A New left-wing Spanish Ally in the Fight Against Islamic Radicalism: Welcome to Pilar Rahola
Pilar Rahola is a Spanish left-wing journalist most Americans have probably never heard of. It is time, however, to acquaint oneself with her work. Her website is largely written in Spanish, although there are some English translations on it. Fortunately, an American blogger has taken the time to translate and post one of her most important recent articles, a strong editorial calling upon her compatriots- especially those on the political left- to stand in solidarity with both Israel and the United States.
It is important, given the close identification throughout Europe of the left-wing with Islamic radicals- the kind of alliance that prevails in Britain and is spearheaded by the likes of George Galloway- that a few brave voices on the left can be found who are not afraid to speak out. In Spain, we learn from Rohola, the situation is almost as bad as it is in Britain. She writes boldly:
Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, who have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the left doesn’t care.
It is one thing when someone like David Horowitz, who has made this valid point time and time again, says it. It is another when a writer from the same left-wing precincts as her audience makes the case. Rahola goes on to expose in detail the hypocrisy of the European’s left’s arguments. They claim that they stand for freedom. Rohola responds: “Not true. They are never concerned with the freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan…And they are never preoccupied when Hamas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom.” She terms such logic “ideological pathologies.”
These are, indeed, very strong words. Try to imagine the anger and hostility of her comrades on the left when they read this column. As for the press, she writes, “any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide.” And at the same time, they never pause to condemn any violence propagated against Israel from nations like Iran and Syria.
As for the left in her own country- which she inexplicably considers herself a part-she accuses them of subscribing to both “anti-Americanism and anti-Israeli sentiments” that virtually define them politically. One left-wing group in Spain, she informs us, just expelled a pro-Israeli member, because they inform their members, “our friends are the people of Iran, Libya and Venezuela, oppressed by imperialism, and not a Nazi state like Israel.” In Campozuelos, the leftist mayor of that town changed Shoah Day, meant to commemorate victims of the Holocaust to the Palestinian Nakba Day, mourning the creation of Israel. They compounded that act by inviting one of the first 1970’s Palestinian terrorists, Leila Khaled, to come and speak.
Most horrible is that the current President of Spain has a foreign policy, she writes, that “falls with the lunatic left…[and] is unequivocally pro Arab,” and that privately, President Zapatero places on Israel the blame for the conflict in the Middle East.” She calls this policy “madness,” and concludes by trying to explain to her leftist friends why she, not even a Jew, is not opposed to Israel. The reason, she writes, is thus:
Because as a non-Jew I have the historical responsibility to fight against Jewish hatred and currently against the hatred for their historic homeland, Israel. To fight against anti-Semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the non-Jews.
As a journalist it is my duty to search for the truth beyond prejudice, lies and manipulations. The truth about Israel is not told. As a person from the left who loves progress, I am obligated to defend liberty, culture, civic education for children, coexistence and the laws that the Tablets of the Covenant made into universal principles. Principles that Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. That is to say that as a non-Jew, journalist and lefty I have a triple moral duty with Israel, because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be destroyed too.
Her final words are equally strong: “The struggle of Israel,” she writes, “even if the world doesn’t want to accept it, is the struggle of the world.”
Ms. Rahola, I predict, will soon not be able to define herself as a person of the political left. She will be vilified, (and probably has already been in Spain) attacked, smeared and called both a renegade and traitor. As many of my readers already know, I received that treatment decades ago, when I first concluded that Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet spy. Like Ms. Rahola, at the time I too saw myself as a man of the left. Indeed, in the introduction I wrote to The Rosenberg File, I explained that “as a man of the democratic Left, I certainly had no interest in serving the cause of domestic reaction or in justifying the actions of the new Cold Warriors.” That tactic did not work. I was immediately attacked by Victor Navasky in the pages of The Nation, for serving the interests of the Reagan administration in fomenting the Cold War.
I went on to argue that the truth has its own claims, and that to deny the truth, would mean to “concede that the Left stands for falsehood” and perpetuation of myth. What I learned- truly a hard lesson that did not occur right away- was the truth that in fact, the left did stand for falsehood. What was important was simply to write whatever served the cause at the moment- truth be damned.
Pilar Rahola is daring to tell the truth today, and stand up in her own country against the fanatic radicals, leftist extremists, and the pro-Arab government currently in power. I, for one, welcome her outspoken voice, however she defines herself politically. Salud!
Poor Pilar. I do feel bad for the world of hate that is going to come down on her (from her so called “friends”). She has become a heretic in the progressive utopian church.
I have a few lefty friends (forgive them, they are artsy-fartsy types) who are slowly starting to become aware of how intellectually unmoored their paradigms are. Whether they successfully make that break depends upon whether or not they respect the truth. Not “My Truth”, or “Obama’s Truth” but “The Truth”. You know, that thing that can be hard to actually identify but in reality DOES EXIST! If they value “The Truth” over loyalty to the progressive utopian church, and the truth knocks them upside the head hard enough to make the break, they will.
God Bless, Pilar. best to just say “goodbye to all that” and be done with them. The faster you leave your old Orwellian world behind, the happier you will be.
“An eight-month old fetus is not a fetus, but a child. And no matter how much one may be in favor of unlimited abortion, a time limit should be demanded if one doesn’t want to turn the right to abortion into the right to murder.”
—Pilar Rahola
Spain has a demographic crisis that can no longer be ignored. Only roughly .07 of children are born into an indigenous family. Muslim immigrants, needless to add, have much larger families. Spain’s economy is also in deep trouble. Pilar Rahola has her hands filled. It may be too late. I have serious doubts that Spain can be saved. Where are the children needed to replace today’s adults? Rahola might want to consider moving to the United States. We have at least a 60/40 chance of surviving.
“our friends are the people of Iran, Libya and Venezuela, oppressed by imperialism, and not a Nazi state like Israel.”
Utterly beyond parody.
The tragedy of your thinking is that, if you are a non Muslim, you will be absorbed by these monsters and denied any form of self expression, or fun. Your existence will be in service of a Caliphate as a drone praying 5 times a day to a false prophet. Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and other Islamic states are in the business of killing anyone who deviates from their vision of religion. These people are skilled liars who insinuate themselves into Western Culture and like a cancer kill their host.
The United States and Israel are the only plural societies. Non Muslims in Muslim states are harassed, killed and taxed for being non Muslims. Islam is intolerant and medieval. If that’s what you want you can find it in Saudi Arabia which would not exist but for the U.S.
She won’t be considering herself a part of the left much longer. She’s going to find out, as did Ms. Chesler and Mr. Radosh, that opposing views are simply intolerable and personally offensive to the true believers on the left. She could have said a tenth as much an still will be excommunicated, which is good luck for her, since she’s entered the real world now and can see things as they are.
Dear Dr. Radosh
Excellent column, but just one small correction. Spain is a monarchy, not a republic and Senor Zapatero is the Prime Minister, not the President But otherwise, a great column and keep on the good work!
I had never heard of Pilar Rahola until yesterday when a Jewish aquantance handed me a copy of some of her comments in support of Israel. My comments are therefore based simply on what I read and what my thoughts are at present. Whether those thoughts change as I find out more about her and her view remains to be seen. I quickly came to the conclusion that what I read was a complete insult to the intelligence. If this woman is a serious journalist, then it seems to me Spain has a paucity of talent in that field. Most of her comments were either completely irrational or totally unsubstantiated drivel! She as many, who do not seem to have great grasp of their subject portray opinion as fact, and for a journalist in particular to do that is absolutely scandalous. I do not know if it was Rahola herself who described herself as an extreme left winger or someone else as the heading to the piece stated. Whoever it was I would be interested to know what their definition of an extreme left winger is. This is particularly interesting as later in the article she refers to the lunatic left. Again I would be interested to know what her definition of a lunatic left wingeer is. Would it be incorrect to suggest that this is just another of the many overemotive comments which pepper the article, but in fact have no real meaning.
Why many people have problems with America is the hypocrycy of these two nations which have carried out some terrible actions during their history which any right minded decent human being with any sense of justice would rail against. America’s activities in South America over the decades has been reprehensible. You could also go back to the 19th century and the attempt to wipe out the native population of that country by the so-called forces of progress. Israel should be thoroughly ashamed of its opression of the people in Gaza, and as you know there are admirable Isreali’s who indeed oppose their govenment’s position on this. They deserve great praise for their stance. I have never been able to understand why the Israeli people continue to elect such reprehensible individuals Sharon, Olmert, and Netanyahu to represent them, there action in regard to the Palestinians should be held up for examination, but not only that as you know each one has at different times been invetigated for corruption, something that does not surprise me. These people only seem to lead the country into deeper and deeper conflict with anyone who looks at them the wrong way. If Israels approach to Hamas and others was more pragmatic, then both sides, and I mean the Isreali’s and Palestinians could eventually coexist side peacfully, then Hamas would be an irrelavancy to the latter group if they had stable existence. Who would then be ostracised into irrelevance and oblivion. I would love to see this in my life time. No one who has an ounce of decency in them wishes an Isreali child walking to school having to be taken to hospital instead, a victim of a mortar, equally nor should any Palestinian child be the victim of an Isreali air strike. This apparent eye for an eye approach just fills one with despair, it does no one any good. It would be great if some defenders of Isreal just stepped back and consider for a moment alternative construictive views and opinons from different sources, journalists included. Examine the considered views of people which do not stem from hatred of Isreal,(it seems to be a very easy, stupid and lazy label to slap on an opponent, indeed an inaccurate one in many cases), and maybe think that they may have a point and that there motives are only good,instead of this intransigent stance of every thing Isreal does is good and everything anyone else does or says is bad and everyone hates Isreal and is anti semitic. This is both wrong and insulting in the extreme. So just to refer to people Rahola who on the evidence I have seen,comes across as a very stupid woman with some strangely irrational notions, which have no basis in fact. These are the comment of a human being who hates injustice no matter who it is perpetrated by, or where in the world it is prepetrated. It is something that we all as human beings should stand up against and make our voices heard. Thank you for allowing me to adress my thoughts on the site
I for one hope Pilar remains a woman of the left because she reminds us that, once upon a time, before it became stained with apologetics for Stalinism, the left was a genuinely antifascist movement whose members truly and valiantly supported universal human rights and opposed all forms of racism and antisemitism. The contemporary struggle against Islamicist fascism should not only be a project of the conservative right, which also has its demons to exorcise (support for Franco, Pinochet, et alia), but rather a project for enlightened humanity.