Refuting the Anti-Israel Narrative by Jeremy Havardi

Author:Jeremy Havardi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2016-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Moral Justification

It sounds odd to argue that there is a moral reason why a state should exist. In a world where claims to national sovereignty have so often rested on the outcome of war, subjugation and conquest, as well as secret treaties with other states, the idea that there is an ethical basis for statehood seems contrived and far-fetched. Countries just exist, their presence taken for granted in international forums, regardless of any wrongs they may have been committed in their past. But Israel is different in that there was always a profound moral basis to establishing Jewish nationhood in the world.

Today, Israel represents the world’s only guaranteed safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution, discrimination and oppression. It is a sanctuary that will always open its doors to Jews regardless of the prevailing socio-economic or political circumstances. Historically this has been a vital part of Israel’s very raison d’être. During its 66 years, Israel has opened its borders to Holocaust survivors from Europe as well as Jewish communities threatened with pogroms in the Arab world. While Western countries have enacted laws to protect the civil and religious rights of their Jewish populations, they do not have the safe-haven function that Israel alone can offer. This protective capacity invests the Jewish state with a unique mission and moral purpose in the life of world Jewry and within the international community.

There have been occasions when this principle has been tested. In the raid on Entebbe in 1976, Israeli paratroopers rescued a large group of Israelis who were being held hostage in Uganda by Idi Amin’s government. Without a Jewish state, those hostages would almost certainly have remained the captives of that African tyrant. Eventually, they might all have been murdered, abused or traded for some of the world’s most notorious terrorists. Similarly, in Operation Solomon in 1984, Israel rescued thousands of Ethiopian Jews who were threatened with death during the civil wars enveloping that country. No other country would have carried out such an operation, certainly not with the consummate preparation and skill of the Israeli forces. “Israel, alone,” declared the Sunday Times, “was capable of plucking a whole people from the nightmare of the Ethiopian famine with such brilliant élan and brushing aside all its own material problems in order to welcome its African brothers.”87

Those who believe that no such “safe haven” is necessary would appear to have forgotten the long and tragic history of persecution that has beset the Jewish people for more than two millennia, culminating in the demonic genocide of the Second World War. Indeed the late nineteenth century Zionist movement was forged in a European atmosphere replete with the virulent stench of anti–Semitism. Much of this prejudice was racial, not religious, in nature. Jewish communities were increasingly portrayed as alien and inferior forces that were undermining their host nations; their liberal values, ethnic particularism and economic success increasingly regarded as a destabilizing and insidious threat to civilization. For sure, the more poisonous brand of anti–Semitism built upon

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.