Shortly after America and Israel launched their thoroughly-justified war against Iran’s Mullahocracy, protesters in Times Square – and worldwide – defended that evil regime, denouncing America and Israel.
It was another milestone in illiberal liberals’ descent into the moral abyss. On October 7, 2023, they celebrated Hamas’s outburst of Jihadi perversion. 875 days later, they are condemning a long-overdue counterattack against Jihadi despotism.
Welcome to the amoral world of totalitarian anti-Zionists. Making antisemitic anti-Zionism their touchstone dictates their logic. Hating Israel makes them hate America. Then, believing the enemy of my enemy is my friend, they go soft on Iran’s evil Jew-hating, America-hunting regime.
These days, Zionophobic anti-Americanism has a force multiplier effect, as Trumpopobia mobilizes zealots while recruiting hordes of useful idiots. The joint US-Israel invasion has further triggered these political hysterias.
Disciplined statesman
US President Donald Trump declared: “the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America.” This eight-minute videotape broadcast a disciplined, statesmanlike Trump. Reflecting the moment’s seriousness suited the justice of his cause.
Yet these somber words – and long-overdue attack – enraged his enemies more than his clownish performances. His opponents’ outrage reflected the moral confusion that overcomes even reasonable people as obsessive anti-Zionism fuses with anti-Trump mania.
When BDS meets TDS, brains fog, souls wither, tempers rise: the decades-long anti-Israel campaign seeking Boycott, Divestment and Sanction crossbreeds with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Future historians will wonder how this admirable objective – freeing millions of Iranians who already started rebelling from a Jihadist theocracy committed to destroying America and Israel – generated so much opposition from the liberals and Westerners Iran’s clerics would happily slaughter if they could.
As anti-Trumpism imposes mono-think, the old revolutionary imperative “No enemies to the Left,” shatters the moral compass of once-mainstream liberals.
The New York Times pronounced the war “reckless,” eulogizing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a “Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power.” The description made this mass murderer sound more like a holy soul who re-careered as a statesman. The Washington Post rhapsodized how, “with his bushy white beard and easy smile, Ayatollah Khamenei” cut an “avuncular figure” and “was known to be fond of Persian poetry and classic Western novels.”
Who knew this Jihadi cutie-pie who greenlighted the slaughter of as many as 40,000 fellow citizens in two days was the Muslim Santa Claus?
Similarly, too many Democrats lawyered up, demanding Congressional authorization for Trump’s “military action.” Their self-righteousness faltered amid the inconvenient facts that Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden struck hard without Congress when pressed.
Assault on Americanism
This mushiness exposed the collateral damage caused by the far Left’s assault on Americanism and Zionism, now further fueled by anti-Trumpism. The zealots from within their camp blinded Democrats over decades to the evils of Iran’s dictatorship.
Many decided they could reason with the Mullahs, negotiate with them. Such amoral hubris spawned Obama’s JCPOA nuclear deal, which ultimately transferred $1.7 billion in cash to Iran, with much distributed to terrorists. More broadly, too many good liberals underestimated the threats coming from Jihadist Iran.
Most appalling were the extremists’ anti-war protests in midtown New York, central London, and other world capitals. Waving the Islamic Republic’s flag, some yelled, “Long live the resistance! Long live Iran!” and “Resistance is justified when people are colonized.” In Times Square, they chanted “US drones in the sky, Iran’s missiles will reply!” and the genocidal: “Iran, Iran, make us proud… Burn Tel Aviv to the ground.” Some signs branded Americans “war criminals” and “baby killers.” Others claimed “Zionism is a crime” and “Zionism is terrorism.”
As America and Israel forged their post-1967 military alliance, they became the world’s new twin bogeymen. These modernist upstarts, increasingly disdained by Europeans and Third Worlders, were placed in the perpetual international docket, especially Israel. After the 1960s, a homegrown corps of anti-American anti-Zionists, reflecting deep Christian programming, demonized America and Israel as two allies conceived in Original Sin – one against blacks, one against Palestinians.
Over the years, politicized talk of “settler-colonialism,” and the “oppressed-oppressor” dynamic, demonizing the Western capitalism Americans and Israelis mastered, spread. Then, in the 21st century, as universities, mainstream media outlets, and other progressive strongholds went “woke,” Donald Trump emerged.
The ultimate liberal lightning rod, he attracted the enmity of those who hate America – and Israel too. Following October 7, 2023, haters burned American flags and Israeli flags, merging the two files.
Clearly, the subtle moral muddle of a Times or Post obituary differs from protesters encouraging the deaths of American soldiers and mass murder in Israel. But everyone must check their allies. Those whose antisemitism blocks their love of America and recognition of Islamist evil should be embarrassed to find themselves on the wrong side of history. And, once again, Trump’s opponents scored another own goal – against themselves.
Illiberal liberals detesting America because they detest Israel now have new, unlikely allies from the far Right. These extremists hate Israel and bash America because they hate Jews. It’s the intersectionality of idiots: their Joker-in-Chief, America’s diabolical clown prince, Tucker Carlson, called the war “absolutely disgusting and evil.”
And, negating half a century of Iranian anti-Americanism, Carlson claimed the “only reason” America intervened was not that “Iran attacked America... It’s because Israel wants us to fight their war for them.”
If this Islamic Republic collapses – or, better yet, a freed Iran emerges – Trump will be remembered as a foreign policy powerhouse, balancing out some of the domestic carnage he risks leaving behind. But his unenlightened opponents will help him cement another dimension of his legacy.
Trump’s War on Woke has forced the illiberal liberals on the defensive – in universities, newsrooms, and corporate boardrooms. Opposing this justified Iran war, which implicitly links them to the evil regime and its enablers worldwide, puts another nail in the woke coffin.
It’s fair to worry that Donald Trump’s presidency has harmed America’s democratic fabric. But that doesn’t negate the damage his fanatic opponents,furthered by their antisemitic anti-Zionist zeal,have done to the American body politics – and to themselves.■
Gil Troy is an American presidential historian and Zionist activist born in Queens, living in Jerusalem. Last year he published, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath. His latest E-book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and Jew-hatred was just published and can be downloaded on the website of JPPI – the Jewish People Policy Institute.