An Israeli soldier reports on what he has learned while speaking about Israel at universities in the Pacific Northwest:
When I served as a soldier in the West Bank, I got used to having ugly things said to me, but nothing prepared me for the misinformation, demonization of Israel, and the gut-wrenching, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic hostility expressed by many students, professors, church members, and even some high school students right here in the Pacific Northwest.
and
To give you a taste of the viciousness of the BDS attacks, let me cite just a few of the many shocking experiences I have had. At a BDS event in Portland, a professor from a Seattle university told the assembled crowd that the Jews of Israel have no national rights and should be forced out of the country. When I asked, “Where do you want them to go?” she calmly answered, “I don’t care. I don’t care if they don’t have any place else to go. They should not be there.” When I responded that she was calling for ethnic cleansing, both she and her supporters denied it. And during a presentation in Seattle, I spoke about my longing for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. When I was done, a woman in her 60’s stood up and yelled at me, “You are worse than the Nazis. You are just like the Nazi youth!” A number of times I was repeatedly accused of being a killer, though I have never hurt anyone in my life. On other occasions, anti-Israel activists called me a rapist. The claims go beyond being absurd in one case, a professor asked me if I knew how many Palestinians have been raped by IDF forces. I answered that as far as I knew, none. She triumphantly responded that I was right, because, she said, “You IDF soldiers don’t rape Palestinians because Israelis are so racist and disgusted by them that you won’t touch them.”
via Bookworm
It is merely repackaged anti-semitism, popular in the cultural bilges of the leftist fringe, leaking into the mainstream like bacteria from a ruptured appendix when times get tough. Many American Jews are willfully oblivious to what is going on, averting their gazes from the overt hostility and also from tolerance of that hostility by mainstream Democratic (mainly) political leaders.
Quite so. This is nothing more than good old fashioned jew hatred. It is probably more prevalent among the English chattering classes than the North African arabs that I know here in the Midi.
This crap was going on when I went to Illinois back in the late eighties. I am sure that since the left won this war long ago that is it worse now.
Today’s anti-Israel sentiment, and also outright anti-Semitism, are largely creatures of the Democratic Party and of the Left:
25% of Democrats say the U.S. is “too supportive” of Israel, versus only 13% of Republicans giving that answer. Only 9% of Democrats say the U.S. is “not supportive enough” of that country, versus 46% of Republican who think the U.S. should be more supportive.
A survey conducted by YouGov indicates that 37% of Democrats believe pro-Israel lobby groups have “too much influence””¦about twice the percentage that gave this response among Republicans.
In addition to the lack of support and outright hostility toward Israel that appear among the Democratic base, outright anti-Semitism appears to be all too common. 20% of Democrats and Independents view Jews as “caring only about themselves,” compared with 12% of Republicans giving this answer. Another survey, conducted in the wake of the Bernard Madoff debacle, indicates that 32% of Democrats blamed “the Jews” for the financial crisis, while only 18% of Republicans did so.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/33324.html
To a significant extent, anti-Israel sentiment is an extension and generalization of anti-American sentiment: there is a very high overlap between the haters of Israel and those who spell America with a “k.” There are enough similarities between Israel and America to trigger the oikophobic reflex.
Have we forgotten just over a year ago, while the cameras rolled, the Democratic National Committee’s inconvenient honesty about God and Jerusalem as Israel’s capital?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8BwqzzqcDs
I sometimes wonder if it has anything to do with Israel’s shift from Socialism to Capitalism.
I have never understood this. I have in the past and continue to hear the most absurd crap regarding Jews and Israel from otherwise normal-seeming people. It makes no sense from any rational standpoint and is a complete and utter mystery to me. Whenever I hear it, I say exactly that.
Jews have been the default scapegoat villains in western mythology for centuries. After religious bigotry, they became the most convenient ideological enemy as well.
If you hated communism, it was a “jewish ideology”. If you hated capitalism, it was a creation of the “jewish bankers”. If you hated some other variation of western society, it was always and conveniently a “jewish thing”.
How else to explain the endless series of UN resolutions? The bizarre condemnations by every authoritarian thug from every corner of the globe, even those who barely know where Israel is, much less what Judaism has to do with some drought in Africa or a genocide in Asia.
Collectivists love conspiracy theories, and hidden manipulators behind everything that happens, and despicable villains who poison wells, both literally and figuratively, that they can do battle against.
In the current era, of course, the establishment of Israel in the Middle East, and the generally steadfast support for that nation by the US, has been a lightening rod for an endless list of libels and calumnies by all those influenced by the plentiful anti-American ideologies of the right and left, as well as the poisonous religious animosity of its neighbors.
I’m never surprised by the irrational hatreds of the collectivist mentality, only how seemingly rational people put up with them as if they’re somehow legitimate ideas that have to be considered seriously.
The ongoing, interminable, ugly hated of the Jews is almost enough to make me believe Satan exists.
Before and now I remain dumbfounded by American Jews’ overwhelming support for the Left despite its anti-Israel prejudices.
I don’t see it changing.
SPKorn: I think it will change as high birth rates among religious Jews, and high intermarriage rates among nonreligious Jews, lead to a much more religious US Jewish population than the current one.