Commentary: Why Does the Left Hate Israel? | Georgia Star News

by Victor Davis Hanson

As over 3,000 rockets are fired into Israel by Hamas, the establishment of the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war.

It is not just that they fear that the squad, Black Lives Matter, the shock troops of Antifa, and the woke institutions such as professional sports, academia, and the media are now unapologetically anti-Israel.

They are in terror also that anti-Israelism is becoming synonymous with rank anti-Semitism. And soon the Democratic Party will end up disdained as much as was the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

The new core of the Democrats, as emblemized by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), has in the past questioned the patriotism of American Jews who support Israel, and often has had to apologize for puerile anti-Semitic rants.

The Left in general believes we should judge harshly even the distant past without exemptions. Why then, in venomous, knee-jerk fashion, does it fixate on a nation born from the Holocaust, while favoring Israel’s enemies, who were on the side of the Nazis in World War II?

It was not just that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, was a Nazi sympathizer. Egypt, for example, welcomed ex-Nazis for their hatred of Jews and their military expertise—whether the infamous death camp doctor Aribert Ferdinand Heim or Waffen-SS henchman Otto Skorzeny. The Hamas charter still reads like it is cribbed from Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

The Left claims it champions consensual government and believes the United States must use its soft power clout to isolate autocracies. But the Palestinian Authority and Hamas refuse to hold free and regularly scheduled elections. If an Israeli strong man ever suspended free elections and ruled through brutality, U.S. aid would be severed within days.

If history and democratic values cannot explain fully the hatred of Israel on the Left, perhaps human rights violations do. But here too there is another radical asymmetry. Arab Israeli citizens enjoy far greater constitutional protections than do Arabs living under either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

Is the Left bothered by the allies of Hamas? After all, most are autocracies such as Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.

We return then to other reasons for the woke furor directed toward Israel.

In part, the Western Left despises the unapologetically successful—as if they are always beneficiaries of unfair privilege. Underdog Israel was not so hated from 1947-1967. Then it was poor, more socialist, and in danger of being extinguished by its many neighboring enemies.

But after the victories in the 1967 and 1973 wars, the Israeli military proved unconquerable, no matter how large the numbers, wealth, and armaments of its many enemies.

For the Left, Israel’s current strength, confidence, and success mean it cannot be seen as a victim, but only as a victimizer. The more its Iron Dome missile defenses knock down the flurry of Hamas rockets, the more its planes take out those who launched them, so all the more the Left bizarrely believes Israel wins too easily and acts “disproportionately.”

In the virtue-signaling world of the contemporary West, Israel has become caricatured as playing the role of the American white police, the Palestinians a foreign version of the oppressed Black Lives Matter movement. The Palestinians then are woke, the Israelis not so much.

The Left also has a strange idea of current “imperialism” and “colonialism.” The general rule is that Westerners cannot settle in numbers in the non-West. But the reversal is certainly not true. Millions of Middle Easterners are welcomed into Belgium, France, Germany, the U.K., and the United States.

Yet, Jews have been in what is modern-day Israel since nearly the dawn of civilization. And their 1947 borders only grew after they were attacked and threatened with extinction.

Again, the Left always claims that its anti-Israelism has had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.

But it is almost impossible now to make that distinction when woke criticism obsesses over democratic Israel and ignores far greater oppressors and oppressed elsewhere.

Why are there no demonstrations in major Western cities damning the Communist Chinese government that has put 1 million Muslim Uighurs in camps? Why are the world’s millions of former refugees—the Volga Germans, the East Prussians, the Cypriot Greeks—long ago forgotten, and yet the Palestinians alone deified as perpetually displaced by the Jews?

Our formal NATO ally, Turkey, received little global pushback for its treatment of the Kurds, or its frequent intolerance of religious minorities. Why then does the Jewish state alone always earn such venom?

Hating democratic Israel while it is under attack is not just a reflection of the new woke and ethically bankrupt Left. It is also a symptom of a deeper pathology in the West, one of moral equivalence, amoral relativism—and self-loathing.

Hating Israel, then, has become the surrogate Western way of hating oneself.

– – –

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won and The Case for Trump.
Photo “Free Palestine March” by Alisdare Hickson. CC BY-SA 2.0.


Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact licensing@centerforamericangreatness.com.

The post Commentary: Why Does the Left Hate Israel? appeared first on The Georgia Star News.

Skip The Scoop | Seek Understanding

Gates and Soros-backed organization buys U.K. Covid-19 testing company for $41 million

Show Me

Wireless Radiation Exposure for Children Should Be ‘Hundreds of Times Lower’ than FCC Limits, Environmental Group Says

Show Me

Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to sexual assault charges in LA court

Show Me

Eliminating virus risk at Tokyo Olympics is impossible, WHO leader says

Show Me

Drug Distributors and J.& J. Announce $26 Billion Deal to End Opioids Lawsuits

Show Me

Bezos says he’s creating a space industry with Elon Musk and Richard Branson

Show Me

EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans Demand Answers From Biden Over Work With Facebook To Flag ‘Disinformation’

Show Me

GOP leader rips Pelosi for rejecting Banks, Jordan on Jan 6 panel, threatens boycott

Show Me

Biden Homeland Security Announces Travel Restrictions for Americans at Border Due to COVID Variant But Southern Border Will Remain Open to Illegals

Show Me

Canada: Modern but No Longer Very Democratic or Western

Show Me

‘Unintentional Injuries’ and the Lockdown

Show Me

(FORUM) Government and Big Tech are among biggest purveyors of misinformation on Covid

Show Me

US Surgeon General Asks Big Tech to Restrict Voices That Challenge Biden Regime Narrative on Vaccinations

Show Me

Doctors for COVID Ethics: Halt Use of Pfizer COVID Vaccines in Adolescents ‘Immediately’

Show Me

Five Times More Children Committed Suicide Than Died of Covid in First Year of UK Lockdown: Study

Show Me

‘They Should Be Fired’ – Scientist Says Washington State COVID Test Info That Prompted Lockdowns Is ‘Garbage Data’

Show Me

Germany Calls on China to Allow Further Investigations Into COVID Origins

Show Me

WHO admits errors in report of COVID origins, says will correct mistakes

Show Me

China says pandemic won’t delay 2022 Winter Olympics

Show Me

IT BEGINS: The Government Is Keeping a List of Who Has Taken the COVID Vaccine and Contacting Individuals Not Vaccinated

Show Me

California Woman Is Charged in Fake Covid-19 Vaccine Card Scheme

Show Me

Dr. Fauci Has Lied To Congress & The American People About Funding Gain Of Function Viruses | Video 6 Minutes 15 Seconds

Show Me

‘We Can All Learn From China’ – Fauci-Funded Researcher Hyped CCP Vaccines and Lockdowns on Communist State Propaganda Network.

Show Me

Carroll County summer camp suspends operations after two staff members test positive for COVID

Show Me

“Perfect Storm” of Pandemic, Poverty & Jailing Ex-President Unleashes Mass Protest in South Africa

Show Me

Luntz advised Biden’s COVID-19 team

Show Me

WHO Warns South Africa to Brace For Covid-19 Surge After Riots

Show Me

False Labelling in COVID Origin Scrutiny Reminiscent of Climate Change Debate, Observers Say

Show Me

Why The Border Crisis is a Public Health Crisis

Show Me

Covid-19 UK: Alcohol deaths reach record levels after lockdown drove binge drinking at home

Show Me

If California workers must disclose COVID-19 vaccination status, why not state lawmakers?

Show Me

8 Fully Vaccinated Health Care Workers Test Positive for CCP Virus in Las Vegas: Report

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 1 | Recorded July 21, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 37 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 2 | Recorded July 21, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 21 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Evening Edition | Recorded July 21, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 58 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 1 | Recorded July 20, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 49 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 2 | Recorded July 20, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 21 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Evening Edition | Recorded July 20, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 58 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 1 | Recorded July 19, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 24 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 2 | Recorded July 19, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 45 Seconds

Show Me