I taught for forty years at a totally PC liberal arts college. Although I opposed the excessive tendencies towards group think PC fostered nationally, I was and still am on the side of the great PC quests for justice for women, blacks, the LGBTQ+, etc. The irony for Jews today is that both the Women’s Movement and the Gay Rights Movement were not only founded by Jews but also strongly pushed by liberal Jews throughout the country and throughout academe. And of course from the founding of the NAACP a century ago through very strong Jewish support for the Civil Rights Movement for the past seventy years, Jews have been almost as strongly behind that cause as blacks themselves. The trouble for Jews, as they are now discovering to their horror, is that the exact same paradigm of the oppressed fighting the oppressors that has been central to all these Jewish led, or strongly Jewish supported causes, unfortunately has now come for Israel, just as it came for sexist men, white racists, and homophobes long ago. Israel’s devastating problem is that it is hard not to see obvious comparisons to the second-class living circumstances of Palestinians throughout Israel and the second-class circumstances of blacks in Wallace’s Alabama and in apartheid South Africa. American Jews led the successful charge for justice against oppression for both sets of blacks. What a shock that the oppressor-oppressed binary Jews, especially in PC academe, had now come for Israel itself! But if Jews now turn to the “Jews will not replace us!,” Squirrel Hill Synagogue mass murdering, historically viciously ant-Semitic Klan thuggery behind Trump, just because Trump right-wing Israel’s “Messiah,” what’s the guarantee for Jews that the American Nazis who love Trump and still hate Jews will not turn on Jews someday, maybe sooner rather than later. Let’s face it, as The Hague typified again today, like it or not, the fact is that most of the world has been appalled not just by the Gaza War, but by the way that war has caused massive critical focus on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians for decades. Trump may well win for Israel this fall, but America is soon going to shift well to the left as the power of the Boomers who overwhelmingly back Trump will inevitably be replaced in the coming decade by that of the much more progressive Millennials and Gen Zers, the very Americans making such a stink at our best colleges nationwide because of the war against oppression their Jewish professors have been teaching them to fight since the 60s. Israel is indeed in a hopeless bind in terms of not just world opinion, but also America’s emerging progressive majority.
I taught for forty years at a totally PC liberal arts college. Although I opposed the excessive tendencies towards group think PC fostered nationally, I was and still am on the side of the great PC quests for justice for women, blacks, the LGBTQ+, etc. The irony for Jews today is that both the Women’s Movement and the Gay Rights Movement were not only founded by Jews but also strongly pushed by liberal Jews throughout the country and throughout academe. And of course from the founding of the NAACP a century ago through very strong Jewish support for the Civil Rights Movement for the past seventy years, Jews have been almost as strongly behind that cause as blacks themselves. The trouble for Jews, as they are now discovering to their horror, is that the exact same paradigm of the oppressed fighting the oppressors that has been central to all these Jewish led, or strongly Jewish supported causes, unfortunately has now come for Israel, just as it came for sexist men, white racists, and homophobes long ago. Israel’s devastating problem is that it is hard not to see obvious comparisons to the second-class living circumstances of Palestinians throughout Israel and the second-class circumstances of blacks in Wallace’s Alabama and in apartheid South Africa. American Jews led the successful charge for justice against oppression for both sets of blacks. What a shock that the oppressor-oppressed binary Jews, especially in PC academe, had now come for Israel itself! But if Jews now turn to the “Jews will not replace us!,” Squirrel Hill Synagogue mass murdering, historically viciously ant-Semitic Klan thuggery behind Trump, just because Trump right-wing Israel’s “Messiah,” what’s the guarantee for Jews that the American Nazis who love Trump and still hate Jews will not turn on Jews someday, maybe sooner rather than later. Let’s face it, as The Hague typified again today, like it or not, the fact is that most of the world has been appalled not just by the Gaza War, but by the way that war has caused massive critical focus on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians for decades. Trump may well win for Israel this fall, but America is soon going to shift well to the left as the power of the Boomers who overwhelmingly back Trump will inevitably be replaced in the coming decade by that of the much more progressive Millennials and Gen Zers, the very Americans making such a stink at our best colleges nationwide because of the war against oppression their Jewish professors have been teaching them to fight since the 60s. Israel is indeed in a hopeless bind in terms of not just world opinion, but also America’s emerging progressive majority.