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‘Everyone Expects the Jews to Be the Only Real Christians in This World’
Eric Hoffer was a man not only of profound wisdom, but of true character. And not only because he took the side of the Jews. Scan his writings on the Internet, and I promise that you will be favorably impressed. Yet, as my father was fond of saying: “You can tell the true character of someone by how they feel about Jews,”; he would often add, “by how they feel about Israel.” Hoffer clearly passes this test with flying colors.
In 1968, Hoffer wrote as follows (italics are mine):
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russian did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese — and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.
Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
And here is a statement from Hoffer that is all too obvious:
No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on.
There cannot be any doubt that the college campus of today is an incubator of anti-Israelism, and that the likes of AOC and her friends, should they assume power, would have no use for Israel. And, most likely, the mass of ignorant, brainwashed college graduates would fall in line with her way of thinking where Israel is concerned.
Hoffer continues: “There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Blacks are executed in Rhodesia. But, when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one demonstrated against him.”
Or, as is often said, the Jews are the only minority in the world that it’s permissible to hate.
Hoffer: “The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer (during the Six-Day War of 1967) had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.”
In other words, America needs Israel more than Israel needs America. The Jewish nation has been around for three millennia and knows how to take care of itself; America, on the other hand, is still in its infancy. It’s not only because of geopolitics that America needs and supports Israel, but because America’s moral standing depends on that support. And it is doubtful that an immoral America could survive.
As Hoffer concludes: “I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us all.”
Here, however, as a person of faith — as distinguished from Hoffer, who was an atheist — I must demur since I cannot subscribe to the notion of Israel perishing. However, it is entirely foreseeable that America’s abandonment of Israel, should that occur, would have dire consequences for America’s future and result in the perishing or disappearance of America as we know it.
Published in General
I would recommend reading the part about how Israel got its first king. 1 Samuel chapter 8 is the way the section is identified in the Christian bible. I am flabbergasted that Christians who seem to know about Samuel, David, Solomon, etc., have never encountered this story.
The imperative for a Jewish homeland arose before the Holocaust. The Jews who left Europe (prior to the rise of the Nazis) for modern-day Israel (and other countries) escaped probable extermination. Prior to WW2 Arabs had the opportunity to have their own state but spurned it. They have been rejecting compromise ever since. They and their allies in surrounding States have launched three wars against the nascent State- any one of which could have led to mass casualties and the scattering of the survivors to the winds.
In round terms, as many Jews were driven from Arab States as Arabs left modern-day Israel.
Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005 in a show of good faith. What a disaster that turned out to be!
There is a significant non-Jewish minority in Israel with full rights of citizenship. Palestinians seem set on having a Judenrein State of their own. In your case, you refer Israel as being “occupied” which appears to put you in the “Rivers to the Sea” camp.
Palestinians are cursed with leadership that has no interest in a shared region with minorities in each State. They are cursed by the malign intervention of Iran which is stirring the pot throughout the Middle-East.
Maybe you’re right? Maybe it’s not so nuanced after all? But not the way you see it.
You’re proving my point.
I would have encountered it, but I was hiding among the luggage. But the timing of Samuel’s anointing David to be king came long before Saul’s death.
I’m proving that I’m prepared to get into the nuts and bolts of the issues, not just make an occasional superficial comment.
Many of the points you make are correct. Palestinians do have bad leaders. Arab Jews were expelled from Arab countries.
But your points don’t address the core question: was creating Israel at the expense of the local population justice or injustice? I think it was injustice. Britain and the UN had no moral right to give their homes away.
I don’t think that Israel should be dissolved, I certainly don’t think anybody – Jewish or Arab – should be killed or exiled, but resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict means resolving that injustice, and to resolve it one has to acknowledge it. Avoiding it, or throwing in the kitchen sink at it, doesn’t really do anybody any favours.
What do you mean when you say “give their homes away?”
Did someone get an eviction notice from the British government as a result of the partition?
Are you referring to the fact that Judges were the original governing body of Israel but the people clamored for a king? When I saw Joshua’s statement that the Torah promoted a king, I was going to correct him. If he means the Torah is the first five books, as we Christians refer to the Torah (sometimes referred to as the Pentateuch) then the Torah does not promote a theocracy. You have to get into the history books to find the support of a king. And surprisingly to some perhaps, David is not the first king. That would be Saul.
The Brits didn’t need to do that. Implausible deniability, remember?
Thank you for engaging. Can you specify the point at which you think the injustice arose?
The Balfour Declaration without the Palestinians’ assent. It all flowed from that.
In your view, why was the Balfour Declaration a bad idea?
The bride was already married.
What does that mean?
Don’t be a bozo. Happy New Year.
You are being very cryptic. I was hoping for some clarification.
You just noticed? He’s always cryptic.
Hello Flicker,
Point of information: It was after Saul and Jonathan were killed in a battle with the Philistines that David was annointed king.
JF
Sorry, Z, I didn’t get it either.
Happy new year to you too! It’s probably already like 2024 in Australia.
I am going to take a guess as to what Zafar meant by “The bride was already married.“
I think Zafar meant “The borders were already set and no redrawing of borders was legitimate.“
If that is what Zafar meant, my follow up questions would be, “On what basis were the existing borders considered legitimate? On what basis were the new borders, those drawn up by Britain and the UN, considered illegitimate?”
I might have misinterpreted Zafar’s “bride” analogy. But hey, I took my best shot.
I was torn between using chosen and anointed. But anointed means more than just being anointed with oil. So I figured it didn’t much matter. But the quibble that I was trying to make was that David was chosen before Saul’s death, but to say that chosen might imply that he was chosen by Samuel, which he was not, he was chosen by God.
Oh, if only it were.
But in what shape might that assent have been given? There was a chance for peaceful co- existence but it wasn’t taken. Even now there is an opportunity for all of the inhabitants of the region to share in the prosperity generated by Israeli innovation. But too many States and organisations are irrevocably invested in continuing “the struggle”.
Great point. Also, we should not presuppose that the Palestinians should have a veto power over whether Jewish people get to have a single nation in which they are the majority.
One could make a similar argument for the right of the Kurds to have a nation in which they are the majority.
There was an Israeli tourism ad campaign on the theme, “Israel and America–Two of a Kind”. This acknowledged the good relations between the two countries, but was also a subtle reminder that we are both nations made up largely of Europeans who conquered and occupy land that once belonged to someone else. Zafar is right about that.
Palestine was already occupied, and the founding of Israel was not fair to those Arabs. Defenders of Israel’s existence–and I’m one–ought to recognize that. The founding of the United States was not fair to the “Indians”, and Americans should not tie themselves into knots pretending otherwise. But facts are facts, and the facts on the ground are, Israel exists and is not going away. The table where I type this sits on land that was once owned by the Chumash tribe. They are not going to be reclaiming Santa Monica anytime soon, if ever. I’m not smug about that, nor am I gloating. It’s just a fact.
Not every Zionist is Jewish–as we see in the US, some fundamentalist Christians are pro-Israel for their own reasons. Not every Jew is a Zionist. And anti-Zionists are not always Jew haters (Zafar isn’t), although there’s some overlap. (In some people, of course, that overlap is 100%.)
When my son was at UCLA, he took several Bible studies courses, he noted that the most committed, most fervent believers in the class were black Americans, and Arab Christians. They were strong believers in Biblical Israel, but had decidedly mixed, complicated disagreements about modern Israel. That didn’t make them haters.
Just because land is occupied doesn’t mean other people aren’t allowed to move into the area. It’s called immigration. Immigration has happened all through history.
Should I say to a Vietnamese-American immigrant who owns a house down the street that he is a colonizer?
I just want some clarification on how Jewish people can be considered colonizers because they represent a majority in a tiny strip of land in the Middle East, while the Arabs who are the majority in most of the Middle Eastern nations aren’t considered colonizers.
How does that work?
The Arabs aren’t colonizers because they already live there. The Navaho weren’t colonizers because they already lived here. The Vietnamese immigrant down the street isn’t a colonizer because he didn’t conquer his way into the neighborhood, but entered the country legally with the permission of the people occupying the land–us.
If you really want to get to know the history of modern Israel, based on the truth about the past, listen to this recent podcast interview of Benjamin Netanyahu by Jordan Peterson. When you get to the Peterson podcasts, scroll down until you reach this interview.
We try but we are not quite that much ahead of the rest of you. Only 2023 I am sad to confirm.
This is a myth, Gary. If you listen to the above referenced podcast, you will understand why.