Sunday, January 8, 2012

Why the Progressive-Left is Bad for the Jewish People

Karam

Elder of Ziyon and Cif Watch are discussing a story about Daylife / Reuters that, in my opinion, offers an excellent example of just why progressive-left I-P assumptions are dangerous to the Jewish people.

As the Elder writes:

First there were "settlers."

But that wasn't inciting enough.

So we then had "Jewish settlers."

But with overuse, it didn't bring in the hate that journalists wanted to bring across.

So then came "Right-wing Jewish settlers."

But even that didn't capture the seething disgust that objective journalists wanted to convey towards them.

So now we have, from Daylife/Reuters:

"Extreme right wing Jewish settlers, one of them injured from a rock hurled by pro-Palestinian activists during a weekly protest, stand in front of their house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem December 30, 2011. Some 100 activists protested against the Jewish settlement in the predominantly Arab neighborhood and threw rocks towards a house occupied by the settlers leading them to confront the protesters, to minor clashes."

So people who live in a house in Jerusalem are "extreme right-wing Jewish settlers."

But the people who throw rocks at them, literally spilling their blood, are simply "pro-Palestinian activists."

Adam Levick over at Cif Watch is none too happy with this story, either:

So, here is yet another example of the lazy political labeling of Israelis who reside in neighborhoods of Jerusalem where Jews lived for thousands of years – except for the period from 1949 to 1967, when Jordan cleansed Jews from the “East” section of the city.

But, the reason for my emotional reaction was that, unlike the “journalist” who wrote the caption, I personally know the victim of the Palestinian attack.

His name is Yaakov...

Yaakov is not an “extremist” in any sense of the word unless, of course, you consider an extremist to be any Jew who lives in neighborhoods across the arbitrary green line.

Yaakov is an observant, learned Jew who liberally and humbly imparts his wisdom and erudition on Torah (Hebrew Bible) and Halacha (Jewish law) to his family, friends and Shabbat guests. But, Yaakov, like me, grew up in the U.S., and is also literate, witty and pithy in musing on the often farcical minutia of secular American pop culture.

Moreover, Yaakov is real, nuanced and certainly – as with everyone who inhabits this beautiful yet complicated nation – not an abstraction.

An extreme, right-wing Arab threw a rock at a man because he was a Jew – a Jew whose name is Yaakov.

This is, of course, just one small story among many others just like it in which journalists portray ordinary Jews who live in the eastern section of Jerusalem, or in the area of land that Jordan dubbed "the West Bank," in the most biased and provocative terms possible while white-washing Palestinian violence. It has become a progressive default to almost always portray Jewish people in the conflict in unflattering terms that justify violence against them.

It's a disgrace and a dangerous one, at that.

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6 comments:

  1. If this era will be recorded and remembered, examples such as the photograph that is the subject of this article will seen as the Western racist genocidal anti-Jewish photojournalism that it is.

    Compare and contrast this photograph, and the huge mass of others such as this photograph, which are the images that constitute the entirety of the images that the Western mass media presents as the image of Israel, with the actual reality of Israeli life and culture.

    The following are my YouTube channels, on which I have playlists on which there are videos which display actual Israeli life and culture:

    http://www.youtube.com/user/humanbeingdan (my personal channel)

    http://www.youtube.com/user/danielbielak (my main other channel - "Israeli Life and Culture")

    ————

    It's the 1930's all over again, but even worse - more perverse, more widespread, more pervasive, more sophisticated - globally encompassing - and almost no one is noticing - let alone almost any Jewish people.

    Just like before.

    The myopic, timid, oblivious, imperceptive, Jewish people.

    History has not been taught. Therefore, history is not known. Therefore, history has not been remembered. Therefore, history is repeating itself.

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  2. "unless, of course, you consider an extremist to be any Jew who lives in neighborhoods across the arbitrary green line."

    Therein, of course, is the rub; far too many people, including far too many leftist/Progressive Jews, think exactly that. It is a political stance that is part of their ideology. Framing is therefor necessary to recognize who is bad and who is good in their universe. In a way it's the same old good Jew, bad Jew scenario.

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  3. Well, I do not know that I would go so far as to say "the 1930s," if you get me, but there is no question that outside of the Arab and Muslim worlds the greatest haters on the Jewish state, and thus the Jewish people, comes from the progressive movement.

    For this reason I remain disgusted that so many Jews support a movement that is at best indifferent to Jewish well-being and, at worst, genocidal.

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  4. Karmafish,

    I'm vexed and dismayed that most Jewish people (and almost all non-Israeli Jewish people) do not know nor understand the reality of the current situation.

    Equivalence of circumstances does not mean exact replication of phenomena.

    I think that very many Jewish people (most Jewish people - almost all Jewish people) do not know nor understand very many of the essential conditions that were occurring in the 1930's.

    I think that very many Jewish people (most Jewish people - almost all Jewish people) do not know nor understand very many of the essential conditions that are occurring at the current time.

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  5. Thank you for the links, Dan.

    I particularly recommend Ken Levin on what he calls "the Oslo Syndrome," but what we tend to call Jewish Stockholm Syndrome.

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  6. Especially given the fact that Israel is now surrounded by so many Jew hating nations which now are controlled by the genocidal Muslim Brotherhood and worse. Those that aren't soon will be from the looks of it. And the nervous West seems to be whistling past the graveyard.

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