|
|
A TIME
TO SPEAK (Ecclesiastes 3:7)
MESSAGES ABOUT ISRAEL
A Time to Speak is a Message from
Israel that appears once a month. Each message is on a theme that
relates to Israel and the Middle East past and present. The contents
include history, background, current events, analysis and comment, and
excerpts from published writings.
Material in these messages may be re-circulated, cited and quoted.
Readers who so use this material are requested to note the source and
not make changes in the wording.
Complimentary subscriptions are available by request to speak@actcom.co.il
All the messages to date are on A Time To Speak's website:
www.israel.net/timetospeak
Vol. V:10 (No. 58)
October 2005 -- Tishri-Heshvan 5766
ISRAEL AND AMERICA:
PART I - AFFINITY
"Those who bless you will I bless, and those who curse you will I
curse."
-- Genesis 12:3
Most nations in the history of the world developed their identity and
character gradually before they became states. In contrast, there are
two that chose to create and define themselves at one moment in time:
Israel at Mount Sinai, circa 1440 BCE, and the United States of America
in Philadelphia in 1776. These two have a unique affinity that sets
them apart from most others nations.
Affinity is not the same thing as political or diplomatic or military
alliance, which may or may not be based on expediency or the negative
bond of having a common enemy. Israel and America do indeed have common
interests, and their association has pragmatic advantages for both, but
their singular affinity is one of shared tradition and convictions,
values and traits of character and spirit.
There are immense disparities in their historical experiences and many
variations in their ways of life. Yet the Israeli and American
characters collectively -- though not unanimously -- have much in
common: These are two peoples who treasure liberty and are averse to
arbitrary authority, and tend to be independent, resourceful,
forthright, humorous, generous, and when necessary courageous. Most
saliently, they are concerned to do "the right thing"; a
worthy aspiration but one that incurs danger of being "nice"
and "tolerant" toward unworthy causes.
Even when these traits are diluted by shortcomings and failings, they
still set these two nations apart from both moribund Europe and
oppressive dictatorships. Based on these shared traits, Americans have
an understanding and respect for Israel rare in the world, and Israelis
are the most pro-American people in the world.
These shared characteristics and the special affinity that derives from
them have a common effect on other nations and even on aberrant
elements within their own nations: They make Israel and America the
prime targets for obsessive hatreds bred in envy and spiteful
resentments.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The affinity of Israel and America is not an historical chance or mere
coincidence. It is, rather, part of a chain of moral and spiritual and
historical development.
In chronological order, Israel came first. That is, the biblical Israel
that so influenced the formation of the American character from its
earliest days -- a character found in no other country besides Israel
itself.
To the founders of the American nation, the biblical world was not
something remote and foreign. The Bible was not merely revered; it was
an integral and essential part of everyday life. People settling their
new land of America called it their Canaan. They named their children
Joseph and Samuel and Daniel, Sarah and Hannah and Abigail.
So deep went this identification, that in nineteenth-century New
England the master novelist Herman Melville commented: "We Americans
are the peculiar, chosen people, the Israel of our time. We bear the
Ark of the liberties of the world."
Through the 17th and 18th centuries, Hebrew was the language of learned
men, and higher education required a knowledge of it. Commencement
addresses at Harvard University were for long delivered in Hebrew, and
Yale University designed its official seal to depict the breastplate of
the Hebrew High Priest. The ceiling of the U.S. Supreme Court
Chamber is painted with a depiction of Moses and the Ten Commandments.
Both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin advocated that the seal of
their newly-proclaimed nation depict a scene of the Israelite Exodus
from Egypt, the archetypal ascent to liberty. That did not come to
pass, but the Children of Israel supplied the motto for the American
Liberty Bell: "Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land Unto all the
inhabitants thereof" -- Leviticus 25:10. (That ideal has come
full circle: Israelis have placed a replica of the Bell in Liberty Bell
Park in Jerusalem.)
The polity of the United States drew some of its principles from the
parliamentary institutions of England, but others have more in common
with the polity of biblical Israel:
[1] A nation based on confederation of distinct
geo-political entities -- whether tribes or colonies or states.
[2] A nation wherein all citizens are equal
without distinctions of class or property. (This goal was long impeded
by slavery and its aftermath of discrimination and repression.)
[3] A government that rules by consent of the
governed, with strict limits on its power and protection of the rights
of the citizens.
[4] A government in which the people choose those
who will represent them and rule on their behalf, and who -- as in
biblical Israel -- must be residents of the communities they represent.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
A nation that so identified itself with biblical Israel might well hope
for the restitution of the Israel that had so inspired their founders.
There was even some premonition of a special American role in the
future redemption of Israel, and that prophetic vision was to be
fulfilled.
John Adams wrote in a letter to America's first active proto-Zionist:
"I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation. . . . I
could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a
hundred thousand Israelites and marching with them into Judea and
making a conquest of that country and restoring your nation."
The recipient of that epistle was Mordecai Manuel Noah of Philadelphia,
prominent in literary and political affairs in the early 19th century,
and the first Jewish American to propose a practical program for the
redemption of the desolate Land of Israel.
(In 1813, Noah was appointed U.S. Consul in Tunis, but while serving
there received a letter from Secretary of State James Monroe dismissing
him from his post because of "a very unfavorable effect" of "the
religion you profess". Much has changed since 1813, but not the ways of
the U.S. Department of State.)
Gradually, the idea of a Jewish return to Zion developed from a remote
romantic image to a practical possibility. In 1815, the very
influential journal Niles' Weekly Register, published a prediction that
a rebuilt Jewish homeland would lead to ""The deserts of Palestine
brought into cultivation by patient industry may again blossom as the
rose, and Jerusalem, miserable as it is, speedily rival the cities of
the world for beauty, splendour and wealth". This testimony to the
desolate state of the abandoned and ruined Holy Land and Jerusalem was
confirmed a half-century later by visitor Mark Twain. [See Issue No. 2].
By the early 20th century, American Zionism was an active movement that
drew public attention and approval. Theodore Roosevelt was inclined in
its favor. Woodrow Wilson defied his Secretary of State and backed the
Balfour Declaration for a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
The question became not an abstract but an urgent one in the 1930s and
1940s, by which time U.S. official views came to be colored by the
value of the oil under the sands of Arabia.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had remained almost entirely aloof from
his government's complaisance about the Holocaust, had robust
convictions on the future of the Holy Land. In various
recorded conversations it was clear that he meant to pursue the policy
of establishing an independent Jewish state in all of the remaining
area of Mandate Palestine. That is, all the land west of the Jordan
River should be should be entirely Jewish territory. The Arabs then
resident west of the Jordan would be given generous grants to resettle
in the neighboring Arab regions.
In the event, the decisions on the creation of the State of Israel were
made by Roosevelt's successor Harry S Truman. His writings and recorded
comments reveal a streak of vulgar Judeophobia, but under domestic
pressure he gave U.S. support to the United Nations resolution that
granted Israel a mere 17 percent of Mandate Palestine, and on the
proclamation of the State of Israel he immediately granted its first
formal international recognition.
Since then, in the 57-year-long war of the Arab states to destroy
Israel, a U.S. administration has occasionally assisted Israel with
desperately needed materiel, as did Richard Nixon in the darkest days
of the Yom Kippur War. It has never given military assistance, nor has
any such assistance ever been sought or requested or needed. This is a
striking enough contrast to the nations of Europe, repeatedly rescued
by American forces and perpetually ungrateful.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The role of the United States of America in the creation and survival
of Israel has been unique and inestimable. And this has been of unique
and inestimable value to both.
The value to America of its affinity with Israel is foremost of all
moral and spiritual and ethical. But it may be noted that it has
significant practical advantages as well. Israel is not merely a
protégé, much less a liability. In proportion to
its size and means, it is a partner.
[1] For many years past, economic assistance from the United States to
Israel has been used for Israeli purchases in the United States.
(Equivalent sums go the loudly and mischievously anti-American
government of Egypt. The endless flow of billions of dollars to the PLO
subsidizes terrorism, indoctrination in anti-American as well as
anti-Israel hatred, subversion and graft.)
[2] The existence of a staunch and pro-American Israel in a shaky and
anti-American Middle East is in itself a strategic and tactical
asset. This has been noted by, among others, U.S. Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff and later Secretary of State General
Alexander Haig, and Chairman of the Joints Chief-of-Staff General Omar
Bradley.
[3] Actions that Israel took for its own defense redounded to the
benefit of the United States. Among them:
[a] In 1970, while the United States was
concentrating on Communist threats in Southeast Asia, Israel
forestalled the attempt of Soviet-backed Syria to take over
Jordan. Had that attempt succeeded, Saudi Arabia and other
Arab countries might well have gone next.
[b] In 1981, Israel destroyed the atom-bomb
factory in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At that time, the U.S. administration
of President Ronald Reagan took full part in the international howls of
condemnation. By the time of the U.S. engagements against Iraq in Gulf
War I and Gulf War II, it was thanks to Israel that Saddam Hussein did
not have nuclear weapons. (This benefit did not produce any apology for
the earlier ill-considered condemnations.)
[c] In 1982, Israel destroyed the Soviet Union's supposedly
untouchable anti-aircraft batteries in Lebanon. Israel passed on to the
United States its information on Soviet batteries and how to deal with
them.
[4] During the Soviet-backed Arab aggressions of the Six-Day War in
1967 and Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel captured much Soviet weaponry
and military technology. It passed on samples of Soviet equipment to
the United States, that thereby obtained vastly useful information
about its antagonist and potential enemy in the Cold War.
[5] Israel's highly skilled intelligence services often share their
findings with the United States. Highly-placed U.S. sources estimate
that Israel has thereby contributed more to American security than all
the NATO allies combined.
[6] Since America has been under terrorist attack since 9/11, no other
country has provided more highly advanced technology, equipment, and
experience to enhance security and homeland defense.
[7] Israeli technology, equipment, military innovations and inventions,
and experience have also been utilized by the United States. To the
list now has been added the urgently requested and speedily delivered
devices for protection of American soldiers against terrorist attacks.
[8] Manufacturers of military equipment purchased by Israel from the
United States have made many important improvements in their products
on the basis of Israeli recommendations. These include more than 600
enhancements to the F-15 fighter plane.
[9] Israeli research and innovations in medicine, health care,
agriculture, and high technology are among the most advanced and even
spectacular in the world. [See Issue No. 44]. These are beneficial to
the United States and its people, and to all others who do not prefer
to boycott them.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Public opinion polls may be contradictory and at times tendentious or
slanted. Yet when a variety of professionally-conducted polls
consistently come up with similar results over a long period of time,
they can be taken as statistical weathervanes.
The weathervane points to majority American views on Israel and its
neighbors often at odds not only with U.S. policymakers but also, in
recent times, those of incumbent Israeli governments as well.
Americans by a margin of at least four-to-one disapproved of Sharon's
Run-Out-of-Gaza-and-Expel-the-Jews plan, and perceived it as a reward
to terrorism. The U.S. Administration, in contrast, hailed it as a
"good first step" and expressed confidence that it would bring
democracy and peace.
The American public with equal vehemence opposes the U.S.
Administration demands that Israel quickly surrender more of its own
historic homeland to the PLO.
As many as --
-- 75 percent oppose the creation of a Palestinian State
within the biblical Land of Israel, and anticipate that it would be a
terrorist state bent on the destruction of Israel. They do not share
the U.S. administration's obsession with "birthing" such a state.
-- 77 percent oppose U.S. financial gifts [that is, U.S.
taxpayers' dollars] to the PLO regime.
-- 75 percent favor maintaining or even raising the strength
of U.S.-Israel ties.
-- 86 percent regard Israel as a friendly state and an ally
of the United States.
-- 92 percent regard Israel and the United States as allies
in the war against terrorism.
These views are particularly noteworthy from a public daily exposed to
the anti-Israel bias and distorted reported of the popular news
media, and the anti-Israel and pro-PLO programs of schools
and universities.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The affinity of Israel and America rooted in the Bible, the
Judeo-Christian tradition, and shared traits of character is strong and
thus-far enduring. Yet there are prominent and influential elements in
both societies that go against the grain of this affinity.
These elements, the powers they wield and to what ends, is the planned
topic of the forthcoming Issue No. 59: "Israel and
America: Part II -- Against the Grain".
END
|
