Pete Seeger’s Continuing Naivete on How to Achieve Peace
Despite his apparent good will in refusing the pleas of the far Left anti-Israeli activists, Pete Seeger’s decision to participate via the Internet on a world-wide Peace in the Middle East Rally emanating in Israel, the noted folksinger is only revealing his naiveté.
As the JTA story reports, “Seeger has rejected calls by individuals and organizations demanding that he cancel his participation in “With Earth and Each Other: A Virtual Rally for a Better Middle East,” an online event promoting peace through cross-border cooperation and scheduled for a Nov. 14 global broadcast at www.withearthandeachother.org.” OK, some mild kudos to Pete for doing that.
But, as Seeger is anxious to make clear, “That doesn’t mean that he supports Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, Seeger says; quite the contrary. He is a longtime donor to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, an organization that became so critical of Israel that it was dropped by the New Israel Fund years ago, and readily decries what he calls ‘monstrous’ Israeli military actions against Palestinian civilians.”
If the group Seeger supports is too far Left for the very far left New Israel Fund, that in itself says a great deal. Evidently, Seeger thinks that calling for peace is good- but naming the real enemies of peace is wrong. Here’s how he sees things:
“My religion is that the world will not survive without dialogue,” Seeger told JTA in an interview from his home in Beacon, N.Y. “I would say to the Israelis and the Palestinians, if you think it’s terrible now, just think ahead 50 years to when the world blows itself up. It will get worse unless you learn how to turn the world around peacefully.” In other words, talk instead of make war; engage in continual dialogue, and eventually you’ll both work it out. No need to examine which side really wants peace and which side does not.
He supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the Civil Right’s movements early days, he says, and therefore, Seeger says, “he does not oppose nonviolent efforts, including an economic boycott, to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But standing in the way of promoting dialogue makes no sense, he said.”
Let’s take a moment and look at this ridiculous moral equivalence. He wants an economic boycott of Israel, although he evidently is not in favor of doing anything to stop Hamas or Hezbollah aggression against Israel, including the rocket attacks a few years ago. In Seeger’s eyes, the only guilty party that is preventing peace in the Middle East is Israel. He also seems to be rather unaware that Israel pulled out of Gaza, and that it is run by Hamas, and is not occupied by Israel. Nor does he seem to know much about the Palestinian Authority and its weak position in the West Bank.
So he agrees with boycotting Israel “financially,” he says, but he is not for “boycotting dialogue.” His kind of dialogue, of course, amounts to a dialogue of the deaf, in which Israel would suffer from economic boycott by the West while the extremists of Hamas are allowed to plot their aggression without opposition and their desire to destroy Israel goes without protest.
Seeger says he does not want to “abandon the world to those who believe in violence.” But if he bothered to look at evidence, instead of uttering his useless platitudes, he would soon learn that Israel has made substantive peace offers over and over, only to be rebuffed by Palestinian leaders who never agree to recognize Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state. On this point, they have been consistent since 1947, when they opposed the UN’s decision to partition old Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.
Why should we be surprised? Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, Seeger called for peace, peaceful co-existence between the United States and the Soviet Union, singing songs like “Put My Name Down, Brother, Where Do I Sign?” a ballad in favor of the Soviet Union’s phony international peace petition that favored unilateral disarmament by the West while leaving the Soviet atomic stockpile intact. He would sing and give his support to peace rallies and marches covertly sponsored by the Soviet Union and its Western front groups and dupes—-while leaving his political criticism only for the United States and its defensive actions during the Cold War.
That the Western and international Left sees Seeger as some kind of traitor speaks only to its own complete extremism. Seeger should pause and ask himself whether these are the people he sees as misguided allies, and instead of his meaningless vague calls for peace, do something really brave—sing and speak out on behalf of Israel’s right to exist freely as a Jewish state in the Middle East, without having to constantly face the threats of its destruction by the Jihadists and their western left-wing allies.
One has to wonder if Seeger has been hitting his bong a bit too frequently. Simply ignoring the Palestinian and terrorist attacks upon Israeli cities, towns, civilians and military targets is not going to create an environment conducive to peace. It’s a typical leftist ploy, to try and get Israel to give up more land, more authority, more safety and more security in the false hope that somehow that will bring about a peaceful Palestinian state is laughable. Perhaps I was initially wrong, though. Maybe Seeger should spend even more time with his bong and just learn to keep his mouth shut in between tokes. Peace Brother!!
Pete Seeger! What layer of alluvial did they find him in? And why would anybody under, say, 85 care what his opinion is on anything except being a hobo in the ‘Thirties?
Pete Seeger is not naive at all. He never was. He’s vicious and scheming. Now he wants Israel destroyed, and uses “peace” as his perennial, time-tested buzzword. When a naive pundit says Seeger’s naive, that’s yet one more example of a useful idiot out thumping for Seeger’s cause.
Pete Seeger has a few of his gnarled roots in the tepid Stalinist support for Israel back when it was still a somewhat Communist society in its early days, built around kibbutzim. And then there’s that old 78 or two still around of the Weavers doing “Tzena, tzena, tzena” that he can’t quite disavow, not to mention all the (Communist and leftist) Jews he’s worked with over the years, some of whom doubtless supported, and support, Israel.
So he’s not about to toss Israel wholly under the bus in the late autumn of his life. But that doesn’t mean the old hard-Lefty isn’t as quietly eager for Israel’s destruction as some of his more-vocal pals.
“trying to achieve peace” is about as effective as “reading about being an alpha male”.
For you peace achievers and students of alpha maledom, try maintaining a stong military and becoming expert at a useful skill. Both work a lot better than hope.
Anyone attacked by the Klan, HUAC and PJM can’t be all bad.
Ron, with respect–and by the way, I actually mean “with respect,” I read you frequently–what causes you to put this down to naivete and not to a conscious decision?
Yet again I pose the question and I don’t think I’ve ever had a convincing answer from a leftist: By every conceivable proclaimed value of the left, leftists should be wildly pro-Israel and are, instead, wildly anti-Israel. Why?
Professor Radosh is of course right about Pete Seeger’s boundless ignorance and naivete (which grants the great singer and greater fool the probably unwarranted benefit of the doubt), but we have reached the point where anybody’s decision to dissent in any way from the delegitimize-and-destroy-Israel juggernaut must be hailed as a not insignificant act of courage.