foyle’s War, Season 1, Ep. 2.
How can there be any doubt, when our SecState shows up uninvited in the Mideast and proposes ceasefire terms that favor the terrorists?
Check this out:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/leaked-document-confirms-us-ceasefire-bid-generous-to-hamas/
And this:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-fumes-at-kerry-over-alternative-ceasefire-bid/
Mike LaRoche
I want to be flippant, and ask if this pope is Catholic. But, where it counts (he’s obviously a very devout and spiritual man) he is.
I’m not sure its a whole lot more complicated for most leftists than that (1) they view politics through the lens of power and economics through the lens of exploitation, and therefore have a tendency to identify with those they have decided are “victims” coupled with (2) a broad moral commitment to multiculturalism/diversity conceived simplistically on the basis of an intellectual commitment to a soft-minded and uncritical moral relativism in all cases not resolved by the framework of (1).
Simply: the garden variety leftist seems to think Israel is unjustified in its use of force against “the oppressed”, and Hamas represents “the oppressed”. For many, I doubt it is much deeper than that.
I’m not of the opinion that is sometimes expressed among conservatives that there is some “secret alliance between the Left and Islamism”. I tend to think the reality is more mundane: these people have a cosmopolitan self-identity that doesn’t dare speak in terms of friends and enemies, and are so wrapped up in ivory tower jargon about Eurocentrism, that they can’t think their way out of a paper bag. Their view of the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, is a combination of (1) and (2) above and a kind of Maoist nonchalance: “after so many years of oppression, can’t found a state without breaking a few eggs”…….and so on
More interesting, I think, is the intra-Jewish debate among American Jews about Israel and how it cuts across other issues (see Dershowitz’s books on Israel).
What Crow’s Nest said. The left likes Jews when they can call them “oppressed.” But Jews with power are evil.
The left is utterly irrational on the subject. All power is bad, except–of course–power in the hands of the left.
Most of the left are mindless sheep who think as they are taught to think. Why they pick the one country whose people are actually more politically akin to them than any other is a puzzlement. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood which started during WWII. Many historical studies have shown their Nazi origins. So why are Jews leftists? If an election were held today, they would still vote for Obama. That is the real head banger. It’s good to see your post here Mr. David. It’d been a while.
Crows Nest: “More interesting, I think, is the intra-Jewish debate among American Jews about Israel and how it cuts across other issues (see Dershowitz’s books on Israel).”
Also, particularly interesting is the debate on politics with Democrat Jews who do vigorously support Israel and who admit their party does not. I know Jews who admit that the control faction of the current Democratic Party would like to see Israel destroyed. Nevertheless they insist on supporting that party and engaging in all sorts of ad hominem attacks on people like Ted Cruz.
They are given a choice between a Republican Party that generally seeks to avoid completion of the Final Solution, but wants Sandra Fluke to pay for her own birth control and a Democratic Party that generally supports completion of the Final Solution but wants me to pay for Sandra Fluke’s birth control. They choose the latter. I give up.
Maybe for the American Left it is just politics, and they favor Israel when Israel is led by the Left.
Consider:
Likud, the right wing party, was founded in 1973. When Likud won in 1977 it was a historic victory, the first time the left lost in Israel.
Meanwhile the kibbutz system, a leftist thing, entered crisis in the 1980s.
In 1992, Likud lost to Labor. Mr. Clinton’s presidency (1993-2001) seemed a similar move to the left, and in this left/left climate Mr. Clinton created, to a greater or lesser degree, the Oslo Accords, a Leftist dream come true.
This matches my general sense of the American Left and Israel over time: sometime in the late ’70s the American Left soured on Israel; but things were suddenly sweet again for Mr. Clinton; then Oslo disappointment and loss for the left returned the mood to sour.
It’s really pretty simple – they dislike Israel for the same reasons they dislike America – they stole their land with wars, displaced the native population to camps (reservations) and worst of all they are, to use the C-word – CAPITALISTS – actually much more successful, especially in High-Tech.
A greater mystery is why so many American Jewish people still support Mr Obama.
Steyn recently discussed an old saying which I paraphrase as “The Europeans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.” The Holocaust took away moral standing from much of Europe.
The left (all branches of it in different ways) resents the Jews generally and Israel particularly because Israel and the Jews are threats to the left’s own self-image .
For Europeans, the solution is to create a history where they can argue that Israel and the Jews are bad to detract from or perhaps even justify Europe’s actions or inactions surrounding the Holocaust. In this way, they restore their moral superiority.
For others, the circumstances they seek to explain are more current and may be economic/civilizational as much as moral. Despite adversity, Israel and the Jews have had remarkable successes. These overshadow much of the rest of the world. It is intolerable for a _____ [Insert the low achieving populace of your choice; for Obama, consider Kenyan] to think that the relative lack of achievement by _____ has anything to do with _____ people or their culture. The solution is twofold: 1) destroy the evidence (i.e., eliminate Israel and the Jews); and 2) create all sorts of conspiratorial fictions to blame Israel and the Jews for the problems of _____.
Yuri Bezmenov referred to the left in this country as a demoralized populace. The meaning is twofold: a) the left has lost confidence in western culture (lost their morale), and b) the left has lost its capacity to discriminate between good and evil (lost their morality). The first is a result of being indoctrinated into the idea that the west, and America is particular, is the focus of evil in the world, and the other is a byproduct of atheism. Bezmenov goes on to describe why the condition is permanent. Facts no longer matter because the leftist mind has been programmed to react to certain stimuli rather than think critically.
Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, understands the conflict in the Middle East as a battle between the forces of civilization and barbarism. Notice how both the American left and radical Islam both correctly identify the American right as the chief impediment to an imagined utopia. The average leftist will continue to believe he can make peace with Islam right up to the moment he gets his head lopped off with a rusty scimitar. The cognitive dissonance from the left is displayed (continued . . .)
. . . by the stubborn belief that somehow a movement based in non-violence can be reconciled with an ideology where the aim is to force compliance through massive amounts of violence and bloodletting. Every conflict for your average leftist is simply the result of a misunderstanding. All conflicts can be resolved by negotiation. Thus the reliance on agreements and treaties as the preferred means toward conflict resolution. The average Muslim, on the other hand, understands that ceasefires and negotiations are merely a tactic to achieve final victory.
Anti-Israel sentiments from the left, more accurately defined as anti-Semitism, are part of the time-honored method of mythologizing your enemy as the source of all evil. Yasser Arafat was so successful in his efforts to demonize Israel that the rational faculties of his people have been completely (perhaps permanently) supplanted with blind emotion: raging hatred Haphazard bombardment of Israeli population centers has little military value other than to offer the Palestinians an outlet for their bloodlust. The average leftist must necessarily align himself with evil in order to stay internally consistent.
One undeniable fact about Ricochet: It has by far the smartest commenters anywhere on the Internet. Usually way smarter than the contributors, or at least this one. Fascinating thoughts — thank you.
Keep in mind Obama’s anti-colonialist father. Since modern Israel was created by the Western Powers, it is viewed as more colonial appropriation of land from more deserving downtrodden peoples. And in this case, the downtrodden are still collected into refugee camps, which are called “Gaza” and the “West Bank” and “Jordan.” This has allowed the left to use a continual supply of visual images which serve to advance their cause without any need for actual words/arguments/logic.
Since the leftists are all about righting the wrongs of Western Civilization (chiefly by destroying it), they are enthusiastic about un-doing this most recent act of Western colonialism. They seem to me to be amazingly unaware of the actual history of the founding of modern Israel, for a group so bent on eliminating it as a way of righting past wrongs.
It is also amusing (or sickening) that the Left demands that the UN play a greater role in resolving the conflict when it was the UN who approved Israel in the first place. Israel also runs their country fairly socialistic, so this is yet another source of dissonance with our Left. There are many more examples.
I talk with a co-worker about Israel from time to time and he expresses a fire-breathing contempt for the Orthodox/Hasidic Jews living there. He says that they are the obstacle to peace because they are unyielding and don’t even want Palestine to exist. From that, I concluded that religious piety or a nation based on religion is a key factor in the Left’s loathing of Israel. I would love to hear others’ views on this as I’m not well-versed in the Orthodox/Hasidic influence in Israel.
The ultraorthodox community is religiously split. Some do not want Israel to exist. Others want Israel to exist but won’t do anything to help.
There may be more of a right-left split on the peace process with the right comprising more of the religious (but not ultraorthodox) and the left comprising more of the secular socialists. Your friend is likely a deranged socialist.
Deprived of the self-fulfilling moral superiority of practicing a formal religion, left wingers seek to establish their moral superiority in other ways. Blaming the lack of peace on the religious Jews is one way of doing this.
That dynamic is not unique to Israel.
I think one constant in the Obama administration’s foreign policy has been its affinity for Islamist movements. No matter which conflict, that’s the side it seems to back. Iranian mullahs vs. reformers? Egyptian army vs. Muslim Brotherhood? Hamas vs. Israel? Al Qaeda vs. Qaddafi? The reasons change depending on the geography, but the outcome is remarkably consistent.
I would highly recommend David Mamet’s books, which touch on the issue of why Jews are leftists. Both “The Secret Knowledge” and “The Wicked Son” are worth a read.
Crow’s Nest
Simply: the garden variety leftist seems to think Israel is unjustified in its use of force against “the oppressed”, and Hamas represents “the oppressed”. For many, I doubt it is much deeper than that.
Bingo, Crow’s Nest! But you are giving leftists too much credit for thinking.
When it comes to political struggles, the left’s great success has been training people not to analyze the particular facts of the struggles, but simply to cast them.
By that I mean the left has succeeded in training people to look at political conflicts as melodramas, making the challenge not one of determining who is right or wrong based on the particular facts, but one of casting the roles of Oppressor and Oppressed. So who gets what part? Easy. Just look. Whoever appears to function better (richer, etc.) is the Oppressor, whoever functions poorly is the Oppressed. No grubby fact analysis required.
So: Israel and Hamas. Again, easy: Israel is high-functioning, so it gets the role of Oppressor, and Hamas (low-functioning) is the Oppressed. To the leftist, the question is not “What’s happening?” It’s “Who gets what part?” Because casting saves thinking.
ISIS vs Iraq- sending advisors instead of airstrikes only helps the muslim extremists/terrorists. Iran vs the US/Israel- releasing billions in Iranian assets and destroying an effective sanctions regime for no result.
It’s pretty clear that this administration’s only clear foreign policy is to appease muslim extremists and terrorists. Simple incompetence cannot explain their actions/inactions over the years.
In the US, we tend to think of religiosity in one-dimensional terms. In Israel, it’s better to think of it in two dimensions, religious-secular and nationalist-universalist.
The Hasidic/Ultra-Orthodox (in Israel, “Hareidim”) are generally not nationalistic. They rarely serve in the army, instead taking deferrals to study in yeshiva, and are concentrated in city centers (e.g. Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, outside of Tel Aviv). The men are distinguished by their black dress (including hats). They are heavily dependent on welfare. This leads to tensions, especially with the “national-religious” orthodox, as they are perceived as moochers who don’t care about the country but just participate in politics to keep the funds flowing.
The “National Religious” are most often associated with the settler movement. They serve in the army, disproportionately volunteering for elite units. While they would deny being any less “religious” than Haredim, they fully participate in modern Israeli life. They wear modern dress, though you can identify the men by their knitted yarmulkes (and often visible tzitzit fringes).
The secular Left is not anti-Israel. They are anti-Western Civilization, which Israel represents in the Middle East. They are pro-non-white minorities being “oppressed” by Western Civilization representatives, meaning that the Palestinians are non-white and reject Western Civilization as represented by Israel. This is how the Left views the conflict and therefore Israel must be restrained or maligned into restraint, shamed, if you will, for defending themselves against an entity perceived to be resisting the power of racism, bigotry, and so forth that is inherent in Western Civilization.
There is a fantastic talk by Josh Muravchik – Making David into Goliath – which you can watch or listen/download the audio. The Q&A is really good too. When Muravchik gets to the part about the U.N., ticking off the total number of security council “resolutions” and explaining that 3/4ths of them have been against Israel, you start looking for the nearest brick wall to bang your head on.
Sponsored by Heritage, here:
http://www.heritage.org/events/2014/07/making-david-into-goliath
(Also recommend podcasting Heritage Events, good stuff.)
Sounds counter-productive. I start looking for a head to bang into a brick wall.
All of the above. I’d just like to credit Evan Sayet with effectively spelling out the moral inversion of the Left (leftist ideology necessarily opposes every good thing leading to success) and Dinesh D’Souza for coining the term “shame narrative.”
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you watch Megyn Kelly’s interview of Bill Ayers. He’s masterful at expounding the shame narrative. It’s like watching a slow-motion passenger train derailment. Bodies of the beloved flying everywhere only to be brutally crushed — but you can’t peel your gaze from the horror. We’re witnessing the end of Western Civilization on the altar of left-wing “moral” vanity.
Your question is an interesting one Mr. Limbaugh because I’ve had difficulty discussing this issue with one of my closest childhood friends who would define himself as a Conservative Jew, sent his youngest to Columbia (who graduated PBK) and supported her decision upon graduation to take a job in Beirut working to support Palestinian causes. He adamantly claimed that Israel was not faultless and that the country had ventured far from its original socialist kibbutz roots; in other words, capitalism and hawkish behavior have turned off the family.
What I found particularly frustrating about this discussion is that he is a wildly successful venture capitalist.
I find that especially interesting, EThompson, in that not a small number of observant Jewish friends have told me that most observant Jews are political conservatives. Perhaps the person you describe as a Conservative Jew is not in the “observant” category; I don’t pretend to know.