During the recent Gaza war, Israel was forced to defend herself from thousands of rockets and destroy 40 tunnels dug by Hamas terrorists planning to enter Israeli kindergartens and malls from underground hatches.  In response to Israel’s military defense, we witnessed vicious anti-Israel, anti-Jewish protests all across Europe organized by leftists and Moslems.  They were hateful, with signs calling for “Jews to the gas chambers,” duplicated here in America by various Moslem groups.

Their anger, condemnation, and call for Israel’s annihilation was all done in the name of “human rights, and for women and children”… and, of course, “morality.’ So moral were the demonstrators that they burned Jewish stores, attacked Parisian synagogues, beat old rabbis and a woman wearing a Star of David, and, in England, raided city supermarkets and threw kosher food, Israeli produce, and goods manufactured by Jewish companies off of shelves.  It was a nouveau Kristallnacht collaboration between leftwing and Islamic mobs, many from the much vaunted/imagined moderate Islamic groups.

Since then, ISIS has reared its barbaric head.  ISIS is not acting in self-defense, rather going on a brutal lust binge: beheading, enslaving, raping, crucifying… and loving every minute of it.  None of these things have ever been done by Israel, nor would Israel ever do so.  ISIS is not content with one limited war, but gleefully announces its intent to annihilate all Christians from its ongoing path, enslave women as permanent sex slaves, burn, loot, and round up children for mass beheadings and use the heads of those it murders for sport.  It is engaged in real, actual genocide of non-Moslems.  Yet, not a word from the “moral” crowd.

No angry public protests from the leftwing, no public rallies from the paid/ professional feminists who know that this Islamic group intends to vaginally mutilate millions of women, imprison them in sex harems, and honor kill them.

Nor have we heard from Islamic groups who everyday indict America and Israel for some arbitrary, manufactured “civil rights” infraction against Moslems.  They remain silent while ISIS kills Moslems… and everyone else.  If ISIS is Islamic, Moslem groups should raise their voice all over the world in public protests condemning what is being done in the name of their Islam.  If ISIS is not Islamic, why aren’t they out there screaming “ISIS to the gas chambers”?

After years of this hypocrisy, it is obvious that the Left exploits the terms moral/human rights/women and children to further its agenda of grabbing personal power.  It selectively chooses those terms to demonize those it hates and wants removed so as to smooth its own way to power.  For them morality is not an inner value, but a political tool.

The Left hates Israel just as it hates America.  America is too Christian, Israel is too Jewish.  America and Israel are democracies, whereas the Left feels it should rule over us for the sake of our welfare and its entitlement to power.  It will always find a way to criticize Israel and America about human rights.

The Left shares in common with Islam a disdain of individuals deciding their own destiny.  Be it shariah for Islam or liberal social engineering so as to erase individuality and liberty, the leaders of each group expects submission to its ideology.

Israel is successful, as has been America.  The left hates success for anyone but its clique.  Israel and America are both patriotic countries; Americanism and Zionism are specific identities.  Nothing riles the left more than specific identity and national patriotism, the antithesis of its bland universalism and trans-nationalism.  Israel is too much like America.  The left sees in America and Israel only sin… never self-defense, while accepting and defending wicked totalitarianism in its partners.  It is blind to the justice and kindness endemic to American and Israeli society.  The left romanticizes evil and scoffs at the simple goodness embedded in the Judeo-Christian societies.

By now it’s clear that current political feminism is no longer about protecting women.  If so, they would be first in line criticizing Islam.  If worldwide feminists would but alert the world to Islamic mistreatment of women, we would be well along in winning this war.  Truth is, the celebrity American feminists are, by and large, a privileged set of upper middle class women who have become part of the belittle or hate America gang.  We regular Americans are an embarrassment to them.  Many have, through their universities and social milieu, been taught they are better than us, more enlightened than the unwashed below.  They are “worldlier” and “understand” and are more sensitive to other cultures.  It is a great ego trip.  Find warts In America while seeing only good in other cultures… it makes you superior to your countrymen.

What began as a road for equal rights ended up with a hate for the “patriarchal society,” which they began equating with the American Judeo-Christian outlook.  Living in the luxury of America, they could blithely condemn the U.S., while imputing romantic visions to other societies, where they could visit a couple of weeks in a 4 star hotel and then return back to Manhattan’s Upper West Side and boast of their solidarity and oneness with the Third World.  Much of today’s feminism is just another division of Liberalism, dedicated, like all the latest liberal “ isms,” to the radical transformation of America… and Israel.

One notable NY Jewish feminist so identifies with that which is Un-American and un-Israel that she takes the side of Hamas over Israel, just as she would take the side of others over America.  This feminist who rails against corporate America’s glass ceiling goes on to wax about “the abundance of sexuality and femininity that lies beneath the burqa.” She certainly wouldn’t be so rhapsodic if the Catholic Church would force head-to-toe covering of women.

For the pampered icons, it’s no longer about upholding abiding principle, but staying in the good graces among leftwing academics and rabble-rousers, which is the fraternity wherein they crave social acceptance.  It takes, in their circles, no courage to condemn Israel and America, but tons of courage to criticize Islam.  Courage is not something they any longer possess.

Bottom line for the Left: once perceived as the Un- American, anti-American or Un-Israel you are automatically considered virtuous.  Once deemed virtuous, the Left overlooks your acts of atrocity, whitewashed as necessary for the “liberation.” You get a free pass.  What counts is one thing only: being on the “correct” side.  In liberalism, it’s never about conducting yourself by an immutable set of virtues, rather espousing the liberal shibboleths; it’s not about what you actually do, but what you politically espouse.  It’s not about virtue or morality, it’s about politics.

Groups on the Left and feminists like to think of themselves as victims.  Victims are, or have been, discriminated against; and once discriminated against, you can happily label yourself with victim status forever.  Victim status makes one automatically noble.  It’s the coveted prize.  Thus, we have the bizarre phenomenon of “victim” feminists identifying with “victim” Moslems, though it is Islam that victimizes women.  But, American career feminists see oppression from American or western males only.  Talk about self-centered, myopic parochialism! Both groups seek faux “liberation” from their mythical “oppressors.”

Too many modern day, trendy feminists have become the cheering squad for the world’s ultimate victims: Islam.  Islam and Moslems have worked shrewdly and tirelessly -- with all that oil money and as conquerors of 1/3 of the world’s population -- to portray themselves as victims.  Israel is successful, so it is the oppressor.  The Arabs routinely shown are victims and thus hailed and excused for everything and anything they do.

Wealthy leftists, and Hollywood types, see in their denunciation of the successful and their identification with “victims” a ticket to absolution and a protection shield; while leftist Jews see political Leftism as a “sanctified” way to topple the Jewishness and Israel they long ago abandoned but which stubbornly still “taints” them.

ISIS has one way to turn around their PR problem.  If they attack Israel and Israel counterattacks, ISIS will be on their way to being excused, understood, and seen as “victims” of Israeli aggression.  The streets of Europe will be reactivated with protest, and moderate Moslem groups will once again bring out the signs of “Gas the Jews.’

Rabbi Aryeh Spero is author of Push Back and president of Caucus for America.