More reason needed on left

EUGENE KAELLIS

It is indisputably clear that the left – using the terms "right" and "left" as popularly used – is now the major source of anti-Israelism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Jews who lived through the Nazi period have been conditioned to see anti-Semitism as a rightist expression and, for much of the 20th century and in unprecedented murderous form, it was. To a significant degree, the precedent for leftist anti-Semitism was the 18th-century Enlightenment, critical of all religions, but particularly Judaism because it was considered eminently cultic and primitive and, by demanding allegiance to itself, undermined Europe's growing nationalism. In 19th-century Germany, the Catholic Church became a major target in Bismarck's struggle (Kultkurkampf) against divided loyalties.

Karl Marx's family, which had produced prominent rabbis, converted to Protestantism when he was a child. Early in his career, believing that Jews were indissolubly tied to capitalism, he attacked them with considerable bias and vigor in, for example, On the Jewish Question (1848). In his private correspondence with Friedrich Engels, Marx expressed not only anti-Jewish, but racist, bigotry, for example, referring, in 1862, to Ferdinand Lasalle, the head of the German Social Democrats, as a "nigger Jew," because Lasalle was dark-complexioned. This attitude toward Jews was so prevalent among leftists that August Bebel, a founder of the German Social Democratic Party, labelled anti-Semitism "the socialism of fools."

Leftists could have applauded the founding of Israel as an inspiring example of "self-determination," something they allegedly supported for all persecuted peoples, including at one time, blacks in the southern United States. Israel became a state by opposing the British occupation of Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, a system of dealing with former colonies of the Central Powers, defeated in the First World War, that was itself merely a guise for colonization. Therefore, the left had ample precedent for supporting Israel's struggle against Britain as essentially anti-imperialist. But even with Soviet de jure recognition of Israel, there were many on the left bitterly opposed to the Zionist state. At that time, their rallying cry was not "apartheid," but "Deir Yassin," a Palestinian stronghold that the Irgun attacked after extreme and deadly provocation, causing civilian casualties.

Before the 1967 war, before the separation wall, before Lebanon, before Gaza, there were significant leftist elements that were already immersed in anti-Israelism.

What motivates such people is their concern for what they believe is fairness and charity, which invariably means favoring the underdog or, more precisely, the perceived underdog. This stance informed Catholic liberation theology in the 1960s (now suppressed), an amalgam of Catholicism and Marxism that also displayed anti-Jewish sentiment, and it now forms the basis for some persistent rabbinic opposition to Israeli actions.

What can be done with people who are unalterably committed to anti-Israelism? Aside from assiduously keeping them away from power, probably nothing. They didn't adopt their positions through facts and logic and they are not going to be dissuaded by facts and logic. They are basically reacting to sentiment, and their sentiment is usually quite simplistic.

Thank goodness, the (overdog) winners sometimes deserve to have won. Consider the American Civil War and the Second World War. But even within the context of the winners being the "good guys," the overdogs, leftists still manage to "score points." Some leftists strongly criticize the firebombings of Hamburg and Dresden in the Second World War, although both, in spite of the saccharine falsehoods the critics put forth, were bona fide military targets: Hamburg was an industrial area and Dresden, in addition to its china and lovely baroque buildings, was a military communications centre.

Yearly, there are leftist peace activists who use Hiroshima Day to besmirch the United States, although it became apparent after the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa that an

Allied invasion of Japan would certainly have involved huge losses, including huge Japanese losses, perhaps greater than those caused by the two A-bombs. For a while, I repeatedly asked organizers of an annual Hiroshima Day commemoration to include mention of the terrible atrocities the Japanese committed in Nanking in 1937, to lend some historical balance to their program: Japan was, after all, a brutal aggressor. They consistently refused because they didn't want to "sidetrack" their main concern, which was evidently not concern for the Japanese, but condemnation of the Americans.

Sentiment, concern, empathy and mercy are all precious components of our human makeup, but they cannot reasonably be expected to form the sole basis for conclusions. Somewhere in that process reason has to be imposed. It rarely is.

Eugene Kaellis is a retired academic living in New Westminster.

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