Journalist Calls Out the Radical, Anti-Israel Protesters of the Left

Journalist Calls Out the Radical, Anti-Israel Protesters of the Left

Jonathan Chait has had it with the anti-Israel mob. Does he realize that Democrats gave birth to this?

He writes at NY Mag:

The Anti-Zionist Protesters and the Left: An End to Denial – Stop projecting humane beliefs onto groups whose ugly ideas are very clear.

A week and a half ago, anti-Israel demonstrators began chanting during a Kamala Harris rally outside Detroit. Harris stared down the protesters and told them she was speaking. The crowd cheered wildly, but the scene disturbed some progressive observers.

“Ms. Harris managed to quickly dismiss them when they interrupted her rally speech in Detroit, but she will not be able to so easily dismiss the shocking reality against which they are protesting. Failing to adequately address protesters’ valid outrage could cause Democrats’ newfound party unity to quickly unravel,” wrote Farah Stockman in a New York Times op-ed. A similar view was expressed by Masha Gessen, also in the Times, who suggested the protesters “cannot stand to live in a world in which Joe Biden’s vice president, who has not voiced any disagreement with the administration’s Middle East policies, wins the presidency. It’s not that they want Trump to win; it’s that the level of political cynicism they are being asked to adopt feels unbearable.”

While both columns suggested the most sympathetic possible motives for the outburst, neither identified the protesters’ actual beliefs. But the demonstrators do have a publicly articulated worldview. The Detroit action was organized by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the University of Michigan chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

SAFE, like other branches of SJP, takes an eliminationist posture toward Israel. It has employed violent rhetoric preceding Israel’s operation in Gaza. A SAFE rally in January 2023 featured calls of “intifada revolution,” smashing the “Zionist entity,” claims that Israelis “water their invasive species with Palestinian blood,” and so on. SAFE celebrated the October 7 attacks. In March, its president wrote on social media, “Until my last breath, I will utter death to every single individual who supports the Zionist state. Death and more. Death and worse.” The group sent masked protesters to the home of a Jewish regent in the middle of the night and vandalized his law office.

Would progressives have taken a cooler view of the demonstrators had they possessed a clearer view of their objectives? Some might. But others would not. Progressives tend to take a romantic view of left-wing protest. Protesters occupy a special category of political actor, freed of any responsibility or agency and judged only as a counterweight against the worst excesses of whatever they oppose. They represent an idealistic impulse and revulsion at the status quo, and since the status quo is unjust, their behavior, by definition, cannot be. All that matters is that their actions are directionally correct.

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