Selling our Soul

Yehezkel Dror is the founding president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a professor emeritus of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a recipient of the Israel Prize and a member of the Winograd commission of inquiry into Israel’s war with Hezbollah in 2006. He’s also the man who ruined my day a week ago. That latter is the least of his sins.

In a Forward column of May 23 he opines that “when the survival of the Jewish people conflicts with the morals of the Jewish people, is existence worthwhile or even possible?” And then he answers his own question: “Physical existence…must come first. No matter how moral a society aspires to be, physical existence must take precedent…realpolitik should be given priority [over morality]…Regrettably, human history refutes the idealistic claim that in order to exist for long, a state, society or people has to be moral…The calculus of realpolitik gives primacy to existence, leaving limited room for ethical considerations.”

Realpolitik is a term coined by Otto von Bismarck. It is best exemplified in a speech he made to the Prussian Landtag (parliament) in September 1862, shortly after his appointment as Chancellor. The king wanted to make Prussia a military state; the Landtag objected. Bismarck, soon to be known as the Iron Chancellor (he spoke metaphorically of his iron fist inside a velvet glove) told a parliamentary committee that “The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power … Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided…but by blood and iron.” And Bismarck was true to his word. He fabricated a war against Denmark, and another against Austria and a third against France and the blood flowed and the iron ripped into bellies and Germany was united under Prussian militarism. And then it brought about the First World War and then the Second World War. The Germans have finally learned that when you abandon morality for realpolitik you get neither.

Dror continues: “Let us leave aside reliance on transcendental arguments, biblical commands and sayings of the sages…” To which I ask, “And still be Jews?” Is such possible? Without morality, we, the weakest people on the planet would be doomed to wander, eking our way through history without contributing anything to world culture. Israel surviving without morality as its life’s blood would be a Jewish Golem, an artificial body without a soul; it would be as a hollow tree, surviving until the axe-man comes for firewood. This is what we want?

Dror continues by offering what philosophers call a reduction ad absurdum; a false choice that we must chose morality or survival. I don’t know if the Jewish people are unique in this, but one thing that’s maintained our status as a lamp unto the nations is that historically (maybe because there’s been so little choice) Jews have opted for the moral high ground that Dror so facilely would have us surrender.

One more point: “But at the end of the day,” Dror tells us, “there is no way around the tough and painful practical implications of prioritizing existence as an overriding moral norm over being moral in other respects. When important for existence, violating the rights of others should be accepted, with regret but with determination.” I imagine that these very words are the ones muttered by Ahmed as he straps the plastique onto the torso of Abdul whose assignment is to go to the local pizzeria in Tel Aviv.

Enough of Dror. The same issue of the Forward has an article by Gideon Levy of Haaretz. He wants Americans to stay out of Israel’s politics. He especially wants rich Americans such as Morris Talansky not to bribe Israeli politicians such as Ehud Olmert. “Leave us alone. Take your hands off Israel. Stop using your money to buy influence in Israel. Stop contributing to advance your interests and views, some of which are at times delusionary and extremely dangerous to the future of the country you’re supposedly trying to protect.” In other words, Israel is capable of taking the high ground; the realpolitik of the politician who contaminates the morality of the State and his foreign investor is, or will be, the ruin of the nation. Good for Levy.

Is there a local angle here? You bet there is. Our Jewish Federation, the organization that publishes this newspaper, has made a grievous error. We have squandered the high moral ground for $30,000. We have taken the advice of Dror and rejected the wisdom of Levy. I refer, of course, to our recent participation with the Reverend John Hagee, the selfsame who declared that the Holocaust was God’s way of removing the Jews from Europe and resettling the survivors in Palestine. The same Reverend John Hagee who calls the Catholic Church the Great Whore which has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history. The same Reverend Hagee who announced that he knew that Katrina struck New Orleans when it did with such devastating force because there was a scheduled gay pride march which the hurricane prevented. When John McCain learned of the God works through Hitler blasphemy he renounced Hagee’s endorsement and in the process stood to lose 2,000,000 potential votes, for thus is the impact of Mr. Hagee. We went to an event in Seekonk where at an Evangelical church (I know nothing of the politics of this church or its minister) we received a check for $30,000 made out to a hospital in Jerusalem which we immediately gave to Rabbi Jonathan Hausman of Stoughton, Massachusetts who will forward it to Alyn Hospital. What were we doing there? Didn’t we know the money was tainted by Hagee’s presence? For $30,000 we gave the man credibility at the cost of our own? As Gideon Levy would say, “Leave us alone. Take your hands off Israel. Stop using your money to buy influence in Israel. Stop contributing to advance your interests and views, some of which are at times delusionary and extremely dangerous to the future of the country you’re supposedly trying to protect.” To which I say, Amen.

Religious World Thhrough an Athesitic Prism

I’ve just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. His thesis is two-fold—religion is the work of man, not of divine origin (and it’s used to exploit the fearful) and, as the subtitle suggests, it has no redeeming value; in fact it’s poison. Nu? So what do I think? The first part of the thesis is obviously true on the face of things. Of course religion is the work of man (which should not be read as a denial of the existence of God). People have known this since time immemorial or at least since the Greeks began to think about things. Xenophanes of Colophon (570-480 BCE) noticed that the gods of the “Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair.” The second part of the thesis is more problematic. “Everything” includes a lot of things. Can religion really poison them all? Well, Pope Alexander VI is a well known example of someone who did, in fact, use poison, but Hitchens doesn’t even bother to mention him, though he does include in his rogues’ gallery of examples such icons as Mother Teresa and Mohandas Gandhi.

What are we, the religious people of the world, to make of this? The simple answer is to point out all the errors of fact that mar Hitchens’ work. At some point I started to take account. My dozen examples may be his only gaffs, or the tip of the iceberg; in any event his credibility is undermined. (Examples: William Jennings Bryan was three times—not twice the Democratic candidate for president; scholars believe Jesus was born in 4 BCE, not 4 CE.) We could point to the ethics religions (whether man-made or divine in origin) provide to help guide lives honestly and productively. But he has an answer to that, two in fact. One is the obvious rejoinder that you don’t need religion to have ethics. Atheists and agnostics are potentially as ethical as religious people (and have never burned the religious at the stake). They believe in a natural law perhaps, not a revealed one. And secondly, he asks, are religious people all that ethical? Some are, but remember Alexander VI, and the recent Catholic priests’ sexual abuse scandal, and the Orthodox rabbi who cheated old people in his nursing home. Need I go on?

David Klinghoffer in his valedictory column in the Forward defends religion, Judaism specifically. (I really hate to see him go; Noam Neusner, like his famous father, a former Providentian, is the new conservative voice on the op-ed page, but I’d gotten used to Klinghoffer. Who else could be so wrong so often? Young Mr. Neusner has big shoes to fill.) In this final column Klinghoffer manages to equate liberalism with Hitlerism, a form of journalistic legerdemain unmatched since Goebbles defended Germany’s invasion of Yugoslavia with his famous three lie sentence: “Peace loving Germany was viciously attacked by war mongering Yugoslavia.” To Klinghoffer, while Hitler didn’t believe humans could overcome their nature, real Jews do, but Libels don’t, so liberals are like Hitler. I’m really sorry to see him go. Doesn’t he know that liberals are really Commie Pinkos who are secretly trying to undermine the country? Every Rush Limbaugh Conservative knows that. Klinghoffer argues that liberals believe in gay marriage and handing out condoms in schools since gays and students are simply acting according to their nature and their hormones. Ah, but the Jewish sages have for a thousand years taught that to overcome our nature is why God put us on earth. To this Hitchens would ask: The Great Intelligent Designer gave us hormones and instincts only so that we could suppress them? I add—And give untold business to Freud and his?

In a recent New York Times op-ed piece Edward Luttwak discusses apostasy as viewed by Islam. Those who think that as the son of an African Muslim Obama will be in a better position to negotiate with Muslims are sadly mistaken. Because his father was a Muslim, Islam considers him to be a Muslim despite his father’s having renounced the religion, and despite his own conscious decision to become a Christian. The punishment for this backsliding is beheading by a cleric. It’s worse than murder as the victim’s family can forgive the murderer, but God and Islam can never forgive the apostate. Hitchens would ask where, exactly, in this scenario is the benefit of religion to society? I wonder myself.

Uzis at the Ready?

The questions of the day are two. Here’s the first: Who would like to see a viable peace in the Middle East with Arabs and Jews living harmoniously in nations side-by-side? Raise your hands. Let’s see, there’s one, two, ten, a thousand, one hundred million, two hundred million.

Now the second question: How many think this will occur in your lifetime? One, two, three, ten, fifteen, sixteen...seventeen......that’s it? I grant, this is not the most scientific of polls, but is there any evidence at all that Arab leaders really want peace with Israel? Hamas leaders? Hezbollah leaders? Syrian leaders? Has peace been possible since 1948? Yes. Has peace been achieved? No. (Well, “yes” if one counts Jordan and Egypt but “no” once those governments are toppled by Islamic fundamentalists.)

So, Happy Birthday Israel. Keep your Uzis close at hand.

In recent days former president Carter has visited leaders of Hamas and declared that they seek peace. This was immediately contradicted by leaders of Hamas. Love or loathe him, Carter is not stupid. So if he said “yes” and they said “no,” it’s obvious that Hamas set him up for a fall. They betrayed their own advocate. Can we expect them to honor their (former) foe?

Last week there was complaint from Palestinians about President Bush’s up-coming trip to Israel to celebrate its sixtieth birthday. He’s already met with Mahmoud Abbas, president of... (well, I’m not sure what. “The Palestinian Authority” is his official title, but he seems to have only a little authority over Palestinians in the West Bank and none at all in Gaza.) Bush said after the meetings that he “remained confident that talks could produce parameters for a Palestinian state.” (OK, another poll: Raise your hands if you know what that means? Seeing none, we’ll proceed.) The president of the United States went on to say, “I assured the president that a Palestinian state’s a high priority for me and my administration: a viable state, a state that doesn’t look like Swiss cheese, a state that provides hope. I’m confident we can achieve the definition of a state.” Achieve the definition of a state? Can a man whose goals are so nebulous be expected to accomplish anything? Does he even have the vaguest idea of what he hopes to accomplish? And was it necessary to insult Helvetians in the bargain? Abbas (who, as a former top aide of Yassir Arafat must be used to double-talk) responded graciously, praising Mr. Bush for “seeking a true, genuine and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

The two presidents are scheduled to meet again in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, not in Ramallah, the temporary capital of Greater Palestine (until all of Jerusalem can be liberated). My guess is that this is less an overt insult to the Palestinians than an imperative imposed by the Secret Service. “It’s a slap in the face,” said Dianna Buttu, a former negotiator for Abbas. Bush is “saying to the Palestinians ‘You have no history, and your past does not matter.’ He’s not visiting a refugee camp, he’s not meeting survivors of the forced expulsion.” Mustafa Barghouti, a former Palestinian information minister chimed in: “The lack of sensitivity to this matter is very prominent. Forty-eight was, of course, the date when Israel was created but it’s also a very sad date for Palestinians who were dispossessed from their lands. It’s a very deep scar in Palestinian life.”

Does anybody out there see any hope for peace in any of this? Deep scars of the political and emotional kind do not heal. They get infected when palliative measures are not sought, when those who bear the scars prefer to let them fester to prove a point rather than take steps to heal the wounds. Those refugee camps are still in place because Israel wants them? Bush should go to Israel to honor its
60th birthday and also commiserate with the Palestinians? This makes sense to someone?

How many times could there have been peace in the Middle East? Let me count the ways. After 1948, after 1956, after 1967, after 1973, after Oslo, after Madrid, after Camp David, during the Clinton initiative. Is there anything now, other than a one state solution that would return all of Palestine (from the River to the Sea) to the Palestinians that can bring about peace? A peace devoutly to be wished by anti-Zionists everywhere.

Happy Birthday, Israel. Keep your Uzis at the ready.