Michael L.
In truth, I am not very religious, but I like to think that I have respect. I have respect for the Jewish people and respect for the Jewish faith.
I beg your indulgence for this piece because today I simply want to ruminate... this is strictly personal so you can go forth and read something else if you want.
Europe is transmogrifying before our very eyes and the United States has, essentially, an anti-Israel / anti-Jewish president that American Jews broke down the doors to vote for. The Labour Party in Britain, as you well know, just elevated Jeremy Corbyn to the top slot and Corbyn is friendly with Hamas. Hamas calls quite specifically for the genocide of the Jews in its charter. Hamas makes no secret of their Nazi-like desires, yet progressive-left Brits stand with them, anyway.
Fascinating, really.
Those of us who put ourselves out there politically - a foolish endeavor if ever there was one - are engaged in a journey. It is, for each us, personal and different. I ran into a key turning-point while I was working on my dissertation in San Francisco toward the end of the last decade. The glue that held the American Left together during the years of W. was nothing less than sheer hatred of the man. We despised George W. Bush almost as much as Hunter S. Thompson loathed Richard Milhous Nixon... and those of you who know a thing or two about Doctor Gonzo know the extent of his disdain for the former Republican president.
This is a snippet of Thompson's obituary for the man:
I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.It is disgusting, but it is honest and much the same can be said for the American Left of my generation in terms of our hateful relationship with Bush. One of the things that I did, in the spirit of solidarity at the time, was start participating on the popular American-Left political blog, Daily Kos. The purpose of Daily Kos is ostensibly to support the Democratic Party. That is its stated function according to blog own and neighbor, Markos Moulitsas.
{Every now and again I bang on his door for a couple of eggs and a cup of sugar.}
Daily Kos was an educational experience and I appreciate that very much. What I learned during my time as a minor participant on an exceedingly large left-leaning political blog was the degree, extent, and quality of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism within the Democratic party and the progressive-left. That, in essence, is what I learned from Daily Kos and for this I will always owe Markos Moulitsas a debt of gratitude.
Certainly, to my knowledge, Moulitsas is no racist, and I hold nothing against him, but that is not the point.
The point, as I never tire of insisting, is that the Democratic party and the western progressive-left have a made a home of themselves for anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, yet they still self-righteously claim to represent western anti-racism. That is false. The truth is that the progressive-left is the most racist political movement in the West today, outside of political Islam.
The form that western-left, or Democratic party, racism takes is that of the condescending "humanitarian" variety. In truth, it is a twenty-first century iteration of the notion of "white man's burden." Like their imperial nineteenth-century forbears, today's leftists believe that people "of color" are innocent children who must be protected. They have absolutely no respect for these people, who they infantilize, or their cultures, that they whitewash. This progressive-left stance of condescension is particularly true toward Arab-Muslims who are viewed as nothing more meaningful than passive victims of their own white, racist ancestors.
The western progressive-left has nothing but contempt for Arab-Muslims, which is why they treat them like children in need of protection. I find it disgusting and were I Arab I would deeply resent it. The Muslim Empire is one of the most successful in all of human history. Between the death of Muhammad and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, in the early twentieth-century, the Arabs vanquished eastern Christianity, conquered their lands, spread Islam into Persia and among the Turks, took a good shot at crushing Europe only to be stopped at the Gates of Vienna, and made significant inroads into Chinese society.
Islam rules 1.5 billion people.
Western-progressives, in their unbelievable arrogance, think that these people are cotton-candy-like trifles, or chocolate truffles, for their political consumption and usage. This is why Germany and Sweden flung open their doors to the wash of Arab immigrants flowing into Europe. They think that they are being magnanimous toward their "little brown brothers" but the Arabs will soon show them the steal in their spine.
This moment in human history is very important.
This is nothing less than a turning point in the history of Europe.
I wrote one of my modest one-thousand word pieces on this. For many decades the West has generally committed itself to the furtherance of civil liberties and human rights of women, gay people, and minorities. This is not going to come to a halt, but the introduction of millions of traditionally-minded Muslims onto the continent will mitigate. These people, over the coming years and decades, will elevate their political power. Unless the misogyny and homophobia endemic to traditional Muslim societies reforms itself, then these attitudes will slop into European politics.
As I say, this is just ruminations. I am just thinking off of the top of my head and I am not trying to write a "piece." You can be sure that I will not be sending this off to The Jewish Press.
I don't know.
I do worry about the Jews in Europe, however. They are in an exceedingly difficult position. It is not so easy to simply pick-up and move to Canada. I worry about our friend, Kate, in Britain. It is going to get harder and harder to be open as a Jew in Europe. We saw those video clips of journalists wearing kippas in Paris and Malmö. The Jewish people understand what this means. It means that we are becoming less and less welcome throughout Europe. It is not as if Europeans loved Jews to begin with, but with continued Muslim immigration things are getting considerably worse.
I would like to see as many European Jews as possible make aliyah.
They should not go to North America or Australia. They should go to Israel in order to support our bothers and sisters in their ongoing struggle for survival and success.
And that, when it comes right down to it, is precisely what it is all about.
The Jewish people have lived under the boot of European and Arab-Muslim tyranny for millennia and we are done with it. All we want is to be left in peace in our little tiny part of the world, Israel, the place that Jewish people come from. Y'know, Ryan Bellerose - who I have nothing but admiration for - has a powerful piece concerning the Metis, the Jews, and indigeneity, entitled, Indigenous Status Matters: Here’s Why.
He writes:
So when I, an indigenous Metis, am asked about the importance of indigenous status, it is simple: our ties to our ancestral lands give us the strength to carry on through great hardships, to survive what seems to be unsurvivable. It nourishes us when we are starving. It gives us strength when we are weak to know that we always have our homeland. It really is that simple.Bellerose is unique.
This is why Indigenous people fight when our lands are threatened, because the land doesn’t really belong to us, again, things that belong to us are possessions and we can live without possessions. Indigenous people belong to the land, our ancestors blood fed the land and we are part of the land, without the land we know we are just itinerant travellers with no homes, and home is everything, Home is the reason we exist at all. That is why the fact that we are indigenous is important.
How many Native-American Canadian pro-Israel-activist football players can possibly be out there?
:O)
I am guessing he is the only one!
Bellerose slays me. I love the guy in much the same way that I appreciate Chloe Valdary. The Jewish people may be tough as nails, but we cannot stand alone and, from an ethical stand-point, we should not have to.
Going back to Bellerose's point on indigeneity, the man is spot-on. The Jewish people were decimated by the Romans and our numbers were kept artificially small by both the Europeans and the Arab-Muslims throughout the centuries since. We are the only people who can make claims to indigeneity in the Land of Israel.
We are the indigenous people.
We are willing to share that tiny bit of land, but no one is going to tell me that Judea is not Jewish.
No one is going to tell me that the rightful owners of Judea and Samaria are the children of hostile, conquering Arabs out of the Arabian peninsula.
I am going to wrap this up because I am rambling.
There is so much to say, but one thing that I very much want to stress is that we should not demonize or look down upon Jews who choose to build homes and communities for themselves beyond the Green Line. There is something, to my mind, exceedingly ugly about Jews in the West, or within Israel, pointing their finger at Jews who live Judea and Samaria and suggest that they are the real problem.
Yosef and Melody are not the problem.
There is no decent reason in this world why Yosef and Melody should not be allowed to live in Hebron, for chrissake. That is the very spot wherein Judaism was born. It is the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
My claim is not a religious claim, however. I hope one day to go to the town of Hebron and to meet Yosef and Melody, because I admire them.
It cannot be easy to live in the place where Jewish people come from and, yet, to be surrounded by malice.