What is the price you will accept? Will you accept 1200+ people being murdered and 239 people being kidnapped?
Will you accept women and girls being raped, some of them dying from their pelvises being broken by gang rape, some of those being infants and toddlers?
Will you accept children being tortured in front of their parents only then for all of them to be murdered?
Will you accept families being burned alive in their homes while locked in safe rooms to escape terrorists?
Will you accept 25,000 rockets fired from neighboring countries at civilian populations?
Will you accept those rockets hitting schools and hospitals that have zero soldiers or terrorists using them as bases?
The answer is a resounding YES, you will accept that. You do accept that. And this is why the left is losing a passionate group of supporters of most issues over one issue that is not domestic.
The new litmus test of the Left is support of Palestinians and blaming Israel when Palestinians kill Jews. The Left now requires that Jews take getting killed lying down, just like during the lead up to the Holocaust.
Jews stand up to racism first. We stood against Trump’s Muslim ban first. We linked arms with BLM immediately. We always do and we do so knowing we will be deserted when the latest antisemites target us.
In 2016, when I was first getting really excited for Bernie, I had a bunch of my anti-electoralist commie saying that he would in time prove to be just another Democrat, that whatever his rhetoric he would prove to be a sheepdog whose primary role would be to push lefties back into the Democratic party. And I thought that was so stupid and fatalistic and annoying. Now, from the perspective of 7 years later, it's really hard not conclude that they were correct.
Thanks for articulating this important observation. Those who are willing to stand up for Palestine are our new leaders who demonstrate that they have a strong moral compass and are willing to stand by it.
Hamilton, while I don't disagree with your description of what it means to be a Leftist, I do disagree with your central point that what is happening in Palestine, and the reaction to it in the US, represents the ending of an "Era." While most of us Lefties are following the events in Palestine closely, for the vast majority of people in the US, including the Democratic Party's constituency, it is not of much importance.
We may wish it was otherwise, but the bread-and-butter issues that Bernie has consistently pushed throughout his political career are of far more importance to most people than a foreign war they don't see as involving the U.S. How many people have read one single article about what is happening in Palestine? The news on their social media feeds and TV comes in contradicting bits and pieces. The Dems Jewish constituency is split and I'm sure more of that constituency is closer to the position of AIPAC than that of JVP. Most of the non-Jewish constituency does not much care, and there is so much out there in the mainstream media suggesting that support for Palestinians equates with antisemitism that many are simply confused.
MLK's Riverside Church speech deserves to be remembered as in the ensuing years his legacy has been "sanitized" to ignore this element of his politics (as well as his anti-Capitalism). But there is no analogy with the public's attention on the U.S. war against Vietnam at that time and the public's present interest in anything happening in Palestine. By April of 1967 the U.S. had been fully engaged in the Vietnam War for over two years with thousands of U.S. military dead. The war in Palestine is less than two months old and the handful of U.S. citizens who have died are split between the victims of the Hammas attack and Israeli military action. Youth and Lefties may become increasingly involved in criticizing the Biden Administration's full-throated support of Israel, but the majority of the Dem Party's constituency will not follow their lead.
The working-class people Bernie is trying to pull back into the Democratic Party have little time to worry about a foreign war they don't see as involving them. And, while I fully agree with your attention on Palestine, the reinvigoration of the Dem Party remains those policies and advocacy that are directed at rolling back enough of neo-liberalism that working people will be convinced the Democratic Party is once again on their side.
Something dawned on me about us progressives a while back. No matter WHAT negative things ANYONE thinks or says about us , we NEVER EVER EVER misrepresent who we are or what we stand for...ever. EVERYONE ELSE on the political spectrum does (though there are significant differences the further right you go)
We do not LIE about who we are. You can hate us, but you CANNOT call us two faced or hypocrites...And that's probably one of the reason THAT they hate us...Like the way that fundamentalist Muslims and Christians hate Atheists more than they do each other
Because in both cases we're not playing their fucking game and that takes power away from them (even though they hold the lionshare of it it drives them crazy to share it at all)
Mark Shields, the late syndicated columnist - no right-wing guy by any standard - used to emphasize how politics is about addition, not subtraction - or division for that matter. Bernie Sanders has been an effective spokesman for his views over many years because he has argued compellingly, using facts and reason. I hope “the left” does not abandon his approach altogether because its voice will become less compelling than it often should be. Reasonable people can and do disagree; compromise is not surrender.
Foreign readers are cautioned to substitute "American Left" for "Left" everywhere, since this is not at all about the Pink Tide in Latin America, or British Labour, or the Canadian NDP. (That alone tells you something, as "Leftism" is a trans-national concept...the American Left has separate issues.)
"Left" is two things that can be orthogonal: Cory Doctrow provided the separate definitions: a "progressive" works against there being about 150 people who set all the rules for the world; a "liberal" is fine with that, as long as the group has proper representation of minorities. The Clintons were anti-progressive liberals, so were they "Left"...on average? (And Richie Riche Sunak literally embodies the contradiction, as an oppressive billionaire...of colour!)
The liberal/progressive split was always sharpest for America, since American politicians have to sign on to some degree with Vietnam, Iraq, and other crimes. Even Bernie could only put very restrained effort into Iraq opposition - where were our congressional torture hearings? So much harder for American politicians to look Liberal, when your bombers are compromising other's right to life.
It's only possible to bring up some new atrocity as morally-compromising the current crop, by ignoring the old atrocities. "Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq", google that for Barton Gellman's June 27, 1991 article on the bombing of Iraq power stations, shutting down water treatment plants. 170,000 kids-under-5 dead in the ensuing epidemics. Nearly nobody even knows about it, NYT article and all, because we looked away, hard, as soon as possible.
As we will here. Progressive issues are wages, hours, precarity, pensions; dead kids overseas is a Liberal issue, about their human rights. It will lose. Those issues always have. Even torture.
Predicting the End of Bernie is cheap and easy, of course; he's very old. No points awarded.
Having seen this cycle way too many times, I have to ask: what happens after a cease fire?
Tougher: what needs to be done to move past the cycle and how do we accomplish it? (The underlying assumption there is that the solution is dual state situation.)
All the terms you misuse and selectively apply, are someone else’s. That makes you a tool.
For example:
Genocide-the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
Hamas has elimination of the Jews in its charter and backs that up with a constant barrage of missile attacks since the Jews left (yes, not just the government, but 8,000 Jewish civilians left) in 2005.
The totally unprovoked Hamas/Palestinian attack on Jewish civilians, with wholesale slaughter, rape, execution and medieval mass kidnapping on a scale never seen in history (maybe since the Barbarians in the 1700s), was/is actual genocide.
Warning people who are sheltering the perpetrators in their midst that they have two weeks to leave before the bombs come, is a NOT genocide no matter how much you want to obfuscate, twist terms, to make it fit. Just because Ilhan Omar calls it genocide, doesn’t make it genocide.
Israel has nukes. If genocide is what they wanted they could do genocide.
Since you are slo “passionate” that you can’t/won’t see the difference (and stop cussing) between those engaged in actual genocide and the Jews who want their kidnapped people back, you are either a moron, a tool, or just a garden variety anti-Semite. Either way, you’re boring.
What is the price you will accept? Will you accept 1200+ people being murdered and 239 people being kidnapped?
Will you accept women and girls being raped, some of them dying from their pelvises being broken by gang rape, some of those being infants and toddlers?
Will you accept children being tortured in front of their parents only then for all of them to be murdered?
Will you accept families being burned alive in their homes while locked in safe rooms to escape terrorists?
Will you accept 25,000 rockets fired from neighboring countries at civilian populations?
Will you accept those rockets hitting schools and hospitals that have zero soldiers or terrorists using them as bases?
The answer is a resounding YES, you will accept that. You do accept that. And this is why the left is losing a passionate group of supporters of most issues over one issue that is not domestic.
The new litmus test of the Left is support of Palestinians and blaming Israel when Palestinians kill Jews. The Left now requires that Jews take getting killed lying down, just like during the lead up to the Holocaust.
Jews stand up to racism first. We stood against Trump’s Muslim ban first. We linked arms with BLM immediately. We always do and we do so knowing we will be deserted when the latest antisemites target us.
They lost my vote. #neveragainisnow
In 2016, when I was first getting really excited for Bernie, I had a bunch of my anti-electoralist commie saying that he would in time prove to be just another Democrat, that whatever his rhetoric he would prove to be a sheepdog whose primary role would be to push lefties back into the Democratic party. And I thought that was so stupid and fatalistic and annoying. Now, from the perspective of 7 years later, it's really hard not conclude that they were correct.
It doesn't feel good!
Thanks for articulating this important observation. Those who are willing to stand up for Palestine are our new leaders who demonstrate that they have a strong moral compass and are willing to stand by it.
Thanks Hamilton. Clear as usual.
John Crane from the guardian, said:
If we get the government we deserve, we must all have done some bad shit in a previous life.
Hamilton, while I don't disagree with your description of what it means to be a Leftist, I do disagree with your central point that what is happening in Palestine, and the reaction to it in the US, represents the ending of an "Era." While most of us Lefties are following the events in Palestine closely, for the vast majority of people in the US, including the Democratic Party's constituency, it is not of much importance.
We may wish it was otherwise, but the bread-and-butter issues that Bernie has consistently pushed throughout his political career are of far more importance to most people than a foreign war they don't see as involving the U.S. How many people have read one single article about what is happening in Palestine? The news on their social media feeds and TV comes in contradicting bits and pieces. The Dems Jewish constituency is split and I'm sure more of that constituency is closer to the position of AIPAC than that of JVP. Most of the non-Jewish constituency does not much care, and there is so much out there in the mainstream media suggesting that support for Palestinians equates with antisemitism that many are simply confused.
MLK's Riverside Church speech deserves to be remembered as in the ensuing years his legacy has been "sanitized" to ignore this element of his politics (as well as his anti-Capitalism). But there is no analogy with the public's attention on the U.S. war against Vietnam at that time and the public's present interest in anything happening in Palestine. By April of 1967 the U.S. had been fully engaged in the Vietnam War for over two years with thousands of U.S. military dead. The war in Palestine is less than two months old and the handful of U.S. citizens who have died are split between the victims of the Hammas attack and Israeli military action. Youth and Lefties may become increasingly involved in criticizing the Biden Administration's full-throated support of Israel, but the majority of the Dem Party's constituency will not follow their lead.
The working-class people Bernie is trying to pull back into the Democratic Party have little time to worry about a foreign war they don't see as involving them. And, while I fully agree with your attention on Palestine, the reinvigoration of the Dem Party remains those policies and advocacy that are directed at rolling back enough of neo-liberalism that working people will be convinced the Democratic Party is once again on their side.
excellent article...
Something dawned on me about us progressives a while back. No matter WHAT negative things ANYONE thinks or says about us , we NEVER EVER EVER misrepresent who we are or what we stand for...ever. EVERYONE ELSE on the political spectrum does (though there are significant differences the further right you go)
We do not LIE about who we are. You can hate us, but you CANNOT call us two faced or hypocrites...And that's probably one of the reason THAT they hate us...Like the way that fundamentalist Muslims and Christians hate Atheists more than they do each other
Because in both cases we're not playing their fucking game and that takes power away from them (even though they hold the lionshare of it it drives them crazy to share it at all)
Mark Shields, the late syndicated columnist - no right-wing guy by any standard - used to emphasize how politics is about addition, not subtraction - or division for that matter. Bernie Sanders has been an effective spokesman for his views over many years because he has argued compellingly, using facts and reason. I hope “the left” does not abandon his approach altogether because its voice will become less compelling than it often should be. Reasonable people can and do disagree; compromise is not surrender.
What does the Cease Fire Now movement want to do about Hamas?
Foreign readers are cautioned to substitute "American Left" for "Left" everywhere, since this is not at all about the Pink Tide in Latin America, or British Labour, or the Canadian NDP. (That alone tells you something, as "Leftism" is a trans-national concept...the American Left has separate issues.)
"Left" is two things that can be orthogonal: Cory Doctrow provided the separate definitions: a "progressive" works against there being about 150 people who set all the rules for the world; a "liberal" is fine with that, as long as the group has proper representation of minorities. The Clintons were anti-progressive liberals, so were they "Left"...on average? (And Richie Riche Sunak literally embodies the contradiction, as an oppressive billionaire...of colour!)
The liberal/progressive split was always sharpest for America, since American politicians have to sign on to some degree with Vietnam, Iraq, and other crimes. Even Bernie could only put very restrained effort into Iraq opposition - where were our congressional torture hearings? So much harder for American politicians to look Liberal, when your bombers are compromising other's right to life.
It's only possible to bring up some new atrocity as morally-compromising the current crop, by ignoring the old atrocities. "Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq", google that for Barton Gellman's June 27, 1991 article on the bombing of Iraq power stations, shutting down water treatment plants. 170,000 kids-under-5 dead in the ensuing epidemics. Nearly nobody even knows about it, NYT article and all, because we looked away, hard, as soon as possible.
As we will here. Progressive issues are wages, hours, precarity, pensions; dead kids overseas is a Liberal issue, about their human rights. It will lose. Those issues always have. Even torture.
Predicting the End of Bernie is cheap and easy, of course; he's very old. No points awarded.
Having seen this cycle way too many times, I have to ask: what happens after a cease fire?
Tougher: what needs to be done to move past the cycle and how do we accomplish it? (The underlying assumption there is that the solution is dual state situation.)
Dude.
All the terms you misuse and selectively apply, are someone else’s. That makes you a tool.
For example:
Genocide-the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
Hamas has elimination of the Jews in its charter and backs that up with a constant barrage of missile attacks since the Jews left (yes, not just the government, but 8,000 Jewish civilians left) in 2005.
The totally unprovoked Hamas/Palestinian attack on Jewish civilians, with wholesale slaughter, rape, execution and medieval mass kidnapping on a scale never seen in history (maybe since the Barbarians in the 1700s), was/is actual genocide.
Warning people who are sheltering the perpetrators in their midst that they have two weeks to leave before the bombs come, is a NOT genocide no matter how much you want to obfuscate, twist terms, to make it fit. Just because Ilhan Omar calls it genocide, doesn’t make it genocide.
Israel has nukes. If genocide is what they wanted they could do genocide.
Since you are slo “passionate” that you can’t/won’t see the difference (and stop cussing) between those engaged in actual genocide and the Jews who want their kidnapped people back, you are either a moron, a tool, or just a garden variety anti-Semite. Either way, you’re boring.
Fine portrait of the House useful idiot caucus.
Left leaders on Team Blue deserve a party more in line with their principles.
You so called progressive are the most morally corrupt group in the US today. You are rape apologists. Thats just for starters.
It’s so utterly idiotic for a synagogue to have a BLM sign up at this point. Doesn’t win them brownie points among the Jew haters. It’s a bad joke
They have a really terrible landlord though, that gives them essentials to live for “good behaviour.”