Victimology on steroids.
I will get around to Israel in due course. But I need to set the stage with an excursion into grade-school arithmetic.
Do you remember learning how to work with fractions? To add, subtract, multiply, or divide fractional numbers with different denominators, it is necessary to convert each number to a common denominator (mentally if not mechanically). A simple example is the addition of 1/8 and 1/4. Because 1/4 = 2/8, the lowest common denominator is an eighth, which is lower than a fourth. So, by the rule of the lowest common denominator (LCD), the addition of 1/8 and 1/4 becomes the addition of 1/8 and 2/8, which yields 3/8.
In the classroom, before AP courses were devised, the pace of teaching was influenced by the pupils who were slower at learning a subject. The practice was known (unofficially) as catering to the LCD. The pace of teaching was tailored to the less-bright students (eighths) instead of brighter students (fourths).
AP courses are under attack (and have been discontinued in some places) because the placement of pupils in them is a form of discrimination — discrimination of the kind that is based on merit, not racial or ethnic prejudice. But because blacks on average are considerably less intelligent than whites (especially Jews) and East Asians, blacks tend to be left behind in educational endeavors. This, of course, is “unfair”, “discriminatory”, and “racist” — and it flies in the face of “equity”.
The attainment of “equity” therefore requires the removal of badges of superiority and occasions in which blacks might feel inferior to whites, etc. So out with AP courses; out with SAT and GRE scores as criteria for admissions to undergraduate and graduate programs: in with blatant pro-black discrimination in admissions; in with segregated housing and black-only events and programs; and out with meaningful grades (pass-fail is an old solution; “A” is becoming the new normal where grades are still used).
“Equity” is a way of catering to the LCD, with a twist. The twist is that “equity” requires not just the same reward for everyone, regardless of ability and effort, but extra-special treatment for “victims” of … of what? A “system” that is obviously inequitable because of “white privilege”, “patriarchy”, and whatever other excuse the less able and their leftist supporters can conjure instead of facing facts about genetic and cultural differences that produce different outcomes — not only between identity groups but also within them.
Thus far I’ve only touched on K-12 and university education indoctrination. The search for “victims” is perpetual on the left.
Take the Palestinians as a salient example. They are “obviously” (to a leftist) “victims” of Israel because they live (mostly) in territories that were or are controlled by Israel: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. There is also Israel’s controversial nation-state law, which according to an anti-Zionist source
declare[s] that only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country, something members of the Arab minority called racist and verging on apartheid.
The “nation-state” law, backed by the right-wing government, passed by a vote of 62-55 and two abstentions in the 120-member parliament after months of political argument. Some Arab lawmakers shouted and ripped up papers after the vote.
“This is a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the history of the state of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset after the vote.
Largely symbolic [not observed in practice], the law was enacted just after the 70th anniversary of the birth of the state of Israel. It stipulates that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it.”
The usual suspects have declared that the separation of Palestinians (and other Arabs) from Israel and from its governance amount to apartheid., a crime against “international (leftist) law”. From this it follows (to a leftist) that acts of savagery — like those committed by Hamas against Israelis on 10/7 — are justified because Palestinians are “victims”. It further follows (to a leftist) that Israel’s fully justified preventive retaliation is “aggression”.
Let’s take a few minutes to examine those premises.
It’s true enough that the denizens of Gaza are poor and feckless. But what makes them “victims”? They are about on a par with most non-Jewish Semites, except for the relative handful who are members of a professional caste or oil-rich. The basic problem with most such members of humanity —whether in the Middle East or elsewhere — isn’t that they have been put down by anyone (e.g., Israelis) but that they lack the intellectual, cultural, and natural resources to raise themselves up.
A “funny” thing about Israel is that it is of a piece with the surrounding lands occupied by non-Jews, but it has become a relatively prosperous place because Jews have the intellectual and cultural resources that undergird prosperity.
For their success and for the fact that they are Jews, the Jews of Israel are the targets of envious failures (Palestinian and Muslim hot-heads), Jew-haters (in addition to the hot-heads), and leftists who can’t bear to think that Palestinians (like American blacks) mainly have their genes and culture to blame for their failings.
Israel was founded (re-founded, really) in the wake of the Holocaust. It wasn’t meant to be anything but a Jewish state, run by Jews for Jews — a safe haven for a historically oppressed and brutalized people. Israel has been been under attack by Muslims since its modern founding. But Israel has a natural right to self defense and to preserve its Jewish character, just as the American rebels of 1776 had a natural right to declare themselves independent of a despotic King and rapacious Parliament.
So the Gaza Strip and the West Bank become de jure parts of Israel (though the Gaza Strip was foolishly handed over to anti-Israelis) as a matter of the natural right of self-defense. As for Palestinians living in Israel proper, why should they have a voice in the governance of a country that was re-founded for Jews? Well, despite the nation-state law cited above, they do have a voice in the governance of Israel.
So, all of the leftist propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, Palestinians aren’t “victims”, except of their own genes and culture. But unlike the “liberals” of old, the left nowadays focuses on demonizing the meritorious instead of helping those who need help.
Finally, there is the accusation that Israelis are sometimes brutal in their own defense. Why shouldn’t they be? It’s impossible to defend a country against determined enemies without being brutal toward them — just as it’s impossible to protect law-abiding citizens by disarming them and depriving them of police protection. The left sees Israelis as brutal because the left despises Israeli Jews, not because Israelis are any more brutal than leftists like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and their many successors unto the present day.
Coda: There was a time when most Americans recognized the need for brutality in the defense of Americans — which included existential threats posed by distant enemies. It is a sad commentary on the state of America that a sizable and influential segment of the populace no longer believes that America is worth defending.
Those pampered idiots somehow consider themselves to be “victims” of a system that allows them to spout such nonsense and to tear down the very laws and traditions that shelter them from the wrath of the rightfully aggrieved victims of their beliefs and policies: hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding victims of unfettered illegal immigration, unnecessary Covid lockdowns, prosperity-draining regulations and regulatory agencies, unnecessarily high energy costs because of the climate-change hoax, etc., etc., etc.
Politics and Prosperity 