"Those in his party, the Democratic Socialists of America, lead similarly cloistered lives. Over the last few decades, universities have produced a bumper crop of these people—graduates of disciplines in which they are trained to identify systems of oppression but not much else."
Although some Leftists have sympathy for Islamist causes, most Islamists are disgusted by their rainbow flag-waving ideological counterparts. But that does not change their shared ideological roots.
"(April 2, 2024 /Newsweek) In the “Gender and Islam” course that I took a few years ago at Columbia University, the professor made what many might consider a provocative point: Western criticism of female genital mutilation and honor killings is hypocritical and a form of racism.
"While she lectured, two young women sitting in the front row—one in a spaghetti-string tank top with green hair and several piercings and the other conservatively dressed and wearing a hijab—snapped their fingers in approval.
"At the time, I wondered why these women, living in the United States and so different on the outside, were so quick to dismiss the subjugation of women in other places in the world?
"There has been a similar surprise for American moderates since the vicious, inhuman assault on Israel on Oct. 7 by Hamas. They have been shocked by the support for the Islamic extremists from Leftist academics and activists. How could ardently feminist supporters side with a culture that represses women? How could trans-rights activists back a society where any deviation from sexual or gender norms can result in death. What could the far left have in common with Islamists who seem to stand for everything they are against?
"Dig down and you’ll see Islamists and radical leftists have a lot more in common than meets the eye.
"Prominent leftist scholars like Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler have expressed support for such terrorist groups as Hamas and Hezbollah and have described them as part of the international and progressive left." . . .
Joseph Epstein is EMET’s Director of Research. Prior to EMET, Joseph worked in Business Intelligence and Due Diligence for Kroll and Vcheck Global. He has additionally worked as a journalist, analyst, and consultant covering security and migration issues in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Central Africa.
. . . "She arrived in New York expecting that evidence of the atrocities committed against women would command urgent international attention. Instead, she found herself surrounded by the UN Committee’s apathy and hatred, as dozens of pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas activists came out to accuse Israel of genocide. The experience left a profound impression. “I remember feeling devastated,” Elkayam-Levy told theMagazinein an interview at the commission’s office in Modi’in." . . .
"The difference and winning margin between the two was that the losers didn’t reject Israel’s right to exist and wouldn’t voice antisemitic hatred the way the victors did."
"Friday will be the thousandth day since jihadis massacred 1,200 people in Israel. Which means we’ve been wrestling for about 999 days with the appalling fact that the pogroms increased support for Hamas and the other terrorists instead of revolting and alienating world opinion.
"The jihadis tortured and mutilated their victims, raped and murdered them, burned and starved them, and forced them to watch as they inflicted their horrors on their mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, grandparents and babies. The fact that such evil would draw rather than repel millions of people seems, on the surface, inexplicable.
"Yet the killers of Oct. 7, 2023, knew it would happen. They calculated that visual evidence of their depravities would stoke enthusiasm. The rest of us should have known this, too. After all, we saw it happen only a decade earlier when young Westerners abandoned their home countries to join the Islamic State after seeing video of those black-clad executioners slit the throats, decapitate, and burn their caged victims alive.
"So 1,000 days ago in Israel, the marauders strapped on cameras, recorded every atrocity, and uploaded the video for global viewing on the internet. They wanted the world to see. They knew it would not be only proud parents back in Gaza who’d swell with pride. It would be millions of others around the planet.
"By Oct. 8, a Jew-hating subculture that had previously been underground emerged from tunnels beneath Western civilization to celebrate the barbarities we’d all just witnessed. They blamed Israel, they insisted rape was resistance, and they beat and intimidated fellow countrymen in America who happened to be Jews. They were not protesting Zionism or other policies, as they claimed. They were giving free, gleeful rein amid the madness of crowds, to a vile and visceral hatred.
"This hatred is engulfing much of what we used to know as leftism. It explains why radical candidates lost in Democratic congressional primaries last week to other radical candidates. The difference and winning margin between the two was that the losers didn’t reject Israel’s right to exist and wouldn’t voice antisemitic hatred the way the victors did.
"This hatred is engulfing much of what we used to know as leftism. It explains why radical candidates lost in Democratic congressional primaries last week to other radical candidates. The difference and winning margin between the two was that the losers didn’t reject Israel’s right to exist and wouldn’t voice antisemitic hatred the way the victors did." . . .More...
