The Importance of Israel

The Forward ^ | 10-5-2001 | editorial

[Masada]

Disaster doesn't always bring out the best in us.

Sometimes, tragically, it brings out the worst. A case in point: the finger-pointing in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, seeking to blame the atrocities on America's supposedly misguided support for Israel — and on Jewish Americans who supposedly manipulate the system to tilt our policy the wrong way.

No, it's not a national groundswell. You hear it mainly on the margins, and if past experience is a guide, it will stay there. Still, the variety and persistence of the finger-pointers is startling: left-wing professors in California, right-wing fanatics in Idaho, Arab-American activists in Michigan, smart-alec journalists in New York. There's enough of it to be worrying.

In reply, important voices are being raised from within the Jewish community, declaring that the attacks and the hatred behind them have nothing to do with America's support for Israel. Osama bin Laden and his ilk are motivated, we are reminded, by larger, more global issues: suspicion of modernity, secularism, democracy and the Western civilization that champions them. On the policy plane, his passion is driving American troops off the holy soil of Arabia. Israel isn't on his screen, except perhaps tangentially, as one more example of the West's corrupting influence.

The fact is, things are a bit more complicated than that. Bin Laden and his allies are driven, above all, by an extremist version of fundamentalist Islam. And Islam, as many of those same defenders of Israel have noted countless times, regards the mere existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East as a cardinal theological challenge. Indeed, pessimists in the pro-Israel community have been pointing for decades to the power of Islam's territorial imperative as a reason to dismiss Israel-Arab peacemaking as impossibly naïve. It's hard to see how that reading squares with the notion that the world's most dangerously fanatical Islamist just isn't interested in Israel.

But we needn't search the theology texts to divine bin Laden's motives. He's spelled them out repeatedly in various public statements. He's on a self-declared holy war against "Crusaders and Jews," with a three-fold goal: "liberating" Mecca and the rest of Arabia from American "occupation," "liberating" Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem from Jewish "occupation" and lifting the Western embargo on Iraq. They're always stated in that three-fold form, and usually in that order.

The fact is, Israel is one of the issues, though not the only one, driving bin Laden and his cohorts. It is foolish to deny it; that merely undermines the credibility of Israel's defenders at a time when Israel sorely needs defending. The best defense is always the truth.

And the truth is that America and Israel are allies, not because of some cabal of Jewish lobbyists, but because their two peoples demand it. America's support for Israel is not misguided, but profoundly moral. America and Israel share a deep community of values. They are partners in the democratic enterprise, cities on a hill devoted to something larger than themselves. Both are imperfect, at times painfully so. Both become impatient when their imperfections are pointed out. Still, both are societies striving to represent the better nature of humankind, and for that reason they deserve defending.

If America's defense of her values sometimes puts her on the firing line, then that's the right place to be. That's not a hard case to make. Most Americans, like most Israelis, understand it instinctively.

[Michael2001]

"But for a democracy to enjoy the principled support of the U.S. and its taxpayers, don't you think it would be nice if everyone born there -- not just Jews -- had a right to vote?"

Funny. I lived in Israel, I'm not Jewish, and I got to vote, go figure.

[marbren]

It is not about individuals it is about nations. All individuals are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. God says Israel is a stubborn and rebelious people, hence their 4000 year history. He does not choose them for who they are but because of who He is. God keeps his promises. My point is If the Nation USA wants to be blessed we should bless Israel, that is how GOD set it up. I myself know that I am saved even if the USA isn't.

[marbren]

God knows who Israel is.

[dennisw]

What do you know about G_d? NOTHING! What nation were you born in. Some Muslim rathole?

[looky]

Hmmm..hard to understand your logic. If one doesn't agree with some Israeli policy, they are automatically an anti-Semite ? If so, then there are many anti semites within the Israeli Government..

[Lent]

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[Zviadist]

You have an "eliminate Israel and our Muslim problems will end" bug up yer ass.

Oh yeah? On what do you base this imbecilic assumption? You seem to me to have a "I am the great mind-reader and YOU-must-be-an-Israel-hater-because-you-don't-agree-with-everything-I-say" bug up your ass.

[11bravo]

Your assertion that the territory known as Israel "Belongs" to the Jews is preposterous!. There has been continouos human (and prehuman) for nearly 500,000 years before Abraham wandered in from Iraq. A scholar once said that the only people to have never conquored and occupied Israel is the Japanese and the Cherokee, but history isn't done yet. Nearly everyone on the planet has an equal claim to the area. To claim some sort of spiritual exclusivity is the height of conceit!

[Big Bunyip]

If the only authority you can quote is Pat "send me your money" Robertson, you're not quoting an authority at all -- just a sleazebag whitened sepulchre with a slick spiel for sucking money out of morons.