The idiot files exposes those who write in public spaces and attempt to create arguments without any effort to contextualise or apply logic.
Idiot files – Episode 1: Jeff Jacoby on X
In response to Malcolm Harris on X, explaining the obvious reasons for the concern by the left for Palestine,
Jeff Jacoby, columnist at the Boston Globe, produces our first Idiot File piece.
Before we analyse his piece, first contemplate how any normal human being might object to the decolonisation of any of the many countries of the world who live still under colonisation, have lived under colonisation or, having thrown off colonisation now deal with the legacy of colonisation.
I mean, let’s build the case for colonisation of India by Britain that reduced the world’s second largest economy to a basket case in two centuries. Now, surely, surely, that’s a great achievement?
I understand how flabbergasted ordinary people must feel when conservatives embark on apologies for the destruction of humanity.
Jeff’s particular contribution to the Idiot Files is to talk about a coloniser from 1500 years ago that the ‘left’ is not attending to. By failing to march for the decolonisation of the Muslim Empire, the ‘left’ commits breath-taking hypocrisy.
I know that you are laughing and that you realise now how apt this piece is for an Idiot File, but Jeff is serious.
Muslims came from Arabia in the 7th century to invade, conquer, and colonize virtually the whole Middle East. Today, as a result, there are 55 Muslim nations and 21 Arab countries — not one of which the left seeks to decolonize.
Now Jeff is very confused. Is he telling us that Muslim countries, such as Indonesia, having the largest population of Muslims globally and never conquered by any Muslim, are ripe for decolonisation? Or should we begin unwinding the Arab population from those 21 Arab countries, most of which had majority Arab populations by the Middle Ages?
Of course, Jeff knows how ridiculous this is and hopes the audience is intellectually challenged enough to make the false equivalence along with him and say, “De-colonisation is not worth doing.” That’s his actual thesis. A very boring thesis indeed, a cliche direct from the Victorian era where Jeff appears to have gleaned his values.
Jeff does ahistorical. Don’t be like Jeff.
Somehow, Jeff thinks that Jews are indigenous to the area of the Levant once called Palestine. It’s a bit like saying that my Indonesian sister-in-law is indigenous to Saudi Arabia because she grew up a Muslim.
Sadly, Jeff doesn’t appear to know much history at all and waves 2000 years of diaspora Judaism aside to conjure up a populace in the Levant who, scout’s honour, trace their lineage back to Abraham (the mythical Babylonian dude who got the commandments before Moses, who worshipped idols and then overnight got God).
But Jews did live there. Sure. Some lived in China too. I’m pretty sure that makes China the promised land. Pack your bags, Israelis. You got the wrong place.
Apparently, every claim to a homeland is valid and equal. As so often in history – everything is the same. No need to examine each claim on its merits.
Jewish sovereignty
I mean, that’s got to be worth fighting for, isn’t it. Why no protests?
The left doesn’t care about “decolonizing” Palestine or anywhere else in the Middle East. If it did, it would be marching in the streets and demonstrating on campuses to restore Kurdistan to the Kurds, Morocco & Algeria to the Berbers, and Egypt to the Copts. No — the only left-wing priority in the region is to strip Jewish sovereignty from the only bit of territory where Jews have ever been sovereign.
Let’s talk about Jewish sovereignty, shall we. Let’s go right back to the collapse of the Bronze era great powers and the opportunity this afforded to a bunch of tribal people to form a new Israelite identity. Free yourself from the Biblical mythology and just fix on facts.
In a world where there were no states or nations, power was exercised by either ‘great powers’ who were able to conquer others, or centred around cities that were able to repel conquest. Sovereignty was related to the capacity of a king or pharaoh to govern or control a people and was related to a geographical area only by virtue of who was there. The meaning of sovereignty indicating control of territory is a modern meaning.
Not that the yearning for a homeland based on a short-lived tin-pot monarchy has much to recommend it. One only has to look at the ‘great’ achievements of the kingdoms of David and Solomon against other contemporary civilisations to get a sense of their values – mostly, gathering concubines and living lavishly, while the plebs worked hard.
Jewish diaspora – the purifying fire that made them strong
In complete contrast to the on-again, off-again Eretz Israel, truncated by the Romans, sending Jews into diaspora, was the incredible capacity developed in diaspora to survive and thrive by integrating with local cultures without losing identity.
Of the many that one might cite, the post-pogrom migration to the US is one of the greatest examples of a highly successful adaptation to a new environment. This cultural phenomenon, free from the nonsense of ‘homeland’, demonstrates that Rabbinical Judaism was far superior to the grey world of contrived statehood foisted on Jews by Zionism.
Of course, for Jeff, replacing adaptive capability with militaristic nationalism is a great idea. I mean, look at how well it worked last century. Replacing a rich idiomatic Yiddish with a bland holy language was so sensible. Displacing people, rather than living among them, is a worthy value to hold. Finding success in every field, in nearly every country, without having a state, is not something to champion, according to Jeff. Nah, he’d rather Jews were Zionist canon-fodder than Nobel prize winners.
I don’t know, Jeff. This is not reflecting well on you.
A good, old-fashioned Zionist trope
Supposedly, medieval anti-Semitism was about the Jews. No matter that Christianity waged war against the Muslim world more often. I mean, that was anti-Semitism in its real form – a general racist view of anyone with a Semitic background – mostly Arab. This was the pleasant Christian love one another world where many kinds of punishment were meted out to the average punter – branding, beating, mutilation – for blasphemy, homosexuality, adultery or even miscarriage.
Christianity was the pretext for all kinds of abuse and bigotry, anti-Semitism among them. It was also the pretext for colonisation, readily recognised by those who Jeff criticises. Seems as if this bigotry has barely diminished, especially when one considers the desired outcome of the first Christian nut-job Zionists – the obliteration of Jews.
I’m not sure how one draws a line from this to racial pseudo-science, except that it permeated the western world. Mostly racial pseudo-science was a device for relegating brown and black people to sub-human status. You probably don’t need this pseudo-science if you already have basic fear of anything from east of the Danube.
Goebbels appealed to the German fear of what ‘uncivilised’ people were capable of, like cutting the throats of lambs (slaughtering pigs was OK though). I’m sure that the average Nazi was not up on eugenics. As a member of the Hitler youth once said to me, “Hitler cleaned the place up. Got rid of the homosexuals and communists.” No, this was basic age-old common and garden bigotry and racism that characterised Europe for millennia.
“Masquerades as decolonisation”
Today their hatred of Jews masquerades as decolonization.
I guess Jeff missed the memo when people, for decades, protested colonial legacies. I guess nobody invited him to land rights marches in Australia focussing on indigenous people. Maybe events in South Africa were too far away for him to notice. But I seem to remember protests against apartheid as being pretty substantial back in the time.
And I guess the independence of countries like India and Indonesia are anomalies and, perhaps because nobody in Boston cared too much, they passed unnoticed. Seems to me that Jeff has a fixation. The decolonialist movement is ONLY about Jews. (I mean, it’s clearly about Zionism, but Jeff’s not above a bit of manipulative conflation)
I once was involved in a protest against US interference in Nicaragua – that wonderful neo-colonial tendency of the Empire. In Jeff’s mind, that puts me firmly in the anti-Semitic camp.
There is only one Jewish country on earth, but for the likes of Malcolm Harris and his left-wing friends, that is one Jewish country too many.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Jeff is a worthy subject of the inaugural Idiot Files episode. Every country should be (and many are) a Jewish country, a Hindu country, an atheist country, a Christian country. Because that’s what modern states are about. Eliminating the bigotry. I think Jeff would rather it were not so.