Damned Joos

From the neo-con mouthpiece Contentions, here is Abe Greenwald quoting Martin Amis, trenchantly scintillating...

I know it’s a great tradition of the British left to support Palestine, but when you come up against this question, you can feel the intelligence and balance leaving the hall with a shriek, and people getting into this endocrinal state about Israel. I just don’t understand it. The Jews have a much, much worse history than the Palestinians, and in living memory. But there’s just no impulse of sympathy for that . . . I know we’re supposed to be grown up about it and not fling around accusations of anti-Semitism, but I don’t see any other explanation. It’s a secularised anti-Semitism

The impression of "intelligence and balance leaving the hall with a shriek," is hardly a staple of British Left. It seems to be the acquired methodolgy of many indecent "Left"s in the West, as we can see from these two recent examples:

First, From Ami Isseroff:

The incident in question was the infiltration of the Yeshiva by Palestinian Arabs of the terrorist persuasion, who began stabbing counselors who were minding their own business. As luck would have it, the Palestinians entered a library where counselors were meeting, rather than a classroom. The foiling of the terrorists is detailed in Haaretz newspaper, not noted for its sympathy for settlers. Counselor Elyakim Kovatch managed to shoot the two malefactors after they had attacked and wounded two of the counselors.

...But the self-declared Christians of the Christian Peace Team proved how little imagination I have. For them, settlers are scarcely human (see Christian peace teams Dehumanize Israelis. For them, weapons are evil unless Palestinians have them (See Jesus get your gun). Always anxious to show compassion, CPT's Dianne Roe went to visit -- not the victims of the attack -- but the families of the terrorists.

...Dianne Roe asks:

Suppose the occupier and the occupied changed places. The headline of the event might be Head of Israeli terror group kills two Beit Ummar soldiers as they infiltrate terrorist cell.

Well yes Dianne. And the headline in ancient Rome might have been "Friendly lions eliminate dangerous Christian threat." And in the Nazi paper, the Volkischer Beobachter, in 1943, the headline might have been "SS heroes liquidate dangerous Jewish cell in the Warsaw Ghetto." Probably it was something like that. The headlines in journals sympathetic to Al-Qaeda on September 12, 2001 must've been something like "Freedom fighters strike a great blow for justice against wicked American Christian sons of dogs and pigs."

It's all a matter of "narrative" and "perspective" isn't it? (Read it all here)


Second: Via Solomonia: Jews told to "get a life" by pro-Palestinian Christian groups

This exchange [between the Presbyterian Church's Clifton Kirkpatrick and Jewish Community leaders] came shortly after a presentation of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network, a group chartered by the Presbyterian Church though not formally speaking for it. In a slideshow presentation calling for "reframing the debate," the group argued that the "Jewish community in the Diaspora must get a life," referring to Jewish reactions to Christian groups' calls for changes in policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Read it all here)

So, what does it mean to "get a life"? The Jargon Dictionary informs us that "Get a life!" imperative [indicates] a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of theology too seriously.

Israel's existence and security are hardly an obscure point of theology, and Jews have every right to be deeply concerned about the future of their co-religionists in that beleaguered land.

Those Christians who use this expression to mock and belittle Jews for their worry are in effect saying to them: We don't really care about the possibility of Israel's demise, or Israeli Jews getting killed, because we have a good and full life here, in bounteous America. Why don't you follow our example, discard your fears about Holocaust phase II, and just join us in our good and full life in America the beautiful. We'll reward you you by getting off your case.. for a while.

If I understand Christian ethics properly, this is not a Christian way of relating to one's neighbours.

This is not the golden rule.

As Martin Amis said, in the beginning of this post:

The Jews have a much, much worse history than the Palestinians, and in living memory. But there’s just no impulse of sympathy for that . . .

What can the reason be for this deep antipathy, this sneering hostility, to Jewish suffering?

(H/T Simply Jews)