The Left Sinks to the Level of the Right
It distresses me to bring this sort of thing to your attention, but I would like you to take a look at this post at Crooks and Liars, which concerns the four people murdered by Palestinian extremists in a Jerusalem Synagogue. What I want to ask you to read are some of the comments, which are an endless stream of the most disgusting attacks on Israel and Jews, written without a single acknowledgment that innocent Israelis were the victims here. As my readers know, I spend considerable time looking at right wing websites, and I must say that the tone of these comments is absolutely on a par with the sort of thing that one sees at Aryan supremacist blogs like Vanguard News Service or the American Spectator.
I saw hardly a single person take exception to this outburst of violent hatred, while many essentially applauded acts like this.
Are we really caught in a world where the evil on both sides is equal? If this is any indication, we are, and everything we try to do is hopeless. Crooks and Liars, which is one of the most important left wing blogs, is committing a deeply unacceptable act if they do not take this opportunity to stand up against the racist hatred of their readers.
I saw hardly a single person take exception to this outburst of violent hatred, while many essentially applauded acts like this.
Are we really caught in a world where the evil on both sides is equal? If this is any indication, we are, and everything we try to do is hopeless. Crooks and Liars, which is one of the most important left wing blogs, is committing a deeply unacceptable act if they do not take this opportunity to stand up against the racist hatred of their readers.
Comments
It's about team politics. Why would anyone in Kansas vote for Brownback? Team politics. I'm a Republican, he's my team leader. Why do left blogs support genocidal maniacs? Team politics. Somehow it has become a staple of the left to support perceived underdogs and ration be damned. It is only the likes of you, infidel753 and a few others who are ready to use reason rather than groupthink to determine what the appropriate position is. Someone thinking for oneself is just too hard for too many people.
Crooks and Liars features good writing but it’s also just a site where any ole idiot can write whatever he wants.
Maybe they’ll write an editorial about the comments but probably they won’t, because they have too much facts to talk about to spend time dissecting non-fact. You’d like them to handle it like Green Eagle would. That’d be nice, but I don’t think they’ll do it.
Over and above Israel-specific issues, I get offended by peasant notions of indiscriminate collective responsibility. Like it would be okay for me to kill you because another American killed an Australian once. They’d never say that because that isn’t Palestinians and Jews – which says a lot by itself -, but that’s what most of those comments boil down to. There is absolutely no regard for personal innocence of the victim, as a thing distinct from what his passport says, what he prays to or what he wears.
One of the comments near to yours reads “I hope Israel brutally retaliates”.
Brilliant. Just go butcher some poor sod on the other side who had nothing to do with it … that’ll show ’em. How’s your burger? Tasty? And then someone else will retaliate for that and then the same idiot can write “I hope Israel brutally retaliates”. Again.
Another one “All resistance to six decades of Israel racism, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and colonialism is not only natural but legal under international law.”
Oh… so black people can go on a murder spree with the laws of both nature and nations on their side? That’s nice to know.
We need to do onto the mosques as they do to us.
Magpie gets offended by "collective responsibility." Too bad. Perhaps if the Arabs were targeting him for death, he'd change his mind.
We cannot afford to distinguish between "innocent" and "guilty" Arabs, because the "innocent" will get brainwashed by Hamas and Hizbullah and the PLO and the PFLP and become guilty.
It is evident that innocent Arabs may be guilty tomorrow. How many of us Jews are you willing to have killed?
The Quran tells them to exterminate us.
The Quran is not entirely useless. It makes good toilet paper.
That's a natural reaction, but it is wrong. It's why we don't let victims decide the punishment of offenders. I am convinced that most people want three things in life: A decent job, a better life for their kids and a beverage at the end of the week with their buds. Palestinians are no different, but they have weak leadership and a core of brutal thugs who terrorize not only Israelis but their fellow Palestinians. And the Koran, like many works of literature, is ambiguous. It is not the Koran itself, but the interpretation by extremist elements that is the problem.1362
Some are apparently, and no I won’t.
I was nearly killed twice by people of the nationality I ultimately married.
“It is evident that innocent Arabs may be guilty tomorrow.”
Genius.
I passed baby twins today. They might grow up to be bank robbers. Maybe I should have fixed them there and then.
“It makes good toilet paper.”
I reckon you’d need a lot of toilet paper, Lev.
That's a natural reaction, but it is wrong." -- Joseph
That's what I've been trying to tell Green Eagle the whole time about Palestinian actions. When Zionists and the Israeli government have been persecuting Palestinians for decades, including conducting ethnic cleansing by the forced removal of Arabs from their homeland, it IS a natural reaction for some Palestinians to want to retaliate against all Jews. This reaction, like Lev's, is also wrong.
Let me look at all the Anti-Semitic comments.
"At this point, there's not much bad that can happen to Israel and Israelis that isn't richly deserved." -- Wesley Sandel.
Same reasoning as Lev, and it's as anti-Semitic in the same way that Lev and Green Eagle are anti-Arab.
"Can't wait to see every scumbag Zionist ass-wipe in the District of Criminals falling all over themselves condemn this action." -- Prairie Dog
I don't think this qualifies as anti-Semitic. We've got a lot of Republican "scumbag Zionist ass-wipes" in Congress, and none of them are Jewish.
"They'll do it when they finish their lunch of Christian babies and get done monitoring the media they own, right?" -- Pere Ubu
I think this is sarcasm.
"But that's not good enough for the NAZI Zionists and it will be their undoing." -- prairiedog
Zionism is a political ideology, not an ethnic group, and prairiedog isn't referring to us anti-Zionist Jews as Nazis. Still, referring to any Jews as Nazis is extremely problematic.
On the other hand, we have this from some Holocaust survivors:
"We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. . . . “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!"
Hyperlink Code
If we have Holocaust survivors who are describing the actions of the Israeli government as genocide, then we might have some justification for using the word "NAZI" in conjunction with "Zionists." I'd call this borderline.
"All resistance to six decades of Israel racism, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and colonialism is not only natural but legal under international law." -- Wesley Sandel.
You're not permitted to target civilians. "All resistance" may be natural, but "resistance targeting civilians" is not legal.
Lev, as I have mentioned here, I have lived in Israel and worked in Israel and the West Bank, dealing with Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and Bedouins, and based on my experience, I am one hundred percent convinced that you are right- the Palestinians I knew were decent people who only wanted a chance at a decent life. We can speculate all we want about the horrible dysfunction of Palestinian "leadership," but I know that the vast majority of Palestinians are no more crazed terrorists than anyone else on earth.
There is no way to respond to shotgun arguments in a coherent way, which is why GE has simply ignored you. But one key point, the natural reaction to a hysterical two year old is to resort to violence. The difference between adults and criminals is that adults control their initial, natural reaction while sociopaths do not. That is why the Israeli government is so much more moral than the Palestinian one.
A small story to share (which I usually keep confident): I was living in the UK in the 1980s – working on a masters degree at the London School of Economics – when I came back to the US on holiday one year. It was the year of the first Infitada (Palestinian uprising), and my mother (a hardcore Zionist) asked me how these events were being treated on European TV.
To be frank, I reported what I saw: A Palestinian teenager - who was captured and subdued by an Israeli soldier - lay limp across his lap as the soldier snapped the kid's arm over his knee as if it were a twig. Not pretty at all. I mentioned this incident of brutality to my mother.
After some moments of silence, I added, “If fate or chance had dealt me a different deck of cards, and I were born of Palestinian parents instead of Jewish, I could very well understand the urge to throw rocks – knowing my kids had no future, and no self-determination.”
That is when my mother said: “Son, I always knew you were a closet anti-Semite.” Foul play, I thought, whenever the specter of anti-Semitism is raised to censure an argument and close a discussion. Briefly, I reminded my mother that there is also a peace movement in Israel, with political parties of opposing views on the subject; and no one calls them anti-Semitic. Rabin was still alive at the time – not yet assassinated by a far rightwing settlement extremist.
I would never think of defiling the memory of a great-grandfather, who died on route to Auschwitz. When the JDL used to say “Never Again,” I chose a different meaning … not necessarily an ethno-centric meaning but one more universal in tone and substance: Never again in Europe, never again in Bosnia, nor Biafra, nor Rwanda, nor Israel, nor Palestine, nor any other place where one group oppresses then massacres another.
My great-grandfather was a scholar, a college professor, a writer, and existential philosopher in the Martin Buber mold. I have reason to believe he would have agreed with me.