The Left’s Loyalty to the People of Israel

Nadav Shnarb published a post this week: And this is his claim: The left is not loyal to the people of Israel. Here it is:

Interesting events in recent times: Bogey Ya’alon declares that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Moshe Redman identifies with him, Nava Rosilho says she went to The Hague against Netanyahu, Costa Black signs a petition calling on the countries of the world to impose sanctions on Israel, Amos Schocken sees terrorists as freedom fighters, and so on. Quite a few of the people who were the faces of what was called “the protest” are revealing to all that they have very strong opinions not only on the question of the constitutional structure of the State of Israel but also on the question of what is permitted and what is prohibited in order to preserve the lives of Jews living in their country.

In my opinion, as I have expressed it several times here, this is not a coincidence or a mistake. Many think that there is a sharp dichotomy between the public here called “left” (in a rough generalization, Gantz-Lapid-Golan voters) and something called “extreme left.” This division does not flow at all for me.

There is a very simple question that tends to be suppressed: Does the Jewish people, as an ethnic and religious collective, have a right to the Land of Israel, a right that justifies the settlement enterprise in the land and the armed struggle against the harassment by its former residents? The Israeli left formally presents a position that divides between territories occupied 76 years ago and an area occupied 57 years ago. Even if the argument has some validity, it has no chance of convincing the student and the professor at Harvard Yard that the basis of their protests is a basic moral concept. They believe that the existence of a Jewish ethnic state, within whatever borders, is a form of racism, and that the Zionist enterprise from its inception has been evil European colonialism. Anyone who has no cultural anchor outside the modes currently dominant in the Western world will reach exactly the same conclusions.

The Israeli left has no such anchor. It exists in contradiction. As a result, people who commute every day from their homes in Katamon or in Babylon Park (Jamousin) to their offices in Sheikh Bader or Sheikh Munis are trying to convince us that expelling an enemy population and establishing Jewish settlements in its place is the ultimate war crime, a human abomination and a moral monstrosity. This is an unsustainable situation.

Quite a few camels have already turned their heads and recognized the hump. Doctors who invest heroic efforts in treating terrorists (remember that complicated brain surgery that saved the life of Yahya Sinwar) and then deny treatment to wounded soldiers as part of a strike that the court declared political, can no longer hide behind the broad back of Hippocrates. They made a moral choice, and it is not on our side. Professors at the Hebrew University, who oppose awarding an honorary doctorate to Yitzhak Herzog (!) because he signed off on shells fired at Gaza, made a moral choice, and it is not on our side. In general, the willingness to draw conclusions from the murder of Jews or their kidnapping that are remarkably consistent with the goals of the attackers and kidnappers has seemed quite suspicious for many years. In any debate on a specific issue, one can give one reason or another, but the cumulative effect points in a clear direction.

One radical leftist, I think Yossi Sarid, was upset during the first Gulf War, in 1992, when the Palestinians showed joy at Iraqi missiles falling on Tel Aviv. He wrote to them something like, “I want you to know: if it’s us or you, then we’re for us.” The events of October 1979 have rather sharpened the insight that the game between us and our neighbors is indeed a zero-sum game, and yet, with almost every learned Supreme Court hearing, the feeling grows that the Israeli elites are far from being for us.

My explanation for this phenomenon, as I have written here more than once, combines the disengagement from the particular Jewish identity (i.e. from all those customs and values ​​that distinguished Jews from their neighbors in recent history) with the drifting with the spirit of the times. Among secular elites, who are by nature more globalist and less particularistic, the process is more evident, but I see no reason to think that the so-called “Zionist left” will not be swept along with them. They are still at a higher point on the slide, but the force of gravity is not much different. It is only a matter of time.

The disregard, or very weak condemnations, that those who were supposed to be members of the “Zionist left” make towards people of the type I described above, show a lot. The fact that those people, even those who declared themselves anti-Zionists, as voters for parties that deny the existence of the Jewish state, are still sought-after speakers at conferences, still win awards and prestige and do not pay a single bit of the social price that Orit Struck, for example, pays, speaks for itself.

Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps more, have gathered in the past two years on Kaplan and similar streets, under the baton of a group whose characteristics have been described here. I have no idea how many of them identify with people like Boogie and Schocken and how many disagree, but I wonder if it makes any difference. Is it important to know how many of them will run to report us to The Hague and how many are loyal patriots that a clever publicist can hang on to and twist around his little finger? Such questions are weighty when it comes to the moral evaluation of details, but when it comes to conducting politics, there is no practical difference between the two groups.

That’s why all the talk about unity and ‘preventing a rift in the people’ seems foreign and strange to me. As far as I understand, even those who preach to us in this direction understand that there is nothing to talk about with Schocken or Boogie or Costa, but they believe that there is some kind of ‘center-left’, some collection of “paeans” from the past, of Tabenkins, Yigal Alonim and Yisrael Galilim, with whom we can steal horses together if we just flex here and there. In my opinion, this hypothetical public is equivalent to those ‘moderate Palestinians’ who just want peace and live in peace, or those ‘modern Haredim’ who want to enlist and work for their living. I’m not saying that such human groups don’t exist, but they have no intellectual center of gravity nor social power that allows them to have a real influence on the course of events. As a result, their people are always dragged along by guides of a very specific kind.

Politics aimed at enabling the lives and security of Jews in the Land of Israel cannot be based on this false maxim, at least not in the foreseeable future. I have no idea about the deep processes that may be taking place, I do not have comprehensive or even partial knowledge of all the groups and organizations that have been established recently, but to this day I have not seen any of them who are willing to openly flout the principles of contemporary political correctness, who are willing to openly declare ethnic loyalty, for example, even if others call them fascists. As long as this is the case, it is worth sticking to a consistent policy of respecting him, but especially suspecting him.

To the point, according to your actions and words, it turns out that you too are de facto disloyal to the people of Israel (like a significant portion of the religious Zionist public). Is he right in general? Am I right about you?