I am not especially bothered by right-wingers who defend Israel’s indefensible onslaught against Gaza. Right-wingers who supported the Vietnam war (if they were around then) or the Iraq war, the people who want to go to war with Russia now. I get that. Right-wingers (think John McCain) like war and view it as sport; their side is always right.
But progressive Jews (and most Jews are progressives or, at least, liberal Democrats) aren’t like that. They dominated the anti-Vietnam war movement. They opposed the Iraq war. They never bought into Cold War rhetoric, which is why Joe McCarthy disproportionately targeted Jews when he was going after “Reds.”
So what’s happened? Why are Jews running off to support this war “like lemmings going to a Barbra Streisand concert,” as one correspondent put it to me. What’s going on?
It’s simple. Most Jews, apparently, are as chauvinistic as every other ethnic group.
If they saw any other army (including the U.S. army) doing what the Israeli army is doing, they would be appalled at the monstrous cruelty and they would say so. And they would demand an end to the war through an agreement that met both sides needs. They would not explain away the bombing of hospitals or of children playing on the beach.
But they are apparently okay with these horrors when Jews are doing them, even buying into obscene propaganda (like something out of Berlin in 1942) that Palestinians are ,in Netanyahu’s words,using “telegenically-dead Palestinians for their cause. They want- the more dead the better.” Telegenically-dead. Pure Orwell or Kafka.
Imagine believing that Palestinians are picking out beautiful babies to die to advance their cause.
It’s obscene and too moronic for Jews to believe. But, check the social media, many do. (The idea actually came from Charles Krauthammer, of course. Netanyahu just borrowed it).
So, after 3000 years, we learn that Jews are just like everyone else. After all those centuries when our ancestors condemned the “goyim” (I hate the term but that is the term they used) for killing each other (and us) like barbarians, we learn that under the right conditions, we behave the same way. So much for all our Holocaust lessons about how the world was silent in the face of the horrors inflicted on us. We would have been silent too.
We are the same. Not all of us, not those of us (and there are many) who hate this war and oppose it. But the rest, the ones like Barney Frank who, a life-long opponent of all war, isan ardent supporter of this one. Why? Because he’s Jewish and must root for the home team. That is entirely what so-called “Solidarity with Israel” is all about now: choosing “blood” over morality.
3000 years and it’s come to this. Go Blue (and White).
I keep wondering if this is all some test that God is administering to Jews. How will Jews behave when the shoe is on the other foot?
Now He knows.
And we know too. If you defend this war, you are defending atrocities because, when it comes to Israel, you suspend all moral judgement. Fine. Just don’t think you are fooling anyone.
Bravo, Mr. Rosenberg, Bravo! And a few ‘amens’ thrown in.
You always say what needs to be said — what many people are thinking but are afraid to say aloud.
Thank you.
The truth hurts. People don’t want to admit it but it is true. The U.S. and Israel are very close to
silent agreement on this issue. And so are many Christian churches I am embarrassed to admit..
You do realize , that as far as Hamas is concerned, Jews in Tel Aviv is no more legitimate than jews living in Nazareth, right? Let’s get Hamas to publicly avow that distinction, and the war is over. And until Hamas does make that distinction, only the most confused and delusional Jews would fail to support Team Israel, which is far from perfect (but not as far from perfect as Hamas, which was given a Gaza with an israeli-built operational agricultural infrastructure which was allowed to rot, the cement and labor applied instead to tunnels and munitions warehouses built, where else, in the middle of Gaza City so they could cry foul each time Team Israel strikes to protect itself.). And finally: guess what? Like it or not, YOU are Team Israel. Trust me, when they come for the Jews (and they will, someday: in history Antisemitism, whether as veiled as protests in support of Hamas, or as blatant as Kristalnacht, has never gone away) they won’t give a rat’s ass for how high-minded your political affiliation was. So get real, and recognize the enemy, your enemy – and stop being a traitor to your cause. It’s your cause, however flawed its leadership; so while you should, as I do, try to improve its actions, don’t support the enemy under the delusion that you have no enemies. You do, if you’re Jewish.
Actually, you just represented the Pre Traumatic stress syndrome symptoms, that most right wing Jewish Zionists suffer from. You want every body to live in fear of being persecuted again and again. You want all the Jewish people to adopt; we stand alone, the whole world is against us, that’s why we need to commit crimes, and kill the Palestinians , just to prove what? That the world is against the Jews and Israel never does wrong? Learning from the past is not a bad thing, but to continue living in it, is not that healthy. ” Never again” should mean something, killing the Palestinians and dispossessing them for 66 years committing crimes against humanity is not it. Stop hiding the truth,or ignoring it, and the cycle of killing is not healthy for any one, the victims nor the victimizer . Seek peace and be human! We all will win!
Israel Sands like so many Jews rubbing.people’s noses in this Genocide,.pushing.people too far has a Death Wish..It’s not.just that he’s crazy with shetl fear, but, that he actually wants to provoke a Second Holocaust so he triumphantly cry.”See, I.told you so! I.told you.about the goyim, but you wouldn’t listen! Ha!”
I agree that Israelis shouldn’t be in Nazareth; but has Hamas agreed that the Israelis belong in Tel Aviv? Until then, I’m rooting for Team Israel.
MJR at it again with his sense of moral superiority, lack of awareness and general lack of empathy for everyone except Jews.
For one thing a great numbers of Jews are horrified — wringing their hands in fact! just trembling! — by some of your colleagues.
(Btw, I once donated to your group.)
For another, many Jews see the walls closing in and that the Arabs/Moslems are just so nuts that Israel will never have peace. And that Jews are insecure, no matter what success they may have in America. After all, it is just 60 years ago that the rest of white christianity allowed the Jews of Europe to be murdered.
So give it a rest, MJR.
They’ll try to kill you too even if you say “Oh no! I am one of the good Jews.”
Don’t try to instill the fear in others like you did to yourself. He is not being a good Jew or a bad Jew, he is being a human ! You should try that sometimes, it might help your case. Isolating one self by labeling from others is just being like those who you despise, and accuse. So, what distinguishes you from them if you act like them? Nothing, actually you become worst, as you claim knowledge and distaste to their behavior while you adopting it! Think about it , and please don’t criticize people who wish to express their humanity toward others, and don’t stick to the negative fear and labeling that you promote. Learn from Mr Rosenberg and support him, because being like you, will put us in the cycle Of eternal hate!
You keep mixing up Palestinians with Hamas, the only enemy, who, if they ever get done with Israel, will be coming for you. If Hamas was controlling Manhattan, what do you think the American Government would do? They would wipe it clean, that’s what. It’s just too easy for you to sit in your American home and judge.
Irgun.and The Stern.Gang.make Hamas look.like The Girl.Scouts..Hamas is an.extra-legitimate Resistance Orginazation.defending an Occupied, Oppressed, Enslaved, Blockaded, Humiliated, Ethnically.Cleansed, Sieged.people..If the Warsaw Ghetto.or Auschwitz Death.Camp.Jews were firing.symbolic bottle rockets to.protest The.Holocaust, the only.people who would blame them.would be Nazis, Nazi sympathizers,