AMERICA AND ISRAEL
Prof. Paul Eidelberg, President Israel-America Renaissance Institute
America and Israel are said to have a "special relationship." To grasp
the essence of this relationship, one has to understand America's as
well as Israel's world-historical function.
America is Exceptional. By virtue of its democratic universalism
America represents to mankind the example of a nation in which diverse
peoples can live together in abiding peace and friendship, and without
negating the particularism of other nations.
This means that America, at its best and to the glory of its Founding
Fathers, is to provide the pragmatic test of various universal laws of
morality embodied in its Declaration of Independence— the "Laws of
Nature and of Nature’s God," the very laws Jews bestowed on America
and mankind via Christianity.
Now, in order for America to represent the one nation in which people
of diverse ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds can thrive in
peace under the same laws and institutions, there must exist, of
logical necessity, a welter of nations having significantly different
ways of life. This being so, America's world-historical function is to
preserve the political independence and integrity of other nations
against any imperialistic power that would obliterate the
particularism of nations by means of any universalist ideology.
America errs profoundly, therefore, when it expects Israel to
subordinate its particularism to the universalism which Israel's own
Torah prescribes for mankind as a whole, the Seven Noahide Laws of
morality. (Incidentally, the failure of the Soviet Union to impose a
universalistic creed on a welter of nations is not a victory of
democracy so much as a victory of nationhood.)
To be more precise: America violates its world-historical function
when it seeks to impose on Israel a set of democratic principles which
can only distort Israel's unique character or hinder Israel's
restoration as the unique commonwealth of the Jewish People.
This is not to denigrate democracy, which has brought many blessings
to humanity. But let us examine this term which countless
intellectuals have thoroughly Americanized and homogenized.
Of Greek origin, "democracy" means the "rule of the people." But what
is a "people"? A people is not a polyglot as in "one-man-one-vote"
America. The essence of peoplehood or nationhood is particularism,
not universalism or humanism. A people must have a distinct ethnic
character or way of life. Whatever the differences among the
individuals composing a people, these will not be as important as
their shared beliefs and values derived from a common past, its
venerable tradition.
A living and vibrant people must have a vivid sense of national
consciousness and even of national pride, sustained by the memory of
national triumphs and tragedies. Therein is the heart of a people's
authenticity and the reason why their government will not readily
bestow on heterogeneous elements dwelling in their midst citizenship
or equal rights unless these elements swear loyalty to, and act in
accordance with, the basic convictions and aspirations of their
benefactors.
Unfortunately, the Zionists who founded the modern State of Israel did
not apply this ethnic implication of democracy. Animated by humanism
and socialism, they had no intention of establishing a government
whose primary goal would be to restore the sovereignty of Judaic law
and institutions in the Land of Israel. Indeed, they sought to purge
Judaism of its particularism. Only then would the Jews become a
"normal" people acceptable to others. Thus did these humanists
(vainly) expect to overcome the scourge of anti-Semitism.
But in seeking to make the Jewish people "normal," these humanists
deprived many Jews of peoplehood—a basic reason why hundreds of
thousands of secular Jews have abandoned Israel for the melting pot of
America.
All honor to the architects of the modern State of Israel; but let us
not conceal their shortcomings. No less than David Ben-Gurion penned
this piece of self-effacing universalism for posterity: "An Arab
should also have the right to be elected President of Israel."
This egalitarianism would be appropriate in America, where any
native-born Arab citizen has a legal right to become president of the
United States. But Israel is supposed to be Jewish; that was the
raison d'être of its reestablishment in 1948. In fact, however,
Israel is so far from being Jewish in Structure as well as in
Statecraft that its prime minister stoops to Arab despots imploring
them to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people!
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