(Dobbs) It’s Not Just Israel On Trial. It’s Jews.
If Israel is guilty of excesses, it's not the only one.
Israel has never behaved the way the world wants it to. That has never been truer than it is today. Israel has always felt that if it placated public opinion, it might not survive. That too has never been truer than it is today.
We can debate the decisions Israel makes in its own interest, particularly now. We can debate what that interest is, and ought to be. We can debate the humanity of its campaign to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth, when so many Palestinians perish in the process, especially after today’s catastrophic chaos around the distribution of aid. It is a debate that Israel right now is losing, and whose costs will plague it for years to come.
What we cannot debate is that Israel has always been on the defensive, because the Jewish people have always been on the defensive. Not just against Arab terrorists they’re battling now whose very charter calls for the eradication of Jews. Not just against Arab nations whose focus for decades was on the annihilation of the Jewish nation. Not just against the Nazi war machine that tried to exterminate the Jews, from whose ashes the Jewish state was born.
The fact is, Jews have been on the defensive for more than 2,000 years, even before the death of Christ but especially since the death of Christ. There have been millennia of prejudice against the Jews. It was eternalized in early Christendom, when the Book of Matthew in the New Testament said that a Jewish crowd demanded Jesus’s crucifixion and declared, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” A Pew Research survey ten years ago showed that a quarter of Americans believed that Jews were responsible for Christ’s death. The prejudice of people worldwide never disappeared.
Samuel Clemons, aka Mark Twain, used to be one of them. As Michael Feldberg of the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom wrote for the Jewish Virtual Library, a project at England’s Cambridge University, “In his youth, Twain held the same negative stereotypes of Jews that his neighbors embraced— that they were all acquisitive, cowardly and clannish. Hannibal, Missouri, his hometown, had only one Jewish family, the Levys, and Twain joined in hazing the young Levy sons.”
But he had a change of heart, and at the very end of the 19th Century wrote an essay in Harper’s magazine with the title, “Concerning the Jews.” As Israel fights to stave off condemnation today from much of the world, Clemons’s words— which I have abridged— are worth repeating.
“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.
“He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone.
“The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains.”
He will likely remain beyond the ruinous war against Hamas. But as Tom Friedman wrote this week in The New York Times, “Israel’s very legitimacy is being undermined by the enormous casualties in Gaza.” In a commentary titled “Israel Is Losing Its Greatest Asset: Acceptance,” he points out the ways in which the Jewish state is singled out: “Each day brings new calls for Israel to be banned from international academic, artistic, and athletic competitions or events. That so much of it is hypocritical in singling out Israel for censure— while ignoring the excesses of Iran, Russia, Syria and China, not to mention Hamas— is true.”
But in the court of public opinion right now, the excesses of neither Iran, Russia, Syria, China— or even Hamas, nearly four months after it staged its massacre— are on trial. Israel’s are, and after all the people killed and wounded today, the charges loom larger than ever. However, it’s not just Israel on trial. It’s Jews. That’s what hasn’t changed, and if the history of millennia is any guide, it never will.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
“It never will”
Am Yisroael chai!
Well said Gregg, and it needed to be said.
Sadly, this has been true since the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in 586 BC and exiled the Jews to Babylonia. And the Hypocrisy of the nations of the world and many of its peoples continues against the Jews today. The latest event in Gaza illustrates this point by the so called "mainstream media" immediately accepting as fact that Israeli soldiers fired upon and killed some one hundred Gazans (men, women and children) as they stormed needed supply trucks. Now, as the dust settled reports and evidence is showing that Israeli soldiers did not fire on the crowds. ( See, https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1709240166-new-evidence-spokesperson-says-idf-did-not-fire-on-gaza-aid-convoy). I am always amazed at how news from Gaza that only comes from Hamas authorities is presented as fact and when Israel says something it seems it is always questioned or challenged and presented as 'alleged by or according to Israel.' The bombing of the Hospital Gaza is another example where Hamas spokespeople said not only did Israel bomb the hospital, but over 100 people, mostly women and children were killed. And the US and international news outlets ran with it not even saying alleged. Now we know it was actually a misfired Hamas rocket that landed and exploded in the hospital parking lot killing and wounded two dozen Gazans.
Mark Twain was right. And it is still true today over 120 years later, when you would think people would know better. But hatred and prejudice are usually not associated with truth, facts or enlightenment.