Pharaoh’s Successors: When Liberation Becomes a Lecture
A people liberated from slavery after 220 years are forged into a conquering force. The biblical Exodus is more than God’s dramatic rescue of the Israelite tribes. The Festival of Freedom, by the name itself, is intensely political. Real freedom cannot exist without justice, equity, ethics, and a government to secure the common good. In words that soar Paul Johnson in History of The Jews describes the birth and historical struggle of the Israelites as a, “Perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose.”
The eternal lesson of Passover is that under the vilest regime the defiant flame of liberty may flicker. This idea is playing out in Iran. Rise up. Reclaim what is yours, the leaders of America and Israel tell Iranian citizens. From where did that originate if not the tormented slaves in Egypt crying so hard it galvanized God to act.
About Passover, Lord Jonathan Sacks the late Chief Rabbi of Britain said that, “No story has had greater influence in inspiring revolution toward a just and humane society. It is the West’s great meta-narrative of liberty.” It’s that political context of the festival which activates non-orthodox or secular Jews. In their telling the Exodus was a triumph of nationhood. God’s covenant with Abraham the first “Habiru” is to the left a fun touch: “I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”
It was no surprise therefore that Jewish progressives took Oct 7 as a lesson, not for the Palestinians to be taught, but for Israelis to be condemned. Forget divine destiny, think a psycho-ideo-legal moral imperative to uplift the down trodden. This emerges with utmost clarity in a New York Times column on the war with Iran. Posted by the hard-headed progressive, Thomas Friedman, it treats the necessity to bomb the Iranian regime into submission as a mere political distraction. As the dirty artifact of white supremacists.
“We must not let this war to bring democracy and the rule of law to Iran distract us from the threats to democracy and the rule of law posed by Trump in America and by Netanyahu in Israel. If the war in Iran enables him to win the Israeli elections it will be a major propellant to efforts to annex the West Bank, cripple the Israeli Supreme Court, and make Israel an apartheid state, which would be a major blow to American interests in the region beyond Iran.”
Your grumpy progressives never let up. A drumbeat for the Two State “Delusion” numbs the brain. Not even Oct 7 cured the fixation. The puerile moral imperative that has blinkered Jews on the left goes as follows: “We got our state. Don’t deny the Palestinians. Nationhood is as much their right as it was ours.”
Come Passover, pushing hard-hearted Pharaoh to let the people go free seems to be instinctive. Israeli leaders must hark to the cries reverberating from the “Palestinian Territories,” so called. Just as in the Exodus narrative the torment of slaves rose to heaven, let the torment of Palestinians impact rightwing coalition governments that Israelis freely elected.
Some of the pleaders claim to be devoted Zionists. The more lucrative credential is to be devoted to human rights. There are more leftwing NGO operatives per square meter in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank (so-called) than anywhere on the planet.
A modern day Moses who flourishes both credentials — a devoted Zionist and devoted to human rights — is Uri Zaki. The onetime director of human rights outfit B’Tselem (in the image of) he made the perennial Passover appeal to American leaders. Let my favorite people go. What Zaki really said was, “Israeli settlements in the West Bank make it practically impossible for the Palestinians to realize their right to self-determination in an independent and viable state of their own.” What are the fatal flaws in his lament?
Spot firstly the duty of one side to give and the right of the other side to be given. Progressives are in love with Palestinian rights and Jewish obligations. To sanctify the division of the spoils they’ve produced a homespun Judaism composed of a central commandment: Do not deny to others the human rights and social justice that you would not like denied to you.
Dems leverage that stricture to the hilt — if they don’t get too carried away. “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.” Rep Ilhan Omar poetically bashed the government for being manipulated by Israel through AIPAC’s payment for pro-Israel policy. Her “Benjamins” referenced the $100 bill with Benjamin Franklin on it, and her meaning brooked no misunderstanding. Jewish money buckles American interests, shackling them to Israel’s.
According therefore to Uri Zaki, the Pals are owed and the Benjamins owe. Volleyed back and forth, a hapless people emerge scarcely human, a dragon of goodness and angel of guile.
Fatal flaw two is a follow-on. From a silky divan in Ramallah the Palestinian ruler for life, Mahmoud Abbas, tables demands then sits back while the international community arm-wrenches Israel to meet the demands more than half way. It’s the old story of the spoiled kid, and it brings to mind the quip made by Israeli ambassador, Abba Eban:
“I think it would be the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.”
A bittersweet joke. The Pals lost wars they started. Like the spoiled kid, tyrant leaders want everything and they want it on their own terms, unconditionally.
Given the miraculous state of Israel, never again will Jews be footloose and powerless, begging countries not to let them go but to let them in.
Fatal flaw three is that possession of land is nine-tenths of the law, and the ‘Benjamins” have it. But victim losers can’t be held to law. The Pals are defined by rights. And whose rights have to make room for the Chosen? Obviously the un-Chosen Israelis, making do with an already hostile strip of land. When human rights and social justice are ladled out, dark’ victims of a white Likud government get the spoils.
Fatal flaw four is that progressives like Zaki forget that the proposed land swap deal ignore a big assumption — that of lawful ownership. By all means let the Pals make a nation, but where shall they do that? On what land? On whose land? Except for the Kingdom of Jordan, no land west of the Jordan River was ever held by a people latterly named “Palestinians.” Israel took the real estate in a defensive war when the latest claimant had yet to be conceived.
Well then, could Jordan not ask for the West Bank back? No it could not because it was never Jordan’s to have and to hold. At the time Israel snapped up the territory in the Six-Day War Jordan had no right to be there. Not even the Arab league liked the idea of returning the West Bank to Jordan.
Moses imposters thus look to Israel. At Passover time thoughts on bondage and liberation run riot. And further fatal flaws logically follow.
“We must allow Palestinians to enjoy the same basic rights to self-government and independence that we, the Jewish State, have been privileged to enjoy since 1948.” David Newman, ex-professor at Ben Gurion University, wrote of “fundamental Jewish religious values” as recounted at Passover. It is incumbent on the Jews to ensure that other peoples are not oppressed, even more when they are under “our own control and for whose wellbeing we have direct responsibility.”
After marrying rights to responsibilities, Newman divorces them. Israel gets the responsibility and the Pal settlers get the rights. It’s as if reciprocity is a dirty word. Israel must part with land legally held for the sake of existential enemies. The “fundamental Jewish values”’ of an academic come with that sting in the tail.
Diplomacy, having no truck with the bible, comes with a sting of its own. And it brings down a flood of fatal flaws.
Looking back on American brokered peace talks before the Trump era, it is easy to forget the generic players on the game board: landowner and supplicant. Obama’s negotiator John Kerry hammered Israel for dangling carrots which the other player did not find terribly juicy. Not even negotiators acting for Israel stopped to recall natural law. The owner of real estate needs do nothing until a person who would like to have it brings an offer. Should the latter be unwilling to meet the owner’s terms, the owner carries on with his life.
Cornered, Zaki the Priest and Newman the Dean have to admit that neither law nor treaty give the Pals the right to “self-determination in a viable state of their own.” There are only Accords created in Oslo, and they’ve been trashed, time without end. But even when in mint condition, Oslo conferred no right to self-determination. The progressive Moses ignores principles of law while he scatters rights and obligations like confetti. Odder yet, Moses figures are the first to insist that Israel abides by international law.
Unpacking the Judaic imperative to give the Pals a state, we discover a fake product. Obligations come without rights and rights without obligations. ‘Give them what they want, dammit!’
Well — why not if it satisfies some quirky view of fair play. It might even help Israel’s own security. So say do-gooders toying with real baddies.
But look at their case — so fatally flawed it’s unfunny. Don’t put a spanner in the wheel by making Pal leaders recognize a Jewish state. Obama’s peace maker John Kerry, thinking only of Israel of course, scolded it for putting the kid out of temper by insisting on that precondition. Stop the tantrums. Give the kid what it damn wants, dammit.
Problem is, several intifadas and Oct 7 were rude-awakenings. And that’s another fatal flaw too many. What exactly does the brat want? How many times did Israel offer what everyone told it the kid wanted? Repeatedly Arafat and then Abbas were invited to establish a home they could call their own. After tearing up the RSVPs they launched Intifadas and flung the bits at Benjamin’s pale face.
Finally there’s the fatal case of Gaza. Were not the Pals in bondage in Gaza until they got it, lock stock and barrel? Gratis. All they had to do was build a Singapore on the blue Med. You’d think the progressive Moses would be happy. Think again.
“In 2005 Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip, which increased Palestinians’ control over their lives … However, Israel continues to hold decisive control over major aspects of people’s lives.”
Here was Zaki the Priest prodding Pharaoh to let the people go, after Pharaoh had already done that. What did unelected leaders do with the gift which came with no strings attached ? They warred and they jawed. But then it’s not for Gaza’s elect to uplift the lives of their subjects. It’s for Israel to do that for them.
Zaki the Priest and Newman the Dean, typifying Moses impersonators, fail to see the bottom line of giving land away. Let Palestinians have the Temple Mount, half of Jerusalem, and Judea-Samaria — the parts in dispute. Where will this leave the Benjamins? It will leave them looking suspiciously like colonial usurpers. After all what historical connections do the Benjamins have to Tel Aviv?
From the Passover Seder service we learn that Jewry is not a mere people, an ethnic group, a culture. It can’t be according to the alert contained therein. “In every generation they stand up against us to destroy us.”
Given the miraculous state of Israel, never again will Jews be footloose and powerless, begging countries not to let them go but to let them in.
READ MORE from Steve Apfel:
All the News That’s Fit for Whom?
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