Diversity in Israel's Left

Alex Stein, an occasional reader of this blog, has reactivated his own blog. Alex is rather to my left, and he and I disagree on much, but he's solidly within the healthy diversity of opinion any functioning democracy must have.

After I posted last week on some pernicious radical-left Israelis who support the families of murderers as they defame Israel, I had the dubious pleasure of observing some of their attempts at apologetics. The best they could come up with was that since the Machsom Watch visit to Awarta had been before the gag order on the investigation was lifted, they couldn't have known better; this in spite of the obvious fact that their visit and subsequent reports took place after the conclusion of the investigation itself, when there was widespread unofficial knowledge about its results.

At least whoever was making those excuses had some sense of shame. When I contacted Didi Remez to hear his opinion, he refused to utter a single word of criticism of his friends of the radical left, preferring instead to attack me personally. The reason I occasionally pick on Didi is that while he has no impact on policy or even on the Israeli political discourse, in the parts of the world which love to hate Israel and use Israelis as their sources of malice, Didi is a significant figure.

The insight I gleaned from the exercise is that Israel's radical left doesn't criticize the society it comes from as part of an attempt to make it a better place; rather the motivation draws on estrangement and revulsion. On that level, the radical left aren't capable of testifying about Israeli society at all, since they've severed their relationship with it.

On a related note, here's a very funny talk by Souad Amiri, a Palestinian who uses humor to confront Israel. Of course I could point out the fallacies in her narrative, and so could most readers of this blog, but she's still funny. Enjoy.