As with all nations and cultures faced through history by the plain facts of Jewish brilliance and success, we have a choice. We can either resent it or embrace it as a divine gift to the world. But although our choice is free, the result of our choice is intractably set by the moral law that governs the outcome of human endeavor as strictly as the laws of physics that govern the planets. The envy of excellence leads to perdition, the love of it leads to the light.
Today this choice, with all its relentlessly existential implications, is focused not on the Jews in the neighborhood but on the Jews as a nation.
America is a profoundly Judeo — Christian nation, and without the Jewish role, it might well not have prevailed or even survived in its present form. Israel is a national expression of the Jewish genius and achievement that has long been manifest in American life and commerce. We need Israel today as much as Israel needs us, as much as we needed Jewish physicists and chemists, such as Leó Szilárd, John von Neumann, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, to bring to fruition the Manhattan Project that won World War II, as much as we needed Jewish entrepreneurs and inventors to consummate the technologies of Silicon Valley, and as much as we needed Jewish engineers to maintain our national defenses throughout the Cold War and thereafter.
The lesson of the ascendancy of Jews in America is the same as the lesson of Israel today. It is not primarily a tale of sentimental tolerance in which WASP Americans sheltered the needy Jews, but a tale in which America, including American WASPs, incomparably benefited by passing an often brutal and exacting moral test, and accepted, if sometimes grudgingly, the superior performance of another, in some ways, alien people. The point of Lazarus’ great poem is not to celebrate America as a vast homeless shelter but as a nation whose genius has been to know that the huddled masses — in their very yearning to breathe free — would surpass all the storied posh and pomp of Europe.
As with America, so with Israel. Israel is not a dispensable Jewish “best friend,” a noble but doomed democracy, or even a charitable dependent we can no longer afford. It is an indispensable strategic ally, and in the past twenty years it has evolved into perhaps our most valuable partner.
Yet, for most Americans, ultimately our loyalty to Israel arises not from a cold calculus of survival, but from a sense of the holy. What Americans must fathom with both heart and mind is that this instinct is true — and vital to our survival — that if we would live, we must defend this Holy Land.
INDEX
Abbas, Mahmoud
Abdullah, King of Jordan
abstract thought
accomplishment/superiority. See
also specific accomplishments
anti-Semitism and
envy/resentment of
global dependence on
Israeli test regarding
key indicator predicting
threat of
U.S. benefit from,
Achieving Society, The (McClelland)
Adelson, Sheldon
Adiri, Jonathan
Adorno, Theodor
Agassi, Shai
agriculture
innovation in
land reclamation projects
Palestine in antiquity
production growth
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud
Alami, Musa
algorithmic faith
algorithms
Alinsky, Saul
Alsop, Reese Fell
Amimon
Amin
Anobit
anti-capitalism
Hitler’s anti-Semitism as
Obama’s
anti-Semitism
accomplishment/superiority and
author’s recollection
capitalism and
economic element of
essence of
locations of
Marx, Karl
origin of
present day, globally
reasons for
solutions to
uniqueness of
universality of
zero-sum nature of
apartheid regime, basis for claims of
Apple
Arab Awakening (1936 — 37)
Arab League
Arabs
economic success, globally
Israeli, life expectancy
Arafat, Yasser
Areikat, Maen
arms race
ending the
quantitative vs. qualitative,
ASOCS
al-Assad, Haffez
Assaf, Israel
Assyrian Christians
Al-Astal, Yunis
atomic bomb
Aumann, Robert
Austria
automobile industry
Avishai, Bernard
Avon Products
Baez, Joan
Bain, William
Barak, Ehud
barbarism
Bauer, Peter
Bauer syndrome
Beaux, Cecilia
Begin, Menachem
Bell Curve, The (Murray and Herrnstein)
Ben-Ami, Shlomo
Ben-Bassat, Itzik
Ben-Gurion, David
Berkshire Hathaway
Berlin, Irving
Bernstam, Michael S.
Bethe, Hans
“A Better Place,”
Beyar, Raphael
bin Laden, Osama
Biosense
“blackmailer’s paradox,”
Blair, Tony
Blumenfeld, Morry
Bohr, Niels
Born, Max
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Brown, Lester
Budapest
Burlingham, Dorothy
Burlingham, Michael
Bush, George H. W.
Bush, George W., and administration
Cæsarea, described
Camero
Cantor, Georg
capitalism
anti-Semitism and
conflict primary in
the creative mind and
democracy’s relation to
moral framework for
positive-sum view of
requirements for
resentment of, source
struggle for existence prior to
two views of
violence vs.
Carter, Jimmy
Case Against Israel’s Enemies, The (Dershowitz)
Case for Israel, The (Dershowitz)
Center for Rationality
Central Dogma
Chabad House massacre
Chapin, Chester W.
Chesterton, G. K.
China
Chinese in Indonesia
Chomsky, Noam
Churchill, Winston
Cisco
civilization, dependencies
Clinton, Bill
Clinton, Hillary
Codevilla, Angelo
Cohen, Leonard
Cold War
colonialism
Commentary (periodical)
communications industry
communism
Communist Jews
Compass EOS
Competitive Advantage of Nations, The (Porter)
computer industry
computers and computer architecture
Conquest of the Land through 7000 Years (Lowdermilk)
consumer electronics
conviction
cooperation, repetition and
Coulter, Ann
counterterrorism
creativity. See also innovation, accomplishment/ superiority
Crick, Francis
Darkness at Noon (Koestler)
Darwinian nature
Dayan, Moshe
Decter, Midge
de Kay, Charles
democracy
critical test of
Israeli, criticisms of
military defeat in the process of
requirements for
true nature of
without capitalism, results of
zero-sum view of
democratic capitalism
democratic threat
Deng Xiaoping
Dershowitz, Alan
Dirac Medal winners
disarmament
Doron, Daniel