February 19, 2007

We haven't changed. YOU left us...

From Jewish World Review. (Thanks to O. Judd)

Sometimes, the most daring thing a scholar or an organization can do is to mention the obvious. That is a lesson that Indiana University's Professor Alvin H. Rosenfeld and the American Jewish Committee have recently learned to their sorrow.

Rosenfeld is the author of a 30-page study titled " 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism," which was published in December by AJCommittee. In it Rosenfeld, briefly surveys the international rise of anti-Semitism and then goes on to touch on the various excesses of intellectual anti-Zionists with an emphasis on those leftist Jews who are important elements in the massive contemporary assault on Israel.

Rosenfeld's conclusion is that those Jewish writers and thinkers who have aided the assault on Israel's legitimacy and its right to exist cannot pretend that their stand is unrelated to the wave of violent Jew-hatred, which is itself largely focused on the delegitimization of Israel and Jewish self-defense. He rightly asserts that anti-Zionist Jewish authors such as British historian Jacqueline Rose, New York University's Tony Judt and Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner have been carrying the intellectual water for a weird coalition of the far-left, the far-right, and the Arab and Islamic propagandists...

....For this, Rosenfeld and his sponsors at AJCommittee have been treated to the sort of public tar and feathering that is usually reserved only for the troglodyte denizens of the far-right....

Really, there's nothing much to say here that I haven't already said. Except that the battle-lines are, I think, becoming more well-defined. It will become harder and harder to occupy that amorphous left-of-center position where you can be both pro-Israel and still sneer at the "troglodyte denizens of the far-right."

...If we want to know where we are headed, we need only look to Britain, where in intellectual and artistic circles it has gotten to the point where it may no longer be possible to identify as a Jew without also disavowing any support for Israel.

A group of British Jewish celebrities, including actor Stephen Fry and playwright Harold Pinter recently signed a joint statement titled lambasting official British Jewish institutions for continuing to support Israel. Since they agree with the slander that Israel is an oppressor, incredibly, they see support for it as justifying anti-Semitism....

This is one of those situations where people will say, "Oh isn't it depressing that WE have become so partisan, so divided!" NO, that's a lie. WE have not become anything! What has happened is that Leftists have dragged their side into opposition to the things we ALL once agreed upon. Things like patriotism and traditional morality and willingness to fight for our freedoms have become "partisan issues" only because the nihilist Left has abandoned them.

People of the "Right" ("right" and "left" are, as always, sketchy terms. But you know what I mean) have not changed. MY positions are similar to what my father held 50 years ago. And he hardly thought of them as "positions," they were just what everybody in town believed, Democrat or Republican. If in America it is now controversial to fly our flag, to have faith in our military, or to support Israel, this is 100% the fault of Leftists, who swerved into twisted nihilist dreams in the 1960's, and continue to "work-out" the implications of their world-view.

And yes, I am perfectly aware that it is not considered politically or polemically correct to say that the other side is 100% at fault. And it's surely hyperbole. So if you don't like this, I'm happy to DEBATE. Bring on your opposing arguments and facts. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Of course I write this with the confidence of not having been able to bring forth a strong general debate from any left-leaning type since I started blogging in November 2001. Never once. Sneers and complaints by the bushel-basketfull, yes, but never once an argument that rocked me back on my heels. (And instant "gotchas!" if I make a factual error--I know you fakes are out there reading this stuff.) They can't. Not only logically can't, but also because it is against the post-modernist creed. To seriously debate is to admit that there may exist Truth, with a capital "T." (And the implications of that alone are huge and shocking. Truth will make demands on us. Not least it will demand that aging Baby-Boomers grow up!)

Posted by John Weidner at February 19, 2007 8:23 AM
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