The underlying narrative of just about every liberal
attack on Israel has been this. Defending yourself only makes us hate
you more. This cynical sleight of hand is of course an old trick used by
bigots to inhibit their targets from daring to fight back. And liberals
have made it their weapon of choice when going after Jews and Israel.
The tactic works by criminalizing any attempt at a defense by the
target, and making the defense itself part of the indictment. The goal
is to impose a Catch 22 framework on Jews with the only way out being to
agree and participate in the indictment of Israel. The defense itself is
then incorporated into the bigot's narrative.
A hundred years ago, Jews would be charged with being "Pushy" and any
defense against pushiness would itself be construed as pushy. Thus
attempting to defend yourself would itself be an indictment proving the
case already made against you. Similarly Israel is charged with
defending itself too strongly. Anytime Israel defends itself in any way,
it is automatically then proven guilty of defending itself. Liberal
bigotry against Israel is not simply a charge immune to any defense, it
is a charge which incorporates any defense as proof of the truth of the
original accusation. Self-defense itself becomes the crime.
Playing this game allows liberals to express anti-semitic ideas and
beliefs while blaming Israel and the Jews for making them feel that way.
A liberal bigot will explain that he is a reasonable person, but that
Israel and those Jews who defend it are causing him to hate them.
Speaking the truth about the situation only inspires more vitriol, as
the bigot warns his target that defending Israel is itself hateful, and
will cause him to hate even more. The target is then left with the
choice of joining with the "Good Jews" who agree with the bigot, or
becoming one of the "Bad Jews" who believes that his people have rights.
As one of the "Good Jews", the target is then expected to join in the
Jew-baiting. And as one of the "Bad Jews", he or she is now expected to
shoulder responsibility for the liberal's bigotry. Catch 22. Either way
the liberal bigot wins.
The use of such a tactic displays not only liberal hypocrisy on bigotry,
but demonstrates their ability to exploit the social insecurities of a
minority to prevent them from exercising their political and civil
rights. No wonder then that so many liberal Jews who do support Israel's
right to exist are complaining that they are tried of being expected to
constantly defend Israel. Because that is exactly what the left wants to
accomplish.
The same tactic has been quite effectively used against Israel. Each
time Israel defends itself against Islamic terrorists, it is warned that
defending itself will only inspire more hatred. And so it scales down
its self-defense. It abandons defensible borders. It gives over land to
terrorists. It reduces itself to naval patrol and a defensive wall. And
yet each time, the same hateful shriek follows in its wake. "Don't you
know that defending yourself only makes us hate you more."
When an Israeli comedy website produced a parody of the hysterical
attacks on Israel, titled, "We Con the World", the liberal bigots rushed
to warn us that we were only causing them to hate us more. Both the
Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan featured the video, and condemned
Jews for daring to make a production mocking the lies being directed at
Israel. An AlterNet blogger triumphantly announced that the video was
just making people hate Israel even more. Which of course is as always
the point. Because liberals have to justify their bigotry, by using the
refusal of their target to just lie down and take it, as their
justification. And so the balance swings right back to, "Defending
yourself only makes us hate you more."
When Israeli sent out soldiers with paintball guns against terrorists
with knives, the liberal bigots were outraged that the soldiers
eventually defended themselves. When video after video was released
telling the truth, the liberal bigots were outraged because Israel was
providing fact based evidence that demonstrated just what kind of
ugliness they had gotten into bed with. Each phase inevitably drove the
liberal bigots to become more outraged at Israel's gall for actually
defending itself, instead of apologizing and agreeing to turn Gaza into
a Hamas state with a convenient Iranian port perfect for shipping
missiles or any other weapons to their genocidal terrorist allies.
Like most bullies, the liberal bigot is self-righteously angry at the
thought of his victim daring to offer any kind of defense. The
combination of ideology and bigotry work to reinforce a sense of
rightness in playing the old game of "Beat the Jew". Being liberals,
they do make a point of trotting out Jews to do at least some of the
beating. This makes it look less like bigotry, and more like infighting.
Of course this isn't exactly an original gimmick. The man who presided
over the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Spain in the 15th century was
himself Jewish. In the early days of the USSR, the Communist Party
employed the Yevsektsiya (the Jewish Section) to shut down synagogues,
terrorized Jews and helped the NKVD murder Rabbis and Zionists. And even
Pharaoh had his Jewish taskmasters and the Nazis their Kapos.
As liberals themselves are so fond of pointing out when challenging the
feminist bona fides of a Sarah Palin or the legitimacy of black
conservatives, it is not genetics or biology, but the willingness to
fight for the interests of a group that gives one claim to be a
legitimate representative of that group. There is no conceivable
argument for the likes of M.J. Rosenberg or Glenn Greenwald meeting such
a test. Not now. Not ever.
As I have written in the past, liberal anti-Zionism is actually poorly
camouflaged anti-Semitism. It is based on the denial of Jewish national
rights, which itself has roots in a Voltairesque disdain for the Bible
and the Jews by association with it. The socialist approach has been
that Jews ought to dissolve into the mass of humanity and cease to
exist.
Israel was based on a rejection of that approach. And that alone has won
it an incredible amount of enmity. A continuing Jewish identity
represents an implicit rejection of the secular messianism that has
defined left wing movements since the French Revolution. The destruction
of the Jews continues to be associated with the destruction of the old
order. But where liberals once believed that removing the ghettos and
legal barriers to civic participation would do the job for them, Israel
has come to represent an obstacle to their agenda.
While the Muslims wield the battering ram, their liberal advocates
demand that Israel raise the gates to let them in. When the terrorists
open fire, the left demands that Israel not shoot back. When Jews are
murdered, the left shrugs. It has nothing to say about dead Jews. Only
about the inconvenience of still having living ones around and
cluttering up the place. While they are not prepared to make active war
against Israel. they instead work to characterize any self-defense by
Israel as illegitimate. Whatever Israel does, it is indicted for
excessively defending itself. An excessive defense in their eyes being
any defense at all.