Why does left hate Israel?

Editor's note: Joseph Farah is leading the annual WND tour of Israel through Nov. 15.

JERUSALEM – Someone recently asked Joshua Muravchik, the distinguished scholar of international studies at Johns Hopkins University, why the left, which once embraced Israel, now detests the Jewish state.

He explained, "Leftists/liberals/progressives believe that the great moral drama of our era is 'the rest against the West' or the 'people of color' against the 'white man.' This has replaced poor-against-rich or worker-against-capitalist as the core idea of progressive thought. Seen through that lens, Israel (the 'Western,' 'white' guys) is automatically wrong, and the Palestinians (the 'anti-colonialist,' 'people of color') are automatically right. On the other side, conservatives value Israel as a free country, a democracy and an ally of the United States."

While I think there is some element of truth in what Muravchik says, I think he misses the big picture.

First of all, if you travel to the Middle East and visit the Arab "Palestinians" in Judea and Samaria and Gaza and then visit Israel, you will be hard-pressed to see any significant difference in the skin complexion of Arabs and Jews. While many Israelis emigrated from Europe and the former Soviet Union, they also came in big numbers from the Arab world where they were visibly indistinguishable from their Muslim and Christian neighbors.

As well, Arabs run the gamut in skin color from very light to very dark. Many even have sandy hair and blue eyes.

So this whole racial dynamic makes little sense. Arabs and Jews are ethnic cousins – all genetically children of Abraham.

While it's true that Israel is often mischaracterized by the left as a colonial oppressor, the only ethnic cleansing and genocide being espoused in the Middle East comes from the Muslim Arabs, who insist the Jewish state needs to be destroyed and demands that no Jews be permitted to live in their "liberated" territories.

I believe there is something much more fundamental at play between the alliance of the left and radical Islam.

It's not so much a war on the West.

It's a war on God – specifically the God of the Bible.

That's what ever so clearly Israel represents in the world today – a fulfilled promise of return to statehood and nationhood after nearly 2,000 years.

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It also stands at the very heart of Israel's legitimacy as a nation.

Israel, after all, is not just a legitimate state because the United Nations approved its rebirth in 1948. Israel, after all, is not just legitimate because Jews lived in the land continuously since the time of Joshua.

Israel, after all, represents the people who were summoned by God to live in the land, delivered out of Egypt to the land and who brought the Bible to the rest of the world.

What's more, the modern-day state of Israel perfectly fulfills the prophecies of a worldwide dispersion of the Jews throughout the world who would return to the land with a nation reborn in one day.

No other nation in the history of the world has experienced the miraculous rebirth Israel experienced just as described by the ancient Hebrew prophets. But that is a frightening reality for Muslims and the left, because Muslims worship a different god with a different story of history, and the left denies any god at all except the god of materialism.

Could this be why Islam and the materialistic left have found a common enemy in Israel?

To me it's undeniable, self-evident.

Israel is a reality that cannot be denied, unless it is demonized as an impostor.

And that's exactly what Islam and the materialistic left do.

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