Monday, June 15, 2009
I'm no Zionist but ...
... anti-Zionist types drive me crazy.
First, we Jews are persecuted because we are deracinated cosmopolitans (doesn't that sound like a diet mixed drink?). So what do we Jews do? We put down roots (why a doctrine that acquieces to anti-Semitism like that has become the sine qua non of Jewish identity also drives me crazy, as do New York drivers and many other things ... is it any wonder my wife says I need to chill? ;) ). I disagree with that (vide supra), but there it is.
But then what happens. Conveniently the world says "oops! we were wrong to persecute deracinated cosmopolitans ... now we'll persecute people who put down roots in land in which other people might live (which is everywhere". Perhaps dispossessing people is wrong. But isn't it convenient how the world decided to finally make this a moral issue when Jews started doing it?
I'm not saying two wrongs make a right or embracing moral relativism (and why are supposedly religious Jews doing so in their support of Zionism?), but the world's newfound discovery of morality at just a time when we Jews are not on the loosing end of things is, as the Church Lady would say, just so conveeenient.
And that so many lefties don't get it (when they are otherwise all about empathy) really says a lot, don't it?
(c.f. the comments section for any post about Israeli issues at Matt Yglesias' blog to see what sort of thing would prompt me to make a post like this)
First, we Jews are persecuted because we are deracinated cosmopolitans (doesn't that sound like a diet mixed drink?). So what do we Jews do? We put down roots (why a doctrine that acquieces to anti-Semitism like that has become the sine qua non of Jewish identity also drives me crazy, as do New York drivers and many other things ... is it any wonder my wife says I need to chill? ;) ). I disagree with that (vide supra), but there it is.
But then what happens. Conveniently the world says "oops! we were wrong to persecute deracinated cosmopolitans ... now we'll persecute people who put down roots in land in which other people might live (which is everywhere". Perhaps dispossessing people is wrong. But isn't it convenient how the world decided to finally make this a moral issue when Jews started doing it?
I'm not saying two wrongs make a right or embracing moral relativism (and why are supposedly religious Jews doing so in their support of Zionism?), but the world's newfound discovery of morality at just a time when we Jews are not on the loosing end of things is, as the Church Lady would say, just so conveeenient.
And that so many lefties don't get it (when they are otherwise all about empathy) really says a lot, don't it?
(c.f. the comments section for any post about Israeli issues at Matt Yglesias' blog to see what sort of thing would prompt me to make a post like this)
# posted by alberich @ 3:43 PM 
