This all reminds me of the American Jews (such as Congressman Sol Bloom and Rabbi Stephen Wise) during the 1930’s and 40’s. Few major rallies in the streets demanding that the Jews of Europe be given exit visas, no pressuring of the Roosevelt administration to allow the people on the St. Louis to disembark, no demanding that the Air Force bomb the railway lines leading into Auschwitz. “Roosevelt is our best friend, don’t make trouble, the gentiles will get angry”. They much preferred the notion of Jews as victims rather then as a people who take their destinies into their own hands. The “J Street” crowd as well as the New York Times Jews will have a lot to answer for before History.
hat tip – The Other McCain
by Philip Klein
In the past, I’ve remarked to friends that the difference between a Jewish liberal and a Jewish conservative is that when a Jewish liberal walks out of the Holocaust Museum, he feels, “This shows why we need to have more tolerance and multiculturalism.” The Jewish conservative feels, “We should have killed a lot more Nazis, and sooner.”
I thought of this as I read Peter Beinart’s new essay, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” which argues that “liberal Zionism” is in danger unless groups such as AIPAC start to take a more critical view of Israel’s actions. Beinart, using a Frank Luntz survey of young American Jews as a jumping off point, writes:
Particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster — indeed, have actively opposed — a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.
The problem, however, isn’t with leading Jewish organizations that defend Israel, but with liberalism. As sickening as it sounds, Jewish liberals see their fellow Jews as noble when they are victims being led helplessly into the gas chambers, but recoil at the thought of Jews who refuse to be victims, and actually take actions to defend themselves. It isn’t too different from American liberal attitudes toward criminal justice or terrorism, where morality is turned upside down and the lines between criminals and victims become blurred, and in certain cases, even reversed.
[…]
Read the rest: How liberal Jews are enabling the second Holocaust
Tags: Philip Klein
