Millions of Jews around the world this week are celebrating God’s use of disproportionate force to liberate their ancestors from captivity in Egypt. But for the rest of the year, liberal members of the tribe will go back to berating today’s Jews for defending themselves against those who seek to destroy them. If the events of Passover had happened today, the United Nations would brand Moses a war criminal for his involvement in Operation Ten Plagues and liberal Jews would be cheering them on. After all, unleashing locusts and wild beasts is surely a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Today, the Jewish nation of Israel is surrounded by enemies, threatened by terrorist groups and grappling with the prospect of extermination if Iran gets its hands on a nuclear weapon. Rather than stand in solidarity with Israel, Jewish liberals devote their energies to hand wringing over actions Israelis take in their own self-defense, while joining an international chorus that sees Jews building homes as the biggest threat to Middle East peace.
The disturbing tendency of Jewish liberals is to take pride when Jews are victims, while recoiling in embarrassment when their co-religionists are fighting back against their enemies.
This can be seen in American popular culture, from the nebbishy image of Woody Allen to the films of Steven Spielberg.
In Spielberg’s 1993 Oscar-winning movie “Schindler’s List,” Jews were noble in the way that they passively accepted being led to slaughter during the Holocaust. He chose not to depict the Jews who resisted the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Then, in 2005, Spielberg released “Munich,” his film on the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics massacre, when Palestinian terrorists slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes. What should have been a heroic story about the Israelis tasked with finding and killing the perpetrators morphed into the tale of a Mossad agent who questions his mission and struggles with the morality of fighting terrorism. At the end of the film, the disillusioned protagonist abandons counterterrorism and moves to New York.
Back in 2008, a group of liberal Jews founded J Street, which purports to be “pro-Israel, pro-peace” yet routinely condemns Israeli actions. Last month, one of its founders, Daniel Levy, expressed his discomfort with the idea of Israelis having to use force to defend their nation. “If we’re all wrong and a collective Jewish presence in the Middle East can only survive by the sword.” Levy said, “then Israel really ain’t a very good idea.”
Having failed to destroy Israel through conventional warfare or terrorism, its enemies have adopted the strategy of attempting to delegitimize the nation. While it would be easy to dismiss Jewish liberals as harmless blowhards, the problem is that they play a useful role in this strategy.
Look no further than former South African Judge Richard Goldstone. Chosen by the United Nations to lead a fact-finding mission on Israel’s 2008-2009 war against terrorists in Gaza because of his convenient last name, Goldstone issued a report accusing Israel of war crimes and intentionally targeting Palestinian civilians.
Earlier this month, Goldstone had to retract the central conclusion of his report about Israel targeting civilians, yet only after the report had been used for a year and a half to bludgeon the Jewish state.
The Haggadah, the Jewish text that retells the story of Passover during the celebratory Seder dinner, reminds Jews that “For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us. …”
Only in this generation, liberal Jews are facilitating the efforts of our would-be destroyers.
Philip Klein is senior editorial writer for The Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
