There’s something adorably out of touch about Edward Luce’s contribution to the Israel discourse today in the Financial Times.
In attempting to explain why voters are turning on Israel, Luce writes that younger Americans don’t remember the years during which the Jewish state was led by Yitzhak Rabin. “There should be no mystery as to why younger Americans are as pro-Palestinian today as their forebears were once pro-Israeli. Rabin staked his life on peace. What will posterity say of Netanyahu?”
Setting aside the characterization of Rabin, what matters here is that Luce is simply incorrect: The young progressive anti-Israel mobs know who Yitzhak Rabin was—they just have a very different opinion of him than the one that Luce holds.
That’s not too surprising: Rabin was a complex figure. After all, Netanyahu has gone much further than Rabin did regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state, the division of Jerusalem, and the like. Were Netanyahu to adopt Rabin’s positions on the conflict, he would become less, not more, solicitous of pro-Palestinian activists. Luce is correct, however, when he credits Rabin as being willing to make sacrifices for peace. Rabin made the greatest sacrifice there is when he was felled by an assassin’s bullet.
So I share Luce’s opinion of Rabin as a man who wanted to make peace. The problem here is that the anti-Israel left has made its opinion of Rabin very clear: They think he’s evil.
The key moment came in 2020. Around the 25th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination, Americans for Peace Now put together an event on the peace process and Rabin’s role in it. They wanted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leader of the increasingly rabid anti-Zionist squad in Congress, to give a talk criticizing settlements—something they assumed AOC would love to do. They were right: She accepted the invitation.
But then an anti-Israel activist criticized her for the offense of honoring a fallen peacemaker’s name. More such criticism poured in, both from Ocasio-Cortez’s token as-a-Jews and from Arab activists who were appalled that AOC would even consider honoring an Israeli former military figure who traded the fatigues for the olive branch. The congresswoman relented and the anti-peace left rejoiced.
Noura Erekat, the well-known opponent of Jewish indigenous rights, called the peace process an “arrangement of permanent subjugation” of the Palestinians and backed AOC’s decision not to promote coexistence between Arabs and Jews.
An International Crisis Group activist wrote in 972Mag that “Palestine advocates are setting the record straight about one of the conflict’s most harmful myths: that the Oslo Accords — and by association, Yitzhak Rabin — were a force for peace.”
One was tempted to sympathize with the spokesman for APN’s Israeli sister organization who asked: “Are you really going to boycott us and all our work with Palestinians to support human rights and an end to the conflict, just because Rabin wasn’t a flawless [idol] after 5 decades of conflict?”
Well, yes. They really are going to boycott you. It certainly doesn’t matter to AOC and the anti-Zionists around her that APN worked “with Palestinians to support human rights and an end to the conflict” because the progressive anti-Zionist movement doesn’t support either of those things. Human rights? The Tentifada crowd openly worships Hamas, which exists to deprive Palestinians (and non-Palestinians) of human rights. End the conflict? What on earth would give someone the impression that a movement chanting in support of Iran’s occupation forces, which are keeping several countries mired in civil war, wants an end to the conflict?
A Marxist author for Jacobin praised AOC’s snub of the Rabin event by cheering that this all happened because “AOC took her cues from Palestinians instead of pro-Israel voices.”
It’s hard to argue with that. Pro-Israel voices want coexistence. Those voices have been systematically excised from the political left. There is no progressive peace camp, and there hasn’t been one for years.
Edward Luce thinks there’s a big difference between Yitzhak Rabin and Bibi Netanyahu. The progressive anti-Israel caucus thinks the problem is that people think there’s a difference between Yitzhak Rabin and Bibi Netanyahu. To them, both men are equally guilty of the one unforgivable sin: believing the Jewish state ought to exist.
Source:
www.commentary.org
