Saturday, January 28, 2012

We Have Right on Our Side



{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives}

One of the things that needs to be understood among pro-Israel advocates is that we do, in fact, have right on our side. I am not convinced that everyone in the pro-Israel community really believes that. As someone who spent years battling it out in the ditches of the progressive I-P blogosphere in places like Daily Kos, I can unequivocally tell you that many Jewish friends of Israel still believe that large parts of the "Palestinian narrative" are true.

They believe that Israel is holding the Palestinians under an unjust Occupation (they always capitalize the "O" as if it is the mother of all occupations, the uber-occupation, if you will) that must end and that it is Israel's responsibility to end it. This is the fundamental crux of the disagreement between "progressive" pro-Israel Jews and the rest of us.

As someone who watches the I-P debate (and the I-P Jewish debate) in a close daily manner, it is clear to me that the Obama administration has great potential for dividing the Jewish community. Because Barack Obama is bleeding support within the Jewish electorate this will, naturally, set Jewish people arguing among ourselves. {Shocking. I know.} Alan Dershowitz has consistently argued that we must do what we can to maintain bipartisan support for Israel within the general American electorate and I agree entirely.

The question is, though, how do we do that when we have a Democratic administration that validates a genocidal, fascist organization like the Muslim Brotherhood? Furthermore, how do we maintain political solidarity among Jews when the Jewish left tends to believe that the onus is on Israel to accept what it has always accepted, two states for two peoples, and therefore foreign pressure must be leveled onto the Jewish state, rather than on those who truly represent an obstacle to the two-state solution, the Palestinian leadership in both Fatah and Hamas?

The problem with the Jewish left is not only that they tend to forever focus their energies against Jewish conservatives, but that they perpetually ignore the millions upon millions of people around Israel that wants to see it destroyed. This is not hyperbole, but quite literally the case. The Muslim and Arab world is absolutely rife with genocidal anti-Semitism and, with the encouragement of the Obama administration, Radical Islam is coming into power, via the so-called "Arab Spring," in country after country in the Middle East. If the progressive movement doesn't have the stomach to face this, and if progressive Jews likewise have their heads in the sand, how can there possibly be any political solidarity among Jews, left, right, and center, who care about the state of Israel?

This is a good question, it seems to me.

The answer is in promoting the understanding of two major points. The first point that we need to agree upon, if we can, is that Radical Islam is a genuine and widespread political movement that seeks not only the resurrection of the Caliphate, but the genocide of the Jews. And, two, that Arab opposition to the presence of a Jewish state on that tiny bit of land is immoral on its face given the thirteen hundred years of Jewish oppression (dhimmitude) by the Arab majority. What they call the "Occupation" is nothing more than Jewish self-defense in the face of perpetual Arab hostility.

It seems to me that if we can really agree on these two points then we can reconcile the differences among Jewish people throughout the political landscape and thereby present a united front.

The key is recognizing that we have right on our side, which we most assuredly do, and that the Radical Jihad is not some fantasy of George W. Bush's fevered imagination.

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