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The World Is a Simple Place to Leftists
Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff quotes a Washington Post story, which explains that Democrats are less supportive of Israel than they once were (emphasis mine):
A Gallup poll in March found that the majority of Democrats now take the position that the United States should be applying more pressure to Israel to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The 53 percent opting for more pressure on the Israelis is up from 43 percent in 2018 and no more than 38 percent in the decade before that, marking a substantive change in Democrats’ perspective on U.S. policy,” the report found.
I wonder what their stats would have looked like if they had asked that question differently. Say for example:
A Gallup poll in March found that ______ percentage of Democrats now take the position that the United States should be applying more pressure to Palestinians to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
After all, it seems to me that it might be easier to achieve peace if the Palestinians would stop lofting missiles into residential areas of Israel. It would be easier for Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians if they could see some evidence of goodwill from their neighbors, and less evidence of hatred. It takes two to tango, right? On the other hand, I know the situation over there is complex, and I don’t understand the details. So what do I know? It’s a difficult situation.
But to Democrats, the situation is simple. When Israel gets bombed, it’s Israel’s fault. When anything else goes wrong in that area, it’s Israel’s fault. The solution is obvious: America should put more pressure on Israel. Simple.
The world is a simple place to leftists. Bad weather is caused by SUV’s. You can cure poverty by giving money to poor people. Lower-class blacks are poor because of racism. Lower-class whites are poor because they’re lazy stupid redneck deplorable Neanderthals. Corporations are evil. Government is good. Businessmen are greedy. Politicians are selfless public servants. And on and on. And on and on and on and on.
Everything is simple.
Republicans are redneck Neanderthals, and Democrats are deep thinkers.
Right.
Published in General
It has been tried before in other ethno-cultural conflicts, and hasn’t worked. Several generations of Germans tried that with Poland, and it worked to some extent in places like Silesia, but overall the Poles still wanted to rule themselves.
I didn’t say I was an Israeli citizen. But Jews identify with Israel, and as a Jew, G-d created the land for the Jews.
I don’t see any of those civilizations coming forward and making claims of ownership or statehood, do you? And there were no “Palestinians” until the 20th century. They were just Arabs that nobody else wanted to take in.
I didn’t say, “one single Jew”; I said one could argue how many would still need to remain. Since those other civilizations no longer exist, you’re making a silly argument.
It is very complicated. But I think it’s important to discuss with facts, not with incorrect assumptions. And one fact is that the Hamas charter (and Fatah, too, I think) are determined to drive Israel into the sea.
It’s pretty hard to have peace talks when one side states at the outset that their terms are non-negotiable.
No peace talks have any chance of succeeding. No chance at all. Ever.
Unless you have one of the following circumstances:
In the Israeli – Palestinian negotiations, neither of those circumstances exist. Not even close. So in my view, any negotiations are doomed to failure before they even start.
Agreed. And your first point is probably insufficient, in that the Palestinian “leadership” is (a) apparently unconcerned about the suffering of the people under its dominion, and (b) ever hopeful, and for good reason, that that leadership will continue to accrue the benefits (monetary and political) that come from international support of a fashionable anti-Jewish cause.
So if being utterly defeated plays well in the salons of Europe, the misery on the streets of the Gaza Strip and West Bank is an acceptable cost.
Very good points…
Also true: The Muslim oppression of Jews (and Christians) never ended. It waxed and waned but it never ended and it never was repudiated.
So what do you suggest that Israel do? Especially in light of the genocidal intentions of these enemies?
One more historical point: “We are oppressed refugees” is a recent propaganda ploy, which tugs at the heartstrings of naive or Jew-hating Europeans. In the 1930’s and 1940’s it was all about “the Jews must remain subjugated to the Muslims whom Allah has ordained to rule over all infidels”.
There are times I wish Israel would just nuke the idiots and be done with ’em . . .
The Palestinians do seem to have a rather specific problem though, which is that any of their “leaders” that makes serious progress toward peace, seem to rather quickly turn up dead.
Another main point. There can never be a “two-state solution”, as the so-called “Palestinians” could never establish any sort of self-governing society. Look at what happened when the Israelis gave them Gaza. Their first act was to destroy all the public works that the Israelis left them, and Gaza is now a hell-hole and terrorist sanctuary. The people who live there are mostly mired in poverty, and their “leaders” are not bent on improving their lot, just destroying Israel.
And let’s not forget the old talking-peace-in-English-while-talking-war-in-Arabic.
Isn’t there some validity to the idea that there was no – or very little – civilization in those areas, until the Israelis brought it there?
That’s been happening for a very long time.
And that Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are perennial best-sellers.
There have been TV dramatizations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which were broadcast during the entire month of Ramadan: 30 evening installments of “kill the Jews” propaganda. And then there are all the
bizarreevil claims of poisoned water, matzoh made from the blood of children, chewing gum laced with aphrodisiacs to corrupt the women, and so on.Zafar,
The faction that I call “the Right” may be different from the one that you do.
But given my definition of “the Right”, no. They are no more nuanced.
The faction that I think of as “the conservatives” (or “the Americans”, or “the liberals”–all the same definition to me) are immeasurably more nuanced in their view of who is to blame for the Israel-Palestine conflict continuing than the Left and the Right.
By my definitions, I think “the Right” and “the Left” have a beam in their eyes and the “conservatives” (etc.) don’t.
Wiki says 21% Arabs of all religions. 10% of the Arab population in Israel is Christian, which is a significant minority within a minority. Somehow they often get erased when the stats are broken down by religion (rather than ethnicity).
Edited to add:
I don’t know if it’s conscious, but it’s easier to caricature and vilify a group of Muslims to an Evangelical audience (which you were not doing) than it is to do that to a group containing some clearly identified Christians.
Quickest answer: That’s because leftists are simple people!
Zafar, Jerry is far more interested in vilifying and caricaturing Jews than Muslims. Hadn’t you noticed that? Your biased education (or lack thereof) on the subject of Israel is…culturally understandable. His ignorance is willful and refuses correction. His are the words of a believer in replacement theology. There is no place in his world for Jews to live and practice as Jews.
There were definitely not a lot of people. The land the Arabs lived on was largely owned by absentee landlords in Ottoman Turkey. The Jews did not conquer Israel in the 1880s through 1940s, they purchased it from those same landlords, often at prices that would have made Ephron the Hittite blush, but made the purchasers as happy as it made their forefather Abraham. The Arab population exploded, through immigration from the surrounding areas of the Ottoman Empire and other Arab countries, after Jewish settlement in the late 1800s/early 1900s brought modern farming techniques that were used to drain swamps, move rocks, and “make the desert bloom,” and farming labor was needed. The people complaining about having their land “stolen” lost their houses, but not their homes. They never owned the land they were farming. Same for the people being evicted for non-payment of rent in Eastern Jerusalem. When ownership changes hands, tenants can be evicted. That’s the way the law works pretty much anywhere private property rights exist. Former tenants have no rights as far as ownership or every apartment building owner could be faced with pouting mobs of former tenants (and their children, grand-children, great-grand-children, etc.) all holding keys and demanding their old apartments back.
BTW, the East Jerusalem case is particularly egregious. The homes were purchased by Jews during the Ottoman period and registered with the appropriate authorities. When the British Mandate of Palestine began, they were again registered with the new authorities. When Jordan took the Old City in 1948, the Jews were forcibly removed from their homes and Arabs moved in with cheap rental agreements. Since the Jewish reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 the original owners have been trying to get their homes back. The Arabs continued with their cheap rent, but eviction proceedings were begun in 1997 when they stopped paying. This has been in the courts for over 20 years. Those people are being evicted for non payment of rent. The Jordanians were the occupiers who violated the Geneva Conventions, not the Israelis. Eugene Kontorovich, a legal scholar of constitutional and international law and a professor at George Mason University, is worth reading on the topic.
So you’re giving me a pass because I have a Muslim name?
But you do and will continue to do so. Iow, so what? I’m sure lots of people here believe things about me that are not flattering, or a bit end timesy. Sincerely – so what?
In 1946 the Yishuv owned about 6% of the land in what became Israel. They did buy that. But what about the other 94%?
Successful hasbara depends on the target’s ignorance. When people in America become less convinced by hasbara points it’s because they have become better informed.
In a way, it’s a a perfect microcosm of the whole magillah. Jordan – which was simultaneously an ancient country and a brand-new one – annexed land that was neither Jordanian or belonged to Israel in the post-Balfour arrangement, right? This wasn’t regarded as Jewish land, but of course it had Jews living there, and that was unacceptable once Jordan had it, so, ausfahrt, as the Germans say. Isn’t this how things usually go when borders shift after a conflict? If Israel has the right to do what it wishes with the West Bank because they won it in a defensive war, doesn’t that nullify Ottoman-era claims laid down before the land was taken by another power?
It seems a bit absurd to apply these niggling legalisms to a vague area that has been whipsawed back and forth, but OTOH it speaks well of a society that does address the issue through the numbing process of the courts. On the gripping hand, it seems to validate the idea that the titles granted by defunct states should have the force of law in a post-Ottoman / post-Balfour world of 2021, which opens the door for Palestinian claims to houses vacated in 1947. BUT! Those houses were vacated because the occupants left in anticipation of the elimination of the newly-formed state; does that equate with a relinquishing of title?
It’s a combination of law, war, and force majeure, which is always a mess, but when you add in the obvious but curiously unremarked-upon objective need to make the entire area Jew-free, you get a mess. In the end, none of this matters; what matters to Hamas is the amount of crude fire they can hurl into the sky. But the days of rote bored applause from neighboring state are over, no? Jew hatred is so 2014. It’s like your mullet-wearing cousin ranting about disco in 1982.
Is it fair or accurate to think that the left tends to side with whoever is the most vicious?
Probably not fair.
The Left always sides with the most authoritarian.
Which is also what they accused Trump of doing, more projection…
And if Trump was supposed to be such a dictator, why weren’t they on HIS side?
Because they only side with ACTUAL authoritarians, not those they just falsely accuse of it?
Re: the bolded portion, above. That presumes title in the first place. The majority of people claiming to have had their land or homes “stolen” by the “colonizer Jews” were tenant farmers or, particularly in the E. Jerusalem apartments, renters. They claim rights of ownership that they never had in the first place any more than you can claim such for an apartment that you once rented and vacated.
And, yes, there’s certainly an argument that Ottoman era land claims should be nullified, yet the Israeli courts persist in having settlements destroyed because of a hint of a possible past Arab owner, even if no one is claimed by name. The courts in Israel are in many ways worse enemies of the people than our own.
One final point, and this goes to Zafar’s question: not all of the land was owned by particular people. As in modern day Israel and the US, there were wide swaths of “state-owned” land during the Ottoman era. Tenant farmers were there using State land much as ranchers are permitted to graze cattle on US Federal and State lands in the western states. When the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist, those lands truly were ownerless and should transfer to the victor. Mandatory Britain in 1948, then briefly Jordan, and Israel thereafter. Jordan’s claims were based on true occupation and illegal according to the Geneva Conventions, so any land given by the king of Jordan to anyone would be voided by Israeli liberation. It’s also worth looking at the San Remo Conference statements, which predated and, arguably, had higher precedence than did any declarations by the UN. One more final point (I’m sounding like Peter Robinson): the UN General Assembly has no legal power, only political. All UN statements of the “legality” or “illegality” of various settlements or Israeli activities are meaningless, except for propaganda purposes.
I agree with you on the “so what” part, as it really doesn’t matter, but aren’t you inclined to call out blatant lies about Islam? Or those who use their their lengthy posts to deny historic truths that have been previously and patiently (with much documentation) corrected? Eventually the thought that the interlocutor is dishonest or malign overtakes the usual benefit of the doubt I try to give (particularly in on-line discussions where true conversation is not entirely possible).
I give you a pass, BTW, because you’ve shown yourself open to learning and to contrary opinions, despite what I see as a biased education. You are also sympathetic to the experiences and feelings associated with being a minority, both religious and otherwise. My education was also shaped by my time and place. Rather than teaching untruths, IMO, the American public school system of my youth just ignored large areas of the world, and even Western Civilization as it was taught completely ignored the ancient Hebrews (who arguably had a whole lot to do with the civilizing part of it) and left out even the Christian because “religion” had been removed from schools (though we still had quite explicitly Christian Christmas carols in music class–I don’t think that’s the case any more). I’m still pretty ignorant of much of the East and Africa, though I have friends from both who are helping my education, as is voracious reading.
I’m getting worn down, to be honest. These days I usually don’t bother because if people listen without hearing, if they choose ignorance, what’s the point?
Wrt land ownership, some more information:
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/01/ottoman-archives-helps-palestinian-reclaim-their-land.html
But I think we are talking past each other here. What Israel did with Palestinian people, and homes, and land was immoral. A legal argument doesn’t address that, but that’s where the ‘other side’ is coming from.
I get that this was a group of people traumatised by centuries of pogroms and then the Holocaust. I get that they didn’t see another option – that they felt they had no other choice if they were to be safe. I get the minority instinct to always present as ‘good’ in order to be safe.
And I think that last one is what makes things hard to overcome. Because if I am good then you must be bad, or if you are good then I must be bad. But people are not that clean cut, are we? And neither are peoples or cultures.
Jmnsho as per usual.