Edward Gibbon the English historian (1737 to 1794) wrote six volumes of The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. His conclusions have been disputed ever since. But he ushered in a new era of historical and social theory that has dominated western thought ever since. We like to find simple easy explanations which never work out exactly the way we think they will. The American Francis Fukuyama published a book entitled The last man and the end of History in 1992. The American political scientist Samuel Huntingtonargued that wars would be fought not between countries but between civilizations.
We live in a hyper world of facile theories, both about what is happening in the world today and what is likely to happen in the future. A world divided between goodies and baddies, rival religions, Zionists and anti-Zionists and almost every other conceivable human political division, let alone sexual identities. All of them claiming moral high ground and predicting sea changes within the tide of human history. Theories are fine. But they are not reality.
I was brought up in a culture where there were divisions and disagreements, hatreds and prejudices. But there was a veneer of politeness and sensibility that acted as a safety net. “I might hate you, but I won’t say so in public.” Hypocrisy? Perhaps, but it made life livable. This has now been swept away by the vicious destructive banality and corruption of the media and their pathetic victims.
I always felt anti-Semitism embedded in British and most of European societies. Whenever our Jewish school played non-Jewish schools, we were assailed by Jew hatred. The artsy world tended to side with the Palestinians. One of the most vociferous opponents of Israel at Cambridge in my day was an aspiring Jewish actress and of course there was Roald Dahl. Of course there were many good Britons who were if not Philo-semitic at least understood a Jewish point of view that saw autonomy rather than assimilation as a solution to its sense of alienation.
Similarly in the United States of America a vein of anti-Semitism has run through that society since Peter Stuyvesant tried to ban Jews from New York. In 1862, in the heat of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. And Harvard had anti-Semitic restrictions until after the second World War.
Even so, for many Jews escaping the killing fields of Europe thought that America was a Goldene Medina. Its all relative. Let us not forget that the gates of the USA were slammed shut before the Second War. Jews were looked on as outsiders and in America the desire of assimilating Jewish immigrants was always to distance themselves from the passionate commitment to a Jewish identity that has survived all the attempts over millennia to suppress it.
There was for a short period in American history when the idea that the Jews deserved to have a homeland of their own and protect it was accepted. Even though it was never allowed to secure a peace treaty. American policy despite the reservations of the state Department upheld Israel’s right to exist even if it often impeded it from Suez onwards. At least under Nixon and Trump America had our backs. Yet New York now looks like reverting to Stuyvesant. Jews who want to stay Jews may no longer be welcome.
The issue now is not whether Israel is right or wrong, good or bad, whether one can criticize or excoriate it. But whether it has any right to exist at all. In New York which was once considered to be a Jewish city, the man who would be mayor believes Israel as a Jewish state needs to be obliterated and has no right to exist and is proud to say so. We have experienced shock after shock these past two years. Hamas and Iran, dedicated to killing Jews are praised and glorified. Not only our enemies but even from within our own ranks, opposition to the idea of a Jewish state is returning to the time during the last century when most American Jews were anti-Zionist.
Ideological opponents delight in the claim that there’s a fundamental change in American Society. From a position once where the majority supported Israel and its right to exist, to one in which possibly half of the country now believe that you ought not to. There is indeed constant fluidity. Huge ideological differences in the US between ideologies, on sex, politics, race and social values and identities. Counter theories and counter ideologies. There are those who claim the crazies will take over New York, go on to take the presidency with disastrous effects on Israel. Yippee say a whole generation of useful, ignorant fools. But neither New York nor America in general have become so anti-Semitic that it’s time to get out, for fear of pogroms. And nearly everybody ( except Iran of course) is anxious to say that they are not anti-Semitic heaven forbid. It’s just that they object to Israel.
And here we come to the pig. The Bible says that kosher animals have to have the cloven hoof and chew the cud. Cows have both. Pigs only have one. Why is the pig picked as the epitome of non-kosher more than any other animal? The answer is that the pig could put forward its two feet and show that he must be kosher because he has cloven hooves. But look further and you see that it doesn’t chew the cud. The pig may protest it is kosher. But it is not! The current wave of dogmatic liberals of race and sex who are products of years of infiltration and indoctrination, still want to claim they are not antisemites heaven forbid.
Lord knows, I have throughout my career criticized many aspects of the secular and religious Zionism of Israeli Society and Jewish life. I know full well what our faults, hypocrisies and failures are and wish we would not have war imposed on us with all its cruelties. But when it comes to Israel as a Jewish State ( in an imperfect world where nationalities still hold sway) the right to exist the way that we want to, is after all incorporated into most documents of human rights ( but for countries that have none). It remains rooted in the idea that we can choose how we want to live. And that includes the right of Judaism to a state of its own. Predicated on the fact that no matter how the other nations of the world may have been polite, supportive and helpful, there are within them, many who wish to see the destruction of the Jewish state and for that reason they remind me of pigs. Yet most people love pigs!
Meanwhile Israel continues to face an existential threat. The war in Gaza and its casualties continues. China is rearming Iran as fast as it can. North Korea and Pakistan are offering nuclear support. They are encouraging Iran to go on with its attempted genocide of Israel. Much of what is left of the Jewish community in Iran is either already dead or imprisoned and tortured in jails. There is still no end to this. We have to stay strong.
Nothing remains static. That’s what we can learn from history. For all the fine theories, expert opinions, and predictions, we never know for certain how things will work out. And yet we soldier on. We cannot rest on our laurels. In the first battle the Israelites fought against Amalek it was Moshe holding his hands up high that made us realize that it is not by physical strength alone but spirit that wars are won.
Shabbat Shalom
Jeremy
July 2025
