New Article: Wistrich, The Anti-Zionist Mythology of the Left

Wistrich, Robert S. “The Anti-Zionist Mythology of the Left.” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23739770.2015.1037579

 

Excerpt

The anti-Zionist left has consistently refused to face the reality of Palestinian rejectionism in its dogmatic picture of the Middle East conflict. This is a sure symptom of intellectual dishonesty. In its world-view, anti-Zionism has become the magnet for the free-floating Marxist debris scattered to the winds by the collapse of Soviet Communism in 1991. It is no accident that the confused ideology of the contemporary “post-colonial” left is vulnerable to antisemitism since it no longer has any anchor in the concrete, material realities or the geopolitical, security, and cultural contexts of the Middle East. Its vision of peace in the Middle East is invariably one “without Israel,” taking the kind of liquidationist position long espoused by Iran, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Fatah, and now ISIL. Hence, it should be no surprise that so many left-wing demonstrators in the West during the summer of 2014 displayed such enthusiasm and solidarity with the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas. The ideological gulf between Islam and Western secularism, jihad and class-war, and Muslim misogyny and Western feminism has vanished into thin air—replaced by the irresistible seduction of “revolutionary solidarity” against a mythical Israeli “genocide.” Fashionable slogans like “Free Gaza” seamlessly merge into cries of “Allahu Akhbar” [God is Great] and “Hitler was right” in the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, Malmö, Sydney, Boston, and many other Western cities. “Death to the Jews” is no longer a rallying cry that lies beyond the pale.