T. Belman. I would suggest that the battle is between those who support the “oppressor” and those who support the “oppressed”. The red/green alliance consider America and Israel as oppressors. Breitbart, in July 2014 published The Left Hate Israel Because It Is Everything They Despise: Capitalist, Conservative and Patriotic. The Right, who will shortly be in power due to the election of Trump, loves Israel for the same reason.
JERUSALEM – Someone asked Joshua Muravchik, the distinguished scholar of international studies at Johns Hopkins University, why the left, which once embraced Israel, now detests the Jewish state.
He explained, “Leftists/liberals/progressives believe that the great moral drama of our era is ‘the rest against the West’ or the ‘people of color’ against the ‘white man.’ This has replaced poor-against-rich or worker-against-capitalist as the core idea of progressive thought. Seen through that lens, Israel (the ‘Western,’ ‘white’ guys) is automatically wrong, and the Palestinians (the ‘anti-colonialist,’ ‘people of color’) are automatically right. On the other side, conservatives value Israel as a free country, a democracy and an ally of the United States.”
While I think there is some element of truth in what Muravchik says, I think he misses the big picture.
First of all, if you travel to the Middle East and visit the Arab “Palestinians” in Judea and Samaria and Gaza and then visit Israel, you will be hard-pressed to see any significant difference in the skin complexion of Arabs and Jews. While many Israelis emigrated from Europe and the former Soviet Union, they also came in big numbers from the Arab world where they were visibly indistinguishable from their Muslim and Christian neighbors.
As well, Arabs run the gamut in skin color from very light to very dark. Many even have sandy hair and blue eyes.
So this whole racial dynamic makes little sense. Arabs and Jews are ethnic cousins – all genetically children of Abraham.
While it’s true that Israel is often mischaracterized by the left as a colonial oppressor, the only ethnic cleansing and genocide being espoused in the Middle East comes from the Muslim Arabs, who insist the Jewish state needs to be destroyed and demands that no Jews be permitted to live in their “liberated” territories.
I believe there is something much more fundamental at play between the alliance of the left and radical Islam.
It’s not so much a war on the West.
It’s a war on God – specifically the God of the Bible.
That’s what ever so clearly Israel represents in the world today – a fulfilled promise of return to statehood and nationhood after nearly 2,000 years.
It also stands at the very heart of Israel’s legitimacy as a nation.
Israel, after all, is not just a legitimate state because the United Nations approved its rebirth in 1948. Israel, after all, is not just legitimate because Jews lived in the land continuously since the time of Joshua.
Israel, after all, represents the people who were summoned by God to live in the land, delivered out of Egypt to the land and who brought the Bible to the rest of the world.
What’s more, the modern-day state of Israel perfectly fulfills the prophecies of a worldwide dispersion of the Jews throughout the world who would return to the land with a nation reborn in one day.
No other nation in the history of the world has experienced the miraculous rebirth Israel experienced just as described by the ancient Hebrew prophets. But that is a frightening reality for Muslims and the left, because Muslims worship a different god with a different story of history, and the left denies any god at all except the god of materialism.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
For first graders and a FEW adults who need to know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SeIMW8it_M
Grappelli great jazz
@ honeybee:
Stephane Grappelli – More
https://youtu.be/rD7Cp9uwZ9o
Sebastien Zorn Said:
Less is more ???
no difference between ALT-Right and CTRL-Left: Paulbot and Code Pink
can not believe I just got sucker-punched in a thread at a post on anti-Semitism and Bannon at The Federalist.
In all fairness, the writers at The Federalist blog are a-ok. commenters, not so much.
Thanks, feel better. Good night
@ honeybee:
To add “with sarcasm” is redundant.
“Urban Dictionary: Whoop Dee Doo
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Whoop%20Dee%20Doo
Whoop Dee Doo. An ironic exclamation of approval or pleasure in an event in which the observer is actually bored or unimpressed. Him: Hey! If we hurry and get …”
Marianne Faithfull – Broken English 1979
https://youtu.be/F-H55V_oma0
@ Sebastien Zorn:
“Whoop de doo” an old Texas saying often said with extreme sarcasm.
honeybee Said:
No, I said it was much earlier and not all at once. And it’s “fewer” words.
“According to usage rules, fewer is only to be used when discussing countable things, while less is used for singular mass nouns. For example, you can have fewer ingredients, dollars, people, or puppies, but less salt, money, honesty, or love. If you can count it, go for fewer.Jan 16, 2015”
“What’s the difference between fewer and less? | Dictionary.com Blog
blog.dictionary.com/fewer-vs-less/”
How many of your first graders, not knowing this, turned to a life of crime, depravity, and poor grammar, do you suppose? Would I recognize any of their names from the news? Or among the newscasters? Perhaps as officials in the Obama/Clinton regime?
@ Sebastien Zorn:
That just what I said, only with less words!!!
@ honeybee:
Actually, the Communist left supported the Arabs in the beginning, then Israel in 1948, and then when Stalin saw that he couldn’t use Israel as a pawn, and the British were dismantling their empire anyway, the Arabs again. The non-Communist Left here supported Israel until Israel won the 6 day war and then gradually supported the Arabs starting with the far left. The rest of the Left, including the mainstream media, came around to an anti-semitic position in the aftermath of the first intifada in 1988. Now, they are monolothic and indistiguishable, Anarchist, Trotyskist, Communist, Social Democrat, Liberal (even some “Conservatives”) take the identical line: Israel=Goliath/Arabs=David, excoose me, Daoud.
Because once the Israelis dumped their Socialist Govt., they became economically successful.
@ Bill Badger:
ditto!@ Ted Belman:
@ Bill Badger:
Right on.
Muslims invaded, conquered and settled Israel. They forced their language and laws on the population. That’s the very definition of colonialism.
There are Muslims in Israel for the same reason that there are Muslims in India and more than 50 other nations.
They are the remnants of a Muslim colonial regime that displaced and oppressed the indigenous non-Muslim population.
The Muslims can’t colonize and then complain that they’re being colonized when the natives take back the power that the Muslims stole from them in the first place.
The Muslims also can’t complain that they’re being colonized when the descendents of the natives take back the power that The Muslims stole from their ancestors.