Sunday, November 8, 2009
Daniel Gordis articulates what many of us have expressed concern over. Some people are so focused on self-criticism that they don't weigh the consequences of their words, nor care who their audience is nor are they mindful of the nefarious ways in which their ideas will be taken and twisted. Well meaning self-criticism simply becomes part of the indictment: Anything you say can and will be used against you
...ON the other side of the divide is a growing group so insistent on dialogue that it's no longer clear to what they are most fundamentally committed. When a group of American rabbis visited Jerusalem last week, one of them remarked that it was unfortunate that Ramallah wasn't on the itinerary. "Why visit Ramallah?" another member of the group asked. "Because Ramallah is also part of our story," was the response. "More than Holon? Are you distressed that we're not visiting Holon?" was the question that followed. To that, the first rabbi had no response.
Why, indeed, should Ramallah matter to us more than Holon? And why hide our pro-Israel position (if that's really what we are) simply to appeal to more college students? Had Theodor Herzl adopted that stance with the sultan, or had Chaim Weizmann been bashful in London, would we have a state? Had Golda Meir been self-conscious about her convictions in the face of an American community not entirely certain that a Jewish state was a good idea, where would we be? One shudders to imagine.
Have we become so utterly addicted to dialogue with our enemies that we would rather visit their cities than our own? Have we lost the ability to say, "If you breathe new life into the age-old blood libel, we will shun you"? Would we invite Alfred Dreyfus's accusers here for dialogue, were they alive today? We have real enemies. Have we so lost sight of that that we forget that anything we say, to paraphrase Miranda, "can and will be used against us"?
If those who insist on silencing any critique of Israel fail us because their passion threatens to squelch the debate we desperately need, those passionately committed to open debate suffer from the opposite problem - they do not recognize that they are unwittingly playing right into the hands of those determined to destroy us...
[h/t: Fred]
This is an important idea/discussion, not only for Israel, but of Europe and the AngloNations as well.
The fact of the matter is that the Left has long since been interested in improving societies in the West, and are downright hostile to Western Civilization and peoples as a whole, having condemned them long ago, moving on the political agenda to make the destruction complete, and still offering the constant villification narrative to drive home the will to cultural genocide.
I would like to add one more thought. Individuals can be too self critical of themselves, its a mental disorder, and can lead to all kinds of self destructive behavior (take anorexia as just one example) but there many other examples....some not as drastic by still crippling to the individuals ability to function as a healthy successful person.
Think of Conservatives as those who say yes you can do it, you are good enough, smart enough, and people like you for who you are, and dog gone it, we like ourselves too.
The Left however is constantly criticizing, while giving other cultures, nations, and people a pass, or not holding them up to the same standards. Always putting you down, fundamentally disliking you and wanting to dramatically change you into something else....instead of the exploiting violent racist mysoginist capitalist imperialist bigot bully, lowlife scum of the Earth, that doesnt have a shread of decency or virtue to be proud of or emulated. Needs to be radically transformed right to the core of the seriously flawed (more like racist bourgeios) Constitution.
One is fundamentally anti Western and negative/nihilist, the other pro Western and positive/constructive.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment.