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Mike Lumish

Israel Thrives

Now that election day in the United States is finally behind us and, therefore, I feel no particular need to give Barack Obama yet another kick in the head for supporting the rise of political Islam in the Middle East, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, I thought that I would take a moment and, with the kindly indulgence of the Times of Israel editors, introduce my own little blog, Israel Thrives.

I started the damn thing in 2009 out of horror and disgust with the American progressive-left, my former political home.

The fundamental argument of Israel Thrives is as follows:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

 

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

 

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

 

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

 

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

As part of our overall criticism of the progressive-left, when it comes to the Arab-Israel conflict, we have noticed that there are any number things that are taboo for discussion. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the “Palestinian narrative” of perpetual victim-hood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

These include, but are not limited to:

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) “Pallywood.”

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of “resistance.”

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

Please feel free to drop by Israel Thrives for a chit-chat or to tell me how I am wrong. – Mike L.

About the Author
Mike Lumish is a PhD in American history from the Pennsylvania State University and has taught at PSU, San Francisco State University, and the City College of San Francisco. He regularly publishes on the Arab-Israel conflict at the Times of Israel and at his own blog, Israel Thrives (http://israel-thrives.blogspot.com/). He has in recent years given conference papers on American cultural and intellectual history at The International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences in Dublin, Ireland, as well as at the Western Historical Association in Phoenix, Arizona and the American Cultural Association in New Orleans, Louisiana. Lumish is also the founding editor of the scholarly on-line discussion forum H-1960s. He can be contacted at mike.lumish@gmail.com.