Let us be straight and honest for just a moment. It is profoundly presumptuous for Mr. Obama, Ms. Clinton, and other United States officials of varying ranks to tell the world just how Israel must behave, to tell Israel how it must behave. Frankly, we did not ask for their opinions.
The argument sounds reasonable enough. The US funnels untold billions upon billions of dollars into Israel. They sell (or give) Israel weapons, fighter planes, and heaps of other destructive technology. The US profoundly jeopardizes its own international alliances and popularity with its ongoing loyalty to Israel, defending Israel for the most unpopular maneuvers and strategies in the stickiest of situations. Much of the world hatred and resentment of the US, where that is the dominant sentiment, couches itself in the claim that the US is too protective of Israel. On the global scene, the US has unquestionably been the greatest friend to the modern state of Israel since its founding.
But on what authority does the US dictate to Israel how to manage its land, where it may build, and where it is bidden to dismantle communities, neighborhoods, or even single buildings? As the argument goes, leaving aside the speculative issue of motivation, the US is concerned for the rights of the Palestinian people to live their own lives in their own land. After all, these people have been living in this land for untold centuries. What’s more, the same United Nations partition plan that paved the way for Israel’s statehood also called for a Palestinian state at its side. Israel’s population of territories not held before 1967 threaten and compromise the autonomy of these people. That’s the claim. But in this regard, the United States’ assumed moral authority is actually quite absurd.
To put things in perspective, consider someone ordering the US to liquidate San Antonio, Santa Fe, or Phoenix. After all, the Southwest was won in what was widely considered an offensive expansionist war, the territory seized from those who had lived there for centuries or millennia before the Caucasian Europeans overran them. Actually, the Southwest is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire continental US was forged in this manner. Millions of Native Americans were unceremoniously forced from their lands and homes; programmatically assimilated and slaughtered; and essentially erased; all in the name of Manifest Destiny. Put simply, the US was built on the cemetery of the once rich culture of the Native American peoples, insultingly ruined and reduced to the fate of casinos and reservations. And this was perpetrated by Europeans who, three hundred years earlier, didn't even know that North America existed! But no one would take seriously a motion to shut down Cleveland or return Boston.
And yet, with all the bitter irony and hypocrisy in the US purporting to be the international arbiter of morality, there is a much more fundamental issue at play. The right of the Jewish people to live in Israel does not originally emanate from UN resolutions or US support. This right comes from the divine covenant recorded in Jewish tradition.
The claim to divine right, however, is not a free pass. When Abraham was first settling himself in the land (Genesis 13), Tradition asserts that he kept his animals muzzled as he passed through fields that he did not own. Although the land was promised to his descendants, it was not yet his. Grazing on others’ properties was nothing short of theft. Generations later, the people of Israel sent spies into Canaan and listened to their pessimistic appraisal of their chances in the land. When they squandered their chance to enter straightaway, a band of determined Israelites attempted their own conquest (Numbers 14). But without divine guidance and protection, they were doomed.
What is this divine right? The land is provisionally delivered into the hands of the people with the understanding that they will honor its sacred trust. It is meant to be a bastion of divine worship and a haven of divine justice. “You must observe my statutes and laws and do not perform any of these abominations, the citizen and the foreigner among you. For all these abominations, the people of the land before you performed, and the land was defiled. And the land shall not purge you for your having defiled it, as it defiled the nation that was before you” (Leviticus 18:26-28). “Do not corrupt the land in which you live, for the blood will corrupt the land...” (Numbers 35:33).
As uncomfortable and unfamiliar as it may be to acknowledge it, Israel’s subsistence, prosperity, and enormous relative success over 61 years are pure functions of divine gift. The stability and security of the Jewish people in the State of Israel depends on providential guidance, without which, no amount of US support will make a bit of difference.
Ultimately, our domestic policy, our foreign policy, and our defense policy will benefit greatly from a simple realization. Israel does not belong to the US; it is not a colony. But the land does not belong to us either, insofar as allowing us to rule it by our own whims and inclinations. The land belongs to the Creator, and He has entrusted us to sanctify it.
The argument sounds reasonable enough. The US funnels untold billions upon billions of dollars into Israel. They sell (or give) Israel weapons, fighter planes, and heaps of other destructive technology. The US profoundly jeopardizes its own international alliances and popularity with its ongoing loyalty to Israel, defending Israel for the most unpopular maneuvers and strategies in the stickiest of situations. Much of the world hatred and resentment of the US, where that is the dominant sentiment, couches itself in the claim that the US is too protective of Israel. On the global scene, the US has unquestionably been the greatest friend to the modern state of Israel since its founding.
But on what authority does the US dictate to Israel how to manage its land, where it may build, and where it is bidden to dismantle communities, neighborhoods, or even single buildings? As the argument goes, leaving aside the speculative issue of motivation, the US is concerned for the rights of the Palestinian people to live their own lives in their own land. After all, these people have been living in this land for untold centuries. What’s more, the same United Nations partition plan that paved the way for Israel’s statehood also called for a Palestinian state at its side. Israel’s population of territories not held before 1967 threaten and compromise the autonomy of these people. That’s the claim. But in this regard, the United States’ assumed moral authority is actually quite absurd.
To put things in perspective, consider someone ordering the US to liquidate San Antonio, Santa Fe, or Phoenix. After all, the Southwest was won in what was widely considered an offensive expansionist war, the territory seized from those who had lived there for centuries or millennia before the Caucasian Europeans overran them. Actually, the Southwest is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire continental US was forged in this manner. Millions of Native Americans were unceremoniously forced from their lands and homes; programmatically assimilated and slaughtered; and essentially erased; all in the name of Manifest Destiny. Put simply, the US was built on the cemetery of the once rich culture of the Native American peoples, insultingly ruined and reduced to the fate of casinos and reservations. And this was perpetrated by Europeans who, three hundred years earlier, didn't even know that North America existed! But no one would take seriously a motion to shut down Cleveland or return Boston.
And yet, with all the bitter irony and hypocrisy in the US purporting to be the international arbiter of morality, there is a much more fundamental issue at play. The right of the Jewish people to live in Israel does not originally emanate from UN resolutions or US support. This right comes from the divine covenant recorded in Jewish tradition.
The claim to divine right, however, is not a free pass. When Abraham was first settling himself in the land (Genesis 13), Tradition asserts that he kept his animals muzzled as he passed through fields that he did not own. Although the land was promised to his descendants, it was not yet his. Grazing on others’ properties was nothing short of theft. Generations later, the people of Israel sent spies into Canaan and listened to their pessimistic appraisal of their chances in the land. When they squandered their chance to enter straightaway, a band of determined Israelites attempted their own conquest (Numbers 14). But without divine guidance and protection, they were doomed.
What is this divine right? The land is provisionally delivered into the hands of the people with the understanding that they will honor its sacred trust. It is meant to be a bastion of divine worship and a haven of divine justice. “You must observe my statutes and laws and do not perform any of these abominations, the citizen and the foreigner among you. For all these abominations, the people of the land before you performed, and the land was defiled. And the land shall not purge you for your having defiled it, as it defiled the nation that was before you” (Leviticus 18:26-28). “Do not corrupt the land in which you live, for the blood will corrupt the land...” (Numbers 35:33).
As uncomfortable and unfamiliar as it may be to acknowledge it, Israel’s subsistence, prosperity, and enormous relative success over 61 years are pure functions of divine gift. The stability and security of the Jewish people in the State of Israel depends on providential guidance, without which, no amount of US support will make a bit of difference.
Ultimately, our domestic policy, our foreign policy, and our defense policy will benefit greatly from a simple realization. Israel does not belong to the US; it is not a colony. But the land does not belong to us either, insofar as allowing us to rule it by our own whims and inclinations. The land belongs to the Creator, and He has entrusted us to sanctify it.
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