Guest Post (Hillel Fuld): Where I Leave My Comfort Zone & Weigh In On Politics

hillelHillel Fuld is the CMO of Zulastrategic advisor at various startups and startup incubators, startup mentor, and a tech blogger who contributes to sites such as The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Mashable, Gigaom, and others.

You can also read his personal blog at TechNmarketing or watch some of his lectures/interviews at Microsoft,TechCrunch Disrupt, and others on his YouTube channel.

I freakin hate politics. No, seriously, I hate it, which is ironic because I have a degree in Political Science. Then modern politics happened. I cannot wait until my FB feed returns to itself with tech, babies, animals, and food updates as opposed to news and opinions about the upcoming Israeli elections.

I often think to myself why I hate it so much. Why is political debate any different than a debate about iOS vs Android, Yankees vs Mets, or any other trivial debate that we somehow manage to keep civil and respectful?

My only conclusion is that with politics, beliefs, fundamental beliefs are at stake and when one side belittles the other, what they are in essence doing, is ridiculing the other side’s core DNA. Their belief system, their values, their morals.

Another reason I hate politics is because I, like many other people am unable to see the logic of the “Other side”. You see, when one partakes in debate, it is always a good idea to try and understand the other side. With Israeli politics, I try hard to understand the other side and fail miserably time and time again.

I often think about writing a post here entitled “Ten of the most frustrating things about the Israeli leftist philosophy” or something like “Ten logical flaws with the Israeli left”. Then I remind myself that for the reasons above, I do NOT want to go there.

But it keeps nagging at me… “The logical contradictions, they are so blatant. How can you NOT address them?” The need to unify is so strong and the importance to call out those that cause us international damage in the name of an ideology based on falsehoods is so great, how can you remain silent?”

Ans so, I am really going to try and keep it clean and respectable but I can’t contain myself anymore…

What is the fundamental premise of the left? That this group of people who call themselves Palestinians after Yasser Arafat coined the term deserve a state. Why? Because they have rights as a people.

Everyone deserves the right to a home, everyone deserves basic human dignity. Everyone, that is except, our own leader. Bibi doesn’t deserve any of that. We will call him names, we will attack his family, we will spread lies, we will “leak documents”, we will recruit business men who have financial interests to trash him, and we will write disgusting and personal attacks on the man day and night. Because those that try to kill us, and declare their desire to annihilate us, they deserve our respect, but our democratic leader, the one we elected? No red lines there!

Of course, there are so many more logical fallacies I see in the left’s philosophy, like for example “Yes, there are rockets falling on our heads from Gaza by the thousands, but who knows what would have happened if we had not left?” Um, I do. Thousands of rockets would NOT have fallen on our heads. “But maybe more soldiers would have died.” Maybe donkeys would have flown and unicorns would have miraculously appeared.

Did leaving Gaza bring any sort of direction of peace or did it bring more violence? Fact: It brought more violence. “We haven’t given them enough. There is still a siege on Gaza”

Um, first of all, false. Second of all, we took one step toward them, they attacked us. What does logic dictate should be our next move? Cmon, you can figure this out. Take another step toward them after step one failed? Really? That is what your logical conclusion tells you?

Here is one question I never got an answer to. They want peace, right? I mean, not all of the Palestinians want terror, right? Ignoring the fact that they elected Hamas because I have been down that route before “They elected Hamas because they had guns to their heads”. Ok, no accountability for the “Palestinian people”, sold. But here is my question. Does their leadership publicly state that they do not, and will not recognize Israel as the legitimate home of the Jewish people? Fact: The leadership says that every chance they get.

It has gotten to the point, the ridiculous point I may add, that negotiations get stuck on the Palestinian leadership not agreeing to recognize the state of Israel. So let me get this straight. They don’t agree we have a right to exist, they declare at every chance that they want us dead. They proved in words and actions what happens when we give them land, and yet our left proudly declares that “The Palestinians want peace and we just haven’t tried hard enough”.

But… but they say themselves they don’t want peace and that the only advantage to the state of Israel is that now they don’t have to chase down Jews around the world to kill them because there are so many in Israel. “Yes, they are only saying that because we are not nice to them. They don’t really mean it”

That part is truly a mystery to me. How do people who I know are otherwise highly intelligent really believe this garbage?

Which leads me to my next point. The press. Is the value of objectivity in the press still a thing when it comes to politics or have we thrown that out the window? Or perhaps, we have thrown that out the window only when the bias is toward the right, but when the press is blatantly subjective and anti Bibi and the right, that is totally legitimate. I mean, does anyone really believe this is objective reporting?

My biggest question of all though remains, how is it that the left puts so much effort into guarding the rights and feelings of the Palestinians but continue to trample their own brothers simply because they have differing opinions?

What happened to pluralism? What happened to equality? What happened to acceptance? I mean you accept everything when it comes to religion and you accept everything when it comes to our enemies, but as soon as a brother of yours decides to live five minutes away from Modiin or ten minutes away from Jerusalem in what you call a settlement? Then that person deserves to be treated and boycotted like a criminal?

How is that not hypocrisy?

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21 thoughts on “Guest Post (Hillel Fuld): Where I Leave My Comfort Zone & Weigh In On Politics”

  1. Jim from Iowa

    So you have a problem with left-leaning YNet’s coverage of Netanyahu? And you don’t see a problem with Sheldon Adelson-funded Israel Hayom as the longest sustained love letter to Bibi Netanyahu in the history of print journalism? Let me put it this way: Israel Hayom is to Bibi Netanyahu as adolescent girl fan mag Tiger Beat is to Justin Bieber.

    1. The thing is, everyone knows what Yisrael Hayom is. Ynet pretends to be some an objective journalistic source but in reality engage in the same yellow journalism. Poll from Walla today–> both Yediot and Yisrael Hayom are considerde equally biased http://b.walla.co.il/item/2835932

    2. Let me also add that Yediot tried to push forward legislation against YH. I dont like YH but at least they are upfront about what they are

      1. Let’s be more specific. There is a bill in the works to destroy Yisrael Hayom. And some right-wingers voted for it also.

    3. ahad_ha_amoratsim

      Ooooh, Adelson! Koch brothers! Koch brothers! Faux Snooze!
      Danger, danger, danger!
      Jim, ranting about Adelson is one step above ranting how George H.W. Bush was a front man for the Trilateral Commission and the New World Order.

      1. Jim from Iowa

        You act like Sheldon Adelson is just some benevolent good-Government advocate instead of a far-right funding source for his own foreign policy initiatives, which are at odds with the U.S. State Department and with official Israel government policies as well. He is also just a little bit crazy. Adelson actually advocated during a visit to Israel, that the U.S. should explode a nuclear device over Iran to demonstrate we are serious about stopping them from getting nuclear weapons. If you don’t see the corrupting influence of money on public policy by a guy like Sheldon Adelson, then you aren’t paying very close attention.

        1. That’s right. Never mind the infinite sums of money spent by the American foundations (Ford, etc.) to promote the causes of the Left and meddle in Israeli politics and the Israeli court system, or actual European taxpayers money going to Israel’s Code Pinks (and organizations running a scorched-earth policy against chareidi schoolchildren).

          Let’s get rid of the few voices of dissent (Yisrael Hayom, which I despise, BTW and Fox News) so the Left has a complete and total monopoly on public opinion. Heck, even Google slanted their results to protect Obama.

          Do you know the Girl Scouts actually referred their girls to Media Matters so they can know the facts? What’s the ratio in money between Media Matters and the MRC? Two to one? Ten?

        2. ahad_ha_amoratsim

          OOOOOOOOOOOHHHH, scary, scary bogeyman. Bad bogeyman! Bad! Not fuzzy and nice like Soros or Pritzker or Pickens or far left Democrat donors. Not a friendly Jew like Bloomberg. And disagrees with State Department. (Of course, so did everyone who tried to rescue Jews during the Holocaust, or to establish the State of Israel, but never mind that for now.) Bad, Sheldon, bad!

          1. Money can’t buy you everything. Adelson is worth over a billion dollars and still goes around with the worst dye job I’ve ever seen.

    4. Raising Adelson, Tiger beat and Bieber in this fashion, without mentioning Soros and Qatar (inter alia) is the propaganda technique of “Transfer”. Associating an idea you oppose with a person you believe your readers dislike. The extreme form is called reductio ad hitlerum. After some correspondence, I came to understand that you are a troll. Your warts are showing.

      1. Jim from Iowa

        You can display your high moral fiber and expose the baddies of the Left to your heart’s content. I am a troll because I have a different world view than you. Such are the ways of the world. If you can’t handle people voicing political views with which you disagree, you really need to wall yourself off from the rest of humanity.

        1. No, Sweetheart. You are a troll because your “worldview” is made of swallowing whole and then regurgitating verbatim the kind of propaganda shtick like the Reverse Transfer you just pulled re Adelson. I can handle you just fine You’re the best opportunity I get each day to expose the disinformation tricks out of which your “view of the world” is built.

          1. You really have a disturbing need to make it all about me. I’m not interested in having that kind of discussion with anyone, especially a creepy guy like you. It’s not why I participate on this great site. I prefer that we just ignore one another in the future.

  2. The problem with the, otherwise intelligent, left is that they have this bottomless, child like naivity that causes them to only see the world as it should be. It’s like working to a hypothesis and then trying to make all the outcomes fit the hypothesis instead of seeing what happens. Then they get all frustrated with those who disagree because they stand in the way of the experiment proving the hypothesis. The other problem is that (as a generalisation) they often lack humour and take themselves way too seriously. That would explain Obama’s theory that solving the problem of ISIS will involve finding them meaningful employment. Also, they can’t seem to grasp that success in one situation does not at all translate to a different setting. As in, if a social experiment worked very well with Black youths in Chicago, and even if some of those youths were Muslim, the same program would not translate to ideologically driven Sunni Muslim militant extremist ISIS, who are obeying God when they are sticking severed heads on posts.
    Also, many of the left in Israel are in a quandry – they were born and raised in Israel, they were raised with morals and values of kindness and social conscience and they simply cannot bring themselves to believe that to some people it’s more important to kill them than to live comfortably and with a sense of community. Add to that the fact that they invested so much effort into their social conscience but for the respectable Europeans, they are being lumped together with the “awful boarish right, and even worse, the settlers”. Now they, the socially conscious, are being labelled as being part of an apartheid regime. Oh the humanity.

  3. Hard Little Machine

    The problem really is that the leftists who love to hate everyone to the right of the PLO or Stalin would prefer to offer no solutions and would prefer to stand on the sidelines arms folded stamping their feet because not doing the heavy lifting is what gives their life meaning. If the left in US for example announced a Jewish loyalty oath where refusal to take the oath meant you were stripped of your citizenship and kicked out of the country for life. And the only people subject to it were Jews, you could easily get 50% support among the Jews of the Jon Stewart ilk. But if you asked them to actually help with the slightest thing they’d scream you’re a racist and run for cover among the pages of the NYT.

  4. The editor-in-chief of Arutz Sheva (yes, I know they have their biases) calls out the Israeli media for flat-out lying about Bibi’s reception in the US. As he says, he was there.

  5. The ubiquitous V2015 ads (does the right advertise at all?) now show Netanyahu in front of a brocaded curtain (an Aron Kodesh?) with the words, “his honor will not continue”.

    To whom are they comparing Bibi?. Rav Ovadiah? Achashveirosh, lehavdil? The Ayatolla?

  6. Unfortunately Israel is headed in the direction of apartheid. Better option is to kick out all non-jews and be frank about it.

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