The left and Israel

[danaeris]

My father keeps on going on about bias on the Left against the state of Israel. I have no idea what he's talking about, having not heard any such thing from any of my left-wing friends.

Anyone know what he's talking about?

Comments

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

Probably the thought that it wasn't right to get involved in the first place with the State formation in 1950 (or whenever it was), and that the current fighting with the Palestinians is mostly the US and Britain's fault.

[angrykat.livejournal.com]

1948. the state was formed in 1948.

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

thank you...

[cos]

I don't know about the Canadian left. The American Left is very split on Israel. There's definitely a large (though minority) contingent that you could call "anti-Israel". There's a much broader set of political views on the left that people call "anti-Israel" that aren't really, but it's definitely a big heated issue. Google around and you'll find a lot.

[northbard.livejournal.com]

standard complaint of zionists/jews in north america and elsewhere is that the "liberal media" side with the Palestinians.

Siding with the palestinians means they are against Israel as a state, of course, and therefore against jews, which means they're all a bunch of nazi bastards. :)

This is a quote from my gransfather..not my own opinion.

[laura47.livejournal.com]

yeah, there are plenty of very left wing people who are very pro-palestine. They see Israel as oppressive and fascist, best I can tell. Think Aimee Smith.

re: anti-Israel

[etherial.livejournal.com]

The Left thinks Israel's fight with Palestine adds needless aggression to the region.

[outcastspice.livejournal.com]

from what i've heard, the perception is that left wing/libs side with palestinians, which is unfortuantely often the same as being against israel or jews. sorry no sources, though.

[ghudson.livejournal.com]

Well, Democratic politicians in the US tend to be about as pro-Israel as conservative ones. But at the activism level, sure, there's some anti-Israel bias on the left. Google for "divestment".

[dicedork.livejournal.com]

Having a problem with indigenous Palestineans getting rolled over by tanks and having crimes against humanity committed against them is often interpreted as "anti-Israeli."

Zionism has also been denounced by AI as racism. That's considered anti-Israel.

In general any time those tree-hugging, pinko hippies start calling Israel on their shit, the accusations of anti-semetism and anti Israel start coming out.

The left and israel

[admiralthrawn.livejournal.com]

Well, looking around at the left-wing organizations at MIT:

The Social Justice Cooperative (the ones organizing anti-bush rallies, which I think puts them solidly in the "left") links to "a few of the groups and people with whom we stand in solidarity". The only one that talks about the Israel/Palestine issue is OnePalestine.org, whose first principle is to oppose the existence of the state of israel. They go on to describe how the withdrawl of settlers from the gaza strip is part of a secret plan for genocide.

Ok, how about Refuse and Resist? They self-describe as being vocal supporters of gay rights, reproductive rights, and a number of other issues that I'd say put them firmly in the political "left". Their web page includes flyers that describe the founding of the state of Israel as "The Catastrophe" and states that the existence of the state of Israel is "a crime that continues to this day".

Or how about the thistle, home of left-wing news on campus? Well, their description of the infadita is that "After years of being taxed, searched, censored, beaten, raped, and shot at, the Palestinians had enough - many risked and gave their lives to let Israel, the US, and the world know." Yep, suicide bombing temples and bars and such is just like issuing a press release, a nice way to let the world know about your problems.

I could go on; those are just the examples from the first couple pages of google-MIT results to see what MIT leftish student groups thought about Israel.

Now, I think that Israel should stop shooting at the palestineans and get out of most of the west bank. But I also believe that the arab and muslim worlds need to stop declaring that all jews must die and then using guns, rockets, and bombs to get started on their holy quest. Unlike me, the left on campus often seems to portray hamas as innocent victims, as in the thistle quote above and rarely condems their tactic of blowing up jewish civilians (none of the three groups mentioned had anything on their websites saying that maybe killing jewish civilians might be wrong). The thing I hate most is political hypocracy; if you think murdering civilians for political reasons is evil, you should be condeming Hamas just as loudly as you are condeming Israel, rather than trying to explain why it's not really murder because they were oppressed in the past. Nobody would accept a jew slaughtering germans as revenge for the holocaust, and similarly, nobody should accept a muslim slaughtering jews as revenge for the occupation of palestine.

Of course, as usual, the views in the US and those in Canada may vary; I will happily admit that I'm using examples from MIT because I'm familiar with them (and I assume many of the readers of your lj are as well), so this may or may not reflect your father's encounters with the left.

[redhawke.livejournal.com]

I would say that the poster child for both those on the Left and on the Right (though in opposing ways, and for opposing reasons) is Rachel Corrie, the American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip.

LEFT.

RIGHT.

To her supporters, she's a martyr who went to Gaza to prevent the destruction of Palestinian lives and homes by Israel, and was killed either by the deliberate malice, or criminal negligence and indifference of the Israeli Army. To her detractors, she's a naive girl used by terrorists and the "anti-Israel left," who died from her own foolishness.

The truth seems (as in so many cases) to lie in the middle, though there's fudge room enough to go around.

However, whether one feels her cause was right or not, she would almost certainly qualify both as being on the Left, and being "against the Srtate of Israel." FWIW.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Some left wing organizations have been accused of treading lightly on subjects like Palestinian suicide bombers, violation of ceasefires, corruption and repression of their own people, but of exhibiting flagrant bias in their criticisms of Israel.

One illustration of this is the "Jenin Massacre" of 2002 where Israel was accused, mostly by left wing media sources, of massacring thousands of civilians. The number of casualties was later determined to be 56 Palestinians and 23 Israelis.

and presidential candidates

[admiralthrawn.livejournal.com]

How could I forget the big one...

One of the perrennial also-rans for the democratic nomination is Al Sharpton. Best known for holding a rally where his supporters chanted "Death to jews" and then went off and lynched a jewish student. Afterward, when asked if he had anything to say to those who had just killed someone, he said "We must not reprimand our children for outrage, when it is the outrage that was put in them by an oppressive system."

He followed up a few years later by protesting a jewish owned business that raised the rent on a black-owned tenant business subletting (because the black owner of the building had raised their rent...). One of the speakers at that rally said "he's one of the greedy Jew bastards killing our [black] people. Don't give the Jew a dime." The protesters then torched the store and shot the employees. Again, he pointed out to the press that it was the fault of the jews for their historic oppression of blacks.

And then he ran for president, pulling down as much as 9% of the vote in some states. And lest you say "he's just an outsider, the party didn't take him seriously", he was invited to speak in the prime time slot during the convention... And he's been running for office with backing from the party in NY races for quite a while now.