Zionhass Part and Parcel of a Larger Lunacy

Two notable defenders of Israel--Melanie Phillips and Alan Dershowitz--squared off at the recent CAMERA conference in Boston. In so doing, they demonstrated the vast chasm that exists between Left and Right--even among Israel-supporters. From the Jerusalem Post:

...The fierce critic of radical Islam and author of Londonistan outlined what she termed “a mass derangement, a complete departure from reason altogether over the issue of Israel.”

She said the trend goes beyond “conventional” explanations like anti-Semitism to being part of “a much wider repudiation of reason, particularly among people on the Left who consider themselves to be progressive,” including on issues such as global warming and the war in Iraq.

Dershowitz objected to her tying the issue of Israel to a set of stances associated with one part of the ideological spectrum, which he contended would alienate the very college students he and others hoped to reach.

“Don’t you think that the worst way to try to get young people to support Israel is to give them a litmus test on global warming?” he asked to applause. “You’re turning Israel into an extreme, rightwing- driven agenda issue, and that’s not Israel.”

Phillips countered, also to applause, that Dershowitz was in essence saying that “right-wing is a synonym for ‘don’t listen to her, don’t go there, she shouldn’t even be on the platform.’ I don’t think that’s an enlightened way to behave. I don’t think it’s helpful.”

She continued, “The suggestion that I can’t possibly influence young Jewish people to have a more sympathetic, helpful attitude towards Israel because they will be so upset by all these terrible right-wing things that I’m saying presupposes that no young person could possibly agree with me. I have to tell Professor Dershowitz, I’m sure he’ll be horrified to learn this, that a very large number of people do.”

I'm with Melanie, of course, on this one. The derangement that's taken hold of university campuses is symptomatic of the greater derangement that has gripped the Left. The lot of it--political correctness, identity politics, the Marxist bollocks about 
colonialism, imperialism and the rest--is bound up in one big, nutty "progressive" package, and must be rejected in toto.