By Gidon Ben-Zvi, ISRAEL HAYOM
It’s official: The Democratic Party has abandoned Israel to its fate. This development ?has nothing to do with that most ancient of hatreds, anti-Semitism. Rather, in an age ?when a compelling narrative increasingly trumps a cold, hard history lesson, Israel’s ?version of the events leading up to Operation Protective Edge, while factually sound, ?is a snoozer.?
The results of a recent Pew Research Center poll revealed the largest partisan gap in 40 years on the issue of supporting Israel.?
Conducted July 8-14, the week Israel began its air operation against Hamas in ?the Gaza Strip but before its ground invasion, the poll asked 1,805 respondents: “In ?the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, which side to you sympathize with ?more — Israel or the Palestinians?”?
The poll found that respondents considering themselves conservative Republicans ?supported Israel by 77 percent, compared to 68 percent of moderate Republicans. ?Among Democrats, 48 percent of moderate Democrats supported Israel, compared ?to 39 percent of liberal Democrats.?
In other words, 61 percent of liberal Democrats either sympathize with Hamas, a ?group of war criminals designated as a terrorist organization by, among many other ?countries, the United States, or are utterly apathetic to the plight of a small, faraway ?democracy whose millions of citizens are being forced to flee for their lives under ?daily, sometimes hourly, rocket fire.?
While the Israeli government and its supporters have done a valiant job of delivering ?just the facts to a ravenous international media, the fix is in. After all, you would ?have to be made of stone to not be moved to tears by the sight of defenseless ?Palestinians being mowed down by the Israeli war machine.?
Israel vs. Hamas. Goliath vs. David. Got it.?
Now, at the risk of throwing cold water on the misguided passions of Hamas ?supporters and the otherwise uninformed, let us compare founding documents.?
The Hamas Charter states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam ?will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”?
Doesn’t leave much room for a Turkish and Qatari-backed cease-fire, does it??
Now, let us get a glimpse into the heart of darkness that is, to the mind of many ?liberal Democrats, the Israel Defense Forces.?
?”The IDF and its soldiers are obligated to protect human dignity. Every human being ?is of value regardless of his or her origin, religion, nationality, gender, status or ?position.”?
Sounds positively progressive.?
The Israel Defense Forces is sending soldiers into the hornets’ nest of Palestinian ?terror — booby-trapped with mines and riddled with subterranean tunnels — when it ?could simply be carpet-bombing these areas.?
Let’s not forget that during World War II, the British army responded to Nazi attacks ?by leveling entire German cities from the air, with tens of thousands of innocent ?civilians being killed as a result.?
I don’t recall a war crimes tribunal being convened against the winners of World War II.?
Yet, the IDF’s unimaginable restraint has left good American liberals in a tizzy of ?moral outrage.?
What is it about men in uniform that never fails to make good-hearted (is there any ?other kind) progressives see red??
This phenomenon may be connected to how the liberal Democrat processes ?information. Slaves to gut emotion, and averse to rigorous academic research, ?liberals do not bother to figure out who is right or wrong in any conflict.?
Instead, they instinctively root for the scruffy-looking student, professor or terrorist, ?and against the uniformed military.?
Hamas is responsible for the murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians in terrorist ?attacks since 1996. Its founding charter calls not only for the destruction of the State ?of Israel, but the murder of all Jews.?
Each missile that Hamas is now launching against Israel constitutes a crime against ?humanity because it is directed at civilian targets.?
Forced to respond to such attacks, Israel is doing so, but only after warning Gazans to ?evacuate their homes before bombardment. In such a case, if someone is killed, ?international law considers it a mistake rather than an intentional killing.?
Back to American partisan politics. In 2014, you will find Israel’s ?staunchest and most consistent defenders in the Republican Party.? Meanwhile, the ranks of Democrats include a good number of the State of Israel’s ?harshest, most vocal critics.?
As such, Israel has no home in today’s Democratic Party.?
Gidon Ben-Zvi is the Jerusalem correspondent for the Algemeiner newspaper and blogs at Jerusalem State of Mind.
History shows that soon or later Jews will be ostracized from the countries and people they try to integrate with. To no avail. Therefore something similar is bound to happen in this country.
The event of the last demo convention is the first evidence.
But Jews will decide to ignore the warning and then later build more memorials.
At least now Israel exists.
Many American Jews are no different from German Jews. More American than American. They refuse to understand that no one will stand for them one of these days!
@ Bill Levinson:
As, I think I told you, The ALMIGHTY has sense of irony, not humor !!!!!
@ keelie:
Spoken like a true artist.
The democratic party has abandoned classical liberalism.
The liberals/progressives (so called) promote laziness, by ignoring responsibility for ones actions and simply blaming the society. It is obvious that the majority of democrats hate Israel/Jews. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Polosi spoke favorably about Hamas recently. Although it is hard to take liberalism (religion of the leftists) from the hearts of its believers, I hope those who love Israel may not continue to support the democratic party.
If we – all of us – were to base our entire lives on what people think of us, we would accomplish nothing whatsover.
None of you reading this post, which provides clear-cut evidence, that the liberals of the Democratic Party of the USA largely side with the Jew-hating Arabs and other Moslems and their Eurabian backers, will ever see me tearing my hair out over anguish.
The truth is that in the 58 years that I have been entitled to vote in US elections, I have voted solid Republican: Eisenhower 1956; Nixon 1960; Goldwater 1964; Nixon 1968; Nixon 1972; Ford 1976; Reagan 1980; Reagan 1984; Bush 1988; Bush 1992; Dole 1996; Bush 2000; Bush 2004; McCain 2008; Romney 2012.
And thus it shall be for the remaining years of my now 80-year-old life. The Republicans are not perfect; not even hardly so. And as a matter of fact, some of them are downright assholes. But in the main, they view life through prisms somewhat similar to mine. An what we see is American liberty as opposed to — and opposed by — Europian socialist liberslism, of the type that presently is eating away at the sinews of what once was the strongest and richest commonwealth in world history.
Where do my fellow American Jews fit into this increasingly dreadful picture? Mostly on the wrong side. But that’s okay. A new strong, proud Jewish nation is growing rapidly on the soil of Eretz-Yisrael. To be sure, not a few American Jews will play their own roles in supporting, sustaining and ultimately joining their Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel. There, not a few of them will expend their lives on active duty in the armed defense of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation.
But the rest of these Jews? Forget them. They sold out long ago and are now worthless for the purposes of the Jewish state and our Jewish nation.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Lets take a cold look at the folk that constitute the majority of the aggregate called Democratic Party of today.
Short and sweet;
“D’ya wanchips wi’dat?
“Plast’o’paper?
I believe that I may be still registered to the Democratic Party which I joined in the 70’s. Never bothered to check. I doubt many from my era are still around to be counted.