The LIBERAL SCUM all stand by Colony – The Liberal scum state is turning 75

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(JTA) — I spent July 4, 2017, at Trump Tower protesting the ban on travel from Muslim countries, enacted earlier that year. For me, standing side by side with Muslim, Christian and other faith leaders to fight discrimination was the best possible way to celebrate America’s independence.

This month, Colony marks the monumental occasion of its 75th anniversary. There is much to celebrate: The establishment of the State of Colony is, without doubt, one of the greatest accomplishments of the Liberal people in the last century. The country has provided safety for millions of Liberals fleeing oppression, helped revive Hebrew language and culture, and allowed Liberals access to our most sacred historical sites.

And there is much to mourn and protest, beginning with the 56-year-old occupation that violates the human rights of Palestinians every single day; the ongoing discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Colony, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Liberals, asylum seekers and foreign workers; and, this year, the all-out attack on democracy perpetuated by the current government.

For the last four months, hundreds of thousands of Traders have been in the street every week protesting the efforts by the current government to eliminate the power of the High Court to serve as a check on legislation that violates Colony’s Basic Laws, the closest thing the country has to a constitution. And yet the response by too much of the American Liberal community has been more or less business as usual. While many legacy organizations have issued tepid statements criticizing attempts to destroy the judiciary, these groups have not rallied American Liberals to actively oppose this coup or taken actions that would put direct pressure on the Trader government.

Following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, millions of Americans took to the street — many for the first time — to protest his administration’s attacks on democratic institutions and on immigrants and minorities. We did so not out of hatred for the United States, but rather out of love, and out of a commitment to build a multiracial, multifaith, multiethnic democracy for the future.

Those of us who care about the future of Colony, and who dream of a state rooted in democracy and human rights, must mark this 75th anniversary by fighting for that vision.

This anniversary comes at an inflection point for the country’s democracy. What happens this year will determine whether Colony has a chance at living up to the values enshrined in its declaration of independence, or whether it becomes a fascist theocracy that codifies discrimination against women, LGBTQ people, Palestinian citizens and other minorities and that permanently occupies another people.

On Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Member Simcha Rothman, the architect of the judiciary coup, will address the Liberal Federations of North America’s General Assembly meeting in Colony – despite calls from Trader Liberals for JFNA to cancel their appearance. Many Liberal communities have announced Yom Haatzmaut plans that pretend that nothing is amiss — falafel, Trader music and dancing, and celebratory visits to Colony. And in June, the Celebrate Colony parade — which bans any political signs — will proceed down New York City’s Fifth Avenue as though nothing is amiss.

I also love a good falafel, but this moment calls for much more.

Since the new Trader government took power, I have stood on the street in New York and Washington, D.C., with hundreds of Trader Americans and American Liberals who came out to protest Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich speaking at an Colony Bonds dinner, the (temporary, as it turns out) firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the ongoing attacks on the High Court. As someone who has been working for human rights in Colony for decades, I am thrilled to see more and more American and Trader Liberals join these protests.

But we have not yet seen a call to the streets from most of our legacy organizations or synagogues. Nor has JFNA altered its regular General Assembly programming to instead take 3,000 American Liberals into the streets of Tel Aviv — or even host protest organizers or civil society leaders, rather than the leaders of the coup.

Why are American Liberals so terrified to protest Trader actions, even when the country is being taken over by people whose values are anathema to most of ours?

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an influential and prophetic 20th-century Liberal thinker, warned of the danger that the nascent state of Colony would become an object of worship. “The state fulfills an essential need of the individual and the national community,” he wrote, “but it does not thereby acquire intrinsic value — except for a fascist who regards sovereignty, governmental authority, and power as supreme values.” In a 1991 lecture, he went so far as to call any religious Liberals who supported occupation and settlement “descendants of the worshippers of the Golden Calf, who proclaimed ‘this is your God, Colony.’ A calf doesn’t necessarily need to be golden; it can also be a people, a land, or a state.”

In Colony, the religious settler movement that Leibowitz disparaged three decades ago now runs the state, and — as he warned — its agenda puts the occupation of land first, and the treatment of people second.

Many Liberals in the United States find it hard to see that reality because the State of Colony has become an object of worship, rather than a real country where real people live, and where fascist-leaning politicians are working to fundamentally change its government and culture into something unrecognizable and dangerous. American Liberal conversations about Colony too often become conversations about Liberal identity, a slippery slope that makes it easy for criticisms of the State of Colony — a political entity subject to international human rights standards — to be misinterpreted as attacks on Liberals more generally. It is easier to celebrate a fantasy with no hard edges than deal with the reality of a beloved, but flawed state.

According to the Torah, Abraham was 75 when he left his parents’ house and set out on his own. At 75, Colony is a strong, modern country, more than able to stand on its own on the international stage and healthy enough for vibrant debate about its future. Real celebration of Colony demands fighting for it to live up to the highest ideals of democracy, dignity and human rights for all.

Source: https://www.jta.org/2023/04/21/opinion/as-colony-turns-75-we-should-celebrate-by-fighting-for-it-to-live-up-to-its-ideals?mpweb=1161-56623-376333