Published: 15 August 2024
Last updated: 15 August 2024
There has been “a collapse in reasoned conversations since October 7,” says Josh Szeps. “There’s a worthy instinct on the Left to reflexively support the underdog. Yet many people are confused about who the underdog is.
“We see poor brown people standing in rubble, and our post-colonial guilt kicks in. Then we see a straight white Israeli male with flawless English and an expensive suit addressing US Congress, and we code his side as all-powerful,” he tells The Jewish Independent.
“But that’s a failure of imagination. It’s a failure to see the perspective of a people who were nearly annihilated, given a state and then instantaneously invaded by all their neighbours who came back for another bite in 1967 and again in 1973, followed by the intifada and the second intifada.
“If you’re going to have empathy for the frustrated aspirations of the Palestinians, you also have to have some empathy for the siege mentality that exists in Israel.”
Szeps says the difference between him and his leftist friends is that he doesn’t assign all the blame to Israel. 'I give agency to the Arabs'.
Szeps, 46, says the difference between him and his “leftist friends” is that he doesn’t assign all the blame to Israel. “I give agency to the Arabs. They’re also a player and they make choices.
“There’s moral confusion in much of the anti-Zionist Left in conflating the misdeeds of the Likud and Netanyahu with the existence of Israel and the right of the tiny global minority of Jews to self-determination.
“It’s a tremendous but stealthy shift, from the position that ‘Israel is a flawed liberal democracy trying to do its best’ to the position that Israel is a colonial-settler project that had no legitimacy from day one.”
Comments3
Robert Rands21 August at 03:30 am
I’m sorry you can’t express your faith in your normal walking through public places. The resonances of this foul public weather are far greater for you and yours than for me.
My experience is limited to being a naive American teacher in Sydney, in 1972, when coffee table leftists like me weren’t expecting to receive public abuse from strangers who could only hear my accent and relate it to Australia’s involvement in a colonial war of the day.
I am not my country (Australia, now). I am not my religion. I can only feel sorry for people who conflate me with other nations and faiths than their own. Feel sorry, and walk cautiously.
Israel Sean Fliegner19 August at 05:35 am
Kia Ora Josh and Vic
I’ve been stopped in public with “are you Jewish?” The last time I received an unsolicited hug.
Times before not great. And this is 5 minutes walk from the mighty Sydney Jewish Museum.
I don’t wear kippa, chai outside Museum, Shul.
The hate is direct, west of Bondi Junction here in Surry Hills, Darlinghurst.
There’s no power in saying “be strong” unless and until at least three kippa wearing are together.
Yes the media is central and crucial beyond doubt.
Yes too the truth my mezuza is inside, my kippa hidden. A friend turns her ✡️ bracelette inside her wrist on the train: we cannot be Jewish.
Israel Sean Fliegner
Laurance J Splitter15 August at 07:28 am
One way – perhaps the only way – to move beyond the illusory safety of our own echo chambers is to engage in dialogue with one another. Participants in genuine dialogue regard themselves and one another as “persons” first and foremost (other aspects of their so-called “identities” are relatively immaterial). They treat one another with care and respect, they create a “safe place” in which appropriate forms of risk-taking are appropriate; they engage in “powerful thinking” which includes careful reasoning, and as much listening as talking, they do their best to empathise with others in sharing common experiences; and they have a general disposition (attitude) toward rethinking an issue or changing their minds.