More Democratic Demonization of Israel: 'Someone Explain to Me Why We Need to Make Israel Happy?'

Why today's Democratic-leftists continue to berate American support for Israel is beyond me sometimes.

The centrality of the Jewish state in U.S. foreign policy goes back to 1948 and the founding of that country. Indeed, it was the Democratic Party that worked to establish and guarantee the survival of Israel, as Ron Radosh tells it in his book, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel. As the New York Times book review put it, Harry Truman was a "Zionist in the White House."

But today's Democrats have abandoned the moral clarity of earlier generations. Indeed, a large contingent of the mainstream Democratic Party has sought to excoriated Israel and cast off the Jewish state to extermination. One of the most ugly examples of this is found in the notorious anti-Semitic Daily Kos post, "Eulogy Before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel."

The entry recounts all of the historic anti-Semitic conspiracies against Israel. The essay notes, for example, that Israel embodies "the vessel of boiling blood of horror and perfidy in demonic vileness for its pattern of terrorism and murder in the name of Zionist ideology."

Most right-thinking folks abhor such evil talk. But what we do see is a more subterranean discourse on the left that excoriates Israel by questioning U.S. support for the regime. The end result, much like the uglier side of the debate on The Israel Lobby, is ultimately a crude repudiation of Israel as a hegemonic oppressor whose people are undeserving of American support.

We see this despicable meme yet again in an essay by the slithering Dr. Hussein Biobrain, "Appeasing Israel":

'Would someone care to explain to me why we need to make Israel happy? I don't even buy into the idea that having them in the middle-east is some great strategic advantage for us, and think it's the exact opposite. Israel is one of the biggest problems we have in the middle-east. That's not to say I don't support their existence or anything, merely that I fail to understand their strategic importance to us or why we need to keep appeasing them. As with our embargo of Cuba, I believe our support of Israel is more about domestic politics than foreign policy and anyone who suggests otherwise is selling something.'

Actually, what others are "selling" is moral clarity of world historical importance. Melanie Phillips can "explain it" to Dr. Hussein Biobrain:

... the reason why Israel figures so heavily in any discussion about the predicaments of our era is that Israel is the defining moral issue of our time. It is Israel, and the century-old existential onslaught against the Jewish people in its ancient homeland, which stands at the very centre of the titanic fight by truth against lies, fact against propaganda, freedom against totalitarianism, liberty against slavery, justice against injustice and reason against irrationality in which the entire free world is currently engaged. Israel is the quintessential canary in the mine. It is the front-line in the defence of the free world. If it goes down, the rest of us will go down. Those who are on the wrong side of the Israel issue are on the wrong side in the great struggle for civilisation against barbarism. That is why I return to it again and again.

And that is why I return to it again and again.

And to answer Dr. Hussein Biobrain, yes, it is about domestic politics, for the preservation of Israel remains central to the partisan debates in the domestic politics of U.S. international security.

See also, Ed Lasky, "The Democratic Party and the Jews."