Posted on 01/26/2011 6:39:46 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
For Israelis, the American Left's assault on Sarah Palin and the conservative movement in the wake of Jared Loughner's murderous attack in Tucson was disturbingly familiar.
Just as the American leftist media and political leadership immediately sought to blame Palin, the Tea Party and conservative media personalities for Loughner's actions, so in 1995 their Israeli counterparts accused the Right - from then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to various rabbis to the two million Israelis who protested against the so-called peace process with the PLO - of being responsible for Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
Just as Palin and her fellow conservatives are accused of inciting the schizophrenic shooter to pull the trigger, so Netanyahu and his fellow rightists were accused of inciting the sociopathic Yigal Amir to plot and carry out his crime.
And just as it doesn't matter to the American media elites that Americans conservatives engaged in no such incitement, and that Loughner himself seemed motivated to act by a mad obsession with grammar, it didn't matter to their Israeli counterparts that Amir's closest associate and the man responsible for the most incendiary anti-Rabin propaganda was Avishai Raviv - a government agent.
Palin's characterization of the Left's appalling assault on her and her fellow conservatives as a "blood libel" was entirely accurate. Moreover, as her previous use of the term "death panels" in the healthcare debate brought clarity to an issue the Left sought to obscure, so her use of the term "blood libel" exposed the nature of the Left's behavior and highlighted its intentions.
By warning about "death panels," Palin highlighted the fly in the ointment of government healthcare. Government control will induce scarcity of healthcare and government rationing will necessarily follow. That rationing, in turn, will be undertaken by panels of government officials empowered to decide who gets what care. Her remark focused the debate on the flaws in the program in a way no other had.
In the case of her use of the term "blood libel," Palin exposed the Left's attempt to criminalize conservatives and make it impossible for conservatives to either defend themselves or pursue their alternative policy agenda. A blood libel involves two things: First, an imaginary crime; second, the accusation that an entire group of people is guilty of committing that crime that never occurred.
Classically, of course, blood libels have been used against Jews. Anti-Semites accused Jews of killing non-Jews for ritual use of their blood. Jews had murdered no one and Judaism has no ritual involving the use of human blood. Yet, repeatedly entire communities were criminalized and persecuted based on these blood libels.
By criminalizing the entire community based on false allegations regarding a never-committed crime, anti-Semites made it impossible for Jews to go on about our lives. If we sought to deny the charges, we gave them credibility. If we ignored the charges, our silence was interpreted as an admission of guilt. And so no matter what we did, the blood libel firmly attached the stench of murder to a completely innocent Jewish community.
Just as its Israeli counterpart did in the wake of Rabin's assassination, so the American Left seeks to attach a sense of criminality and violence to the American Right in order to make it socially and otherwise unpalatable to support or otherwise identify with it.
By calling the Left out for its behavior, Palin exposed its agenda. But the logic of the blood libel remained. Trusting the public's ignorance, and the liberal Jewish community's solidarity, the leftist media in the U.S. immediately condemned Palin for daring to use the term, hinted she was an anti-Semite for doing so, and argued that by defending herself, she was again inciting violence.
Many conservative thinkers and politicians have long viewed Palin as a liability. By remaining in the spotlight, they allege, Palin is helping the Left. They argue that the media have already destroyed her ability to communicate with non-conservatives. Since she is viewed as a conservative leader, by failing to shut up she is making it impossible for other potential leaders whom the media don't despise to connect with the swing voters they will need to unseat Obama in 2012.
While alluring, this position does more than harm Palin. It renders the 2012 election irrelevant.
It matter not whether these conservative thinkers support Palin. What matters is that by telling her not to defend herself from libelous attacks, they are accepting the Left's right to criminalize all conservatives. If she is not defended against a patently obscene effort to connect her to a madman's rampage in Tucson, then conservatives in the U.S. are signaling they really don't want to control U.S. policy. They are saying that if a Republican is elected in 2012, he or she will continue to implement Obama's radical policies.
In certain ways, Palin is a revolutionary leader and the Tea Party movement is a revolutionary movement. For nearly a hundred years, the Left in its various permutations has captured Western policy by controlling the elite discourse from New York and Los Angeles to London to Paris to Tel Aviv. By making it "politically incorrect" to assert claims of Western, Judeo-Christian morality or advocate robust political, economic and military policies, the Left has made it socially and professionally costly for people to think freely and believe in their countries.
What distinguishes Palin from other conservative leaders in the U.S. and makes her an important figure worldwide is her indifference to the views of the Left's opinion makers. Her capacity to steer debate in a way no other conservative politician can owes entirely to the fact that she does not seek to win over leftist elites. She seeks to unseat them.
The same can be said of the Tea Party. The reason it frightens the Left, and the Republican leaders who owe their positions to their willingness to accept the Left's basic agenda, is because it does not accept the Left's policy platform.
Today in Israel the Left is running a campaign to protect foreign-financed, anti-Zionist, Israeli registered NGOs from public scrutiny. All politicians who support an effort to publicly expose these groups' foreign funders are demonized as "anti-democratic" and "fascist."
Fearing the Left's assault, Likud ministers Dan Meridor, Michael Eitan and Benny Begin as well as Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin have sided with these radical, anti-Zionist groups against their transparency-seeking Knesset colleagues. And all four men were congratulated for their commitment to "democracy" and "liberal norms," by the media.
It doesn't matter that the Left's accusations against those demanding transparency are completely ridiculous and libelous. It doesn't matter that the Left's campaign exposes a deep-seated fear of the very democracy it fraudulently claims to value. What matters to these Likud politicians is that the media place them above their unwashed colleagues.
In many ways, modern Zionism began with the 1840 Damascus blood libel. When Syrian Christians colluded with Muslim leaders to accuse and persecute the Jewish community for the imagined crime of ritual murder, Jewish leaders in Europe and the U.S. mobilized to the defend them. This was the first instance of modern world Jewish solidarity. And it was a necessary precursor to the Jewish national liberation movement whose first stirrings were felt at that time with mass immigration to Jerusalem.
The Left's campaign against Palin is not just about Palin. If she is discredited for standing up to blood libels then no one in the U.S. or anywhere else can expect to succeed in moving past the failed and dangerous leftist policy agenda. But if she is defended, a world of possibilities opens up for all of us.
This is actually one of the best articles I’ve seen. She is right. If they destroy Sarah, they destroy us all.
A great article. There are many significant lines that deserves mentioning but this paragraph explains my support for Sarah Palin for president. It has nothing to do with her looks, her gender or any other trivial argument. She has the desire to take the enemies of our free republic head on and defeat them.
The fact that other conservatives/republicans are uncomfortable with her says all I need to know about them.
Most of the so-called conservatives in DC have two major problems. First, they're not true conservatives or principled ideaologues but rather house pets who are allowed to live in the master's house as long as they obey. And second, they're totally spineless which in fact makes them that ideal house pet. Quite a few of those house pets even wanted to sit next to their masters during the latest outing to prove their loyalty.
Palin, Bachmann and a few others won't roll over for that Milk Bone which means they need to be kicked out of the house...or worse. Palin is now a murderer, and Bachmann a divisive bomb thrower.
The conservatives like Palin who refuse obedience training will be treated as rabid dogs who need to be put down.
If they're not put down and made toxic, the progressives know that more will stand with them, and then more and still more. We know we've been hijacked and Palin, Bachmann and others are saying 'Let's roll!'
Good article! Right on, it seems to me.
Authoress Glick shows that, in Israel and in the U.S., the false-front and reductive tactics and amorality of the Left's techniques is identical. This goes a long way to showing that the Left is indeed and in fact a true conspiracy grounded in ideology.
The left is attempting to demonize us, to dehumanize us so to speak. This is very dangerous...it is what despots/evil do before mass murder. They build contempt, lack of worth, and remove moral ideals...especially our right to life.
We live in very scary times. Evil has become much more cunning than in the twentieth century.
Ping!
Eminently correct. It's a three stage process, first you demonize, then you criminalize, and finally, you exterminate. From my particular vantage point, it appears that we are proceeding apace, from step one, to step two, with step three waiting in the wings, not far behind step two. Scary times indeed...
the infowarrior
Likely the most important column written this new year.
Pity it has thus far recived such scant attention. We’ll see if we can improve on that later today.
What distinguishes Palin from other conservative leaders in the U.S. and makes her an important figure worldwide is her indifference to the views of the Left's opinion makers. Her capacity to steer debate in a way no other conservative politician can owes entirely to the fact that she does not seek to win over leftist elites. She seeks to unseat them.
Caroline Glick’s column is by far, the most important written this year.
Bookmarked and we’ll have much to discuss later today.
DON’T MISS THIS ONE! I intend to give it my attention later today.
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Click has penned a very important piece here. I look forward to Sarah’s vist to Israel as she will be very well received.
Ping!
I don't want a leader whom the media don't despise. The media love RINOs who suck up to the demmunist commucrats.
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