Archives for October 2015

At the Watchers’ Council,

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.

” I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed?” – Shylock in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice‘ Act 3 Scene 1

“The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves is what I call hell.” – Andre’ Malraux

“There is no difference whatever between anti-Semitism and the denial of Israel’s statehood. Classical anti-Semitism denies the equal right of Jews as citizens within society. Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations. The common principle in the two cases is discrimination.” – Abba Eban, 1975

This week’s winning essay, Joshuapundit’s Why So Many Jews Support The Left – And Why They’re So Anti- Israel is my response to a question I get asked frequently that may, perhaps, shed some light on the subject. Here’s a slice:

A good friend of mine forwarded me some questions from someone she knows whom is absolutely baffled.

He’s certainly no anti-semite. But in his contacts with Jews, he finds that many of them while quite intelligent engage in behavior he finds both irrational and inexplicable. Here’s what he basically had to say:

“What baffles me is everyone of them put Obama in office during his first election, and couldn’t understand my disdain for the man. These are intelligent people. Lawyers, investment bankers, stock brokers, etc..They have been voting Democrat for all their lives. {…}

These people are so unfriendly to all things Israel I just don’t understand it. It’s as if they are trying to destroy the country of their origin, or a death wish, I don’t know. They all hated Bush and he loves Israel. I’m confused, because the trouble I see in Israel right now is partly due to them. I feel bad because I so admire Israel and I know if they fall we will be next or at least deep in the fight. Please, enlighten me.”

I only get asked this once a week or so…but I thought I’d share my answer to him with you.

Hello —

Actually, I have a decent perspective on this, as I’m a Jew, a native Californian (gasp!) and someone whom grew up in a home of liberal FDR Jews who always voted Democrat, except for two occasions which I’ll get to shortly and which shed a bit of light on th ematter at hand.

You’re actually asking a lot of different questions here, which I’m going to try and sort out. Here’s what I think you’re asking, and forgive me if I seem to be putting words in your mouth.

Why are so many Jews lefties when they seem to be so smart? Why do they vote Democrat even if it seems to be against their interests? And why would so many vote for Obama, especially when they’ve seen how anti-Israel he is?

That about cover it?

A lot of it has to do with history. Many lefty Jews today are not only rigorously secular, but disdainful of those Jews whom are religious. That also explains why so many of these overtly secular Jews dislike Evangelicals, Mormons and other religious, pro-Israel Christians. To these Jews, all religion represents not only something they’re trying to get away and distance themselves from, but way down deep, a secret source of shame for many. You don’t destroy a part of whom you are without sustaining some damage.

Read this and see if it clears up the history a bit. The short version is that many Jews, once they were freed from the ghettos by Napoleon that they’d been literally locked up in for centuries made a determined attempt to assimilate. They really wanted to be good Germans, French, Austrians, Poles, what have you. It failed utterly. The majority of Europeans simply wouldn’t allow it.

A number of thse Jews made the obvious connection and allied themselves with the Left, especially the Marxists. They stupidly thought that their religion was the only basis for the psychotic hatred they faced, and that religion itself was the reason they were treated the way they were. So they not only gave up all semblance of their own religion, but turned to an ideology that likewise despised all religion while it was essentially creating its own.
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