Interesting debate over at Harry's Place on what Jews should or should not feel about the overthrow of Mubarak, sparked by a stupid article in the Guardian's Comment is Free entitled On the side of the Pharoahs? by Rabbi Howard Cooper. Cooper writes, "I was saddened by the predominantly muted and apprehensive response to these uplifting events from many of my fellow Jews in the UK and in Israel."
I personally was happy when Mubarak fell, but I'm apprehensive about what will happen next.
I particularly liked the comments by Lamia -
Of course, had Jews in large numbers or Israel itself made approving noises about the events in Egypt, or take a close an interest, the conspiracy mongers would have gone into overdrive claiming that the interest of Jews was suspicious (if predictable), and that they were interfering in a sovereign Egyptian matter, and that their support for the revolution showed it was all a zionist plot.
Obama – of whom I’m not the greatest fan – has been in a similar ‘Heads I’m a hypocrite, tails I’m a hypocrite’ situation, especially regarding Iran. And regarding Libya, there are those who will criticise the west for standing by and not intervening there while hundreds or thousands are dying, but who are poised to jump all over any actual sign of intervention or support for the revolutionaries as ‘imperialism’. As another thread has pointed out, there are still those on the left who view Gaddafi as a good socialist hero.
What this boils down to is motivism, the self-righteous paranoia which defines the world view of so much of the left in the post-Soviet world. It’s a lazier form of conspiracy theory, in that it’s not even interested in suggesting that what appears to have happened is not what has really happened. That would take no less madness or dishonesty, but would require at least some imagination.
Motivism doesn’t dispute the facts so much as start with an assumption that whatever Jews or zionists or the west or NATO do or say has a malign motiviation, and then ascribes the same pre-ordained end interpretation to whatever they do or say or don’t do or don’t say.
The main thing is that Pilger and co are always right, no matter their own inconsistency, and Blair amd co are always wrong, no matter their own inconsistency.
In due course it will become an orthodoxy of the left that whatever they said or didn’t say at the time, ‘the zionists’ got exactly what they secretly wanted from the Arab revolutions. Or if they didn’t, it will still be their fault for whatever bad consequences there may be for any Arabs and anyone else. because it always is.
Even if Israel didn’t exist, ‘the zionists’ always will. They will be everywhere behind the scenes (and rocks, and trees) because they are needed. The Pilgerists may have, unlike the Islamists, stopped believing in God, but they still believe in the same devil.
