Gevonden op http://www.yahoodi.com/peace/leftists.html The Peace Encyclopedia: The Left Wing, Leftists -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frequently Asked Questions: Who are those who proclaim themselves to be of the political left wing? Is leftism associated with Arabism, or pro-Arab/Muslim leanings? Is leftism associated with peace, pacifism, and tolerance? What then is the motivation of the Jewish or Israeli left? Can one be leftist and still be pro-Israel, or at least objective regarding Israel? What is the difference between leftism and Marxism or Communism? What are some of the common mistakes that the left makes? Why does the Jewish left seem so vigorous in their public condemnation of 'the Bad Jews', and at the same time emphasizing that they themselves are 'the Good Jews'? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Who are those who proclaim themselves to be of the political left wing? "They are not left wingers, they are the agents of Arab imperialism and its Fascist regimes." - the Lebanese Christian Social-Democratic Party (currently underground), in the Lebanon Bulletin, March 10, 1999 THE HARBINGERS OF DEATH by Emanuel A. Winston Middle East analyst & commentator We know the enemy because they make themselves known in a thousand ways. They want you to know; they want the fear. That is why terror is called terror. But, although they are the known enemy, there is greater enemy just behind them lurking in their shadows. In every society there is a species scattered within the population which is far more terrifying than the enemy outside the walls. This creature is inside, mingling with the people and acting quite friendly. This creature is a person who grows quietly and one day blooms into the creature we must fear. He is always present at the fall of whole civilizations, often acting as the pallbearer carrying the corpse of a dead civilization into oblivion. This creature has been labeled many things and today it is identified as a "Leftist" The Leftist cloaks himself with lofty proclamations boring into our minds with such phrases as "Peace Now" the "Peace Process" the "Inalienable Rights of Man" etc. The selection of a word cover cloaks the wolf in the skin of a sheep. It's a wonderful disguise, for who doesn't want peace or the dignity of man. We want all of that so when our Leftist comes along with his display of seductive wares, we buy. We want his bag of tricks so badly that even when it all disappears in a puff of smoke, we are ready to buy again. Over 250 Jews dead since the handshake and we are still buying. The snake oil Leftist carries his aberrant ideas deep into our conscious mind because we happily open all doors for him. He convinces us that the enemy is not the enemy at all. He gives us a different view, saying the enemy is merely another person just like you. All he really wants is peace; to live with you; to be near you; to do business with you and everything will be all right. Our Leftist grows close to the enemy, so much so that he identifies with his anger, his problems and soon begins to understand and share the anger against YOU. A clever Leftist will not necessarily openly join the ranks of the enemy but, subtly, he becomes his advocate and apologist. Somehow, the enemy's rights become more important than the rights of his own people. So, like death that creeps in on tiptoe in the fog, he whispers: "It's all right; these are your new friends. Lower your guard and be friendly. Put away your weapons; you have nothing to fear. Trust me". How wonderfully lulling. Peace...wonderful Peace. And our Leftist is bringing it free of charge. We just have to reach out and take it. But, why doesn't the enemy lower HIS guard and put away HIS weapons? Why are they killing us? Our Leftists say: "Not to worry. They will apologize for the riots and offer condolences for our dead. They are changing". Soon, after our new friends riot again and their leader says: "Not to worry. I promise again to stop the terror". Our Leftists say: "See...What did I tell you? They are reasonable men and, after all, it's only a few trouble makers who will make the Peace Process seem bad. I", says the Leftist, "guarantee that a full peace is at hand. You must, however, make another gesture. Yes...You did release terrorists. Yes, you did give them Gaza and Seven Cities but, just a few more things - a little more land and Peace shall be delivered to your doorstep". "There is the matter of a capital for their New State. They have had their eye on Jerusalem since 1967 and it would mean a great deal to them if you moved out". In the end of days the Leftists, the ultimate humanists, shall flock from the universities, from the news media, from the Labor and Meretz Parties and all will lend a hand to be pallbearers for the Nation of Israel. Then, they will flee to other nations where they will again take up their work as nation destroyers. They will creep into the unsuspecting population like a virulent plague and slowly infect the entire nation with promises of a really Great Peace if only they will open their gates to the angry mob waiting outside. Is leftism associated with Arabism, or pro-Arab/Muslim leanings? See Socialism Is leftism associated with peace, pacifism, and tolerance? See Peace What then is the motivation of the Jewish or Israeli left? "I see with sorrow and great anger how a part of the people still clings to hopes of reaching a peaceful settlement with the Arabs. Common sense tells them, too, that the Arabs haven't abandoned their basic aim of destroying the State; but the self-delusion and self-deception that have always plagued the Jews are at work again. It's our great misfortune. They want to believe, so they believe. They want not to see, so they shut their eyes. They want not to learn from thousands of years of history, so they distort it. They want to bring about a sacrifice, and they do indeed. It would be comic, it it wasn't so tragic. What a saddening and irritating lot this Jewish people is!" - Yonatan Netanyahu, the fallen hero of Entebbe Collectively, Jews have a hard time facing political reality. We have a far greater stake in fantasies of tolerance than in the truths about aggression, given the energy we realize we will have to expend if we intend to withstand the aggression directed against us. - RUTH R. WISSE, writer for Commentary magazine The Jews are a peculiar race, fit subject for abnormal psychology. Their political and pseudo-intellectual elites are nominal Jews ignorant of the Hobbesian origin of their diminished mentality. Many of these Jews identify with a Jew-hater Karl Marx. This "thinker" adopted Hobbes' reduction of thought to the subrational: "The PHANTOMS formed in the brain are ... bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence." Another perverse mind, exempting itself from its own conclusions. Amazing how many academic earthlings have made a livelihood teaching this sophisticated madness. I say madness because, if "forms of consciousness" merely correspond to "material premises" or economic modes of production which change from epoch to epoch, or which differ from one country to another, it follows that what humans, hence academics, deem normal or abnormal, sane or insane, has no objective validity. Precisely the relativistic conclusion of anti-psychiatry! And what is most significant, anti-psychiatry was adopted by a neoMarxist movement in the West called the "New Left," adherents of which will be found among nominal Jews in Israel. Like Marx, the New Left substituted organized egoism or socialism for random egoism or liberalism in the domain of economics. ...This ersatz mentality describes the political and pseudo-intellectual elites that have dominated Israel for some fifty years. These elites may be classified as degenerates. That they appear normal (or merely misguided) to their contemporaries is merely a reflection of the degeneracy of the human race resulting from the pervasive and leveling influence of relativism. ...I must now say a word about Muslims and the Arab-Islamic world. In that world relativism has no foothold. Yet, everywhere in that sprawling domain Arafat is embraced as a brother--a brother in Jewish blood. This barbarism is of ancient vintage, as I learned even from an emancipated Arab scholar. Thus, in the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun, an historian influenced by two illustrious Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, boldly declared that "Arabs are people who[se] ... savagery has become their character and nature." To this day it is only in Arab-Islamic states which amputate human limbs for trivial offenses Indeed, during the last two decades, almost a million Muslims slaughtered each other in a war between Iraq and Iran; 100,000 Muslims and Christians butchered each other in Lebanon; 20,000 Arabs were murdered by their own countrymen in Syria. And what is more, after ravaging Kuwait, his Arab neighbor, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein won the support of Israel's own Arab citizens despite his threat to incinerate them along with the Jews! All this bloodshed is done in the name of a religious doctrine which thinly adorns a hard core of evil aggressiveness. Intimately linked to Arab bellicosity is mendacity. In this century, an emancipated Arab sociologist, Sonia Hamady, admitted that "Lying is a widespread habit among Arabs, and they have a low idea of truth." They lie not only to "infidels" but to each other. Another indication of a flawed religion no one questions in an era of cultural relativism. ...[Here is] what an exceptional and thoughtful Arab of old might think of Jews who made agreements with their mendacious and unrepentant enemies. Here is what Ibn Hazm of the 11th century wrote: "The height of goodness is that you should neither oppress your enemy nor abandon him to oppression. To treat him as a friend is the work of a fool whose end is near." - Prof. Paul Eidelberg, the Co-founder and President of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East ...how was it possible a "secular, rationalist, and modernist" political party could not fathom the nature of this determined Arab enemy? This becomes understandable when one recognizes the Laborite obsession with its socialist, universalist ideology. To them, all persons would have to obey "the iron laws of economics" and would perforce succumb to the material advantages of peace and abandon the passionate religion of their youth. In other words, the leftists were egotistic enough to imagine the enemy in their own image, an image they universalized to apply even to the Arabs. Like Narcissus in the Greek myth who drowned when he fell in love with his own image in the water, the Narcissistic Laborites embraced the enemy of their imagination, an enemy that still had its fangs but who had been smart enough to make his propaganda appeal to the obsessions of this Israeli leadership. That such characterlogical flaws are not easily abandoned as a result of mere facts is daily demonstrated by the continuation of efforts by the Laborites and Israeli leftists to persist in their fanatic obsessions that those who martyred themselves to murder Israelis will make peace with "the despicable leftist, G-dless infidel." Only earth shaking events can change such a leftist mentality, like going down to dismal defeat in Israeli elections or feeling the first rippings of the Arab knife on their own throats -- the latter being an outcome from which the growing mainstream of truly wise and compassionate Israelis must save them. Unfortunately, the damage of the unwise policies of the Israeli left has been done. It is difficult to reeducate the world and the Jewish public... - David Basch Can one be leftist and still be pro-Israel, or at least objective regarding Israel? See Refugees What is the difference between leftism and Marxism or Communism? Under Construction What are some of the common mistakes that the left makes? In the tradition of Chamberlain, The Israeli and Jewish Left including organizations like "Dor Shalom," urge support for Arafat as "Israel's last, best chance for peace." History buffs will recall that Chamberlain made similar statements about Adolph Hitler, another "man who sought peace." Using such words, Chamberlain advocated the appeasement of Hitler "for peace" by ceding Czechoslovakia's strategic territories. Chamberlain obviously searched for peace in all the wrong places, looked for it at the hands of a man who was the real threat to peace, like the Left searches for it today. The Left's trust in Arafat and the Arabs is worrisome coming after four years of Oslo that have seen Arab bus bombings, terror, incitement to the hatred and murder of Jews, spectacles of Arabs honoring terrorist killers and terrorism, and video speeches of Arafat telling of his staged plan to destroy Israel. Can the Left be in touch with reality, or is it like some of those Germans who allege they spent World War II in a mine cave seeing nothing? If a weakened Arab enemy, driven by Islam and history, was undaunted in his aims to overthrow Israel, why would his goals mellow if he became stronger, thanks to the generosity of the "doves"? Don't leftists ever learn? Or are their socialist, universalist, delusions of the world too strong, delusions in which Nazism could never happen but did, and in which Arabs will love Jews whom they believe violate Islam and rob them of their lands? Yet the Left seems to have learned nothing from recent events, attempting to influence U.S. and Israeli Jews to trust the maggot Arafat, the leader of a determined and dangerous Arab enemy. The Left makes the pitch that unless Arafat is supported by Israel, worse will come, like Hamas leaders, as though there were a difference between the goals of Arafat and Hamas. Arafat's public kiss of the Hamas leader should have dispelled that myth. But the Left is impervious to reality, blind to the possibility that the Arabs are pulling off the old "good cop, bad cop" routine, in which the victim looks to the smiling "good cop" for help and is delivered over to the baddies. One can tell much about the Left's allegiances when it blames Israel for weakening Arafat by such things as building Jewish homes in Jewish Jerusalem, which the Left pointedly refers to as "Arab East Jerusalem," a section of Jerusalem that once housed a majority of Jews before the Arabs expelled them in 1948 and in which sits the ancient Har Hazatim Jewish cemetery. The Leftist Jewish and Israeli organizations are now working to build a new Arab nation on the lands of Israel, as though empowering a new Arab nation will lead to peace when the Arabs themselves tell you that it is the first stage toward gaining all the lands of what is now the "Zionist entity." The Left is concerned that Arafat, "Israel's hope," will be weakened if Israel stops the continuous appeasements that have followed since Yitzchak Rabin signed on the White House lawn. Too involved in its own delusions, the Left can't see that Arafat's position among his people is assured since the Arabs know full well Arafat's role in the "good cop" scam. The Arabs need Arafat as the figurehead to lure confused Jewish idealists. This role is Arafat's ticket to perpetual Arab support despite anything Israel does, the way supporting the Arab savages is the Leftists ticket to egoistic attention-getting in U.S. newspapers, also in on the Arab scam. But the Arabs obviously know their Jewish leftists because they are, invariably, on cue, laboring passionately for them and indirectly for Israel's destruction. But the Left does make one good point, namely, that Arafat should be negotiated with, which is what Mr. Netanyahu is already doing. Though Arafat cannot be depended on to fight terrorism and to be working for peace, he should be treated as a messenger to his people. He should be plainly told by Mr. Netanyahu that Israel will not let herself be destroyed by the Arabs, neither in one fell swoop or in stages -- to forget about that Arab dream. He should also be telling his people that the present negotiations under Mr. Netanyahu is in fact the Arab last, best chance for peace. Mr. Netanyahu -- hopefully -- is placing before Arafat and his people an opportunity to come to terms with Israel in the only agreement that can lead to peace between Arab and Jew. This is an agreement in which Israel preserves her strength and her strategic territories, military and economic, including vital high grounds and watersheds -- the vital watersheds, by the way, which should be instantly nationalized and cleared of polluters and pollutants. This is a land in which Palestinian Arabs never in history existed as a people, and will never have such unentitled sovereignty, nor will they be given the conditions to potentially harm Israel. So what do the Arabs get out of this? The answer, already given, is that the Arabs gain real peace. This is the only kind of peace arrangement that will provide a stable peace for both Arab and Jew since experience has abundantly shown that the Arabs are thoroughly incapable of living in peace willingly with Israel. Alas, they require much compulsion to make such a peace possible, a peace gained through under outside compulsion which even Islam sanctions -- Islam sanctions no other kind of desistance of Jihad. It is the only way for these Arabs to secure what should be their own interests in living in peace. That confusing foe with friend is endemic in the Rabin family and did not end with him is shown by the contemporary Left. The confusion is also demonstrated by Leah Rabin's ardent courting of Arafat as she sat beside him at a public occasion -- the Arafat that is an ardent supporter of Saddam Hussein and of Arab terrorism and who promises his people that all of Israel's lands will be liberated. And while Arafat at a Rabin memorial told how Rabin was his favorite dead Jew, Leah Rabin reviled Israel's democratically elected government. Here with the Rabin family is exhibited the anti-Jewish sentiments that are at the heart of the leftist secular religion of universalism that runs rampant in their veins. Unfortunately, these charter members of Israel's surrender parties, blinded by their fanatic obsessions and their irrational anti-Jewish feelings, cannot visualize the dark reality of the implacable Arab determination to destroy Israel. And so they and their "Dor Ne'evad" labor mightily to create the Arab engine capable of destroying the Jewish state in the illusion that their efforts will bring peace. These form a sick part of this generation of Jews and should be clearly identified as such at every turn by those of saner minds, reminded that it was Yitzchak Rabin that squandered Israel's firm control of the Jewish lands, legitimized a no-people, and enabled the enemy to create armed, terrorist bases adjacent to Israeli population centers. These members of this generation have mistaken the determined Arab enemy jackal with a dove of peace, and they do so with arrogance and self-deception. Crime against oneself and one's inner integrity may perhaps be less serious in its consequences. No doubt my poor parents were unable to forsee what in their time was hardly imaginable; no doubt none of the millions of Jews done to death could have forseen their fate. But today, now that the unimaginable has become part of history, the Jews who allow themselves to be victims of illusion are inviting destruction. - Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" "I would say that leftists must inhabit an alternate universe, except that we wind up having to pay the consequences for their detachment from reality. But while we do live in the same objective world, their vision of it seems to have nothing in common with ours. They do not comprehend reality as we see it, and when challenged with evidence that would seem to buttress our view, they seem either to dismiss it for theoretical reason or ignore it completely. One can list various dangers in the agreement, and give objective evidence that Palestinians have no desire for peace, but still want to drive our people into the sea. What is the reaction? They will tell you that self-determination and prosperity will change the Palestinians' outlook and behavior. On what do they base this? Not on evidence from Arab societies. Rather it is based on theory". "To me, this looks like an unwillingness to deal with reality, and it echoes the unwillingness of the Jewish community of the thirties to recognize the threat posed by the Nazis. Indeed, it seems we have learned nothing at all from our experience with Nazism. The Holocaust has become little more than a tale to frighten children: demons in a morality play. They have turned the Holocaust into an image divorced from real world happenings. Millions more Jews could die in Israel, but they refuse to even imagine the possibility. They will not allow reality to interfere with their myths". - Professor Mark Steinberger (Department of Math and Statistics, State University of New York in Albany, New York Why does the Jewish left seem so vigorous in their public condemnation of 'the Bad Jews', and at the same time emphasizing that they themselves are 'the Good Jews'? The Israeli leadership and many in the American Jewish community have unintentionally played into this latest bid to establish moral equivalence between the principally Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the so-called "victims of Zionist aggression." I am mystified by the lengths Jews in Israel and elsewhere have gone -- not just to denounce Goldstein's criminal conduct -- but to apologize for it. Such apologies unavoidably imply an association with -- and responsibility for -- the crime. [Worst of all,] the apologies for Baruch Goldstein are being tendered in the context of Israel's titanic ideological struggle with its Arab foes.... - Frank J. Gaffney, in the speech "A CALL TO ARMS IN THE JEWS' 'IDEOLOGICAL WAR'", U.S. Senate Caucus Room, 16 March 1994 ...leftist Jewish movements [are afflicted with] the disease of self-hatred and hatred of one's brethren. Jews who hate their Jewishness loathe their heritage and do everything in order to divide the people into two: into the presumably "good" Jews, and the "bad" Jews, who lack legitimacy. Their illness of self-hatred is so severe that they join the Arab enemy, become unadulterated anti-Semites and now, they have plunged to such depths of degradation that they are not ashamed to use the methods that the Nazis employed against German Jewry. Just as the Nazis found their scapegoat for all the troubles of the world - the Jews, so have the leftists found their scapegoat - the settlers! In their fantasy world, the settlers are the reason for all the troubles in the Middle East. The fact that there was terror before '67, and the fact that, in Arab eyes, there is no difference between the settlement of Efrat and the settlement of Sheikh Munis in Tel Aviv, are of no interest to the Jews of the extreme left. Their self-hatred is so entrenched that you cannot talk with them logically. This anti-Semitic mentality, incidentally, also is present as the living spirit behind the Oslo accords - here too, they joined together with the enemy, the arch-murderer Arafat, they established an armed terrorist army for him, and promised him that, withdrawal after withdrawal, the settlements will be uprooted - and this is the seeming "solution" to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Nadia Matar, chairperson of Women for Israel's Tomorrow --------------------------------------------------------------------------------