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"Israel Alone"

(Boston Globe) Jeff Jacoby - The cover of the current issue of the Economist is titled: "Israel Alone." Israel retains plenty of defenders. Grass-roots support for the Jewish state in the U.S. remains solid. Foreign leaders, such as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have been at pains to emphasize that their endorsement of a Gaza ceasefire does not lessen their solidarity with Israel as it fights a ruthless enemy. Israel has loyal friends of inestimable value. But ultimately the Jewish state stands alone because ultimately the Jewish people stand alone. For more than 3,000 years, almost everywhere Jews lived, they sooner or later found themselves isolated, demonized, ghettoized, dispossessed, or exterminated. Again and again they were expelled en masse from countries where they had lived for generations. The pioneers of modern Zionism were convinced that only in a country of their own could Jews finally achieve the normality other peoples take for granted. But they were wrong. Israel has never been regarded as a "normal" country. Alone among the 193 members of the UN, it is the only one whose very right to exist is under constant assault. Jerusalem is the only capital city in the world where the vast majority of governments refuse to locate their embassies. In territory and population, the Jewish state is tiny, yet the passions it arouses are of an intensity worthy of a superpower. The same has always been true of the Jewish people.
2024-04-02 00:00:00
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