According to the formula currently prevailing in the West, nothing that Israel does is right and nothing that the Palestinians do is wrong. Hungarian-Jewish journalist Gábor Sebes seeks an answer to why this is the case.
Progressivism swept the sky clean with the Enlightenment. Since then, progressivism has turned everything into a religion, wants to free itself from original sin and seeks redemption. The French Revolution believed it had found salvation in the trinity of liberty, equality and fraternity, and the murder of aristocrats, clergymen and, in fact, anyone who was not a supporter of the revolution was not too great a price to pay. Since then, terror and progress have been intertwined.
By the 20th century, equality at the expense of freedom and fraternity had become the guiding star of the left. Both the National-Socialist racial ideology and the communist, class-based ideology of equality, both of which demanded horrific human sacrifices, sprang from this development. Meanwhile, liberal democracies and supporters of democratic socialism also see inequality and oppression as the original sin.
The undisputed tenet of equality states that every person in the world has a right to a good life, regardless of where they were born and regardless of the extent to which they and their ancestors have contributed to creating the conditions for a good life. Those who do not have a good life are victims of inequality, and oppression is always to blame for inequality. Therefore, there are two groups of people: the perpetrators, who are the oppressors, and the victims, who are the oppressed.
The Religion Of Equality
The oppressed is not responsible for his actions, and in particular he is not responsible for his own fate. That is why he needs a strong guardian, namely the progressives, who represent him everywhere, who speak on his behalf, because the oppressed is unable to formulate his own interests. This attitude has become a reflex of the progressives.
According to this formula, the Jews are perpetrators and oppressors because, thanks to the existence of the state of Israel, they have become strong and successful and can defend themselves. This is true even when they are being murdered.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, are victims of oppression. They are victims of oppression even if they are not prepared to engage in any meaningful, productive activity, to build a peaceful society, if they use the resources made available to them to finance terrorists and their families and to acquire weapons, or even if they are currently causing a bloodbath among Jewish civilians. But even for that they are not responsible!
The way the other Arabs treat the Palestinians, keeping them in refugee camps for decades, denying them citizenship and prohibiting them from practicing decent professions, is not condemned, and not even the fact that Egypt keeps Gaza under blockade is criticized. Because these Arabs are also victims of oppression.
"Among the progressive supporters of the Palestinians we see the perverse manifestation of the same phenomenon that George Orwell observed among the Western Stalinists towards the end of the Second World War," writes independent filmmaker Jamie Palmer in the internet magazine fathom. "Palestinians are ennobled, just as the communists were then, only this time not because of their doctrine, but because they are stateless and oppressed. The one-sided liberation narrative of large sections of the left must not be complicated by pesky details."
In fact, the parallels cannot be overlooked: Before and after the Second World War, leftists were enthusiastic about Stalin's system. The Gulag, the famines and the show trials caused only a few to lose faith and did not lead to the end of the communist movement. In contrast, the mistakes of Western democracies were blown up and mercilessly exposed in the free media.
In 1956, the major French and Italian communist parties supported the suppression of the revolution in Hungary. In 1967, all parties belonging to the Soviet bloc ended official relations with Israel because Israel had won the Six-Day War. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, they sympathized with the hijackings and assassinations by Palestinian terrorist organizations, as well as the murders and assassinations by the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof group, which were associated with them. In 1979, they were enthusiastic about the Iranian "revolution" and welcomed the racist, misogynistic, fascist theocracy as an anti-colonial movement.
The KGB Invents The Palestinians
The term "Palestinian people" first appeared in 1964 in the founding document of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was drafted in Moscow. This document, inspired by the Soviet KGB, considered only the Arabs living in Israel to be Palestinians, as at the time the West Bank was occupied by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt. The demand for liberation obviously did not extend to these Arabs: the PLO's goal was the destruction of Israel.
The countries of the socialist camp served as havens for the Palestinian and Western European terrorist organizations. At the time, they also prepared for their actions in Hungary, among other places, where they recovered from their exertions and hid from the police forces of Western countries.
The great innovation of the KGB was that the PLO was presented as a "national liberation movement", while Israel was portrayed as a colonialist oppressive power and the Arabs as victims of colonial oppression. This merely transferred the pattern of the Vietnam War to the relationship between Israel and the Arabs: when communist North Vietnam attacked capitalist South Vietnam, this was reinterpreted as a war of popular liberation.
As we learned from the documents of the Romanian Securitate Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, who had fled to the West and was one of the leading intelligence officers of the Palestinian movement, Ho Chi Minh's main strategist, the NVA's Gen. Giap, had made it clear to the PLO's Sec. Gen. Arafat and his leaders that they had to reformulate their cause if they wanted to succeed. The PLO had to conceal its true goals, pursue a strategy of deception and create the appearance of a moderate movement, he advised them: "Stop talking about the destruction of Israel, present your war of terror as a struggle for human rights. Then the Americans will eat out of your hands."
The suggestion to Arafat that he should act as if he had renounced violence and wanted to negotiate peace, on the other hand, came from CPSU party leader Brezhnev himself. The West rewarded Arafat's successful performance with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. The resulting narrative was exactly to the taste of the Western left, who still cling to the narrative of oppression and liberation of the Palestinians to this day.
In 1967, after the Six-Day War, the KGB launched another major campaign. In the course of this, the so-called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" were used, a pamphlet distributed in 1903 (in Russia) by the Black Hundred, a monarchist far-right, anti-Semitic group, by simply changing the word "Jewish" to "Zionist". The campaign was extremely successful, so successful that on November 10, 1975, the UN passed a resolution that Zionism was a form of racism and racial oppression. This resolution was only withdrawn during the incipient collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The effects of the KGB's actions are still being felt to this day. Israel continues to be accused of the original sins concocted by progressives: white supremacy, racism, genocide, colonization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. This has little to do with reality. Since the founding of the state of Israel, the Palestinian population has increased fivefold. The genocide must therefore have been very amateurish.
Israel Alone Is To Blame For Everything
The progressives see no sign of contradiction when the oppressed Palestinian victims attack the Israeli "perpetrators", Jewish civilians, from time to time instead of working for a peaceful society in their territories. This denial of reality is only possible by adopting the terrorists' narrative that Gaza is under occupation. At the same time, this does not prevent progressives from warning Israel not to dare to occupy Gaza.
They seem to have forgotten that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, they ignore that the people of Gaza decided in free elections that the terrorist Hamas should administer the territory - the same Hamas that has either simply killed or expelled the members of the second strongest force, the Palestinian Authority, from Gaza. They also ignore the fact that, in addition to Israel, Egypt is also keeping Gaza under blockade because the Palestinian terrorists are also threatening them. This has given rise to the term "the world's largest open-air prison", which is spread by the left-liberal media (e.g., Der Spiegel and Radio Vatican, among others). Israel alone bears the responsibility, no mention of the Palestinians and Egypt. Incidentally, the massacre on October 7 proves the necessity of the Israeli blockade.
The left has never seriously questioned the Palestinians as to why they did not accept the Israeli offer of territories for peace. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, Israel offered the occupied territories in exchange for peace, and in 1977 they invited the Palestinians - unsuccessfully - to join the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations.
In 2000, instead of signing the treaty with Israel, Arafat triggered the second intifada at Camp David, although then Prime Minister Ehud Barak was prepared to make major concessions. He had offered the entire Gaza Strip and 95 percent of the West Bank and promised that the Jewish settlements would be dismantled, and he even offered to hand over the Temple Mount. Arafat, on the other hand, demanded the "return" of the many millions of Arabs living in refugee camps who had never lived in Israel. While the left-wing public continued to accuse Israel of "occupying" the Palestinians, their representatives did not deny that their goal was the elimination of Israel.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, that Israel does should be recognized, and nothing that the Palestinians do should be criticized. This goes so far as to claim that the extensive recognition of gay rights through Israeli laws only serves the purpose of diverting attention from the mistreatment of Palestinians. Furthermore, the effort to make LGBTQ norms universally applicable is a form of cultural imperialism aimed at stigmatizing Arab countries as barbaric and backward.
Finally, here is an example of the intellectual acrobatics with which progressives reinterpret reality for themselves, this time from the pen of a Harper's Magazine journalist: "It is almost inappropriate to look for an analogy to the world-historical (!) audacity of the Palestinians in conquering the components of self-determination for themselves, if only because the content of liberation is reinvented every time the yoke of slavery is thrown down." What is this author trying to tell us? That the slaughter of Jewish children, women, old people and entire families is synonymous with the conquest of self-determination and the reinvention of the concept of freedom?
When self-proclaimed do-gooders try to excuse evil, they themselves become evil.
(This text is a slightly abridged version of an article published in the Hungarian political magazine Mandiner on October 28. We would like to thank Krisztina Koenen for pointing it out and for the translation!
The author Gábor Sebes is a Jewish publicist living in Budapest, author of "Mandiner".)
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1) https://www.achgut.com/artikel/wie_terror_und_fortschritt_erneut_zusammenfinden
2) https://www.achgut.com/artikel/was_geschah_am_7._oktober_wirklich
3) MERKEL direkt u. bewusst verantwortlich für Breitscheidplatz Terror-Anschlag 19.12.2016, mit Vorsatz - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCFg7R5HuJY&t=537s
4) PaliNet-Indoctrinated USAF Member Dies Of Protest-via-Self-Immolation @ DC Israeli Embassy, Left Hails As Martyr - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8RChImux0E
5) BERLIN: Solidarität mit Ex-RAF-Terroristin, Demo für Daniela Klette - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24wl6kiHhwE
6) Der gefährliche Irrtum der "Woken" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQB7H2KiX1Y
7) 2010: Horowitz Nails It - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvVLmznlcxE
8) How The Left Turned On The Jews - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzBrRd88ZAo&t=1521s
9) Andy Ngo: CHAZ-Style Extremist Occupations For Gaza Erupt At Columbia U And Other Universities - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHxbZLbE1xw
10) Pro-Hamas Supporters At Yale Imitating SA Chain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z49b5SavtE0
11) Why Are Columbia's Students Supporting Hamas? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFDbKgpdRpM
12) Mark Levin: This Is Marxist, Not "Progressive" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHyGM5cqhy8
13) Xi Van Fleet On Maoism Coming To Fairfax VA - https://rumble.com/v4n94qr-xi-van-fleet-on-maoism-coming-to-fairfax-va-convo.html?e9s=rel_v1_b
14) (Ger.) ESC, Greta, Hamas, und Israelhass - https://journalistenwatch.com/2024/05/10/esc-thunberg-hamas-fans-und-israelhass-widerliche-abgruende/
15) Quiet Part Out Loud: Finkelstein Let Slip The REAL Cause Of Israel Conflict - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZncJMyNZjd8
16) Bill Maher, On Anti-Israel "SJW" Students - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Ab7ooJatk
17) Hamas Responsible For Suffering In Gaza - https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/05/hamas-responsible-suffering-gaza/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hamas-responsible-suffering-gaza
18) (Ger.) Der LinkeJudenhass wird immer schlimmer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHXr-yEk1iw
19) AOC: Abraham Accords "Absolutely" Caused Oct. 7 Massacre - https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-804107?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd&utm_campaign=syndicated
18) (Ger.) Der LinkeJudenhass wird immer schlimmer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHXr-yEk1iw
19) AOC: Abraham Accords "Absolutely" Caused Oct. 7 Massacre - https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-804107?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd&utm_campaign=syndicated
18) (Ger.) Der LinkeJudenhass wird immer schlimmer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHXr-yEk1iw
19) AOC: Abraham Accords "Absolutely" Caused Oct. 7 Massacre - https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-804107?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd&utm_campaign=syndicated
20) Hamas Projection: Genocide And Rape - https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-projection-genocide-and-rape/
