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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
OK, Joshua. I’ll give it a listen.
How about by asking them? Using a referendum?
Indeed, but Palestinians should have a veto over what happens in Palestine.
But often they don’t:
Edited to add:
For your viewing convenience:
It would have been better to let the people in the proposed nation of Israel vote on whether the terms of the Balfour Declaration should be accepted or rejected.
Jewish people should have some small piece of land where they are the majority. From a geographic perspective, Israel is not a large country.
But Russia spans 11 time zones and you have people arguing that Russian speaking people outside of Russia need to have their own territory.
But what month in 2023? I’m trying to set my calendar and it won’t take.
February.
Thanks. I’ll write that in.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2016:1-13&version=NIV
Samuel anoints David with oil to be next king of Israel before Saul’s death. Samuel is fearful of Saul finding out what he is doing.
If you go back far enough the Arabs and the Navaho were not there. History is full of ebbs and flows of populations. Saying that this group or that group of people are the original inhabitants and have always been there is just not so. Yes if you go far, far, far back you can find the original tribe or group that set up shop in a place but I would wager that the odds of them still being there are really low…
That’s true. But in this case, we don’t have to go far, far, far back. 75-100 years ago will do.
You are correct. Although David did not begin to rule until after Saul died, David had been annointed before that happened.
No one said otherwise.
But Jewish people have been their at least since 1948. So, one could argue that the claims of Jewish people are stronger than the claims of the Arabs, especially when one considers that the Arabs have a huge amount of territory from North Africa to Iraq, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while the Jews only have a tiny strip of land.
Yet we say the Jews are occupiers because there is a single tiny nation on this huge planet where Jews represent the majority. Oh, and Arabs who live in Israel have full citizenship where in most Arab nations the minority Jewish population is treated like dirt, along with everyone else.
The fact that Arabs in Israel have far higher living standards, more rights, etc. than the vast majority of Arabs in Arab lands misses the point entirely: if your culture/faith/insecurity requires that everyone who is different from you must fail, then Israel will always be the enemy for as long as Israel makes Arabs look bad.
Yes. There is a problem with arguing that groups of human beings have rights but individual human beings do not.
In the eyes of some, if Israel were replaced by yet another Arab dictatorship, this would be all well and good because the man at the top of dictatorship would be an Arab. Somehow, this is better than a society where everyone, Jew and non-Jew, enjoys the benefits of living in a modern democracy with human rights.
People who are against Israel are, without realizing it, against individual human rights.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
Edited to add:
This is not to say that there is anything intrinsic in people that makes them more likely to do this than others. It’s just that power corrupts, and right now they have a lot of power that is never held to account by people that matter.
I agree.
Israel’s human rights record, while not perfect, is so much better than the human rights records of the Arab dictatorships. In fact, that is an understatement.
Yet almost all of the attention directed towards human rights abuses in the Middle East is directed against Israel.
True, but to some extent it’s because you fund Israel. That gives you some credit when they do well but also some responsibility when they do bad.
Human rights are better protected in Israel than in anywhere else in the Middle East.
We should want more nations like Israel in the Middle East, not fewer.
That’s a lot of refugees. Are you sure?
Have you looked at the human rights records of the other nations in the Middle East?
Yes. I’m sure.
I thought I remembered that but I wasn’t sure. Thanks.