Democracy for the Middle East: Democrats May Sacrifice Israel

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Democracy for the Middle East

October 11, 2004

Democrats May Sacrifice Israel

The New York Times recently offered up its Op-Ed page to a silver-tongued, PLO propagandist arguing - in the name of democracy and freedom - for the Jewish state's demise.

To understand the import of this imagine if The Wall Street Journal had printed a racist opinion piece written by a Ku Klux Klan leader who cited passages from the Bible to justify the re-enslavement of African-Americans. That the Times should have permitted its newsprint to be used to promote Islam's re-subjegation of the Middle East's oldest, extant, indigenous population constitutes nothing less. Since the paper is an unofficial organ of the Democratic Party, it may mean that a sea change in the nation's Middle East policy is among the alternatives to the Bush Doctrine being considered by Kerry's foreign policy brain trust.

What makes this incident so insidious is the writer's facility in turning the tropes and institutions of western liberalism to the task of delegitimizing a liberal society much like our own. Here's a representative excerpt from the piece:

In theory, Zionism is the movement of Jewish national liberation. In practice, it has been a movement of Jewish supremacy. It is this domination of one ethnic or religious group over another that must be defeated before we can meaningfully speak of a new era of peace; neither Jews nor Muslims nor Christians have a unique claim on this sacred land.

The struggle for Palestinian equality will not be easy. Power is never voluntarily shared by those who wield it. Palestinians will have to capture the world's imagination, organize the international community and refuse to be seduced into negotiating for their rights.

But the struggle against South African apartheid proves the battle can be won. The only question is how long it will take, and how much all sides will have to suffer, before Israeli Jews can view Palestinian Christians and Muslims not as demographic threats but as fellow citizens.

Carolyn Glick has about had it with the facilitators at The New York Times:

In his article, Tarazi libelously attacks Israel, referring to it as an apartheid state and arguing mendaciously that the Jewish state allocates rights on the basis of ethnicity. In Tarazi's words, "Palestinian Christians and Muslims are denied the same political and civil rights as Jews." This of course, is a complete lie. Israel does not provide or deny rights on the basis of religion or ethnicity, but on the basis of citizenship. Palestinian Christians and Muslims comprise 20 percent of Israel's citizenry and have the same political and civil rights as Israel's Jewish citizens. And The New York Times knows this.

In enabling these lies to be printed, the Times is not simply advancing the cause of the destruction of the Jewish state. It is also serving as a forum in which the cause of Palestinian racial absolutism is championed, given the PLO's demand that all land that will form the basis of the State of Palestine must be completely free of Jews.

The fact that the Times would provide a stage for an author who seeks to baselessly criminalize the Jewish state, while ignoring the racist agenda of the writer himself, is not really news. The Times's record in covering the Middle East in general and Israel in particular for the past several decades has made clear that from the Gray Lady's perspective, Israel is not to receive fair coverage.

Regrettably, the extremism of The New York Times goes back even further than Ms. Glick suggests, and it would be only accurate to observe that the paper's vision of the Middle East, like the PLO's, has never included a Jewish state. In fact over the course of the last century the Times' reporting on the region has consistently reflected the peculiar world view of its owners, a family whose anti-Zionist zealotry can be traced back to 19th-century Germany and France. When we say peculiar we mean peculiar relative to American norms, for the truth is that this once Jewish, later Protestant, but always passionately secular family's hostility to the re-establishment of Israel is a reverse image of the philo-Hebraism of America's founding fathers.

As fellow Princeton alumnus Yoram Hazony documents in his superb history, the public campaign of the Ochs-Sulzbergers against the establishment of a Jewish homeland commenced in the 1920's just as the efforts of the Zionists to establish a Jewish sanctuary in Palestine were finally starting to coalesce. Indeed, at one crucial juncture in the 1940's, the Sulzbergers even went so far as to send a New York Times emissary to Hitler-ally, The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to see if a deal could be brokered behind Ben Gurion's back for a bi-national Arab-Jewish state. Although the effort to undermine the establishment of a Jewish sanctuary ultimately went nowhere, it is worth noting that it took place while the paper was still trying to bury news of the Holocaust and preserve Europe's reputation in America.

That this old world, anachronistic and overtly anti-Zionist broadsheet should remain the favorite of liberal Jewish-Americans is testament to the latter's increasingly adipose character. Make no mistake - the historic inability of this lot to protect their own women and children is never referred to on the way to the golf course, and wouldn't exist today but for the grace of God and the heroism of Ben Gurion's children.

As an almost unrecognizable Democratic Party works in tandem with the Sulzberger propaganda foundry and the PLO to prepare America for a future Kerry "peace deal" with Islam that may well involve the sacrifice of Israel, Jewish-American loyalists to the Democratic Party are bringing new meaning to the words led, slaughter, and caribou.

Home . Posted by Editor at October 11, 2004 09:38 AM . DFME's new internet address is www.dfme.org

Comments on this post:

WHILE I AGREE THAT THE NY TIMES IS NO FRIEND OF ISRAEL, TO IMPLY THAT KERRY WILL BE AN ADVERSARY OF ISRAEL IS A DISGRACE. I DOUBT THAT A MAN OF JEWISH HERITAGE WILL LEAD TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE JEWISH STATE. BUSH ASKED A BISHOP IF "JEWS CAN GO TO HEAVEN?" BUSH WOULDNT KNOW A BAR MITZVAH FROM A SEDER. THERE HASN'T BEEN AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT SINCE TRUMAN THAT DIDN'T SUPPORT THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

Posted by: Willar at October 12, 2004 07:14 PM

Jimmy Carter was a US president dedicated to the destruction of Israel and its replacement by a PLO terrorist state. He failed because of opposition by powerful elements of his own party and the election of Ronald Reagan.

Had Carter been re-elected, Israel may well have been destroyed by American indifference and Euro-Arabic hostility. Carter remains a committed Jew-hater as are other democratic luminaries Michael Moore, David Dinkins, Al Sharpton, Carol Mosley-Braun, and Hillary Clinton.

Kerry's Jewish ancestry is tenous at best and four generations removed from the current day. Mr. Kerry does not now nor ever has had any connection to the Jewish people. Moreover, his current wife has a long history of generously funding Islamic terror groups via the Tides foundation and other liberal slushfunds.

While President Bush may have theological questions about the ultimate fate of the Children of Israel, his administration has never advocated the systematic destruction of the Jewish State. Mr. Kerry on the other hand has said publically that Jimmy Carter and James Baker, both outspoken Arabists, would be his choice for special envoys to the Middle East. This represents a major shift in American policy and a return to the days of Carteresque policies.

The Democratic Party has become overtly hostile to Jews, Judaism and Israel in the recent years. In addition to support for Arabist terror against Jews in Israel the Democrats have proposed a ban on Kosher slaughter a la' the EU, a ban on Bris Milah as child abuse and a ban on public eruv's citing 1st Amendment concerns. David Dinkins and Al Sharpton conspired to launch a pogrom (there is no other word for it) in Crown Heights. Dinkins went so far as to order the NYPD to adopt a "low profile" meaning they were told to ignore the riots. Governor Cuomo refused to order the NY State Police to restore order, the riots ended when the Jews themselves took to the streets armed with private weapons. Dinkins, Cuomo and Sharpton were all democrats. The US Justice Dept. found both Cuomo and Dinkins' offices abdicated their law enforcement responsibilities (the investigation, opposed by the Clinton administration, was forced by the Senate under pressure from Sen. Alphonse D'Amato). Clinton's Justice Dept. declined to bring charges against either conspirator. Again, a democratic president and attorney general.

Any Jew who votes for any democratic candidate needs his head examined. Suicidal tendencies are a recognized mental illness.

Posted by: Andrew Gelbman at October 24, 2004 12:07 AM

Actually, the Left has never forgiven Israel for being a US ally in the Cold War. Yasser Arafat has posed with Castro; therefore he has to be the "good guy".

Posted by: Kepha1 at October 24, 2004 02:19 AM

Please show me some solid EVIDENCE that the Democratic Party has attempted to outlaw Kashrut and the Brit Milah! Long live Elliott Spitzer.

Posted by: stevenkarmi at November 1, 2004 04:20 PM