EVEN PEACENIK LIBERALS HAVE LIMITS
Many have wondered how far the liberal Jewish “peace movement” would go before there was no differentiating between them and Israel’s enemies. Events of the past two months have provided us with the answer. Israel’s most extreme critics such as leftists Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky as well as über liberal organizations like J Street and Peace Now have been frantically distancing themselves from the BDS boycott Israel movement and their affiliates (such as Jewish Voice for Peace) like children on the schoolyard running from the kid with cooties.
It is encouraging that even the most naive of the naive can discover the reality once struck enough times over the head by the painful mallet of truth. And the reality they have discovered is that those who advocate for the boycott and flooding of Israel with millions of Arab refugees do not have benevolent intentions towards the Jewish state. Thus we now have a split between the BDS’ers who sincerely wish harm to Israel and the J Street and Peace Now types who with equal sincerity wish to help Israel while at the same time advocating for concessions which will ultimately bring her harm.
Eran Shayshon writes today in the Times of Israel how the BDS movement is finding it increasingly difficult to find dupes allies amongst Israel’s liberal critics now that their goal of Israel’s destruction has been exposed for all to see. Shayson believes that if the Zionist left, center and right can unify their efforts in those areas where they share agreement, specifically that Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend herself, than together they can defeat the radicals who would do her harm.
Read Shayson’s article in the Times of Israel HERE.
I have met / talked to very few people who don’t feel that Israel has a right to exist or a right to defend itself. However the problem lies with what Israel has become, a state that marginalizes a large percentage of its population and whose hyper vigilance harms its relations even to its allies in the name of ‘do it to them before they do it to us’