Why Does the Left Hate Israel?Hatred of America The most basic reason as suggested already is that those who hate America, also hate those whom America supports, of which Israel is exhibit A. For Al Qaeda, there is the great Satan, America, and the little Satan, Israel. Since 9/11, Al Qaeda has made the focus of its hatred for the great Satan, the great Satan's support for the little Satan. In Europe there are a much larger number of hardcore leftists than we have in the United States. Score one for America, I think. Two percent of the population vote for the Green Party here, 10% or more do so in European countries. While many think the Greens are primarily an environmental movement, the party platform in every country in which they are a factor, including the US, is replete with harsh attacks on Israel. In many European countries, the Greens are part of a left of center governing coalition, which helps explain why there is so little sympathy for Israel in Europe.
Why do the Greens hate Israel? The Greens hate the Western consumer society in which they live, they hate corporations and capitalism, and they hate globalization. America is the great Satan for the Greens — the killer of Kyoto, the maker of genetically modified foods, the exporter of McDonald's, Disney, Hollywood trash and Starbucks. So the Greens are leftist by definition. And economic leftists have an anti-American world view which tends to make them reflexively pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. This hatred of America, which spills over into anti-Israel venom, is, as mentioned earlier, also quite common on the college campuses in America.
ColonialismAlong with the hatred for America, comes a world view about what America and its Western allies represent. In short, the western capitalist societies are believed to be colonialists. While the European empires disbanded half a century ago in most cases, the left believes that colonialism is still evident in the economic relations of the western countries with the third world— in the exploitation of their economies. Globalization has become the catchphrase to describe how the west gets rich off of the backs of the poor countries and their people. Hence, a critical slogan of the anti-war effort in Iraq was No War for Oil. Why do western nations go to war? To steal the resources of the Third World One might wonder about what resources we were fighting for in Afghanistan, but consistency has never been a requirement for a leftist world view.
Israel in the mind of the left is a colonialist creation. The Zionists were given a country to settle where other people already lived. Then the western nations tried to expunge their guilt for the Holocaust (which most leftists will tell you was a bad thing, though hardly unique in the long history of western colonialist genocide) by agreeing to partition Palestine and formally create one Jewish majority state and one Arab majority state.
After 1967, the left's job became easier in attacking Israel, since Israel became a very juicy target. By absorbing millions of Palestinians in the west bank and Gaza, Israel became an occupier. By creating settlements, Israel showed the left its desire to permanently dominate the Palestinians. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Eastern European satellite nations gained their freedom. So for the left, Israel has become the most glaring example of a western society oppressing indigenous peoples.
Now of course the left never became too agitated over the Soviet Union and their system of satellite nations. After all, the economic philosophy of communism had a lot of appeal for many on the left, even after many decades of proof that neither the Soviet Union, nor China, nor any other communist countries had created economic or political systems that had much to so with any noble visions about workers paradises that leftist philosophers might have gleaned from the writing of Karl Marx. Today's economic explosion in China has, of course, come through the Communist party's capitulation to capitalism. But the left did not criticize China's now permanent occupation and annexation of Tibet, nor the movement of many Chinese into Tibet to create a Chinese majority there, nor the Soviets' movement of hundreds of thousands of Russians into the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia after World War II, so as to diminish the percentage of the native stock in those countries. Jewish settlers are perhaps 10% of the population of the West Bank.
So no one could seriously suggest that the settlements were an attempt to create a Jewish majority in the area. Instead, stories are circulated about nefarious Israeli plans to move the Palestinian population out of these areas, and make them Arab free, in other words— ethnic cleansing, one of the left's favorite charges.
The charge that Israel has plans to move the Palestinians out is almost amusing, since it is the reverse that is true: the Palestinians demand and the left wholeheartedly endorses the call for making the west bank Judenrein [all Jewish settlers out], yet also demands that Israel accept the Palestinian right of return, and absorb 4 million displaced Palestinians, 95% of whom are descendants of original refugees, and have never set foot within pre—67 Israel. One might ask how these people are returning to anything that is theirs or that they know, but why complicate things?
Moral RelativismThere is another perhaps more important reason why Israel is singled out. Objective observers might look at Israeli society, and while noting all its obvious problems, would also recognize its vigorous free press, its system of justice, its democratic form of government, its willingness to absorb immigrants of different skin color and national origin to create a new society, its great tolerance for diversity, the role of women in society. Such observers might conclude that Israel compares quite favorably to the authoritarian nations surrounding it. But Israel will always be judged by a different standard from its neighbors. The reason for this is that Israel is not only viewed as a western creation, but a western nation, and its neighbors are not.
With the West, anything short of perfection is intolerable, because for the left perfection is the goal. With the third world countries, the left expects nothing (and for the most part gets nothing). When Hutus used machetes to slaughter Tutsis in Rwanda in 1993 — almost a million in four months — the left reserved its criticism for western nations for their inability or unwillingness to intervene. But as regards the ethnic slaughter, the left's attitude was more or less paternalistic: what do you expect of these natives? I do not remember reading any criticism of the Hutus, or their culture, or their practicing majority rule in such an unsavory way. Of course, had the West militarily intervened, the left would have criticized the countries that sent troops for attacks that killed innocent civilians.
The reason for this hypocrisy I think is the triumph in the academy, and among many in the journalistic profession and the intelligentsia of many western nations, of the noxious notion of moral and especially cultural relativism. This is especially true as regards the left's attitudes towards the behavior of non-western third world people. This is the triumph of the late Edward Said, the distinguished man of letters, and Professor at Columbia University. Said was a professor, but also the photographed rock thrower on the Israeli Lebanese border (thereby presumably perfecting the body and the mind). Said of course was also the man who fabricated his entire personal history, claiming for half a century to be a dispossessed Palestinian, when in fact he was a member of a wealthy Egyptian family, and neither he nor his family suffered any expulsion from Palestine. But why mess up a good story that combines the personal with a historical narrative that one is fabricating in both cases? Of course Columbia University took no action against Professor Said for either his violent act, or his fraudulent history.
Said wrote a watershed book, Orientalism, arguing that the west could not judge the Eastern world, because it did not understand it, and never could. This is the diversity of separation. We can't judge what we don't know, and more importantly can never know. Hence, no universal standard of justice or judgment can ever apply. What may be judged bad or inferior here (say religious intolerance) might be an important feature to hold together a different kind of society, where the role of religion in society is different from ours, and transcends the very notion of nation state.
But Said of course went further. He not only wished to defend the Third World from attacks from the West that many of these third world states were intolerant, bad societies. He attacked the West for its intellectual imperialism, for daring to believe that western philosophy and religion could provide a framework for judging other societies and for our trying to make the rest of the world in our image, which of course we believe is superior: a cultural arrogance. The West he argued, judges the rest of the world inferior for not measuring up. So Western attempts to criticize Arab countries for their intolerance of non—Muslims is a form of colonialism. It is not hard to understand how this kind of argument would have massive appeal among the refugees of the sixties now dominating the faculties of most American colleges and universities.
Christian Holocaust GuiltThere is also a religious dimension to the left's hatred of Israel. Some of this I think represents the attitude prevalent in Christian churches to show sympathy for the perceived underdog: in this case the Palestinians. This support for the underdog is a big part of the leftist ideology — the teenage rock throwers combating the Apache helicopters and tanks of the occupying army. But I think there is something deeper, and less savory to the preference of the Christian left for the Palestinians over Israel. The Jews, in the view of the Christian left, have been waving the bloody sheet of the Holocaust for over 50 years. And the Christian left is tired of hearing about it.
They think that Israel has gotten a free pass for too long, because the Holocaust prevents Israel's critics from attacking it, for fear of being labeled as anti—Semites with no historical memory. For years, the criticism of Israel in Germany, in particular, has been more muted than in other parts of Europe, for this very reason. But in the last year, even this sensitivity evaporated. This Christian coldness to Israel is a factor in the liberal or high churches in America — the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Quakers, and all the other mainstays of the National Council of Churches, the good friends of Fidel Castro, and the group that pressured the Clinton administration to send Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba. Absolution for failure to intervene to prevent the Holocaust, or for complicity in its having occurred, can be wiped away by accusing Israel (the Jewish surrogate) of all kinds of high crimes and by using the same language of the Holocaust: ethnic cleansing, genocide, brutal occupation, starvation, human rights violations, to describe Israeli behavior today.
There is also one other factor for the problem of the Christian churches with Israel, and that is fear. The number of Christians in the holy land has been declining, and at an accelerating rate, since Muslims assumed more control over Lebanon, and the Palestinians assumed control over much of the West Bank after Oslo. The Christian churches in the Palestinian territories and Jerusalem have little to fear from Israel, and much to fear from the Arabs. Just as European governments have become more pro—Palestinian as their Arab population has grown, so Christian churches have become more pro—Palestinian to try to appease the Arabs who control the future of the Christian churches in the Holy Land.
Cowardice and Group ThinkIt is difficult to miss the virtual unanimity within the left on the subject of the Middle East. There is little visible political courage on the left to take contrary views to those held by most others in the movement. The left, much more than the right, seems to need group reinforcement. If there is aggressive anti—Israel sentiment from the chorus on the left, those who are not as passionate about the issue, find it easier to join the chorus, than stand aside. On the campuses, there is another problem: Muslim students are fiercely hostile to Israel. Confronted with this aggressive hostility to Israel, even many Jewish students recede, rather than confront it. So there is no effective counterweight.
It took a physical attack against a small group of Jewish students at San Francisco State University last year, and the action of a single professor who witnessed it and described what happened in a widely circulated email, to finally alert many in the Jewish community to how desperate things were getting for Jewish students at many colleges in the face of this anti-Israel venom. The hard core left on campus, both faculty and students, are happy to make common cause with Muslim students and show their solidarity, particularly since a new issue for the left, since 9/11 concerns protecting the civil rights of Muslims and Arabs in this country. Jewish students are also resented by other minority groups on campus because of their perceived hostility to affirmative action. Minority students have therefore become active enthusiasts of the Palestinian cause on many campuses— a solidarity action in the face of perceived common enemies.
There is a distinction between being pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. Those who hate Israel prefer to say they are for Palestinian self—determination and freedom. This sounds better than claiming that you hate Israel. Of course, were Israel not to exist in the Middle East, the last thing the Palestinians would have is self-determination, and freedom. Why would the Palestinians have what does not exist in any of the other 21 Arab countries? But the left is happy to demand a free, democratic Palestine— all of it of course, not just the West Bank and Gaza, but Israel too, after a right of return brings 4 million refugees into Israel to create a majority Palestinian state.
Those who support the Palestinians are also reluctant to attack the methods the Palestinians choose to use to win their freedom. So while lip service may be paid to a perfunctory condemnation of certain suicide bombing attacks, there are always root causes— the occupation, and settlements, and discrimination. There can be no conduct by the favored group— in this case the Palestinians, that can be judged bad in its own right, for that might serve to muddy the waters on the moral valence between the two sides of the conflict. In some circles, the violence is even romanticized, just as Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh were heroes to the left in the 60s.
Jews Who Hate IsraelThe passion with which the left hates Israel is also related to the fact that the left contains many Jewish haters of Israel. When Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein are the thought leaders of the movement to deny Israel's legitimacy, and moral standing, this gives cover to those who hate Israel for perhaps baser motives— raw anti-Semitism for instance. Israel's universities are full of professors who detest Israel and Zionism, such as Ilan Pappe, and major Israeli newspapers such as Haaretz employ Jewish pro-Palestinian writers such as Gideon Levy and Amira Hess. Many Jewish anti—Zionists in this country get their guidance from Israelis in various left wing groups, such as Jeff Halper, who are actively working to destroy the Jewish state.
For a long time, the left has argued that Jews need only fear the right — the fascists, the Christian crusaders, the neo-Nazi hate groups. Certainly there are lunatics on the right who are a danger not only to Jews but to a free society. But today I think there are many more Jew haters and Israel haters on the left than the right. It is wrong of course to generalize and equate anti-Israel views with anti-Semitism. One can be critical of Israel, and one can certainly be critical of specific Israeli policies, such as settlements, without being a Jew hater. On the issue of settlements, almost half the Israeli population thinks that many of them were a bad idea. But when Israel is singled out, as the left does, and held to account for things for which no other country is judged negatively, then something more is going on. Why is Israel the subject of 40% of all critical UN resolutions? Is Israel responsible for 40% of what is wrong in the world?
I have been to several of the left wing Israel hate fests. They are scary. There is real passion in the air. There is something about Israel that gets the juices going. Anti-Semitism is a part of it. There are a lot of people who are envious of Jews, on the left as well as the right. Patrick Buchanan thinks Jews have hijacked the conservative movement. But on the left, particularly in the academy and in journalism, I am certain there is professional envy of the many Jewish faces and what better way to get even, and get back for sometimes losing the competitive battle, than by picking on the Jewish state as a surrogate. Leftist Jews sometimes lead the assault against Israel in these venues, thereby giving the attacks, whatever their reason, greater moral authority. Few Jews will stand up for Israel in these environments, because of the great pressure on the left to conform to the group think in the institutions they control.
Hatred of ReligionFinally, there is the conflict between the religious beliefs the left associates with the state of Israel, and the secular humanistic values of the left. The anti-Zionists in Israel are foolish enough to believe that a secular democratic bi-national state of Palestine would afford them the same liberties they enjoy today. The leftists in Israel and abroad seek an end to nationality, and other antiquated creations, and the building of mankind. How exactly they would deal with jihadist Islam and aggressive Wahhabism, we don't know. The left has its own religion— it just doesn't require going to church. Reading the New York Times over coffee will do, except on high holy days, when you also must read the New York Review of Books, the Nation, and the collected works of Paul Krugman.
The left also despises Israel because it associates its policies in the territories with the behavior of religious Jews, the 'right wing zealots,' as they prefer to call them. Just as leftists hate the Republican Party in America, because they believe that it is controlled by corporations (bad) and Christian fundamentalists (very bad), the left believes that Israel's behavior is bad, because it is controlled by people who are 'irrational' religious believers.
All this talk by the settlers about the biblical ties to Judea and Samaria, is foreign to the ears of those who believe that everything in this world should be decided through reason, and can be negotiated by lawyers, and international organizations. It is ironic of course, that Israel's so-called religious zealots will likely be much less a factor in preventing a settlement to the Middle East conflict, than the religious exclusionists on the Arab side who have always detested, and wanted to expunge the presence of a non—Muslim state in their midst. But for the left, strong religious views in a Western country are those to be attacked, not those of third world people. For a Western county should know better than to allow itself to be controlled or influenced by religious people. There is a place for religion (a very private sphere for the few on the left who pay lip service to being a member of a church), and there is reason for everything else. The left basically detests religious people and religions of the west (particularly the Catholic church for its views on abortion), but is neutral about third world religions and believers, for which they are not able or willing to judge, but rather must protect against our cultural biases against them.
The support for Israel by Christian conservatives and evangelicals is also a source of great resentment by the left. While the fringe right may believe that the Jews control the world's banks, the left fears that Christian conservatives control the Republican Party, which right now controls the Presidency and but has lost its small majority in both houses of Congress. If Christian conservatives are on one side of an issue, the left has to be on the other side. The friends of your enemies are also your enemies. It is impossible for the left to accept that there can be any common ground between themselves and religious conservatives. Sadly, there are many Jews who have been unable to welcome the passionate support for Israel that comes from the Christian conservatives, because of their disagreements with them on social issues, which I daresay are much less important issues for Jews than the survival of the state of Israel.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/why_does_the_left_hate_israel_2.html
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