When you disregard or insult Jews enough — as Jeremy Corbyn
has done by calling Hamas and Hezbollah great friends of the left, or at least
his version of it — not only do you betray a blinkered view of the world but
you in effect dare Jews to do something about it. I mean, what can Jews do,
cause they need the left, right?
Or maybe not.
And so, in the spirit of "If you prick us, do we not
bleed?", London Jews have pricked back. They voted Labor out in seats long
regarded as Labor sinecures.
Lest this be construed as yet another debate about Zionism,
let me suggest it is but it is also much more. It is, for one thing, a debate
about a leftism that has never matured an inch beyond Leninist conceptions of history.
According to these, Israel is a "colonial settler state." That's the
sort of nonsense Abbas revisits when he talks about imperial designs on the
Levant that Zionism Europe a vehicle to fulfill.
In his apology for this dreck Abbas did admit that nothing
worse than the Holocaust had ever happened, ever, so far as crimes against
humanity go.
Holocaust on the one hand, worst crime ever, Zionism as handy
imperialist conspiracy on the other.
Sense the disconnect?
I'm sure Abbas, an octogenarian, gets splitting headaches
about this. Maybe. Or doesn't. Assuming a head. Same should be said of the left
head. Or lack thereof.
But I want to move on, if only slightly, from the particular
brain ache about Zionism and the Holocaust.
I want to say something ++ about the emptiness of Zionism, its
failure, allure, insufficiency, void.
I support the state of Israel. Therefore, in the most basic
sense, I am a Zionist. But Israel does not satisfy my sense of Jewish nationalism.
Nor can it. Nor can it speak for or protect me and the likes of me outside its
borders.
I support English labor initiatives much as I can, or the
equivalents in the United States, but I support even more those Jewish voters
in London who said, no you can't run over us.
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