Mick Hartley

Natan Sharansky – Our False Partners – on why the progressives who divide the world into ‘oppressors’ and ‘the oppressed’ are not the Jews' allies.

Above all, because progressives see Israel as an oppressor and Jews as members of the privileged class, they believe that we are necessarily on the wrong side of history. To them, Israel is the last remnant of European colonialism and deserves to be attacked and dismantled. Moreover, antisemitism cannot be racism on this view (or at least should be very low on the scale of racial hatred) because Jews are white and successful. Our purported progressive allies are indifferent to our suffering because their ideology has blinded them to basic moral principles and truths, including Jews’ age-old struggle for justice and the reality that Israel is a thriving—if imperfect—democracy amid a sea of repressive enemies.

A historical analogy helps to clarify how well-meaning people can be blinded by a progressive ideology that appears to share liberal principles. Karl Marx influentially portrayed history as a battle between oppressors and oppressed. Yet not all of Marx’s students accepted this premise. Social democrats, who also sought to improve the plight of the working class, saw his work as their foundation but were liberal in their views, promoting equal rights and social improvement rather than an epic battle for the victory of one group over all others.

In the early decades of the 20th century, a number of social democrats who were committed to liberal values thought that Soviet communism shared their basic goals. Some believed this so fervently that, when they traveled in the USSR during the darkest moments of Stalin’s terror, they came back full of glowing reports. They were so desperate to believe in the communist utopia that they failed to see its millions of victims.

Today, the ideological blinders of many progressives make them as insensible to Hamas’ atrocities as those naive liberals were to Stalin’s.