Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
As over 3,000 rockets are fired into Israel by Hamas, the establishment of the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war.
It is not just that they fear that the squad, Black Lives Matter, the shock troops of Antifa, and the woke institutions such as professional sports, academia, and the media are now unapologetically anti-Israel.
They are in terror also that anti-Israelism is becoming synonymous with rank anti-Semitism. And soon the Democratic Party will end up disdained as much as was the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.
The new core of the Democrats, as emblemized by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), has in the past questioned the patriotism of American Jews who support Israel, and often has had to apologize for puerile anti-Semitic rants.
They hate Jews. The better question is why do Jews love the left?
Your article on Israel prompts me to meditate on what deep roots underlie what you discuss.
It seems progressivism has long been profoundly antisemitic. The one god based not on pseudoscience and/or superstition but on a moral social covenant was the original great innovation of Judaism, and is intolerable to materialists and pagans and ergo to Marxists and their dialectic offspring. The venality and corruptibility of Israel’s enemies affirms a base culture of economic materialism and envy — on which the progressive left feeds — without uplifting spiritual purpose. Jews seduced to the materialist left out of compassion or whatever have come to regret it in the past and it seems that will happen again.
Is Twitter then the Krupps for today’s woke progressives?
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Perhaps you do not appreciate tribal values and principles; the first step in defeating them. Tribal members exist for the benefit of the tribe: they are not individuals in the sense of individualist based societies. Tribal member fate is dependent upon the success or failure of the tribe, not themselves individually. Hamas specifically and Palestinians generally are tribal societies. Hamas and the Palestinian cause view their tribal members as just assets to be used for the success of their ultimate mission: destruction of Israel. This in their minds justifies placing weapons in and firing them from civilian areas with the expectation that the deaths of their tribal members in retaliation are better politically for their cause than preventing those deaths.
To them it is a matter of their civilians worth more dead than alive. The more deaths the better and they understand the impact of those deaths on societies based on individualism like Western democracies where they bemoan “civilian casualties” which are meaningless to the likes of Hamas. It is also the reason that Hamas et. al. target Israeli civilian centers! They know that Israel is a society based upon individualism and that it is the individual that is most important, not any tribe or group. Attacking Israel’s most important asset, its individuals, is bound to elicit the desired response: massive retaliation, resulting in civilian casualties which was the aim of Hamas from the very beginning. It is a cynical calculus that most Westerners fail to appreciate because they have little idea of the values and principles employed by tribal opponents.
Add to this tribal value system a religion that ascended from it: Islam. Islam promises domination over its non-Muslim neighbors and eventually the entire world. However, beyond the early glory days of Islam centuries ago, it has been the Muslims who have been dominated by a decadent Ottoman Empire and successive European Empires until the recent past by a dynamic Jewish State, Israel which remains a burr in Islam’s saddle. Just imagine for a moment if a central tenant of Christianity appeared to be historically proven false!
Indeed the rationale for the current failure of Islam to achieve its fated (by Allah) destiny is explained away by the corruption of Islamic society by western values and principles. So what is the natural reaction: retreat to the past when Islam was purer, devoid of western corruption and established its dominance militarily. Thus eradicating Israel is not only a tribal objective (tribal vs. individualism) but also an religious one as well. The parallels with the leftist wing of the Democrat Party are hard to miss. They are on a mission to destroy the very institutions that allow us to survive and flourish individually outside any tribal association: rule of law, law enforcement, our freedoms as guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, private property and a market economy. Destruction of these institutions and emergence of identity politics are necessary to create a tribal society here.
Contrasting “Diversity is OUR strength” with “Unity is our strength” ( E Pluribus Unum) the word OUR is where the deception lies. In “Diversity is our strength” the OUR are those who would divide us into groups via identity politics and those self appointed “leaders” of those groups. The OUR in “Unity is our strength” refers to us as individuals united with a common set of values and principles and the country as a whole as founded based upon the importance of the individual in society.
Who are the “they” that are saying all this crazy s***? Do they have credentials, standing, deep knowledge, years of experience, specific expertise? Have “they” ever done anything productive? If so, maybe we would want to listen to them. Or maybe the conversation ends with “well then you’re a Nazi”. Maybe just another internet wonder child? Remember that the internet brought EVERYTHING known to man… good and bad… to everyone with an internet connection.
Things will change quickly when more people just nod and stop listening. If you have children or grandchildren, then you are very familiar with the technic. There is a reason that we “listen” to children but do not generally put too much weight on “what” they are saying. They have none of the attributes listed above. THEY ARE CHILDREN!