COMMENTARY: Israel attracts endless opinions

(UNDATED)Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, and ever since it has attracted an astonishing number of critics who are obsessed with providing the world’s only Jewish state with an endless stream of unwanted advice, ominous warnings, angry reprimands, or gloomy predictions. Both its friends and enemies have never been shy about telling Israel […]

(UNDATED)Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, and ever since it has attracted an astonishing number of critics who are obsessed with providing the world’s only Jewish state with an endless stream of unwanted advice, ominous warnings, angry reprimands, or gloomy predictions. Both its friends and enemies have never been shy about telling Israel precisely how to behave.

Israel is perpetually on a global psychiatric couch surrounded by condescending therapists, including clergy, diplomats, political leaders, journalists, military strategists, and academics; all of whom proudly proclaim they alone “have the true interests of Israel at heart,” “know what is best for Israel,” or like the late State Department official, George Ball, they simply want “to save Israel in spite of herself.” Such unsolicited counsel usually comes from people who reside hundreds, even thousands of miles from the volatile, dangerous Middle East.

Besides being told what to do by countless “experts,” during its 61 years of independence, Israel has also suffered from two diametrically opposite anti-Jewish stereotypes.


There was the nasty lie that Jews were physical cowards, too weak and passive to be good soldiers or to merit their own state. Purveyors of that ugly canard conveniently forgot that Jews living for centuries in oppressive Christian and Islamic societies were frequently forbidden to own, much less bear arms, even in self-defense when murderous attacks were made upon them. Also overlooked was the fact that more than 1 million Jews –including my father and many uncles and cousins — served in the American and Allied armies during World War II.

But the pejorative image persisted in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion and the 600,000 Jews living in British Mandate for Palestine were warned by some Western geo-political “experts” to defer statehood because the huge Arab armies would crush the nascent Jewish state’s supposedly inept military. Ben-Gurion rejected that counsel and the Israelis confounded critics by winning a bloody war of independence in which they lost 1 percent of their population — the equivalent today of 3,000,000 American combat deaths.

In addition, many American Christian leaders urged Jews to abandon the quest for a state in the biblical homeland. In 1939, when the Nazi anti-Semitic campaign was clear for all to see and when desperate Jews sought to flee Europe, the “Christian Century” magazine carried an article by Daniel Bliss, a prominent American missionary to the Middle East. Bliss wrote it was “Britain’s solemn duty to protect and safeguard the permanent Jewish minority” in the Holy Land. Six years earlier, the magazine urged American Jews to pressure Nazi leaders so Jews could continue to live in Germany rather than embark on the “chimerical scheme” of emigrating to the Mandate for Palestine.

When Israel gained numerous military victories in the decades after 1948, a new, equally false stereotype emerged: ruthless Israeli soldiers. Ben-Gurion was pressured to make concessions regarding independence because Jews couldn’t or wouldn’t fight, but today’s Israeli leadership is being pressured to give in to the one-sided demands of its enemies who have publicly called for Israel’s physical destruction because the Jewish state is “so powerful militarily.”

History is turned on its head. First, because Jews are ridiculed as cowards and told that they can not have a state of their own. And now, because Israel has a strong military, it must make unilateral concessions for the sake of regional stability and world peace.

A double standard is used when describing alleged Israeli human rights violations. Like every other state including the U.S., Israel is imperfect in many areas of its national life, and it readily acknowledges its shortcomings. But when critics, including Christian leaders, unfairly single out Israel for criticism, they weaken their professed concern for justice and equity.


Before critics unjustly tar and condemn Israel with a double standard of judgment, they would do well to follow the biblical commandment to “do no unrighteousness in judgment…just balances, just weights…shall you have” (Lev. 19:36).

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

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