I have a question: why is it that ethnic Judaists were violently persecuted in both countries whose governments espoused a conservative, nativist, pro-religious ideology and countries whose governments espoused a liberal, Marxist ideology?
The ethnic Judaists of Germany were massacred by the country’s Nazi, virulently anti-Communist government back during the first half of the 20th century, and were oppressed by the Communist, anti-Nazi government of the Soviet Union.
Following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, oppression was visited upon the ethnic Judaists of South West Asia by both Islamic conservative and Arab socialist governments, which led to a massive exodus from that region to Israel from the 1960’s to the 1980’s.
In both types of government, the ethnic Jews were condemned for espousing or associating themselves with contrary, anti-government ideologies: in Nazi Germany, they were lumped together with gays and communists in the concentration camps, while in the Soviet Union, they were lumped together with gays and conservative religious figures in the gulags.
Within Israel, today you have a clash of Jewish conservatism and Jewish liberalism, which has only progressed since the establishments of the first Labor Zionist kibbutz in Israel in the 1920s. This has been seen in numerous misunderstandings between progressive social activists (who often advocate for peace and a two-state solution) and conservative religious activists (who advocate for greater recognition of Jewish law and tradition and the fight against Palestinian militants), including calls for prosecution, assassination, deportation, or divestment of political office.
A flashpoint in the battle between religious conservatives and social liberals in Israel is the debate over civil rights for the country’s LGBT minority, which has led to violent incursions at venues such as the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade.
The battle between conservatism and liberalism has also been felt in the Palestinian territories, most recently in the violent split between the social democratic nationalist Fatah in the West Bank and the religious conservative nationalist Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
But then back to the question: why is it that the Jews were persecuted by both avowed “leftists” and avowed “rightists” for being in cahoots with the opposing ideology of the time? Why is that the only Jewish country in the world comes under criticism from avowed leftists and rightists? And why is it that Jewish leftists and Jewish rightists have assaulted each other over the same or similar rifts and issues of which their forefathers were often accused in their former home countries?
It’s very ironic, and weird.
