I received an email the other day from educator Michael Kupfer that included the video below created by students.
Throughout much of the progressive-left blogosphere we are seeing alleged "liberals" seeking to justify the kidnapping - and probably now murder - of three Jewish teenage religious students in Israel by local Arabs.
One of my favorite lines on Daily Kos was when some entirely insensitive schmuck wrote, and I paraphrase:
Well, Israel has kidnapped the entire Palestinian nation, so why shouldn't Palestinians kidnap a few Israelis?Others, in an openly racist admonition against the Jewish people, wonder how it is that either the kids' parents or the Israeli authorities allowed those kids to even be there; there, where Jews are not supposed to be, which also happens to be the place where the Jewish people were born.
The most common progressive-left pro-the-kidnapping-of-Jewish-teenagers argument came from those who simply think that the Jews of the Middle East are guilty of persecuting the local Arabs and therefore it is not surprising, nor much to be concerned about, that Arabs seek to kidnap and murder Jews.
Of course, once again, most western progressives do not care one way or the other, but neither do most western conservatives. Nonetheless, while I am not, on the issues, a conservative, I acknowledge and respect the fact that they tend to be considerably more pro-Jewish / pro-Israel then does the western political left.
Diaspora Jews are having an exceedingly difficult time dealing with this political truth because the social and economic consequences can be considerable and because, from a psychological standpoint, it can be very hard to question long-held core assumptions concerning the "in-group" that one is a part of.
Having said that, however, I am pleased to link to an article by the new editor of The Progressive Zionist entitled, It's Time for Recognition, Truth, and Reparations. In this very welcome piece, Fizziks does something that is exceedingly rare among western-left pro-Israel Jews, he actually criticizes some of Islam's historical imperial behavior.
I have to give the guy significant kudos because the pressure on him, in general, out of his political environment is to snuff out that history.
Who, after all, among white Anglo western-progressive political activists, wants to read about Islamic responsibility for the kidnappings of the black Africans into slavery?
Fizziks, as the editor of The Progressive Zionist, will do as he will going forward, but I would recommend that when he considers the Arab-Israel conflict that he keep the long history of Jewish persecution under Arab-Muslim imperial rule toward the forefront of his mind.
We do not need to overstate it, because dhimmitude varied from time to time and place to place in its severity, but it was never better than black people had it in the United States under the system of Jim Crow and the history of Jewish liberation in the Middle East is a complete distortion, skewed unjustly against the Jewish people, without it.
It must be incorporated into our discussions around the ongoing Arab-Muslim war against the Jews in the Middle East.
