Hillel Fuld is the CMO of Zula, strategic 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?
