By MICHAEL DAVIDOW, InDepthNH.org
Our own senator Jeanne Shaheen, who cut her teeth with Jimmy Carter, recently made waves for blocking the sale of arms to Israel. Shaheen has rarely sought the public eye. But with her daughter running for Congress this year, it was time to take a stand. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu needed to get the message, she explained. America does not support its actions in Gaza. Hamas, apparently, does not need to get any messages from Jeanne Shaheen at all.
So it goes across the Democratic landscape. In the three years since Gaza’s worst criminals murdered over a thousand Israelis, raped scores of them and took more as hostages, America’s progressives have gone from celebrating their actions on the internet, to taking over buildings for them on college campuses, to actively encouraging them to do it again in the marbled halls of government.
Not that Shaheen is a progressive. But nor is she a moderate, or a liberal, or a conservative. She is an accountant with an eye for the ledger, a fondness for safety, and hopes for her family’s political future. It is far safer to follow than to lead, so that is what she does. As governor, for instance, she refused to abolish the death penalty because doing so would have cost her votes. This state has since spent millions of dollars and elected Kelly Ayotte to multiple offices, all to place and keep one man on death row. Death to follow.
Shaheen’s speaking against Israel, then, symbolizes a new norm in American politics, in which Hamas’s depredations are taken for granted (the tyranny of low expectations) while Israel’s reaction to them is excoriated (the classic double standard). Go a little further and you get hatred for not just Israel’s politics, but also Israel’s very existence. Shaheen isn’t there yet, but give her time. That position used to be confined to communist agitators parroting the Soviet line. Now it’s part of getting coffee in most large American cities. And we thought our kids didn’t pay attention in school.
The moral purity of Israel’s critics is beyond reproach these days. Macklemore is a west coast rapper who got himself booted off a tour because he stumped for a free Palestine at his concerts. He is now being lauded for his courage. Years ago he dressed up as a cartoon Jew with a huge nose and curly dark hair. But he apologized for that. It’s just that this Gaza business is so damned bad.
Likewise, the Irish don’t want to play Israel in soccer anymore, because, well, Gaza. One is minded of how the Irish prime minister paid a courtesy call to the German embassy to express his official condolences after the death of Adolf Hitler during the second World War. Ireland is led by highly moral souls who only hate Jews because Jews keep doing such horrible things to deserve it.
Michigan’s democratic candidate for the Senate won’t even condemn the government of Iran for killing thousands of its own citizens who dared to demonstrate against it in public, because, as he likes to lectures us, it isn’t America’s job to pass judgment on other nations’ governments. We are not better than them, and we can’t presume to know what’s good. He makes an exception for Israel, however, which needs to be erased.
Three years ago, terrorists killed and tortured more than a thousand innocent people. They filmed the horror they inflicted, they showed it to the world, and parts of this country exulted. Students and progressives made them into heroes.
The idea that Palestinians were killing their occupiers made it all seem not just righteous, but romantic. That Israel was not actually occupying Gaza did not matter. Nor did history, nor did facts. Progressives and their supporters then began to crave the rush they got from condemning Israel’s every action. It soon became habit. It has since become an addiction. Each time they indulge themselves, they get a little dopamine hit.
Politics is applied psychology. Trump got elected largely because he made his followers happy. He made them laugh and feel good about themselves. Team that with care and intelligence, you have a politician for the ages, like a Kennedy or a Roosevelt. Team that with short-sighted egotism, or the simple urge to prevail, and you have a politician like Trump, or, in its weaker versions, any sort of opportunist: from Joe McCarthy to name your senator…
It has been three long years and our nation’s politicians are just beginning to grapple with the ugly fact that hating Israel pleases many people. The early returns are bad.
Davidow writes Radio Free New Hampshire for InDepthNH.org. He is also the author of Gate City, Split Thirty, and The Rocketdyne Commission, three novels about politics and advertising which, taken together, form The Henry Bell Project, The Book of Order, and The Hunter of Talyashevka, Chanukah Land can be found here. And his latest novel Interdiction can be found here.