Why the Gaza War narrative has taken over the left

These days, you can't mention a tragic event like the Oklahoma City bombing or the JetSet Club collapse without a chorus of people screaming "Gaza has it worse." It's become one of the main focuses of the left. Other far worse situations are either ignored or explained away.

This obsession fits the Christian redemption story that the western left abandoned and needs to replace with a secular version. We're taught that by living in the west, we've inherited the "original sins" of racism, colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, environmental destruction, and other "sins" we can't escape. So the secular "salvation" is through the suffering of the innocent, Christ-like Palestinians, who take the place of Jesus by literally "dying for our sins" at the hands of the Jews, who are also guilty of killing the original Jesus. By elevating "free Palestine" to a sacred cause and opposing "Zionism," the liberal westerner is absolved of sin, the same way his Christian forbears were absolved by accepting Jesus and rejecting Satan.

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BlueVeins · 22-25

You can't even do a genocide these days without lefties getting mad. 😞 Society

There's so much wrong with this whole rant. The point is not and has never been that the Palestinians are somehow 'innocent' as an ethnicity. The point is that an ethnicity of people can't be categorically guilty, and that no set of circumstances could possibly justify what Israel has done to them.

And this whole conflation of Israel with "the Jews" is and always has been deeply, deeply antisemitic. It's one big thing the ADL and the Taliban have in common, and for kind of the same reason. Fact is, Jewish Voice for Peace has been one of the loudest and most persistent voices against the genocide here in the US, while the most powerful supporter of Israel today are weapons manufacturers and right wing Evangelicals.

LeopoldBloom · M

@BlueVeins Why is this war getting so much more attention than other, far more devastating wars?

Jewish Voice for Peace does not think Israel should exist. They are antisemitic even if every one of them fasts on Yom Kippur and attends a Passover Seder.

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Spotpot · 46-50, M

@LeopoldBloom Isreal call itself a democratic state at the same time a state for Jews foremost and others second class citizens esspcially with the far right goverment in power in 'Israel today

LeopoldBloom · M

@BlueVeins Is JVP also opposed to a state for Palestinians, which would be an Arab Muslim ethnostate? Of course not. And Israel isn't even an ethnostate since 20% of its population isn't Jewish. The only Arab country that meets that definition is Lebanon, which is 40% Christian. So by their standard, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria should not exist.

Israel has been a sovereign country for 77 years. Isn't it time to stop pretending that it will go away?

LeopoldBloom · M

@Spotpot Arab Israeli citizens would disagree with you about being "second class citizens" when they have more rights in Israel than they would in any Arab country.

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BlueVeins · 22-25

@LeopoldBloom Where are you getting the idea that JVP wouldn't oppose the formation of a Palestinian ethnostate from?

LeopoldBloom · M

@BlueVeins You said they don't support ethnostates. It sounds like they'd be OK with a Jewish "ethnostate" in Israel within the 1967 borders, and a Palestinian one in Gaza and the West Bank. It's not clear if Israel would be required to give full citizenship to the over 5 million Palestinian refugees in other Arab countries. They seem to recognize that there is no two-state solution acceptable to both sides, and that a single state isn't acceptable to anyone.

If their proposal is for everyone to just stop killing each other, I'm fine with that.

BlueVeins · 22-25

@LeopoldBloom

It sounds like they'd be OK with a Jewish "ethnostate" in Israel within the 1967 borders, and a Palestinian one in Gaza and the West Bank.

Based on what? I think their position is either --

A) 1 state solution, everyone's a big country where everyone lives in peace, or
B) 2 state solution. Palestinian exists and Israeli exists, but neither as a quasi-ethnostate. Equal justice under law in both countries, like we aspire to here in the US.

LeopoldBloom · M

@BlueVeins JVP calls itself "antizionist." By definition, antizionism opposes Jewish self-determination in Israel. That is deeply antisemitic even if no one wants to admit that. If I were to say "the Mexican people are great but the country of Mexico shouldn't exist," that would be anti-Mexican. And repeating nonsense like "the state of Israel and the Jewish people are not the same thing" is either ignorant or a redefinition of Zionism.

We should be post-Zionist by now, by that I mean once Israel declared its independence in 1948, Zionism achieved its goal. It would be like someone in the US saying they support the 13 colonies declaring independence from Great Britain. Israel exists and will continue to exist. You don't hear anyone calling themselves a Chinaist or Russiaist because the continued existence of those countries is taken for granted despite the past and current atrocities both are carrying out.

BlueVeins · 22-25

@LeopoldBloom If Mexico existed as a white quasi-ethnostate which heavily discriminated against non-white Mexicans, I actually think opposing Mexico's existence as a "white people state" would be pretty good, and in fact, not racist against white people.

The way you talk about anti-zionism is very weasely. "Jewish self-determination" can mean anything from the racist status quo to citizens in their respective countries getting to vote like everyone else, as God intended. "Mexico shouldn't exist" could mean anything from the country being fucking nuked out of existence to peacefully joined with some other country, or that it should divide itself into multiple countries.