Past, Present, And Future

Arnold Toynbee, British historian (and well-known anti-semite: his most notable views expressed after the Holocaust were condemnations of Zionism and Israel for “the vicious disease of nationalism” and for committing atrocities on the Arabs, in addition to numerous references to “Judaic zealotry”) amazed by the longevity of the Jewish People, viewed it as anomalous. In volume 1 of A Study of History (1934), he wrote:

“There remains the case where victims of religious discrimination represent an extinct society which only survives as a fossil. .... by far the most notable is one of the fossil remnants of the Syriac Society, the Jews."

“Fossil” was one of the less pejorative terms Toynbee used, but Ezekial's prophecy was more accurate than Toynbee's history:

“I prophesied as I was commanded and the spirit entered them [the bones which represented Israel] and they revived. They rose on their feet, a very great multitude.”

That spirit has reentered the Jewish People, but the world is not happy about it.

Toynbee's bias, though shared by much of the world, was not universal. Eric Hoffer wrote,

“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”

Earlier, Mark Twain had written

"If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race.  It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way.  Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of.  He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.”

“The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.

“The Jew saw them all [and] survived them all.”

And even earlier, our first (and arguably our greatest) President wrote of the Jew

“May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

But I am afraid.

Since its founding, the United States has had what can only be viewed as a sympathetic relationship with the State of Israel, and one that is mutually beneficial. And there has been a great deal of identification with Israel by the American public. In Gallup Polls, there has been a consistent preference shown by our citizens for Israel over the Palestinians, with the edge shown in 2013 as 64% to 12%.

Foreign policy, however, reflects the preferences of the President, rather than the people. During World War II, the Roosevelt Administration denied Jews on the St. Louis the opportunity to save their lives by entering the United States, and Roosevelt refused to bomb the railroads leading to Auschwitz – another course that would have saved Jewish Lives. On the other had, his successor, Harry Truman, recognized the State of Israel only a few minutes after it was proclaimed.

When Israel, in response to the request of Britain and France, joined in the effort to retake the Suez Canal after Nasser nationalized it, President Eisenhower threatened sanctions. But more recent Presidents have been increasingly sympathetic to Israel and have supported it. As Lord Palmerston said, however, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” In our country, those “interests” are decided on by the President, and our current President has decided that it is in our interest to side with Israel's enemies. As the President's Secretary of State put it, "We are gathered here because our leaders made a courageous decision to stop being prisoners of history." He spoke of Cuba, but it has been a hallmark of this administration to ignore past principles and seek “courageous decisions” which the President hopes will form a heritage for him. Agreements with Iran and other tyrannies in the Middle East, he feels, are among the “permanent interests” of our country. Our people's views and our history are irrelevant. Whether or not that history is principled, it is now inconvenient.

Perhaps the policy reflects his personal worldview, or perhaps it reflects a changing world – one in which the Muslim population, already very large, is increasing faster than others, a world in which there is extensive anti-Israel sentiment everywhere (especially among academics and their students), where antisemitism, one the world's few constants, is increasing in strength, as is the need for oil.

Our adherence to Palmerston's philosophy, however, is likely to make our other “friends” and “allies” nervous, since we have demonstrated that we place expedience over principle; we can't be trusted. And if Israel cannot rely on its most trusted ally, I am worried.