When racism raises its head as perhaps the last gasp of an entitled “progressive” elite

...Just what is this global Left? It ostensibly includes labor and social democratic parties in Europe – as well the fascistic, thuggish murderers running Venezuela. It takes in Hezbollah, Hamas and the communist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The same movement that stones women and throws acid in their face is taken in, alongside a movement championing Arab women as dancers, singers and performers. It is the same “progressive values” that allows Silverstain to castigate as “negro” any black person whose ideas threaten his worldview.

Mr. "Tikun Olam" Silverstein

Seth J. Frantzman..
Terra Incognito/JPost..
25 February '14..

"They finally did it: found a Negro Zionist: Uncle Tom is dancing for joy!” tweeted extremist Richard Silverstein, who maintains the Tikun Olam blog. He explained in a follow-up: “when I call @cvaldary ‘Negro Uncle Tom’ it reflects on her betrayal of progressive values respected by most African-Americans.” The decision by Silverstein to label those who support Israel “negroes” is the latest in a long line of recent racially- tinged assaults by the radical Left. Recall for example Israeli writer Gideon Levy claiming that Russians have “crime in their blood.”

Racism is raising its head as perhaps the last gasp of an entitled “progressive” elite. It leads us to wonder, what fuels the rage? One of the greatest achievements of the Left and its radical fringe was simply establishing “Left” as a positive value in itself. This occurred largely due to the rise of Fascism and Nazism; the horrific evils of the Axis regimes gave the Left an imprimatur of being on the side of right.

And in many ways it made sense: The original progressives fought for what were undeniably good causes: the reduction of working hours for menial laborers; stricter safety conditions in mines; the end of child labor; women’s rights.

However, many of these campaigns were paired with other, more obscure activism that was by no stretch of the imagination positive, at least according to most people, and to which not enough attention was paid. For example, eugenics was one aspect of the progressive manifesto.

In the progressive vision of utopia, working hours would be reduced (good), but people would be herded into collectives and forced to work certain jobs with meaningless pay and no chance of social mobility (bad). The utopianists and futurists sought the perfect ordering of society along strict lines; a top-down organization in which dictatorial “parties” would organize things for the “betterment of man.” Prophets of the Left described the evils this could entail in works like 1984 or Brave New World.

Moreover, as the ancient regime was washed away and conservative and classical liberal voices proved incapable of controlling the emerging extremisms, many turned, W.B. Yeats-like, to the answers traditionally associated with the Right: Nationalism and order. Thus the more obscure evils of extreme progressivism and the obvious evils of the fascist Right were all combined under the progressive banner.

We have suffered under 100 years of this leftist-progressive hegemony, during which time the “progressive” brand has come to dictate the normative worldview of Western society – regardless of what the brand actually represents. Consider the case of Judith Butler recently deciding to cancel a presentation on author Franz Kafka at the Jewish Museum in New York City. She withdrew, claiming victimhood, due to an “uproar over my political views.” Let’s recap her political views: During a 2006 “teach in” at UC Berkeley she was asked, “Since the Left hesitates to support Hamas and Hezbollah ‘just’ because of their use of violence, does this hurt Palestinian solidarity?” She responded, “I think yes; understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.” We have here a clear example of the absurdity of the “Left good” construct. The Left is perceived as moral precisely because in its initial form, it abhorred violence; the normative leftist “peace” position.

But here is Butler arguing that we should define these radical, violent, religious fundamentalist movements as “progressive” and part of a “global Left.” Why? Because they oppose an enemy of this self-defined global Left: Israel.

The neo-pilgrim of Palestine

PHOTO: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM

Seth J. Frantzman..
Terra Incognita/JPost..
13 November '12..

The existence of “the conflict” in the Middle East has given birth to a 21st-century literary artifact that can best be described as the neo-pilgrimage account of the Holy Land. The publication of “pilgrimage itineraries” has a prestigious pedigree in Western literary history. From the 5th century on, those who visited the East were able to gain fame, or monetary gain, through putting their experiences down in print. By the 19th century these accounts generally tried to translate to a believing public the truth and earthly reality of the holy sites and the life of Jesus. Some non-traditional accounts, such as Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad poked fun at the pilgrims’ devotion.

The accounts generally took the form of travelogues, weaving in personal experiences with observations on flora and fauna. Studies of these accounts have been able to chart the relative importance of various holy sites by seeing which pilgrims visited which places. As new sites were excavated and discovered, such as the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, or made safe for travel, such as the baptismal site on the Jordan, accounts began to mention them more often.

The modern pilgrim to the Middle East also carves out a pilgrimage trail – in order to present the story of Palestinians to the western world. In general those who leave these accounts are either full-time pro-Palestinian activists, journalists or workers for one of the many thousands of NGOs that feast on portrayals of Palestinian suffering. The writers are often young and college educated. The itinerary is relatively predictable and an analysis of the literary devices employed reveals several recurring themes.

Self-discovery

In Paula Olson’s Fast Times in Palestine (2011), the author is described as “a small town girl from eastern Oklahoma...[who] felt consumed by dread and confusion. This irresistible memoir chronicles her journey from aimless ex-bartender to Ramallah-based journalist and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.”

Witness in Palestine (2007) describes its author as “Anna Baltzer, a young Jewish American, [who] went to the West Bank to discover the realities of daily life for Palestinians under the occupation. What she found would change her outlook forever.”

American “leftists” - Believers that no enemy of Israel can go far wrong

A perception persists among
some elements on the “left”
that no enemy of Israel can
be too bad a guy
(AFP photo/Manar TV)

Alex Rowell..
NOW Lebanon..
30 October '12..

Eager as they ever are to believe that no enemy of Israel can go far wrong, two prominent figures on the American “left” have penned a righteous critique of what they call a “disastrous” and “embarrassing” New York Times op-ed that portrays Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as anti-Semitic.

Not the easiest blemish to brush off, one might have thought, but then such people are well-practiced in furnishing bigots with excuses they haven’t and wouldn’t make for themselves. After claiming the particular “supposedly anti-Jewish” quote attributed to Nasrallah in the Times is “in all likelihood a fabrication,” Phil Weiss and Max Blumenthal proceed to paste a lengthy tract by “widely-published Marxist thinker” Louis Proyect, who has concluded after “assiduous” research that there isn’t a scrap of evidence—anywhere—implicating Nasrallah in any kind of funny business on the Jewish question.

Now, the Times article certainly wasn’t fantastic, and I happen to share Weiss’ and Blumenthal’s distaste for the manner in which Israel’s defenders cry “pogrom” at the mildest political criticism. Yet as a secularist who actually lives in Lebanon, I’ve long wearied of reading hagiographies of the “Party of God” from pseudo-dissidents and laptop-Leninists 7,000 miles away.

Weiss and Blumenthal are probably right that the quote (“If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli”) comes from Amal Saad-Ghorayeb’s Hizbullah: Politics & Religion. Though it purports to quote Nasrallah, the footnote in fact cites an interview with Hezbollah MP Muhammad Fneish on August 15, 1997.

Thereafter, however, the writers quickly wade far out of their depth. Put aside the fact that Nicholas Noe, editor of the party-approved Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah says the quote is genuine after all. Even if it were a fake, what Weiss and Blumenthal damningly omit to mention—presumably because they haven’t actually read her book—is that Saad-Ghorayeb also produces a number of further statements, directly attributed to Nasrallah, that are—how to put it?—difficult to read as philo-Semitic. These include:

Meotti: Sanctioning Jewish deaths

Giulio Meotti
Israel Opinion/Ynet
18 June '11

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4083736,00.html



Op-ed: Western intellectuals, cultural icons have much Israeli blood on their hands

Alan Riding’s new book, “And the show went on”, brilliantly dissects the behavior of French intellectuals under the Nazi occupation: Names that became famous icons such as Gide, Claudel, Romains, Picasso, Malraux and Piaf. But above all, Jean-Paul Sartre, the incarnation of cultural engagement, the humanist guru who turned down a Nobel Prize for literature and founded left-leaning newspaper Liberation.

During the German occupation of Paris, Sartre was a cynical profiteer concerned exclusively with his own literary career and ready to compromise with the authorities. Sartre worked for “Comoedia”, a magazine financed by the Nazis; his work “The Flies” got the blessing of the German censors; his companion, the literary goddess Simone de Beauvoir, worked for the national pro-Germans radio.

After the war, Sartre rebuilt his image of grand-resistant. He already was familiar with the horrors of the Soviet Gulag, but did not reveal as "not to discourage the moral of the Billancourt’s workers," while French intellectuals organized a solidarity rally in Paris in support of the official Soviet position that Jewish doctors had assassinated communist leaders.

Much less known is Sartre’s praise for Arab terrorism. When 11 Israeli athletes were butchered at the 1972 Munich Olympics in, Sartre wrote: “Terrorism is a terrible weapon, but the oppressed poor have no others."

The lesson from Sartre's story is urgent for our time; namely, the appeal of Jihadi totalitarianism and Palestinian terrorism to Western intellectuals and their silence on it. It reveals how deeply Jew-hatred devoured the minds of the intellectual elite. In his recent book, Theodor Darlymple has called it “The New Vichy’s Syndrome."

When legions of “martyrs” started blowing themselves up in the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Afula, and then in London, Madrid, Bali and New York, how many Western intellectuals expressed this Sartrian, lame empathy for the murderous rage?

Tongue has power of life and death

Indeed, most intellectuals, academics, writers, columnists, Nobel laureates and journalists have been enablers of evil, giving cover to international criminals and to the ongoing slaughter of Jewish. It seems like a Nazi fantasy, but some renowned cultural icons have also spoken of removing any Israeli presence from academic institutions and terminating any scientific cooperation with Israel.

Today such writers’ positions, perhaps unconsciously, echo those of Ahmadinejad and Hamas: Jostein Gaarder, author of “Sophie’s World,” wrote an essay saying that Israel has lost the right to exist; Tom Paulin, an Irish poet, recommended that “Brooklyn-born settlers be shot dead”; and Prominent French sociologist Edgar Morin dubbed Israel “a cancer."

Elsewhere, Nobel laureate José Saramago compared realities in the Palestinian territories with Auschwitz; Swedish bestselling author Henning Mankell, who was part of last year's pro-Hamas Flottilla, has just attacked the "Israeli regime" on Haaretz; and famous British historian,Eric Hobsbawm referred to Israel as a “militarist, culturally disappointing and politically aggressive nation-state."

Yet there's more: t Italian historian Angelo D’Orsi only regrets that “maybe its too late” to reset Israel, because “the scandal is the very existence of that state”; Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer urged her friend, Susan Sontag, to not accept a prize from Israel; much celebrated post-modern philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, nazifies Israel and accuses the Jewish State of “ethnic cleansing”; Italian Noble laureate, writer Dario Fo, endorsed a boycott of Israel’s books in Turin.

A.N. Wilson, a prominent British writer, “reluctantly” concluded Israel no longer has a right to exist, while British dramatist David Hare wrote that the Jews have “polluted” the Promised Land and “do not belong here.”

This Judeophobic hegemony, when exercised in newspapers, films, books and cultural events stays around like artificial waste. Like nylon and plastic, it doesn’t disappear for generations.

On a final note, the latest Sanremo Music Festival in Italy, one of the oldest and most famous in Europe, honored Roberto Vecchioni. He wrote a song called “Marika,” a sort of love letter to Palestinian suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who killed 20 Israelis at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa. A Swedish museum displayed an artist work eulogizing the same female suicide bomber, with a small ship carrying a picture of Jaradat, sailing in a rectangular pool filled with red-colored water, and accompanied by a piece of Bach music.

Vecchioni’s song says: “Sing Marika, sing, you are beautiful in time of destiny, gripping the dynamite as a daughter in your bosom.” There is a Biblical Proverb saying: “The tongue has the power of life and death.” Our Western, Vichy-like intellectuals have much Israeli blood on their hands.

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism

Bogus 'pro peace' organizations undermine Israel

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking From Jerusalem
27 May '10

Of late, the western media has provided inordinate prominence to Jewish fringe organizations like J Street and its European clone, JCall, which define themselves as "liberal" and "pro-peace", but concentrate on castigating the Israeli government and undermining mainstream Diaspora pro-Israel Jewish organizations.

These bodies are primarily controlled by anti-Israeli activists, but also include many well-meaning but confused liberal fellow travelers. They also attract uninformed Jews and members of the anti-Zionist chic influenced by constant negative media depictions of Israel.

Their core message is that the Jewish establishment is alienating the bulk of the Jewish street, by blindly supporting the policies of an extremist right wing Israeli government and indulging in "McCarthyite" tactics to excommunicate anyone who dares to criticize Israeli policies.

These unrepresentative bodies receive widespread favorable exposure by a media which relishes quoting Jews beating up on Israel. Whenever Jewish writers or academics condemn Israel or castigate their own community, they are portrayed as heroic voices of conscience resisting a harsh and bigoted Jewish leadership. One only has to compare the enormous media coverage provided to the European J Call petition criticizing Israel with a counter petition by Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein which contained many more signatories and was effectively ignored.

This was also exemplified in the US by the extraordinary media coverage extended to former New Republic editor Peter Beinart who wrote a lengthy essay titled "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" in the New York Review of Books, a periodical renowned for its longstanding hostility to successive Israeli governments. Beinart selectively chose extremist remarks from Israeli hawks, falsely alleged that Prime Minister Netanyahu repudiated the Oslo Accords, quoted the "renowned" Hebrew University professor Ze'ev Sternhell - a bitter post-Zionist - alleging that Israel has "fascist characteristics" and accusing the Israeli government and Jewish leadership of alienating the younger generation of liberal Jews.

There is an uncanny parallel between these "pro-peace" groups and the bogus peace councils sponsored by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which also claimed to be the true custodians of peace and succeeded in duping many "fellow travelers" into becoming accessories in promoting the global objectives of the Evil Empire.

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Ever So Succinctly

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
21 May '10

Melanie Phillips interviewed:-

Kathryn Jean LOPEZ: What is the “Middle East Witch-Hunt”?

PHILLIPS: Medieval witch-hunts involved singling out certain women as scapegoats and then killing them for crimes of which they were innocent but of which they found themselves incapable of proving their innocence because the case against them was rigged. In Britain in particular, but also in parts of Europe and on American campuses (see the Mearsheimer/Walt calumny), there is an obsessive malice toward Israel which goes far beyond reasoned debate and has become a pathological scapegoating of a nation.

The treatment of Israel by the left-wing Western intelligentsia is unique in its irrationality and moral and historical inversion. It takes a nation that is the historic victim of aggression and blames it for jeopardizing peace in the region and causing Islamic extremism worldwide — despite demonstrable evidence that this is simply untrue. It accuses Israel, wholly falsely, of “apartheid” and ethnic cleansing when Israeli Arabs have full civil rights and the Palestinian population has increased many times over — and when Jews are excluded from parts of the Arab world (including the putative state of Palestine).

It takes a nation that has been under exterminatory attack for six decades (nine, if you include the Palestine Mandate) and insists that it make compromises with its attackers, even as they continue to attack it. And if any Jew dares protest at the manifest injustice, lies, and bigotry in this unique delegitimization, they find themselves accused of “dual loyalty” or being part of a covert global conspiracy to put the world at risk.

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