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I recently came across an article on the always-fascinating topic of “The Real Reason the Left Hates Israel,” by Sharon Goldman. I highly recommend it for its analysis of the intellectual and political origins of the flaming misoziony* of the Global Progressive Left (GPL), although, as we will see, it completely misses the point.
Goldman explains how the popularity of the postmodernism of Derrida and Foucault made it difficult to challenge political narratives on the basis of factual truth. The Jews may say they are the aboriginal inhabitants of the Land of Israel, but the Palestinian Arabs claim a history of thousands of years in “Palestine,” descending from Canaanites or Philistines or whatever. Before postmodernism, you could point to archaeological and historical evidence to decide which narrative was closer to the truth; but the postmodernists “showed” that science and scholarship are nothing more than “constructions” used by the power structure to control the populations that it oppresses. The only objective reality is the reality of power and resistance.
The next element in this toxic intellectual soup is postcolonialism. Building on postmodernism, postcolonialism attempts to explain intellectual, political, and economic phenomena as the result of the power relations between the (usually European) colonizers and the (usually African or Asian) colonized peoples. Postcolonialism has given us, for example, the definition of “racism” as racial bias plus power, which is used to argue that a “person of color” can be biased, but cannot be racist, since he or she is oppressed by a “white” power structure.
A particular example of postcolonialist thought which proved remarkably popular and potent in shaping left-wing discourse is the 1978 book “Orientalism” by Edward Said. Said, a professor of literature (and a liar and fraud) of Palestinian Arab origin, argued that distorted and romanticized stereotypes of Arabs and other non-Westerners, particularly Muslims, was used to justify the colonial oppression of them. Scholars of the Middle East like Bernard Lewis, who were not Arab or Muslim, were inherently affected by these misperceptions and therefore incapable of truly understanding the region. Said was also a Palestinian nationalist (a member of the PLO’s Palestinian National Council). “Orientalism” was and is required reading in countless university programs.
Goldman describes the way the GPL and particularly the antiwar movements adopted the postcolonial point of view in the 1970s, and sympathized with the various “liberation” movements, from the Viet Cong to the Black Panther Party, and especially the PLO. When the US became engaged in wars in the Middle East after 9/11, the GPL understood these wars as the US using its power to “impose its control on the natives” of the Middle East.
The relatively new concept of intersectionality put the icing on the cake. Originally the simple idea that someone who is a member of more than one oppressed group – like a black lesbian – suffers in a more complicated way than a person who is only one kind of victim, it has become understood to mean that in order to support one oppressed group, it’s necessary to support all of them. And there are many such groups – all except the white, male, Western, wealthy, power elite qualify – including, of course, Palestinians.
Especially Palestinians. If you are for “social justice,” even if you want to fight abuse of women, notes Goldman, you also need to support the Palestinian Struggle. She writes,
This is how you get to a situation where Israel, with its rights for women and for LGBTQ communities and religious minorities, is the great evil of our time. Intersectionality’s focus on victimhood leads to the exclusion of pro-Israel groups broadly within the social justice alliance, who, post 1967, are no longer viewed as victims; and the left’s historic connection to Palestinians as victims of Western imperialism explains the widespread illogical mapping of the language of colonialism and occupation onto the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
And, thanks to postmodernism, facts don’t matter.
But now we come to the point at which she goes wrong. “It’s not anti-Semitism [sic], but ignorance that has placed Israel at the pinnacle of the world’s evils for most of the Left,” she writes.
Well, no. There is plenty of ignorance to go around, but it doesn’t explain Israel’s location “at the pinnacle,” even, for many, considered more evil than the US or Russia – today’s most active imperialist colonizer. It doesn’t explain the irrational intensity of their misoziony, the belief that Israel is as bad or worse than the Nazis, and the predilection to believe absolutely anything bad about Israel without evidence. It doesn’t explain the way the IDF is accused over and over of deliberately harming children, using poison gas and explosive bullets, and being at the center of an international web of subversion. These charges are simply ridiculous, yet they are believed just as much by the social justice warriors of the Left as by the neo-Nazis of the Right.
What Goldman has laid out for us quite competently is not the motivation for left-wing misoziony. She has instead given us the intellectual justification for it, the logic and ideology that underlies the arguments that are be made for it, when arguments need to be made. These are not the same.
In his book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” Jonathan Haidt makes an analogy with a man riding an elephant. The rider can signal to the elephant where he wants to go, but ultimately the elephant is in control. If the man wants to turn right and the elephant prefers to go left, there is nothing the man can do about it. Haidt compares the rational, conscious part of the mind to the rider, sitting on a massive, mostly subconscious, emotional elephant. The rider may think he is in control with his logical reasoning, but the power to choose resides primarily in his emotions. And the logical arguments that the rider thinks are guiding him are often after-the-fact justifications of the choices made for him by his emotions.
Perhaps young people coming to the university are indoctrinated with the ideological background that enables them to justify the decision to join, say, Students for Justice in Palestine, and swallow its massive charge of misoziony. Perhaps they sincerely believe that they have made this decision rationally. But the elephant knows. And what it knows in its heart is that it somehow fits that the Jewish state is more evil than any other, bleeding children, poisoning wells, damaging everything that she touches.
There is a word for that.
___________
*Misoziony is the extreme and irrational hatred of the Jewish state. It is antisemitism raised up one level of abstraction, although almost all misozionists are antisemites as well.
@ Bear Klein: Excellent quotation and sourcing, Bear.
published in Paris in 1844 under the German title “Zur Judenfrage” in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. It was one of Marx’s first attempts to develop what would later be called the materialist conception of history.
@ Ted Belman: Ted, I was well within the five minute limit. In fact, I had taken no more than two minutes. Had 3 minutes left when your computer announced “you are no longer allowed to comment” and my comment disappeared shortly thereafter. Thanks for looking into this problem for me, Ted.
Adam @ Adam Dalgliesh:
Adam Dalgliesh
I know that you do not write under your own name. And that you probably think it “slick” to use the fictional character of PD James.
And I also know that the donkeys on Israpundit will never challenge your claims above.
Your piece above I suspect is a pack of lies. To me somehow made worst that you write under a false name.
Like the material published on global warming by warming denial people you very noticeably do not give any source to the very first part which reads
“Karl Marx. In 1842, he published an article in which he identified a trio of interconnected enemies of socialism and communism as he envisaged them. The triad of enemies was the Jewish people and Judaism, the United States, and the right sof the individual embodied in the U.S. Bill of Rights. He specifically identified the first ten amendments to the u.S constitution as a pro-capitalist, anti-socialist document.”
I ask you very simply Mr Not Dalgliesh. “Are you losing your marbles”.
Since when has it been possible to write such outstandingly damaging material against anybody without naming your source.
Especially I might say when that “somebody” is a man who became more hated than any other on earth
So be most careful with this. A lot depends on it. Name your 1942 article.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
I am happy to work with you but am not sure what you are saying. After posting a coment, the poster has 5 minutes to edit it.
After 5 minutes, they can write to me and ask me to edit it.
The origin of the left’s l hatred of the Jews is Karl Marx. In 1842, he published an article in which he identified a trio of interconnected enemies of socialism and communism as he envisaged them. The triad of enemies was the Jewish people and Judaism, the United States, and the right sof the individual embodied in the U.S. Bill of Rights. He specifically identified the first ten amendments to the u.S constitution as a pro-capitalist, anti-socialist document.
As for the Jews, he writes that their true religion is “huckstering.” They were responsible for the spread of commercial values throughout Europe. Opposing those who called for the “emancipation” of the Jews from discriminatory laws, Marx wrote that what was needed was the emancipation of Europe from Judaism.
While perhaps later Marxist leaders have been a little less blunt about their hostility to Judaism, I see no evidence that the Marxists hostility to Jews and Judaism has ever really changed from Marx’s vision. Neither has their negative view of both the United States and the rights of the individual.
Ted, why won’t you or your computer let me edit this comment?Your computer refused to print my editorial corrections of my last post. In addition, whenever this ominous “you can no longer edit this comment” appears, the entire post quickly disappears from the site. Please correct this deplorable situation.
The simple explanation is, oil money enabled Arabs to buy education, media, activists and government. This is why most social movements have become antisemitic. Without that, why shouldn’t intersectionality place Jews and Israel at the top of favorite victims? It’s because the people who pay bribes, I mean endow university chairs, have a different agenda.
Uzitiger Said:
Fascinating – I gave a Shavuot Drasha with a very similar idea way back in 1986. Either “great minds think alike” or… 🙂
We who follow the shenanigans of the Left know their meme, “Those who control the present control the past. Those who control the past control the future.”
The past of the Jews cannot be controlled by the present. It is written in too many books, including of course the Bible. Therefore, they cannot be allowed to persist. Jews must disappear by whatever means necessary.
The only reason there is Antisemitism on the Left is because Judaism and the Jews who practice it represent an alternative to Leftist doctrine. The Jews walking away from their servitude in ancient Egypt scares the heck out of those who support the subjugation of the individual to the state. The idea of Passover cannot be allowed to remain in people’s minds. It offers too much hope. Other such examples abound. Jews produce and nurture their own leaders. That is how Rabbis attain their status. Jews argue about points of law. Law is obsolete to the Left. Power is to be had at the point of a gun. Jews choose to restrict their behavior based on prior precedent. This self-control undermines present leaders’ power to coerce. Jews form communities of trust and good deeds. The Left believes that the victim and the victimizer are no different in value. In short. Jews are a threat to the application of power. Israel is the quintessential expression of Jewish opposition to dissipation and assimilation and cannot be permitted to stand.
Of all the states created by Britain 80 years ago, Israel is the only one that existed before. Arabs must prove their claims without usurping the symbol “Palestinian” – all references of this name point to the Land of Israel:
• “I believe in the rebuilding of Judea as an independent nation. I will insist the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.” (John Quincy Adams’ letter to Major Mordecai Manuel Noah; 1829)
• “Restoring the Jews to their national home in Palestine is a noble dream. My emancipated hope is the restoring of the Jews to their nation home in Palestine” (President Abraham Lincoln to Canadian Zionist Wentworth Monk; 1863.
This article is exceedingly post 1945 or at most post Bolsheviks – Russia 1917, Germany 1918 and Hungary 1919.
Further Uzi Tiger’s explanation is too simple. These people are against the self appointed religious machine of the clergy backing kings and employers regardless of economic or other social morality that they reduce too often to niggling interference in people’s sexuality. Just note how many clerics have been dragged to court these thirty years for paedophilia and crookery.
Originally the “left” was The Enlightenment – the 18th century rebelliousness of those who objected to abuse of royal authority first in France by the literature of Voltaire and the Encyclopedie and then the first success was the US War of independence which remains the model example of the ideas of the time. Then France followed and as the then biggest power in Europe ravaged the kingdoms and their churches’ bishops and infected all with the idea of national sovereignty which became nationalism before it became responsible democratic government.
This is why the 1815 to 1918 struggle for national states was also aimed at The Church or any “establishment of religion” for not being amenable to votes but being only too ready to justify royal power in return for enforcing the Church on the people as a reward for beating down the 16th century Protestant Reformation against Papal abuses.
This squabble has resurfaced in Israel in the demand to end or reform the, “chief rabbinate,” and for the same reasons as they are only interested in arcane points of their own featherbedding at public expense.
The Left both in the Reformation and the Enlightenment and the Methodist Revival that comforted the British 19th century urban working classes as the first industrial society was created without public health and education were all Godly to use their word. They – with good reason – just hated the government’s clergy as many including yours truly still do.
The real reason they hate the Jews is that they want to be in power without a G-d to be accountable to. They want to be in absolute power and the Jews remind them that there IS a Creator.