Left's self-immolation

The Left of Israel is laying the seeds for it's own destruction. Perhaps not in the simple way that many on the Right would have you believe. It's not the peace process that destroys Israel- grant the premises of the Right, that Israel needs to show strength, and you can still seek peace creatively. It is not the Left's placating of the Palestinians, or their drive to understand the 'other side' of the story- a State of Israel need not be a zero-sum game where Israel only benefits when the Palestinians do not. It is not the left's inability to think about physical security- the Security Fence, which has dropped the rate and ease of attacks infinitely, was the Left's idea. Further, the pullout from Gaza, done as disastrously and ill-conceived as it was, was Sharon's baby, as a reactionary to 'demographic issues' and not the Left's.


And it's not the Post-Zionist segment that dooms itself. Yes, if it sees it's goals to the end, that will be the end of Israel as a Jewish state- but by its nature Post-Zionism would welcome that. Be it a blazing end of being expelled 'back to Europe where all the Jews came from' (where do the Sephardi Jews go?) or a simple dominance by the 'original owners' of Palestine (all 250,000-350,000 of them, including those in Jordan, which was the population total of Israel and Jordan circa 1850, i.e. before the Jooos came in to modernize.....eh, let's not get to far off track....)


No, the Left's defeat will not come from those who follow their principles to their extreme ends. Nor will it come from its following the more 'moderate' version of those principles. Rather, the Left's immolation will come from betraying itself, and selling it's soul. Those who will be damned will not be the Post-Zionist, but the ardent Zionist. It will be those who, in their attempt to empathize with the Palestinian struggle for nationhood forget their own.



It will be those who universalize the principle of 'nationalism' to include the Palestinians, but forget that their reason to 'universalize' is not only in reference to their 'particular' nationalism, but because of. If, as the argument goes, the validity of Jewish nationalism depends on the validity of nationalism in general, and therefore Palestinian nationalism in particular, then to the extent which the subsequent is true, the antecedent is just as true. In other words, to the extent that Palestinian rights become important to Israel, Jewish right are as well. When FM Tzipi Livni claims that the creation of a Palestinian state is the highest aim of Israel, what she means is as a result of Zionism, Palestinian nationalism must be achieved. What she misses is that it is not a result of Zionism, but rather concurrent with Zionism. Not only is enthusiasm for a independent Palestine not simply a result of Zionism, it is also necessarily limited to the range of Zionism itself.



It is in this particular principle that Left of Israel is practicing unbridled hypocrisy. Any Jew who proposes to transfer Arabs from Israeli land is marked a racist, and perhaps rightly so. But, if he is, any Arab, or Jew even, who proposes to transfer Jews from 'Arab' land is a racist as well. Grant that a someone who claims that only Jews have a right to the land of Israel is racist, no matter what Israel he refers to, and you are left with the subsequent fact that someone who claims that Palestine belongs only to those who are not Jews is racist as well, no matter what those borders are. The left should stop giving its sanction to clearly unacceptable position



It is this halfway thinking that will destroy Israel in the end. Grant that we need to get rid of the territories for demographic issues, but that can only come with actually realizing demographic issues. Instead of Chareidi bashing for having so many kids, the Zionest left ought to start having more kids themselves.

But, more importantly, if it is a hallmark of enlightenment to give space and breathing-room for someone else's culture, it is just as important to give space and room for your own.