The 31 pro-Palestinian groups at Harvard said something foolish. They wrote:
We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.
Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years. From systematized land seizures to routine airstrikes, arbitrary detentions, to military checkpoints, and enforced family separations to targeted killings, Palestinians have been forced to live in a state of death, both slow and sudden.
I cite this example of moral obtuseness because a number of readers sent me links to this story, conflating these activist groups with Harvard students generally, with Harvard-the-institution, and with me. I will summarize their message to me:
See! You aren't so smart, Peter. There are idiots at Harvard! Anti-Semites, too! Harvard produces brainwashed jerks! Maybe you, too.
Good test-takers like Harvard students should have known better than to write what they did, regardless of their politics. Any true-false or multiple choice question which uses the words "entirely responsible" or "only one" is wrong. Life is more complex and nuanced than that -- especially the situation in Israel. Israel is a mess, and I see victims trapped by their history. Not heroes.
People there have been fighting over conflicting claims of possession for 75 years, back to the founding of Israel as a nation; or rather to the Crusades, or rather back to the Prophet Mohammed; or back to the First Century and the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple; or better yet, back another thousand years to the Jewish conquest of the land of Canaan described in the earliest books of the Jewish Bible. And probably before that.
Following the holocaust in Europe, Jews sought a homeland. The UN created a nation of Israel, but Jews believe they have a prior and sacred claim: God gave the land to them. All of it is sacred land, especially the Temple Mount, where King Soloman built a temple. Alas, that same God made that a sacred spot for Muslims, too, the place where the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven. This isn't simple.
In response to Hamas' attack, Israel's Defense Minister announced:
I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
The Biden administration's messaging began as support for Israel, combined with an expression of hope that the Israeli response would show restraint, to minimize loss of innocent life in the densely populated Gaza and in hope the war does not expand to full-scale regional war. Republicans criticized this, saying it implied moral ambiguity and criticism of Israel's right to defend itself. The Biden administration deleted tweets that had called for restraint and replaced them with the statement that "Israel has the right to defend itself, rescue any hostages, and protect its citizens."
Of course, this is grist for U.S. presidential politics. The crosscurrents create inconsistencies, hypocrisy, and nuance. People who urge Ukraine to accept the invasion of Russia and compromise over territory to end the suffering of war, also condemn asking Israel to exercise restraint. Trump said that the fighting in Israel -- and Ukraine, too -- would never have happened if he were president. Ron DeSantis said that Biden had "gone easy" on Iran, and that "Israel is now paying the price for those policies." Mike Pence said "this is what happens when @POTUS projects weakness on the world stage [and] kowtows to the mullahs in Iran." Other candidates say similar things.
There is a revolutionary strain within the American left that defines itself in opposition to the political center and right, but also in opposition to the establishment left. We saw it in the year 2000, when Ralph Nader ran as a third party. From the view of the revolutionary-left, little harm was done since Republicans and Democrats are nearly indistinguishable as parties of empire, colonial wars, White supremacy, patriarchy, and corporate capture of politicians. In 1972, George McGovern himself was not part of the revolutionary-left, but he was supported by people like me who thought the establishment-left to be pro-Vietnam war. Many of Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign volunteers were from this revolutionary-left, and they vigorously attacked Elizabeth Warren. Bernie Sanders himself did not .
The revolutionary-left serves a purpose. They call out compromises and hypocrisy within the establishment left. On cultural issues, they articulate the point-of-the-spear issues that push social change on issues of race, LGBTQ, transgender, and social benefits. They don't do what is necessary to be popular; they seek justice and righteousness and they currently represent the thinking of educational and cultural elites, not the non-college masses. If they succeed in an area -- for example, marriage equality for homosexuals-- they move the goalpost to equality and participation of trans athletes. Readers call me out for being critical of the revolutionary-left. I think they create more backlash than forward progress. My critics disagree.
There have been socialists, communists, hippies, yippies, anarchists in or near the Democratic Party. They are outliers, influencing policy, but not electing leaders. They are to the left of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and AOC, all of whom spoke out in support of Israel while condemning the Hamas attack. Although it fits the GOP narrative to call Biden a communist and Marxist, and to say revolutionary-leftists are typical Democrats, they mis-aim. The Biden administration and the current Democratic Party is firmly part of the mainstream establishment left -- to the regret of the Harvard protesters.
I analogize the Harvard group to the members of the political right who condemn Ukraine, call it a corrupt Nazi-friendly country, blame the U.S., NATO, and Biden for the Ukraine war, and are sympathetic to Putin, though not to Russia bombing civilian targets. Those people are not outliers within the GOP. They have a near-majority of GOP primary voter support and their leading candidate, Trump, espouses that policy.
Among Democrats, the Harvard group is an outlier.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
17 comments:
The Mideast has been in conflict throughout recorded history. This current episode is no exception.
Republicans support Israel because their White Christian Nationalist base believes that it’s instrumental in bringing about the End Times, which they want to bring about. They oppose supporting Ukraine because Putin is their cult leader’s role model.
The GOP has become a neofascist party.
One of the smartest comments I’ve heard about the current situation in Israel:
The Palestinians think of Israel as a colonial power. They saw that terrorist violence caused the French to withdraw from Algeria, the British to withdraw from Kenya, etc. The terrorist violence was so demoralizing to these colonial powers that they decided it wasn’t worth it, and withdrew back to their homelands.
Palestinians adopted that same strategy. Their tactics of terrorist violence go back decades. In one famous case from the 1970s, terrorists invaded town in Israel called Ma’alot. A terrorist picked up a little girl by her ankles, and bashed her head out against a rock.
But the Palestinians made one fundamental mistake: the Israelis have nowhere to go. Ashkenazi Jews are not going to go back to Europe, where The Holocaust happened. Mizrahi/Sephardic Jews are not going to go back to the Arab/Muslim countries where anti-Semitic rage over the establishment of Israel forced them to flee. Israel’s war of independence in 1948 created a counterflow of refugees; equal numbers of Arab refugees fled what became Israel and Jewish refugees fled the Arab world. The difference is that the Jews took in their refugees and made them part of Israel. The Arabs confined their refugees to horrible refugee camps to mold them into a force against Israel; Gaza is an example.
Instead, Palestinian terrorist atrocities induce rage in a people whose backs are to the wall. Israel is now going to eradicate Hamas, and they have every right to do so. This is a war, and “proportionality” is a concept that no longer applies. Some people are saying that this is Israel’s 9/11; it’s actually more like Israel’s Pearl Harbor.
Our response to Pearl Harbor was not to sink an equivalent number of Japanese naval vessels. Our response was to flatten Japan.
Give all Israeli Jews the option to become US citizens. If I was Jewish, I would not want to live in a small Euro-American colony in the Middle East. It doesn't make sense.
Given the Jewish experience in Germany in the last century, Israelis will not want to forsake having their own country that they can defend themselves. Jews were doing really well in Germany, until all of a sudden they weren’t. Once they weren’t, they had no way to defend themselves from the Nazis.
Jews are definitively done with relying on the kindness of strangers.
Speaking of Japan, one has to wonder just how far Israel will go in killing Arabs, in order to save Israeli lives. Scary shit!
According to the Torah and Koran, both Jews and Muslims were descended from Abraham. They’ve been duking it out ever since, which pretty much sums up the history of mankind. Ultimately, we’re all descendants of common ancestors – just one big dysfunctional family.
Modern Homo sapiens evolved over 100,000 years ago, which makes me wonder if this really is the first time civilization developed. Perhaps we advance to the point of becoming able to destroy ourselves and then start all over until we get it right – kind of like the movie Groundhog Day on a global scale.
Israel will go as far as it needs to go to eradicate Hamas. Just like we went as far as we needed to go to eradicate the Japanese regime.
But unlike Hamas, Israel will not be killing wantonly for the sheer joy of it. Hamas hides behind its own citizens, using them as human shields. As of Saturday, those shields no longer work.
Both Jews and Muslims descended from Abraham, but only the Muslim holy writings call for genocide against their cousins:
“Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say, oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me — come and kill him.”
Deut. 20 16-18 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:
Lots of examples of these. Some scholars attempt to make the point that God did not command ethnic cleansing, only the cleaning of non-believers. They were killed completely, man woman and child, because they disobeyed God. Had they honored God they would have been spared. But they were killed first.
I doff my chapeau to your superior biblical knowledge. But there are no verses in the Torah telling us Jews to go and kill Muslims.
The US is again injecting itself into another war based on religious beliefs. I guess because it's always worked out so well before.
This is why we need to keep religion out of public policy.
Who do so many who have these rapture-based death wishes want other people to die?
And why do they consider themselves to be (cough, cough) pro life?
It's all about controlling others.
All the major religions value truth, moral behavior, peace, love and non-violence, but people of one religion cherry pick scripture from the others to prove theirs is superior. We're all the chosen people, we just need to start acting like it.
Meanwhile, since Peter is with the aspiring Republican candidates, it's good to remember that Nikki Haley had paster John Hagee, infamous for his anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-LGBT remarks, open her first presidential campaign rally. After he did, she told him, "I want to be you when I grow up."
Old Testament YHWH, originally a volcano god per Robert Graves, did plenty of killing, of Jews and otherwise, under a variety of auspices, including fits of pique. (Al-lah per Graves started as a moon goddess!).
“Palestinians” as a discrete people first gained currency in the last century. An Egyptian, Arafat, is the most famous Palestinian ever. But Jews as such have been in the Holy Land for several thousand years.
7th century CE an Arabian prophet journeyed to the Dome of the Rock atop a winged horse, minting Jerusalem as Islam’s third holiest city. Anyone but Muslims in control of Jerusalem is what drives their animus.
Sadly, the Harvard groups are no longer outliers among Democrats outside the academy, nor among leftists worldwide. The United Nations is exhibit A. Our modern establishment Left is making itself heard right now.
We weren’t talking about Republicans. We were talking about the depraved acts of Hamas terrorist animals, who we just found out have beheaded a group of Jewish babies.
Deflecting a topic to one’s obsessively focused ideology has a name: it’s called whataboutism. It’s widely considered to be bad behavior that reflects poorly on the character of the perpetrator.
The quotes Peter provides are from Deuteronomy, which is the fifth book of the Torah.
Christians, Muslims and Jews have been slaughtering each other in the Holy Land for ages. The Israelis and Palestinians have been going at it since 1948. All are at fault.
Regarding the notion that "We weren't talking about Republicans," as Peter said in his post: "Of course, this is grist for U.S. presidential politics."
foolish? obtuse?
how about revolting. inconceivably depraved?
who wd have thought that people could behave like nazis at their worst, and get cheered by people claiming to represent a higher morality?
Post a Comment