The Zionist Challenge

About half year ago the Dutch National Committee 4 and 5th of May announced its brand new plan for this year’s World War Two memorial services: Why not have a child read a poem about an uncle who volunteered for the Waffen SS? And why not do so on Dam Square in Amsterdam in the presence of the Queen? After all a guy who betrayed his country, volunteered for Hitler’s ideological shock troops and died at the hands of the Red Army is also a victim worth remembering. Right?

Yeah, right.

When Jewish groups and others let it known that, you know, maybe this is not such a good idea the country was in shock. “Why the hate” people said. “Why the intolerance”. Did we not realize the war was over? How was it possible that Jews -of all people- could not understand that a member of the Waffen SS was also a human being? It was surrealistic, yet at the same time reassuringly familiar, if you are used to arguing with anti-Zionists at least. Jews were once again being accused of monopolizing victim hood, of being intolerant and hateful and obviously of not understanding the significance of the Shoah. The topic may have been different. The arguments were the same.

A couple of years earlier, on the 4th of May 2002, something similar occurred in the city of Lelystad. There, at the World War Two remembrance day ceremony, it was decided not to give the local Jewish community permission to recite Kaddish. Operation Defensive Shield had just ended and the country was still awash in anti-Israel hysteria. People were in a state of shock that the Jewish state, which had happily put up with eight years of crude missile attacks from Gaza, suddenly for no apparent reason started firing back. Outraged crowds, mostly consisting of our Islamic cousins, roamed the streets of Holland and some of them were caught on camera praising Hitler. Not wanting to insult the Muslim participants of the ceremony, the organizers decided they didn’t want to inflame the situation by allowing Jews to recite Kaddish.

I didn’t know this, but apparently Jews reciting their memorial prayer on a day when people remember the victims of World War Two can be deeply offensive. Unlike, let’s say, building a Mosque near the ruins of Word Trade Center in New York.

The madness never abates. A few years ago a Dutch politician called for paying more attention in schools to the role Muslims played in the liberation of the Netherlands. Since pupils with a Muslim background often make it impossible to teach about the Holocaust, either by erupting in cheers or claiming it never happened, such plans are supposed to garner enthusiasm by giving those kids something to relate to. I am not terribly sure if lying about the Holocaust is any more helpful than simply banning the subject, as British schools prefer to do. But if Dutch politicians want to make Muslim pupils feel more enthusiastic about the Second World War, wouldn’t it be more effective to teach them about those two Islamic Waffen SS divisions?

TOLERANCE

What’s fascinating of course is that all these things occur in a country which preaches tolerance for minorities night and day. And especially tolerance for Muslims, who are deemed to be in a similar position as the Jews of the 1930ies. Hypocritical? Well, kinda more like schizophrenic. It’s common knowledge that Jews are rich, that they control America and dominate the media so obviously they should not be considered part of a minority. Muslims on the other hand, who consist of barely 1.5 billion people and form the majority in just a tiny little group of approximately 55 nations, clearly are a weak and vulnerable minority that urgently needs to be protected from the racist hordes. It’s a confusing reality where Antisemitic tropes are used to deny Jews protection from Antisemitism.

Why does this happen?

Now, some people say this is just the Left being stupid and overly idealistic.They want to create a perfect society and make amends for colonialism and the Holocaust by erring on the side of tolerance. What’s wrong with that? Well, it may be true up to a point -especially the stupid part- but it doesn’t add up. Being tolerant for the intolerant clashes with all kinds of freedoms that were thought to be core values of the left. Equality between men and women for example, gay rights and the protection of (religious) minorities from extermination. Just to name a few.

But there’s something curious about Leftist tolerance. You see, they are not tolerant for the intolerant per se. When pastor Terry Jones wants to burn a Koran, everybody on the Left trips over themselves trying to condemn him. They are not being tolerant to the intolerant out of principle, and not just because they don’t have any principles. They are only being tolerant of one type of group: Those who want to kill their political opponents.

This is all about power. Elections are nice and all, but you need to win them all the time in order to stay in power and that can be a drag. Wouldn’t it be nicer if somebody just whacks your opponent instead?

ISRAELI DETOUR

Let’s make an Israeli detour and get a little paranoid. It always mystified me why the Israeli left refused to accept that Arafat and the Palestinians were not adhering to the Oslo peace accords. Even though that endangered the very peace the Israeli Left was claiming they were trying to achieve. Why did they do that? Why were Peres and Beilin lying, denying and covering up for the Palestinians? To deflect accusations from the Likud that the Palestinians were breaking the accords? If their goal was to make the peace process a success, wouldn’t you think it was of utmost importance to make sure the Palestinians kept their side of the deal instead of covering up that they didn’t? It seems to me the Israeli Left had priorities other than peace. Just like the Palestinians, incidentally.

This fits a pattern where the Left (which is a mindset, not an organisation) adopts a policy as a means to destroy, not defeat, their political opponents on the right. There are a number of reasons why the Israeli Left yearns so much for pre-1967 Israel and the most important one is that in those days they called the shots. It’s not unreasonable to assume -from a Leftist perspective- that once the territories were gone the Likud and the parties on the right would return to be as marginal as they were before the Six Day War. That’s why they didn’t care too much when Arafat called for Jihad, supported and praised Hamas, and claimed the peace process was a trick to destroy Israel. They just wanted to get rid of the territories and start winning elections. So what if they destroyed any chance for peace for another generation or so.

PATTERNS

Yeah I know it sounds outrageous to claim that the Israeli Left was not motivated by the desire for peace. But you know what? This pattern is repeated just about everywhere. Take a look at environmental policies. The Left embraced the Global Warming scam despite the dodgy science because it offered the possibility to centralize power on a global scale. Yeah I know the centralization of power is supposed to be just a happy coincidence of all these Leftist schemes but I don’t buy that anymore. Why does everything they propose requires total control? Is it because those plans are so great, or because they attract people hungry for power?

Think about it: if you care about nature and if you care about the well being of the planet, how smart is it to ram through a vision based on lies and deception which is bound to be discredited? Not very much I guess. But why would you care if you are only interested in power?

The list goes on an on. The UN is an absolute disgrace which makes a mockery out of international law, even though its purpose is to uphold it. Humanitarian aid to Africa helps to keep the continent poor, their dictators in power and our failed politicians employed. But it doesn’t help anyone which leads to widespread disenchantment with international aid. Meanwhile multiculturalism in Europe, supposedly introduced as an antidote to Nazism, is now the main driver for xenophobia and instability. Why is that good?

The one thing these policies don’t do is advance their own cause. They do however provide a nice opportunity to damage traditional structures of society and exert more control over individuals. That’s what it is all about, not those little things like peace, the environment, social justice etc. Those are just slogans to get you on the bandwagon.

THE ENGINE OF FREEDOM

People throughout the ages have been in thrall with a vision of Utopia. The Left harnesses those desires and rides them. Religions do it as well. “Give us your vote to create a perfect society” they say where -what a coincidence!- the Left will be in charge. However, just like Plato explained in The Republic, in order to create such an Utopia you need absolute control. Freedom is the enemy of any perfect society. Just ask the Iranians or the people of North Korea. As long as people are free they may behave in ways that are less than perfect. So you can’t have that. Neither can you have unity and freedom at the same time. The opposition therefore must be destroyed. 

How to do that? How to destroy the ability of a people to maintain their freedom? The engines of individual freedom are free markets and the nation states which protect them. As the wealth of a people increases so too does its demand to control its own fate. That’s why African dictatorships absolutely love Western subsidies. As long as the money keeps coming they have no need to allow a middle class from forming which in an ordinary situation would have been needed in order to provide the government with funds. Poverty is much more preferable to them because poor people are not a threat. Contrary to Leftist propaganda poverty does not breed resentment and then violence. You need a certain level or prosperity for that. What poverty really does is that it keeps people too occupied with trying to survive in order to form any sort of threat. In order to establish Utopia, you will therefore need to destroy the ability of an economy to provide prosperity. You will need to attack the nation-state.

THE HEART OF ZIONISM

A people that is not downtrodden will demand power from its rulers. It is a truth that lies at the heart (or very close to it) of Zionism. Jews have experienced the reality the Utopian dream. Of not having their own state and no army, which just meant being powerless and at the mercy of others. It wasn’t a very uplifting experience, to say the least. But a Jewish state giving the Jews freedom, prosperity and a means to defend themselves has been an intoxicating experience despite all the challenges. For us the ultimate lesson of the Second World War is that we need our own place where our culture is dominant and we have the means to defend ourselves. As a consequence we have become more than just nationalists. We are in love with our independence. It is the ultimate anti-dote to the horrors of the Shoah. However the Left concluded something quite different from that event.

Just like Christianity and Islam the Left bases its ideology and beliefs on a fundamentally Jewish experience. And just like Christianity and Islam their conclusions are the direct opposite of what a large majority of Jews, as a result of those experiences, generally believe

As a Christian you are supposed to believe that Judaism, a religion which rejects the notion God having any kind of form, let alone a human one, culminated in the appearance of a God-man. As a Muslim you are not only supposed to believe that Islam predates Judaism, but also that the Torah on which Mohammed based his Koran was distorted by the Jews. And finally, as a Leftist, you are supposed to believe that the Holocaust, which seared the need for independence into our collective consciousness, requires the dismantlement of nations and the abandonment of national identity. If they are right, shouldn’t Jews be the first to believe in Jesus, accept the Koranic version of Biblical events and reject the notion of states, let alone a Jewish one? How is it possible, if their ideas make any sense, that Jews cling to their own religion, history and country despite all the pressure?

Because they are wrong. And they know that as long as we are around we are a testament of them being wrong. This is why like Christianity before them, and Islam today, the Left must try and rid itself of the Jews, discredit our history and demonize Zionism or else risk the collapse of their worldview. Because if a Jewish state is good for the Jews, why would the Dutch -or any other European nation- agree to dismantle their own country and merge into a European Union where power is centralized in the hands of the few? Why would anyone agree to hand over control over their own fate?