I Know Why The Left Hates Israel - Soon, So Will You

This is a little out there but not so much.....

The reasons the left tell us they hate Israel never really do seem to stack up. That it’s an imperalist state for example. So, all those Middle Eastern and North African Jews kicked out of Iraq, Morocco and so on and on - where were they supposed to go? More than half of that Israeli population is Mizrahi - often confused by us gammons with Sephardi (as opposed to Ashkenazi) but not really the same group at all. Effectively, residents of the Middle East since whenever who’ve had to change the bit of it they live in. As those surrounding Arab states have stolen everything the Jews owned and, often enough burned the synagogues to make sure everyone left.

There’s also that claim that it’s an apartheid state which seems a difficult one to support. All rights and civil liberties depend upon citizenship, not race nor religion. Well, they do in Israel at least, as ownership of property clearly didn’t in many of those Arab states.

We might ponder that Israel seems to be successfully capitalist but then by that standard so is France (however fun it is to note that France isn’t all that successful) and that doesn’t produce the same spitting rage.

We could, given that the claimed reasons don’t really seem to work, assume that it’s just that the left is in the grip of that oldest hatred - antisemitism. Given the conspirazoid nature of many leftish beliefs - that there’s a “they” out there trying to get us, the they possibly varying from the capitalists through the bourgeois to the Jews - this could actually be true. But even then it’s an oddity. Why not just hate JP Morgan instead?

My theory is that the real reason here is that Israel has gone on to prove the base claims of much of the left wrong. Those ideas that socialism really would work if only it were ever tried. That the land of milk and honey really would appear if only we could clear out those who stop it from doing so.

I have enormous sympathy for Danny Finklestein’s intimation that actually that land of milk and honey is Hendon. That the pinnacle of, that apotheosis of, human existence is the petit bourgeois pleasure of growing up in a place with food, housing, clothing, the ability to raise a family, meet with the friends and extended family, and no Cossaks about to ride over the horizon to spoil that existence. Or Nazis to gas everyone - as so nearly happened to Danny’s direct family and did to a lot of the wider one. Of course, to teenage revolutionaries that’s a depressingly sordid vision but as it happens it’s the one that billions upon billion of people, not just Jews who endured mid-century Europe, sign on to. Three squares, a change of clothes, walking the kiddies to school and being able to expect to live long enough to take their children along the same route as well - paradise by most of human history standards.

But those teenage revolutionaries and all those who never do grow out of the fantasies of the revolution. Not that this is specifically about Owen Jones and I’d be amazed if he’s knowledgeable enough to have thought through this this far - but it is about that type. You know, Stalinism was great until it was obvious it failed, then Tito’s market socialism, possibly a side detour through Mondragon cooperatives and on and on - Chavez and Maduro etc. Anything other than capitalism and free markets would be great folks! That whatever it is that will be great being a constantly moving celebration as what it was fails and what it might be arises anew.

Which is where Israel comes in for some really serious criticism. Even if it has to be subsumed, for the realisation of the lesson would be an assassination of those hopes - that there will be that better world if only socialism were really tried somewhere. For Israel really was socialist.

Sure, not entirely, not in everything. But that early Israel was as close to voluntary socialism as anywhere has ever got. There really were kibbutz (is the plural kibbutzes?) where everyone got the same wage. Where the children were raised in packs - sorry, communally. Where both farming and light industry were done along those truly caring, sharing, communal lines. It all worked great too.

Except it didn’t. For Israeli socialism was always entirely and wholly voluntary. And over time - those decades - the problems with it have become clear. Kibbutzim now - near but not exclusively always - earn different amounts. There are many fewer organisations run along any socialist lines, let alone pure ones. That is, Israel gave true and proper - voluntary - socialism a damn good try. And proved that it doesn’t work in the long term.

For providing the experimental proof that socialism doesn’t work of course Israel must be condemned by those who would impose socialism rather than give people the choice of to adopt or not.

Yes, agreed, it’s a pretty weird theory. And I’d not try to insist that it explains all. But I would insist that it explains some. A whole country proved that the revolution called for at Tooting Broadway does not, in fact, work. Is not what humans living their actual lives gravitate to - and proves this after the best damn try anyone’s ever given the ideas.

Wolfie wouldn’t hate Jews after this but others? I’m sure it’s a part of it.