PROGRESSIVES’ CAUSE DU JOUR: HATING ISRAEL: The Progressive Left and Israel’s Right to Exist
A small incident during Bernie Sanders’ recent talk at the University of Chicago reveals how the progressive left has turned against Israel. The venue was the largest on campus, and it was packed with enthusiastic supporters. During a Q&A, one student said that he and his friends liked Bernie’s progressive politics but didn’t much like his views on the Middle East. Bernie’s response, and the crowd’s, are worth pondering.
First of all, Bernie said, Israel has a right to exist. It was supposed to be an applause line, but it fell flat. There was only a smattering. That changed when he said he strongly favored a Palestinian state. For that, the applause was loud and sustained.
It’s only a small incident, but it captures a movement that has been developing for years at elite universities and is now spreading to cultural and media institutions. Their views are surely encouraged by President Obama’s diffidence toward the Jewish state. But he is less a leader than an accurate weather gauge. The left loves Israel about as much as it loves fracking, the Keystone pipeline, Goldman Sachs, voter IDs, Clarence Thomas, and deer hunting.
Actually, progressives would probably prefer to go deer hunting with Clarence Thomas than admit that Israel is a democratic ally whose existence is, in large part, the product of a Holocaust that killed an estimated six million Jews and rendered hundreds of thousands more refugees. Indeed, it is not unusual to still hear “history deniers” disclaim that the Holocaust even happened, or believe it is greatly exaggerated.
Jewish “victimhood” after the Holocaust is irrelevant to the progressives, who only acknowledge the “victimhood” of Arabs. The covert anti-Semitism is patent, but progressives will never admit it, lest they lose the political support of American Jews.
Haters gonna hate, I know, but progressives lack self-awareness of their hatred, and instead project it onto others with whom they disagree.