What is telling is the fact that her questions are commonsensical, not extra-ordinary; they don't require some extraordinary or perspicacious insight or knowledge. In a word, she's grounded. By contrast, the larger part of the left has willingly and willfully succombed to simpleton-like pieties - the opiate of the people.

So shines a bright light in the vast and pervasive darkness.

Brava!

Also speaking from the Left - many of us on the Left are simply baffled by the antisemitism that's emerged in recent years - though to some degree antisemitism has long plagued the Left as well as the far Right, and elites across the spectrum.

But lately it's even more ridiculous. The Left is supporting the very things we theoretically stand against: far right wing theological states or militias that oppress individual rights, harm women, try to justify genocide, punish gays, punish rape victims, suppress dissent.

Some on the Left even try to justify awful harm done to women on the grounds that it's part of "indigenous cultures" and therefore has a sort of holiness and can't be questioned or changed.

Some claim that brutal forms of FGM are no worse than nose jobs or high heels in the West. This is obviously absurd - not least because Western women CHOOSE to wear heels or get nose jobs. But also there is simply no comparison between a nose job and the excision of a clitoris. None - simply none.

The subject of choice is sacred to the Left yet they find ways to endorse anti-choice if it falls within the purview of their pet "indigenous cultures".

Oddly enough, the anti-imperialist/colonialist left overlooks non-western imperialism/colonialism.

For example, any map of the 22 Arab League states will show huge swathes of Africa.

How did they become part of the Arab League - by magic? How did the many peoples and cultures, ethnic groups and language groups in these huge areas all become "Arab"? Aren't we overlooking some folks? Speaking of "indigenous cultures" - what about all the indigenous cultures who've lost their languages, their rights?

I was reading an exchange between some Egyptians on the Sandmonkey's site the other day. They claim that Coptic isn't spoken in Egypt now because people had their tongues cut out if they didn't speak Arabic, centuries ago. Is this part of the Left's paradigm of virtue?

And - weren't the dread Western Colonial Powers involved in the creation of the 22 Arab League States - and the destruction incidentally of the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim empire?

Isn't British Empire involvement in the Palestine Mandate one basis for the Silly (and pernicious) Left's hatred of Israel?

I don't hear similar breast-beating about the Mughal Empire.

Yet the affects of the Muslim conquest of India are still felt today. This ultimately resulted in the partition of India, the creation of two Muslim states out of Indian land - and the displacement of enormous numbers of people - population transfer - deliberate "ethnic cleansing" unlike what happened in Israel's 1948 war - except of course for the deliberate cleansing of Jews from the West Bank and East Jerusalem by the British-led Arab Legion.

I guess those Jews don't count?

Many people were killed during the partition of India and there is still terrorism and war there - yet Israel is the poster child for Colonialism/Imperialism - even though Israel fought - The Empire - the British Empire - was blockaded by The Empire - fought with inferior weapons smuggled in from Eastern Europe whilst the British Empire armed the Arabs and stood by during the siege of Jerusalem and prevented ships of Holocaust victims from finding safety in the Mandate.

How does the modern Left deal with these facts? Probably they don't know them! The failure of our educational system surely bears some responsibility here - but nothing, nothing excuses the BBC, the Guardian, other bastions of the "free press".

I feel betrayed by my own wing of the political spectrum. None of our ideals are being upheld any more. Old time communists, people like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo - both anti-racist, both part Jewish - would be absolutely appalled.

I'm glad my socialist mom, my communist aunt - both Jews, children of people who fled the pogroms in Europe, who sent pennies to plant trees in the Palestine Mandate even during the Depression; my left wing grandfather who finally saw Israel as an old man - I'm glad they're dead.

I'm glad they never got to see those forests burn, or Israeli Jews hiding in bomb shelters. I'm glad they never got to hear "Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas!"