Intersectionality Hypocrisy and the Jewish Question.
An
Israeli perspective by Barry Shaw.
People with
strategic antennae can detect a throwback to the Soviet inspired canard of “Zionism
is Racism.” This radical left-wing anti-Israel trope raised its ugly head
way back in 2001 at the UN World Conference Against Racism in South Africa
where thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators and groups hijacked the event to
target the Jewish state with phony propaganda including apartheid accusations.
Sadly, despite being beaten down in the United Nations, this same anti-Zionism
has breathed new life and is active today on the campuses and streets of
America and Britain reaching out into support for Hamas and Hezbollah.
As it was
then, it is dressed up as a universal human rights issue. The same tiresome
aspersions are trotted out, and soft vacant minds of the impressionable young
are hooked on a cause to which they are physically detached but to which they have
been seduced to dedicate their energies. It fits their progressive upbringing. Sadly,
a growing number of the newly deceived are Jewish.
In America,
many have been raised by parents from the anti-war, hippie, flower power, era
who, from a distance, frowned on Israel for not bringing peace to the
Palestinians and, from their distant armchairs, encourage their kids to become
activists in an anti-Israel cause. And they claim to do it for the benefit
of an Israel that is too dumb and too aggressive to see the error of our
ways. What they have yet to realize is that firstly, they are wrong, and
secondly their kids have gone from being liberal to becoming the most illiberal,
closed-minded, and intolerant people in the community. They exist, you see, on
a higher moral plain than the rest of us. They know better.
In Britain,
a diminishing Jewish population is losing control over their country. Some of
them doggedly cling to a Labour Party that is riddled with anti-Semitism. Some
of the new generation to Israel not to support Israel but to visit European
NGO-funded Palestinian activists or, at home, participate in public displays of
mourning for dead Palestinians, mostly members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad terror
groups killed in attempts to cross into Israel and kill and kidnap Israelis.
Recently,
both American and the British anti-Israel Jewish fringe groups have used deception
(some would say fraud) by exploiting subsidized Israel Experience group trips to advance their
pro-Palestinian propaganda with other group members, or to attempt to hijack Israelis on the
street to their anti-Israel cause.
A small
group of them were caught trying to spread their “Israel is occupying
Palestine” garbage in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market. Ari Fuld, a noted
Israel advocate, videoed one of them with a simple question, “When did
Israel occupy Palestine?” The Jewish propagandist couldn’t answer the
question to that slogan printed in his t-shirt. Instead, he accused Fuld of harassment.
These are
the hashtag activists. Question their hashtag soundbites and slogans and they
fall apart. Read ‘BDS for IDIOTS’ and see how it applies to most of the
anti-Israel BDS propagandists.
Harassment? This
is surprising. One of the leaders on his side of the US political divide,
Maxine Waters, recently ordered leftists like him to harass those with opposing
views. She told them to “push back on them.
And tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Yet this guy got upset when he comes to Israel to spread his unpopular lies
and someone pushes back on him.
Hypocrite!
Harassment
is something that pro-Israel spokespeople know very well. Try bringing the
truth about Israel and the Palestinians, let alone expose the fraudulent
messaging of the BDS Movement, to campuses in America and Britain. Good luck
with that.
The
anti-Israel views of the increasingly radical left of the Democratic Party in
America and within the British Labour Party, led by a leader who considers
Hamas and Hezbollah as his friends, could be a disaster in the making both for
Israel and for the Jews of those nations. Israeli voices are stifled at public
events. Should a pro-Israel event take place in Britain the venue must be kept a
closely-guarded secret due to fear of a violent disruptive backlash. Yet, it is
perfectly acceptable for thousands of flag-waving Israel-haters to take to the
streets of London in support of Hezbollah and Hamas.
In America,
there is no intersectionality for Zionist Jews. Intersectionality is a new
political word indicating a joining of interests between two or more different
groups. So, for example, it is acceptable to be a feminist or gay and a
supporter of the Palestinian cause.
If, however,
you are a feminist or gay and support Israel you are beyond the pale and banished
from the leftist club, a club in which the notoriously hateful Linda Sarsour is
one of the leaders that sets the rules.
Sarsour has
been adopted as an icon of this radical brand of politics and, as such, she
calls the shots. They think they are being awfully progressive and liberal but
they are, at heart, the most intolerant, radical, and regimented grouping in
America today. They twist reason into a pretzel to the extent that Sarsour can
grant Palestinian terror the badge of absolute moral justification.
Referring to
Sarsour, US rocker, Courtney Love, got slammed when she tweeted that “I
won’t follow anything that is being led by an anti-Semitic terrorist that’s
using feminism as a tool to promote her radicalism.”
Sarsour led
the twitter campaign against Love. This is, in itself, a metaphor of what
Sarsour is all about.
Sarsour has
not conducted acts of terror but she has promoted and glorified Palestinian
terrorists. In 1917, she shared a stage
with Rasmea Odeh, a female Palestinian terrorist who murdered two young
students outside a Jerusalem supermarket in 1969. She embraced Odeh and told
the audience that she was “honored and privileged to be here in this space, and honored
to be on this stage with Rasmea.”
Sarsour
is a firm BDS supporter. She has said that “there is nothing creepier than
Zionism” and her solution to Zionism is the elimination of the Jewish
state. In other words, she would wipe Israel off the map. In her world, be a
feminist and support the Palestine liberation movement and you are in. Be a
feminist and support the Jewish liberation movement and you are banned from
entering her intersectionality club.
Unfortunately,
this mode of politics has become so trendy to impressionable youngsters that too
many Jewish kids are being seduced and sucked into the swill of this dangerous
nonsense.
Too
many of the unhinged and hate-mongering radical left look on Israel as “white
supremacists.” The Black Lives Matter folk look on Arab Palestinians as
their “brown brothers.” Their stunted, sloganistic thinking leave them
blinded to the fact that the majority of Israelis originate from Arab and
Muslim countries with thousands of black Africans from Ethiopia and that Israel
is the most diverse country in the whole of the Middle East and Africa.
If the
Black Lives Matter people really cared about their brethren beyond their
American shores they should be made aware that, today, slavery is being
practiced on a massive scale in Africa where blacks are forced into slavery and
black women are forced into sex slavery by slave traders and owners who are
predominantly Muslim and Arabs.
This is
where the BLM people share the crime of hypocrisy with the pro-Palestinian
intersectionality pretenders. Those who profess to champion the Palestinian
cause do so solely to hit on Israel, but are silent when abuses, oppression,
and slaughter, are heaped on Palestinian Arabs by other Arabs. Examples include
ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Assad in the bombing of the Palestinian
population in Syria, the 70-year-old apartheid inflicted on stateless refugees
in Jordan, and the blockade of Gaza imposed by Egypt. All go unchallenged by
those who profess to champion Palestinian human rights.
So goes
the “outrage” of Black Live Matter advocates who have adopted the
Palestinian movement into their revolutionary cause. They rage about Israeli “white
supremacists” in their slogans, but shockingly turn their backs on the
suffering and slavery of their African brethren. Do they not know that the
current plague of slavery in Africa is perpetrated by the Muslim Arabs they
support and the victims are their fellow blacks? Why doesn’t this appear in
their intersectionality activism?
What
connects current political trends in America and Britain is the rise of radical
Socialism hiding behind a thin veneer of liberal democracy. What we are witnessing in the Democratic Party is reminiscent of the clash between the Bolsheviks
and the Mensheviks, begun in 1903, to see how far left they could drag Russia. It is sad to see so many young impressionable Jewish minds
being dragged into this poor excuse for political progressivism. It is not
progressive. It is an intolerant regressive hard Socialism on its way to harsh Communism.
It's not surprising really. The "Zionism is Racism" sloganeering back in 2001 Durban was a Soviet-style form of propaganda. They saw Israel as "imperialistic," "capitalistic," "colonialistic," and any other "istic" they could invent. It got beaten down but has metastasized as intersectionality or identity politics. It is as hateful and as intolerant as it was in South Africa and way back at the turn of the last century in Communist Russia.
Two
questions should be answered by the naïve young Jews who have lost their
bearings and have bought into the misinformation about Israel. Can you still
call yourself a proud Jew when you associate and partner with those that boo
whenever G-d and Israel is mentioned? Don’t you have a feeling of betrayal to
your own people, to yourself? These are signs for you to walk away from a false
and hateful cause that will benefit neither Palestinians, nor Israelis, nor
you.
Work
your way through the delusion. Eventually, with moral clarity, you will arrive
at the reality and core belief in the survival and protection, indeed the
legitimate right of the Jewish people, to exist in peace in their own nation,
Israel. Allow us that at least.
Once
you arrive at that point you may be able to better sympathize with our young
men and women, those of your own age, who are prepared to fight and die to
protect us and our right to live in our own land.
You will
find this as moral and as just as anything being pumped out by people such as
Sarsour and BLM.
Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at
the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also the author of ‘BDS for
IDIOTS,’ and ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.’ Make great gifts for
kids who really need to know what’s going on.
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