Britannia Radio

Hatred of Israel and of Jews: Why?

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

 

In view of the hatred of Israel and of Jews raging abroad, even in liberal America, I felt obliged to republish an article I wrote on the subject in 2004.

 

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Ask almost any Jew, “Why Does the World Hate Israel?” and he will say:  “Because Israel is a Jewish state.”  Wrong!  The world hates Israel precisely because Israel is NOT a Jewish state!  This is what we learn from the Sages.

 

Israel-bashing is God’s way of reminding Jews they are Jews.  It’s His way of admonishing Jews when they have strayed from the Torah, cluing them that they need to get their house in order—in this case, making their state Jewish.

 

Let’s face some seldom-faced facts.  Without impugning the religious sentiments of one or two Israeli prime ministers—I have especially Menachem Begin in mind—every government of Israel, despite the participation of religious parties, has been dominated by agnostics or practical atheists.  No government of Israel has pursued, as its paramount objective, the goal of making Israel a Torah-oriented state (which would require interfacing Torah with science).   

 

We live in an age of science, but nothing is less rational and less Jewish than the way Israel forms its government.  With the Book of Books in mind, take a glance at Israel’s governing institutions.  Does the Torah prescribe a pluralexecutive consisting of rival political parties?  “There can be but one leader for a [people] and not two” (Deut. 31:7; and see Sanhedrin 8a).  Does the Torah prescribe a legislature or a judiciary whose membership is based on whim and includes non-Jews?  “Select for yourselves men who are wise, understanding, and known to your tribes and I will confirm them as your leaders” (Deut. 1:13).

 

Institutions aside, who ever heard of a Torah-oriented government yielding Jewish land to a foreign entity, indeed, to a gang of terrorists?   That’s Oslo, concocted by a government diametrically opposed to a Jewish state.  And who ever heard of deporting Jews from their homes as proposed by the government of Ariel Sharon?  And you call this a Jewish state?!

 

Do you know that the government of this so-called Jewish state has deliberately pursued a policy that allows Arab terrorists to murder an “acceptable” number of Jews?   It’s called the policy of “self-restraint” [embraced by Netanyahu in 1996 and by the same Netanyahu today]. 

 

To simplify matters, let us say that this policy was initiated by the government when the Oslo War erupted on September 29, 2000.  But Oslo and the Oslo war and the resulting worldwide explosion of Jew-hatred would not have occurred if Israel were a Jewish state!

 

Let’s stay with Oslo for a moment.  The explosion of anti-Semitism would not have occurred had the government immediately eliminated Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA) and its terrorist network in one swift and devastating blow as it could and should have done once Oslo was violated.  Do you know when Oslo was violated?  How about September 14, 1993, the day afterYitzhak Rabin and Yasser shook hands on the White House lawn?  Yes, and virtually every day since then! 

 

By not abrogating Oslo and destroying the PA, Israel’s government enabled that terrorist organization to accumulate more and deadlier weapons, which obviously prolonged the war.  Had the PA been utterly uprooted, there would have been no weekly video displays [abroad] of the government’s intermittent retaliations against terrorist attacks, with the inevitable “collateral damage” that has inflamed worldwide anti-Semitism.  There would have been no CNN and BBC coverage of “Operation Defensive Shield” in Jenin, for the PA would not have had the opportunity to develop bomb factories in that city.  There would have been no incitement of Arabs via the Palestinian media because such media would have been shut down.  All these (and other) violations of theOslo Accords would not have occurred, and a generation of Arabs children would not have been brainwashed to emulate suicide bombers if Israel were in reality a Jewish state.  Therein is the unknown but underlying cause of worldwide Israel-bashing.

 

And this Israel-bashing is not going to stop so long as Israel is not a Jewish state.  It’s not going to stop so long as Israel has prime ministers who do not think and act like Torah-oriented Jews.  I’m not talking about being “religious.”   The illustrious Rabbi Raphael Samson Hirsch has said that the word “religion” is the greatest obstacle to an understanding of Judaism.  The great Maimonides and other Medieval Jewish philosophers did not regard Judaism as a “religion” but as an all-comprehensive truth-system, else they could not prefer Judaism over its “competitors” on rational grounds.   Maimonides makes it clear in The Guide of the Perplexed that science is the only path to the knowledge of God.

 

A Jewish state will of course have certain aspects that may be called “religious.”  But a truly Jewish state will manifest, above all, the convergence of Torah and science.  When this convergence becomes a reality—when the Torah shines forth from Zion—then and then only will the world cease to hate Israel and turn with reverence toward Jerusalem.

 

 

Post Script February 10, 2010

 

According to the Gaon (the genius) of Vilna, “To the extent that one lacks knowledge of the properties of the natural forces [hence of natural science], he will lack one hundred-fold in the wisdom of the Torah.” (To understand even this sentence requires deep knowledge.) It has been said by one of his disciples that the Gaon mastered the “Seven Wisdoms” of science that included mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, engineering, pharmacology and medicine, musicology, parapsychology, and the brain sciences. With the rebirth of Israel, we are approaching this confluence of knowledge. It is in this light that we are to understand the current storm of Jew-hatred and the frantic maledictions from Iran about wiping Israel off the map. Israel was created to relate God’s praise (Isaiah 43:21)—His infinite wisdom, power, and graciousness in every domain of existence.  But lo and behold: Israel, far from being a light unto the nations has become a black hole.  No wonder we’re hated by the nations. One Israeli government after another has been betraying God!