Friday, February 15, 2019
From Ian:
David French: America Chooses Morality over Money to Support Israel
Melanie Phillips: The unique disorder of hatred now destroying the Left
David French: America Chooses Morality over Money to Support Israel
America’s long support for Israel — often in the face of fierce criticism from key allies and painful economic reprisal from the Arab world — represents an enduring, bipartisan commitment to moral clarity in the Middle East. For the quarter century following Israel’s founding, it was subjected to repeated, genocidal threats to its existence. It has served as a homeland for the Jewish people even as Arab nations rendered life intolerable for more than 800,000 of their Jewish citizens, sometimes destroying communities that existed for centuries. Israel took in hundreds of thousands of refugees, receiving them as the world’s only Jewish state.WSJ: Why Do So Many American Politicians Support Israel?
When the attempts to invade Israel and destroy it with brute military force ended (for now, at least) with the signing of the Camp David accords, terror campaigns continued and escalated to a point that the United States (or its more anti-Israel allies) would never tolerate. Even today — with all its military might — its citizens live under a terror-threat level experienced by few other nations, and (unlike other nations) it exists in the midst of a region full of people who express feelings of outright hatred for its right to exist. Not long ago, an ADL survey found that a full 74 percent of citizens of North Africa and the Middle East harbored anti-Semitic attitudes.
Moreover, it faces a unique level of international hostility, with the United Nation Human Rights Council condemning its actions far more than it condemns all other nations combined. There exists a concerted international effort to boycott Israeli companies and academies, divest resources from Israel, and sanction Israel. Many of the founders and leaders of the BDS movement hope ultimately to eradicate Israel as a Jewish state.
American attitudes toward Israel have been shaped far more by debates among non-Jews than by the influence of Jewish organizations. The most important reason public officials support Israel is that the public does. In fact, approval is at a 17-year high, with 74% of adults reporting a favorable opinion.It Is Anti-Semitic to Oppose Israel's Right to Exist
Public support for Israel is not a new phenomenon. Surveys conducted between 1947 and 1949 showed that nearly three times as many Americans sympathized with Jews over Arabs in the conflict in former Mandatory Palestine.
American approval for Israel has deep historical roots in the Christian understanding of America. Leaders of Puritan New England predicted the demographic return and political revival of the Jewish people in the biblical promised land. In 1845, John Price Durbin, a Methodist who served as chaplain of the Senate and president of Dickinson College, insisted on "the undoubted fact of the restoration of a Jewish state in Palestine."
In 1891, the evangelist William E. Blackstone presented a petition to President Benjamin Harrison calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Ottoman Palestine. Americans who signed included Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Fuller, future president William McKinley, titans of industry and finance like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, and the editors of dozens of major newspapers.
Israel should be challenged and scrutinized in the same way as any other country. Yet other countries, no matter how they came into being or how they behave, do not have their legitimacy or right to exist questioned or their outright destruction called for. Anti-Zionism should not be conflated with mere criticism of Israeli policy. Anti-Zionism rejects the very idea of a Jewish state.
Zionism is the belief in the right to self-determination of the Jewish people (a right guaranteed to them by international law) in their historical and spiritual homeland, Israel. It acknowledges the Jewish people as indigenous to the land and Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, although all citizens, including Israel's 20% Arab population, have equal civil rights. For most Jews, Zionism is core to their identity.
Had a Jewish homeland been set up anywhere else, for example in Uganda, then the accusation of colonialism would have legitimacy. But in the Land of Israel, where Jewish people are the Tangata Whenua - a Maori term that means "people of the land" - accusations of colonialism are made to delegitimize the Jewish presence in their ancestral homeland.
Anti-Zionism has become the new form of anti-Semitism. The state of the Jews has become the Jew of the states. Yet Zionism is not just an idea but a reality whose elimination would mean 6.5 million Jews facing the prospect of ethnic cleansing and a return to homelessness.
Melanie Phillips: The unique disorder of hatred now destroying the Left
Although her fellow Democrats denounced her, their reaction has been wholly inadequate. A statement signed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats called on Omar to apologise for her “hurtful” comments.Melanie Phillips: Crazy world antisemitism, Faustian pacts, revolutions eat their own
“Antisemitism must be called out, confronted and condemned whenever it is encountered, without exception,” Pelosi said. “Omar and I agreed that we must use this moment to move forward as we reject antisemitism in all forms.”
No apology can ever expunge the evil of antisemitism. For this doesn’t merely cause hurt or offence: it directly adds to the demonic discourse that continues to make Jews both within and outside of Israel the target of murderous hatred. Requiring an apology is to help the antisemite get herself off the hook with a mere slap on the wrist.
If that. In Tablet magazine, Yair Rosenberg said Omar deserved “dialogue not denunciation.” He hailed Omar’s “genuine self-awareness” when she reflected upon being accused of antisemitism in 2012 after tweeting: “Israel has hypnotised the world; may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
But this “self-awareness” merely consisted of saying she could identify with her Jewish critics because experiencing antisemitism was like experiencing “white privilege.” Well no, it’s not; there’s no comparison.
She made no acknowledgment that she had perpetrated malicious incitement against the Jews. Indeed, straight after the “unequivocal” apology for her latest barb about sinister Jewish influence, she doubled down on her bigotry by “reaffirming” the “problematic role” of AIPAC as a political lobby.
This is an individual who clearly believes that Jews are a manipulative force controlling the world. And yet certain liberal Jews want to “move forward” now that she has “apologised” – and even to open up a dialogue with her.
The proper way to “move forward” with antisemites is to remove them from public life. Yet Omar will remain on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Please join me here in discussion with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired about the latest goings-on in our crazy world. We were talking about the remarks by an official from Human Rights Watch who was peddling conspiracy theory and antisemitism, and the enduring nature of “Jewish conspiracy” theory. We discussed whether Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was making deals with political “devils” through his alliances with sundry nationalists, populists, autocrats and worse. We talked about the great controversy that has boiled up in America over an apparent slide from abortion to infanticide. And we mused over how revolutions always eat their own.
