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

American Medical Association CEO calls laws banning kids trans surgeries ‘dangerous governmental intrusion’

Show Me

Uganda Detects Covid-19 Variant From India, Urges Caution

Show Me

Dr. John Eastman to Hold Press Conference Thursday at Noon MDT – After Being Fired for Speaking at a Trump Rally

Show Me

Massachusetts Man Took Over ‘OG’ Social Media Accounts to Steal Cryptocurrency: Justice Department

Show Me

Trump defends ‘great patriot’ Rudy Giuliani after ‘unfair’ FBI raid

Show Me

No, Other People’s Covid Vaccines Can’t Disrupt Your Menstrual Cycle

Show Me

High School Runner About To Set Record Collapses At Finish, Blames Outdoor Mask Mandate

Show Me

Joy Behar Claims Tim Scott ‘Doesn’t Understand’ The Difference Between A Racist Country And Systemic Racism

Show Me

Kamala Harris: America Isn’t a Racist Country — But We Have to ‘Speak Truth’ About History of Racism

Show Me

‘The 1619 Project’ and the Red Meat Project

Show Me

Caught on camera: Liz Cheney fist-bumps Biden before his speech

Show Me

Hawley Introduces Bill to Reduce Pentagon’s Reliance on Technology from China and Other ‘Adversary Nations’

Show Me

Water: The Forgotten Nutrient

Show Me

April 29, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 52 Minutes 29 Seconds

Show Me

German spies monitor anti-lockdown activists for suspected sedition

Show Me

Purchase Orders Show FDA Bought “Fresh” Livers of Viable Babies Killed in Abortions

Show Me

NC Sheriff: 2 deputies killed, suspect and 2 others dead

Show Me

Trump Floats 2024 Presidential Run Again, Says DeSantis Could Be Potential Running Mate

Show Me

Ashli Babbitt’s family plans to sue Capitol Police, officer who shot her

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 1 | Recorded April 29, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 19 Seconds

Show Me

Giuliani’s Lawyer Accuses DOJ of ‘Corrupt Double Standard’ In Executing Warrants Against Him

Show Me

US Catholic bishops may press Biden to stop taking Communion

Show Me

WATCH: Christian Pastor Arrested in London for Quoting ‘Homophobic’ Bible Verses

Show Me

Minneapolis parking app hacked, personal information stolen

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 2 | Recorded April 29, 2021 | Video: 47 Minutes 58 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Evening Edition | Recorded April 29, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 59 Seconds

Show Me

Scott Outshines Biden, Enrages Libs With Inspiring Tale of Overcoming Adversity

Show Me

CCP Arrests Netizen for Posting Vaccine Death

Show Me

Facebook Blocks #ResignModi Posts for Hours as India Crisis Grows

Show Me

Border Patrol Chief Tells Biden: ‘I Cannot’ Comply With Demand To Use Non-Legal Immigration Terms

Show Me

U.S. Tells Citizens to Leave India as Covid-19 Swamps Hospitals

Show Me

Pompeo knocks Biden: He ‘successfully outlined a radical, socialist agenda’

Show Me

Biden Takes Credit for Ending Afghan War – After Extending It – in Speech to Congress

Show Me

Judge Denies Request to Stop Arizona Audit | Recorded April 28, 2021 | Video: 12 Minutes 44 Seconds

Show Me

Pompeo: Trump Changed How We Look at China | Americans’ Distrust in Media at Record High

Show Me

April 28, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 52 Minutes 29 Seconds

Show Me

Connecticut Lawmakers Vote to Repeal Religious Exemptions to Vaccines, Health Freedom Advocates Vow Legal Challenge

Show Me

Texas Counties Declare Disaster Over Border Crisis

Show Me

Ex-Trump aide sues Biden administration, alleging discrimination against white farmers

Show Me

Astronaut Michael Collins, Apollo 11 pilot, dead of cancer

Show Me