Until the dominance of capitalism, with its positive spirals of mutual gain, the prevailing regime was a Darwinian zero-sum game in which groups fought for survival against their neighbors. As Walter Lippmann eloquently explained in The Good Society, capitalism for the first time opened a vista of mutually enriching enterprise, with the good fortune of others opening opportunities for all. The Golden Rule, he said, was transformed from an idealistic vision of heaven into a practical agenda. From Poor Richard’s Almanack to rich Andrew Carnegie’s autobiographical parables, all were rediscovering the edifying insights of the Author of Proverbs.
Yes, “Jew-hatred is unique,” as Prager and Telushkin’s first chapter proclaims. Jews are unique. Anti-Semitism subjects this uniquely gifted people to a crude and particularly incendiary manifestation of the immemorial hatreds that have afflicted the world for millennia. Judaism, however, perhaps more than any other religion, favors capitalist activity and provides a rigorous moral framework for it. It is based on a monotheistic affirmation that God is good and will prevail through transcending envy and hatred and zero-sum fantasies. Judaism can be plausibly interpreted as affirming the possibilities of creativity and collaboration on the frontiers of a capitalist economy.
The facts are clear. What makes Jews unique is their excellence. The solution is also clear. As Prager and Telushkin acknowledge, almost in passing, Jews do better under capitalism than under any other system. Anti-Semitism tends to wane under a growing and expanding creative economy. Other consequences of Jewish superiority are also evident. On a planet where human life subsists upon the achievements of human intellect and enterprise, Jews are crucial to the future of the race.
The Holocaust was not only an unspeakable catastrophe for Jews and an eternal source of shame upon all who collaborated with the Nazis’ “final solution.” It was incomparably more destructive than other modern genocidal acts not only because of the diabolical evil of the Nazis but because of the unique virtues and genius of its victims. It was an irretrievable loss and catastrophe for all humanity, depleting the entire species of intellectual resources that will be critical to survival on an ever-threatened planet. Imagine the wealth and culture that might have blessed the world from a population of 200 million Jews, the number that would live today if Jews retained their share of global population held at the time of the Roman Empire.
As irremediable and tragic the loss to the Jewish people and all Jewish families directly affected bv the Holocaust, one could argue that the rest of the world has suffered even more in absolute terms by the loss of the vast potential of the six million Jewish victims whose only sin was being Jewish on the European continent in the twentieth century.
The incontestable facts of Jewish excellence constitute a universal test not only for anti-Semitism but also for liberty and the justice of the civil order. The success or failure of any minority in a given country is the best index of its freedoms. In any free society, Jews will tend to be represented disproportionately in the highest ranks of both its culture and its commerce. Americans should not conceal the triumphs of Jews on our shores but celebrate them as evidence of the superior freedoms of the U.S. economy and culture.
The real case for Israel is incomparably more potent and important than the sentimental and self-serving mush usually mustered on its behalf. It has little or nothing to do with Israel’s murky politics, its frequently malfunctioning democracy, its extraordinary restraint in the face of constant provocations from its seething circle of demented neighbors, its treatment of gays or Palestinians or women or ethnic minorities, or its maddening indulgence of the Socialist sophistries of its critics and casuistically captious friends at Harvard, the Atlantic, and the New Republic.
The prevailing muddle of sentimentality and pettifoggery only obscures the actual eminently practical case for supporting Israel, for as long as it may take, without apology or deceit or waffles, without deception or obsequious self-denial. It is the case for Israel as the leader of human civilization, technological progress, and scientific advance. It is the case for Israel as a military spearhead of the culture of freedom and faith — the bastion of American progress and prosperity, and beyond America, for the progress and prosperity of all the people of the planet. The reason America should continue to “prop up” Israel is that Israel itself is a crucial prop of American wealth, freedom, and power.
In a dangerous world, faced with an array of perils, the Israel test asks whether the world can suppress envy and recognize its dependence on the outstanding performance of relatively few men and women. The world does not subsist on zero-sum legal niceties. It subsists on hard and possibly reversible accomplishments in medicine, technology, pharmacology, science, engineering, and enterprise. It thrives not on forcibly reallocating land and resources but on encouraging and giving freedom to human creativity in a way that exploits land and resources most productively. The survival of the human race depends on recognizing excellence wherever it appears and nurturing it until it prevails. It relies on a vanguard of visionary creators on the frontiers of knowledge and accomplishment. It depends on passing the Israel test.
Critics will call this a culpably Judeo-centric argument, missing lots of subtleties and complexities that shrewd, tough-loving critics of Israel cherish in their long catalog of its flaws. Former Prime Minister Olmert had the best answer, barking to writer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic that he did not care about the flaws. Regardless of flaws — and Israel has fewer flaws than perhaps any other nation — Israel is the pivot, the axis, the litmus, the trial. Are you for civilization or barbarism, life or death, wealth or envy? Are you an exponent of excellence and accomplishment or of a leveling creed of troglodytic frenzy and hatred?
CHAPTER THREE
The Economics of Settlement
A prime cause of Mideast tensions and turmoil, according to the international media, are Israeli “settlers.” According to the prevailing “narrative”, they are strange extremists who reside illegitimately in the “occupied territories” of the West Bank. Even such celebrated and fervent supporters of Israel as Alan Dershowitz and Bernard-Henri Levy deem the settlers beyond the pale of their Zionist sympathies.
As is his wont, Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute adds to these political concerns a coming environmental catastrophe, also presumably aggravated by the Israeli settlers and their hydrophilic irrigation projects. He sees the Middle East as direly threatened by the growth of population and the exhaustion of water resources. The Institute explains: “Since one ton of grain represents 1,000 tons of water, [importing grain] becomes the most efficient way to import water. Last year, Iran imported 7 million tons of wheat, eclipsing Japan to become the world’s leading wheat importer. This year, Egypt is also projected to move ahead of Japan. The water required to produce the grain and other foodstuffs imported into [the region] last year was roughly equal to the annual flow of the Nile River.”
Although these two concerns might seem unrelated, they converge in the history of Israel, a modern nation-state created by several generations of settlers and constrained at every point by the dearth of water in a predominantly desert land. In the mid-19th century, before the arrival of that century’s cohort of Jewish settlers fleeing pogroms in Russia and Ukraine, Arabs living in the British Mandate of Palestine — now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza — numbered between 200,000 and 300,000. Their population density and longevity resembled today’s conditions in parched and depopulated Saharan Chad. Although Worldwatch might prefer to see the Middle East returned to the more Earth-friendly and sustainable demographics of Chad, the fact that some 5.5 million Arabs now live in the former British Mandate, with a life expectancy of more than 70 years, is mainly attributable, for better or worse, to the work of those Jewish settlers.