The metaphysics of antisemitism
It is the duty of every Jew to make the world a dwelling place for God, and be a light unto the nations. And that’s true whether the other nations want that light or not.
Every generation, and no matter how many times we say “never again”, a plague called antisemitism causes peoples to rise to destroy us. What we do about antisemitism goes to the heart of who we are as Jews. If we know who we are, we know what we must do.
I had a dream once that everyone in the world loved the Jewish people, and there was peace on earth. They didn’t just accept us, they loved us. And there wasn’t peace despite us, but because of us. Once such a beautiful dream is born, we’re halfway there.
The most Jewish response to antisemitism, is to take even the ugliest of humanity, and make something beautiful from it. But first, we must understand it. And perhaps by understanding it, all of humanity can understand itself better. Maybe that’s the path to peace, not only with Israel, but worldwide. Let’s see.
The IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism “a certain perception of Jews, hatred of Jews…directed at Jews or their institutions…” is insufficient. Even with some very good examples, it is incomplete. This definition doesn’t help peoples understand the pivotal question: why.
Even if every teacher walked into every university and high school and told their class that the same plague had infected them that had infected the Nazis and every other generation that sought to grow their ideology by blaming and attempting to wipe out the Jews to resounding applause, they still wouldn’t understand: why.
Why do societies become anti-Jewish? Anti-Christian? Anti-American? Anti-Western, “Woke”, “far-Leftist”, and ultimately self-destructive?
Civilization after civilization has viewed Jewish commitment to our moral values, and said Jews of being loyal to our moral code, that thus we can’t be completely loyal to them, not realizing their civilization is built on such values. And so, any civilization that clings to a moral standard will face antisemitism-style resentment of its own. Unless we figure out this conundrum, new ideologies with new “moralities” will continue to rise and seek to dominate the world, and necessarily attack Judaism, and then after Judaism, the broader Judeo-Christian world, American values, then all democracies, and then all other foundations of Western civilization, then all civilization, until they succeed in tearing it all down.
So since antisemitism is really everyone’s problem, let’s define Jew hatred, so others can understand it.
Here’s my definition:
First part: Antisemitism is an irrational, emotional, subconscious discontentment about any aspect of human life that rationalizes itself under the fallacy of a complaint against Jews or their homeland of Israel.
Second part: Antisemitism spreads from a shared excuse among discontent individuals to societies where some use demagoguery for political gain focused on Jews or Israel as the scapegoated out-group.
Third part: And lastly, broader population segments unaware of these origins believe the false excuses of Jewish wrongdoing and are misled to a false moral perspective rather than properly answering outstanding moral questions.
In summary, antisemitism rises when new ideologies rise, the world loses moral clarity, and develops unanswered questions.
But to really understand, we must look at our whole story as the Jewish people. The story of our oppression goes back to when we were enslaved in Egypt nearly 4,000 years ago, continues through the world wanting to take Jerusalem from us and conquering it more than any other city in human history, and it follows us nearly everywhere we have gone, with few exceptions.
While our long story is so necessary I had to include it, I put it at the end as Appendix A, so you could skip to it, and the continue reading here.
Please see Appendix A (below) before continuing.
Most peoples don’t know their full history, but we do. And now you know perhaps the hardest part of ours. And now you know why anti-Zionism is antisemitism. The world has a consistent pattern of trying to exterminate us; not just mobs but governments agreeing and cooperating with the mobs, rewriting laws against Jews again and again, until burning of our books, expulsions, and mass murder of Jews resulted. The Jewish people need the State of Israel to survive, and those who want to destroy us must first destroy the state of Israel. Thus, the necessarily-first target of many who hate Jews, is now Israel.
All hate is wrong, under any excuse. While many neighbors have had disputes, the hatred against Jews is unique. China and Japan, India and Pakistan, Vietnam and Cambodia, Turks and Armenians, Turks and Greeks, Turks and Kurds, Russian and Chechnyans, Irish and British, Ghana and Nigeria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and Qatar: all at some point have made an out-group of their neighbor who is different. But that’s not the same as antisemitism.
Excuses for hating the Jewish people have consistently been inconsistent, often contradictory. Too rich, too poor, too social, too isolated, …whatever the society deemed the most immoral conduct of that time, the Jews were accused of, as Rabbi Lord Sacks explained. If being the wrong religion was the worst immorality, then the Jews were. If opposition to government was, then treason was the accusation. If disease was the problem of the time, Jews were accused of spreading it.
The ultimate lesson from our history is that Jews haven’t been oppressed for the claimed excuses, but for something inherent in much of human nature. The true reason, is below the surface, and unconscious.
We know Jew hatred is not rational because many new nations were formed since 1948, and their neighbors are not bent on the destruction of those new states. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed in the Syrian civil war without major world protests. Turkey killed tens of thousands of Kurds with no major protests. Pakistan in 2023 expelled 1.5 million Muslim refugees, and there were no major protests. Likewise, a million Uyghur Muslims are held in camps in China, and China destroyed or altered thousands of mosques. Yet, none of these problems bring the public outrage we see against Israel. The UN has been averaging 15 resolutions a year condemning Israel, with perhaps one condemning Iran or North Korea. While none of these other countries are considered for termination, a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll said 51% of those polled ages 18-24 supported the end of Israel.
The intellectual are not immune. Modern, educated, cultured, intellectual Germans of the 1940’s listened to Bach and Beethoven, and read Kant and Niztsche, while rationalizing away the extermination of six million of their neighbors. Without a grounding moral compass, Ivy League intellectuals today likewise self-rationalize their primitive anti-Jewish compulsions ever more articulately. The primal urge comes first, overrides reason, and the purported intellectual justification comes in hindsight. Antisemitism turns Ivy League doctors, and nurses, those sworn to protect life, into Jew haters. Those caught tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children cannot even explain why, unable to confront their own absent rationale. Universities like Harvard and Princeton are not merely antisemitic because the US blindly allows nations like China and Qatar to send them billions. 75% of Palestinians support the October 7th massacre, and many Ivy League professors do too. World antisemitism spiked by over 300%, not after Israel’s response, but from October 7th itself, by those so enthused by attacks against Jews, they wanted to join in.
So antisemitism is a primal, unconscious, irrational urge inherent in mankind. And not only are the intellectual not immune, sadly they rationalize it away even better. We must understand that unconscious. Otherwise, as Carl Jung said, “unless you make the unconscious conscious, it will forever dominate your life and you will call it fate.”
Humanity’s conflicts occur because of unanswered questions.
Humanity’s conflicts occur because of unanswered questions, typically about the correct moral perspective the world should hold. The world’s moral perspectives are always changing, and every time new ideologies rise, so do our choices of moral perspective.
Such choices of moral perspectives are everywhere. As a simple example, if you are handing out ice cream to kids, do you give the largest portion to the biggest kid, the most well-behaved, or the one who is screaming for it the loudest? The basis for deciding is not just about satisfying the children then, but building a just society in the future. And if you didn’t make a decision, the kids will fight over it.
The world’s moral questions are likewise. The Russia/Ukraine war will continue until the security and territory questions of Russia and NATO are answered. China will want Taiwan until it understands why it shouldn’t. And so on. Our international bodies and courts are imperfect, and often ill-equipped to decide such questions, thus resulting in conflict.
The most fundamental of such questions attack the Jews. When a newly-rising ideology seeks to replace the moral perspective of Western civilization, it necessarily must attack the Jews as the source of its foundation. When the Jews begin to appear immoral to the world, it’s because the world faces a moral choice, and begins to lose perspective of what is right and wrong.
Without the Torah, morality would always change, causing conflict
Without the Torah, and Bible, morality would change every time new leaders and new ideologies rise. New, divergent ideologies must seek to destroy its mother to continue to grow. By definition, they must diverge or else they would be the same ideology. About 3,300 years ago, we stopped worshipping idols and began to believe in one God. Before that, new ideologies would form around newly-made up “gods”, each having to fight to tear down the former civilization. Since the Jewish people accepted one true God, humanity advanced more than perhaps the million years prior. The Torah codified right and wrong, appropriate animal and grain offerings, because otherwise, ideologies would rise to offer a different value system.
Our Commandments documented “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not covet”, which seem obvious, but otherwise, new ideologies would arise to oppose the former. If a new ideology arose wanting to tax the rich 100% and declare it a higher morality, every poor person would be misled into following its leader, and we’d have a war. By the way, notice how communism is an economic system and should have nothing to do with religion, yet bans religion. It’s because by honoring just these just two Commandments, communism can never take hold.
Even the way our domestic laws are interpreted changes. Twenty years ago, it was immoral, even if not illegal, to weaponize a legal system against a president with “excuse” crimes. The law didn’t change; our moral perspective changed. And not only in America with the charges against Trump, but in Israel with the charges against Netanyahu, and in Britain with the charges against Boris Johnson. It’s no coincidence that all leading Western democracies now all simultaneously have prosecutions by Left-leaning jurists against conservative, Right-leaning politicians. Either all conservative leaders in Western nations became criminals, or the moral perspective changed. As another example, Islam for many centuries preserved the Jews, but now an ideology within Islam opposes a Jewish state, because this rising ideology within Islam has a different moral perspective.
Unless resolved in time, the world’s unanswered questions develop emotionally-polarized ideological divides between in-group and out-group, and cause conflicts.
In 2023, antisemitism is spreading again, now globally. As today’s worst immoralities are racism, genocide, colonization, apartheid, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing, Jews are being accused of these, by many with no perspective. As it’s not politically correct to attack Jews, the broader ideology attacks Israel, the only Jewish state and safe haven. The world lacks perspective, because these terms are ideological hammers to try to destroy Israel with, instead of values that can create a consistent framework for long-term peaceful coexistence. It’s not that we don’t all don’t oppose racism, genocide, and colonization, but that any workable definition exculpates Israel. As I explained, “Apartheid” was by European-origin settlers in South Africa against an indigenous population, but Jews are indigenous to Israel and have no other homeland. As “colonize” means people with one homeland exerting power over a foreign people in another land (ex: British colonies in America), only the Arabs can be colonizers, as Arabs are from Arabia with the Islamic capitol in Mecca. Jews are indigenous to Judea and the Holy Land over 3,000 years, and Jews by definition cannot colonize their only and home territory. But without clarity, the world’s changing ideologies are changing the very lens the world sees morality through.
All Jews ever wanted was to live in peace as Jews. Unlike Roman, Greek, Persian, Islamic, Mongol, and other empires, the ancient Hebrew civilization 1000 BCE to 70 CE is one of the only that in over 1,000 years there, never sent armies to colonize or conquer other distant lands. It’s not in the Jewish culture. And, the Jewish population has always remained small, just a few million. Even waging war has strict requirements for the Jewish people, like seeking peace beforehand.
And of course, the entire Middle East conflict exists because Israel wishes to remain a Jewish state, called “Zionism”. The word inherently has no negative connotation other than Jews wanting to have their indigenous homeland and culture. Of course, if someone is trying to annihilate the Jewish state and she defends herself, to the attackers, Zionism is a problem. Arabs who control 99.6% of the land in the Middle East, openly admit that if Israel’s 0.4% were a 23rd Muslim state, there would be no problem. Somehow, the world’s opposition to racism doesn’t (yet) include this viewpoint, making the term “racism” devoid of meaning without this proper perspective.
So antisemitism is a primal, unconscious, irrational urge inherent in mankind. And not only are the intellectual not immune, sadly they rationalize it away even better. And it’s based on diverging moral questions of the time.
Let’s look deeper into resentment of the Jewish people.
History’s antisemites reveal a subconscious feeling of lacking caused by Jewish contentment. The history in Appendix A shows a consistent pattern of not only expelling Jews, but forbidding Jewish practices and study, and even burning Jewish books. Jerusalem was attacked 52 times and conquered perhaps 20 times, more than any other people’s capital in the world. However, it was never made into another empire’s capital, as if done simply to take it away from the Jews rather than gain anything themselves. In Rome, the Triumph Arch of Titus depicts the image of Romans carrying away the Jews’ Holy Menorah after sacking Jerusalem in 70 AD, celebrating taking Jewish possessions otherwise meaningless to Romans. Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed ancient Israel as “Syria Palestina”, after not one but two of Israel’s enemies, to try to keep Jews from returning to enjoy our own sacred homeland. What did a Roman emperor care if Jews returned later? As Mark Twain wrote in his letter of 1898, the Arabs left Jerusalem abandoned. The Arabs never rebuilt Jerusalem when they possessed it, and never made it the capital of any Arab state, not pre 1948, nor 1948-1967. They didn’t want it until the Jews returned and rebuilt it. And now, there mere existence of a Jewish state is enraging, with that rage spreading like a virus to much of the world.
Why is there a historic pattern of an urge to deny us our faith, our Temple, our books, our rituals; appearing to be disturbed by Jewish happiness itself, and gain satisfaction from destroying it? Why does the world react to us, like a kid in a sand box, who would rather destroy our sand castle than enjoy building their own?
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson talked about an evolutionary hierarchy that goes back to lobsters over a hundred million years ago. In some ways humans still similarly decide dominance and leadership by primal indicators such as size and aggressiveness. However, if a group without these came to dominate hierarchies of competence as he puts it, it would be incredibly disturbing the those who believe they understand the natural order differently.
Why were Jews in Europe’s history barred from many professions? Of course, there’s no need to bar someone from a profession for being bad at it because their reputation would spread and they would be out of business. The only reason to bar a group from a profession is because they are too good at it. While Jews were less than one percent of Weimar Germany’s population, they constituted 25 to 30 percent of the legal profession, including many leading lawyers, as Mark Twain wrote. Per his letter of 1898 “Concerning the Jews”, he believed that nine-tenths of the hostility towards Jews in Russia, Austria, and Germany came from inability to compete successfully with Jews. Twain refers to a speech urging expulsion of Jews from Berlin, which confessed, “eighty-five per cent of the successful lawyers of Berlin were Jews, and that about the same percentage of the great and lucrative businesses of all sorts in Germany were in the hands of the Jewish race.”
Jews have a culture of hard work, strong parental involvement, and focus on study, like many in some Asian, Indian, and other cultures, yet remain a minority everywhere except Israel. Even in the Middle East, Israel’s 7 million Jews are a minority amongst 440 million Arabs. And the same way as minorities we faced antisemitism in communities, Israel is now facing similar as a small minority amongst other nations.
Twain’s comment, of course, was before the modern state of Israel’s reestablishment as a center of global technology and innovation known as the “start up nation”, countless contributions to benefit the world, and having the highest per capita engineers and scientists of any nation. Jews have received 214 out of 965 Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2023 for advances in areas like biology, chemistry, physics, and economics, discovering penicillin, and more. The Arabs outnumber the Jews 50 to 1, but have received only 3 Nobel prizes. According to a 1989 study of the greatest chess masters of all time, 28 out of the top 64 were Jewish, and so were a quarter to a third of top chess champions. Mark Twain wrote in 1898, long before the reforming of the modern state of Israel, “I am not the Sultan, and I am not objecting; but if that concentration of the cunningest brains in the world were going to be made in a free country (bar Scotland), I think it would be politic to stop it. It will not be well to let the race find out its strength. If the horses knew theirs, we should not ride any more.”
In order to resent the Jews’ success, the rest of the world must begin to covet, abandon personal responsibility, and take on a culture of blame rather than gratitude. Ideologies must change to see us as immoral, thus becoming evil themselves, because to adopt their moral perspective, they must go against the very laws of mankind, and any sustainable civilization.
But there is no need to fear or resent Jews. Let me explain some of the magic, whether one believe in God or not. Shabbat, the spiritual Sabbath day off from our material challenges, allows our subconscious minds to wander and return refreshed with new ideas. Since self-disciplined kids become more successful in life, we have Hanukah, when kids only one present a day for eight days. And we eat kosher, as the toxins in pork and bottom-feeding shellfish and other unhealthy animals may affect a healthy mind. The word for our people, Jew, comes from Yehuda, which comes from the ancient Hebrew word Hodaya, meaning gratitude or thankfulness. See Genesis 29:35 “I will thank God and call my son Judah.” The Jewish people, are literally the people of gratitude, which any spiritual advisor will tell you is the key to manifesting, because when you believe good things come to you, you notice opportunities better.
Resentment tears down civilizations, and you cannot have goodness and advancement without gratitude, an essential element of universal morality.
Jews are not “the chosen people” in any meaning of arrogance, but rather, we are “chosen” to bear a heavy burden through struggle, pain, and sacrifice for the benefit of all mankind. We are “a light unto the nations”, whether the world wants that light or not. And when they don’t, they try to put ours out. We have defined our existence, and whether other peoples have defined theirs or not, whether their morals are 1000 years old or invented yesterday, they have no moral right to hate us, and thus must turn immoral to do so.
The world would lose moral perspective without the Jewish people.
The world should celebrate and join Jewish accomplishments (and all others’) as the potential of all mankind, and something to strive for. The other option, is to resent not just Jews, but all those who benefit and give meaning to our world. To resent those who taught us the value of human life, and gave us penicillin and a cure for Polio, is to turn evil. And such divergence in morality will find another excuse and cause conflict.
Abraham binding but not sacrificing Isaac taught humanity that human life is valuable, in a world where the value of human life did not exist as such, and people routinely sacrificed even children for the sake of countless undefined gods, hopes of better harvests and such. The Mayans and Aztecs sacrificed tens of thousands on their temples. Without the Jews, each one of us reading this, Jew or non, would likely be slaves if not a human sacrifice. And if the world ever destroyed the Jews, it would go back to such darkness.
The Ten Commandments; Thou Shalt Not Murder, Thou Shalt not Steal, Thou Shalt Not Covet, are prohibited precisely because they were not obvious to humanity, nor easy to follow. With Jews as the source of Western Civilization’s moral conscience, we are the “canary in the coal mine” of evil growing. Any new ideology rising must distinguish itself from our moral core. The further they diverge, the more contrary to our foundational morals they become by definition.
Communism, for example, has to suppress all religion, as the entire system is based on the prohibited emotion of coveting what others have. When Jews warn against coveting, it is not just for our sake, but the coveters’, for those in an ideology absent personal accountability will never be happy.
Nazism, as another example, rose against the Jews, because their ideology of white supremacy and killing all others couldn’t not survive a challenge from Jewish moral values. Hitler admitted the battle for morality was between his and the Jews.
So my proposed definition of antisemitism helps societies look for the true causes.
“Antisemitism starts as an irrational, emotional, subconscious discontentment about any aspect of human life that rationalizes itself under the fallacy of a complaint against Jews or their homeland of Israel. Antisemitism spreads from a shared excuse among discontent individuals to societies where some use demagoguery for political gain focused on Jews as the scapegoated out-group. And lastly, broader population segments unaware of these origins believe the false excuses of Jewish wrongdoing and are misled to a false moral perspective rather than properly answering outstanding moral questions.”
My definition describes and distinguishes between those who hate Jews due to their own personal deficiencies, those who facilitate antisemitism for political gain, and those well-intended who believe the propaganda of the first two groups. It is a way for antisemites to understand themselves. Because after all, it is not enough to cast blame, when they are the victims of their own mental illness.
Today, ideologies are rising and diverging again because of the world’s outstanding moral questions.
Today’s antisemitism started the day Israel was founded as a state on May 14, 1948, and five Arab armies attacked to try to wipe her out, and has existed since. They have been so insistent on their moral perspective, and so numerous with many of the nearly 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide and 57 Muslim states supportive, that this moral perspective has spread to much of the world. In 1800, the world’s Muslim population was 91 million, in 1900 it was 200 million, and in 1977 there were 577 million Muslims in the world. By comparison there were an estimated 11 million Jews around 1900, 16 million before the Holocaust, and still less than 16 million today. The world Jewish population has been very steady, while the Muslim population has increased by 1.6 billion, now outnumbering the Jews now 100 to 1. By comparison, the population of the nation of Hungary was 7 million in 1900, and is now 9.3 million, growing only slightly.
With Islam’s growing numbers, an ideology is rising among many in the previously-cohabitating and previously-intellectual Islamic world raising unanswered questions about the morality of Islamic expansion and conquest of not just Israel, but Europe, India, and every other nation, people, and culture. Good Muslims who seek cohabitation and balance are often sidelined amidst this surge. And the conflict for control of potentially-future Islamic lands, an inherent side effect of failure to address the world’s outstanding related questions.
And no coincidence that the leaders of the ideologies against Israel today are the Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, where there are likewise no free elections, due process, or free thought. China even has a social credit and monitoring system giving it absolute control, and with their growth and expansion, are also becoming more aggressive than China has been historically, seeking to control the world’s resources, ports, and even leaders.
Without the Jews, the world would descend into a darkness of North Korean oppression, Chinese surveillance and social credit systems, or an Islamic caliphate worse than the Taliban or Isis or Hamas, eventually consuming even moderate Islamic states. Europe can’t defend itself on its own, and America has lost much of its own moral compass. And thus, Israel is now the target of them all.
And that moral divergence is also behind the Palestinian antisemitism.
The world supported a Jewish state in 1947 with General Assembly resolution 181, acknowledging the Jewish return to our ancient homeland. But it probably wouldn’t today if it had a vote, because the world’s moral perspectives are diverging because of the outstanding moral questions of our time. Today, not only could the UN probably could not pass a resolution acknowledging Israel’s 3,000 year indigenous history in the land, but it passed Security Council Resolution 2334 saying the 3,000 year old Jewish Temple does not belong to the Jews, destroying the UN’s own credibility from its shortsightedness. On this path, is there any reason the UN cannot in the future declare away Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, African, or Sikh possession of its own beautiful cultural treasures likewise?
How did the world’s moral perspective change? The world has never seen a civilization largely expelled from their indigenous homeland (although hundreds of thousands of Jews remained in the Holy Land), maintain their identity, and largely return and formally reestablish its nation after 2,000 years.
Israel should win the moral argument based on any reasonable moral perspective: Who was there first? The Jews. Who is indigenous? The Jews. Who has no other homeland? The Jews. Who better takes care of the land? The Jews. Who is the more unique culture? The Jews. Who needs the land to survive as a unique culture? The Jews. Who contributes more to the benefit of humanity? The Jews. Who made the land their capital? The Jews. Who is more advanced technologically, legally, intellectually etc.? The Jews. Who is more willing to live in peace with the other? The Jews.
So the world changes its moral focus to questions like: “Who is suffering more?” Or, “who has broader political clout?”
These are all various moral perspectives we can judge the parties through. However, in deciding which lens to see the Palestinian conflict through, here is the distinction: Some of these moral perspectives are applicable to cherish and preserve every other unique and beautiful nation and culture on earth, and the last two destroy them all. If Jews don’t have an unconditional right to Israel, why would the French have a right to France, or the British to England, or Germans to Germany, Japanese to Japan, or Indians to India? Or for that matter, Ukrainians Ukraine, or Taiwanese Taiwan?
And if we don’t all agree on that right, doesn’t that necessitate challenge and invite conflict?
Simply, when choosing a moral compass, the world must choose one also applicable to them, for they are next. The question is a moral dilemma about group rights of indigenous peoples, and the answer is, if Israel cannot be a Jewish state, then no culture may have its own.
Once you understand the correct moral question, all the world needs is the courage to adhere to its own long term moral values necessary for peace.
During WWII, the world should have sided with the Jews more not because we were suffering more, but but because the Nazi ideology would conquer them next. Likewise, today, the world shouldn’t side with the Palestinians because they are suffering more, but Israel, because a broader Islamic expansionist and conquest ideology unless moderated by a clear moral perspective will conquer them next. And a clear moral stance from the world is needed for that moderation and balance.
And now that we understand the fundamental moral question, the sub-parts, and the rest of the conflict is easy. Every year on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we study the story of Esther, in which Haman had such a hole in his heart due to a Jew not bowing to him, that he was willing to pay valuable treasure just to kill Jews. And with this, the West can understand why Palestinians are willing to create their own self-induced suffering, just to try to harm the one Jewish safe haven. They didn’t want two states before ’48, or ’67, and don’t want two states now.
The missing fundamental understanding is that the Arabs who fight Israel aren’t fighting Israel for the reasons most people in the world think, but simply because Israel is a nation of Jews they believe should not exist on what they believe is Arab land. A nation trying to forcibly conquer and take a land from another is bad enough. The world changing its morality to side with such a nation that can’t even do the evil it desires to is globally destructive.
In simple words, in the world knowing whom to side with, Israel will never try to conquer the rest of the world, but an unmoderated Islamic world of 1.8 billion will.
If the world doesn’t have this moral perspective, it can’t answer the other diverging moral questions. For example: Is one Jewish life worth one Arab life? If the answer is yes, the conundrum then facing the world is, “are 15 million Arab lives worth 15 million Jewish?”, because if yes also, given that option, that many would happily become suicide bombers to destroy the Jewish nation. Thus you have a moral paradox. You cant answer the secondary moral questions unless you answer the fundamental moral question first. And then, everything else is easy. Otherwise, a vote of 440 million million against 15 million in the UN is akin to 22 wolves and one lamb voting on what’s for dinner.
Has the world decided the moral question, that the Palestinians, if they get a state, get a fixed and limited amount of territory, and only on the condition that they first prove they can live side by side in peace with Israel? No. If the world had unequivocally decided this and other such questions, the entire Arab world would be focused on teaching the Palestinians peace and coexistence with Israel. But without this moral clarity, those who want to destroy Israel are united ideologically, without a moral dividing line, with those who simply want to help Palestinians for humanitarian reasons. That’s why so much of the world is against Israel. And Israel, left to defend herself for her survival. Thus, absence of moral clarity causes the conflict. So yes, the United States is correct for vetoing anti-Israel resolutions even though it may not well communicate why. And much of the world, sewing the seeds of its own later destruction.
As I discuss in my article, “The World is in its Infancy in Understanding War”, as long as the Palestinians have a culture of resentment and coveting against their successful neighbor Israel, they will always be polarizable by any leader who takes a divisive position, no matter how bad that leadership is. Until the Palestinian culture meets the precondition of changing to one of acceptance of Israel, peace is metaphysically impossible, and a state would just be an increase in the same Palestinian momentum, and thus a launching pad for more conflict. This is not merely the reasoning for some Jews who do not want a Palestinian state, believing the prerequisite is impossible. This is a metaphysical prerequisite for peace.
How can you let Palestinians have an airport and open border, if they would just ship in weapons to launch at Israel?
How can you have a Palestinian state with a capitol in East Jerusalem, if they would simply let in perhaps 100 million Arabs to overrun Israel?
If someone reasonably believes in the “two state solution”, underlying the question “why” is the assumption that the Palestinians are a separate and unique people who want to live in peace with Israel. You cannot have people with a moral perspective of blame and aggression toward their neighbor coexist with a more successful neighbor. In other words, a people of “gratitude” and a people of conquest cannot coexist unless the Palestinian culture changes first. And it must change so much, that it accept less land than it could have had in ’48 and ’67.
Until then, Israel cannot morally be held to the impossible standard of being responsible for those willing to die to try to destroy her. And the world’s lack of support for Israel without this precondition, only instigating war, against Israel, and soon themselves.
While the world should say the Palestinians should not get a state until they first prove they are able to live side by side in peace with Israel, they aren’t able to say this. Neither self-inflicted suffering for political gain, nor terrorism for political gain, can be a permanent global moral perspective. If that were the world’s moral perspective, it would consume every other nation. The world just doesn’t realize it.
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APPENDIX A
- We were enslaved in Egypt 1650BCE to 1450 BCE, and pursued even after we were set free.
- In 1400 BCE, we were attacked without cause by the Amaleks.
- After Kind David made Jerusalem our capitol in 1000 BCE, and Solomon’s Temple was built in 950 BCE, our temple was destroyed in 733 BCE by the Babylonians, and we were expelled from Samaria in 733 BCE.
- We were held in captivity in Babylon 597 BCE, as described in the Book of Daniel.
- The Persians attempted our genocide in 475 BCE.
- We were sold into slavery across the Roman Empire in 70 BCE.
- In 63 BCE, 12,000 Jews died in Pompeii’s conquest of the east.
- In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple; a million Jews died, and 97,000 were taken slaves.
- Thousands of us were killed in Cyprus and Egypt in 115-117 CE.
- We were forced expulsions from Judea 132-135 CE, which the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed after our ancient enemy, the Philistines.
- There were forced conversions in Italy in 224.
- We were expelled from Carthage in 250, expelled from Alexandria in 415, expelled from Clement France in 554, expelled from Visigoth Spain in 612, expelled from Italy in 855 and all of France in 1181, as the hatred of us broadened geographically.
- There was rioting and attacks on Jews in Toledo Spain in 1212.
- By the Lateran council of Rome in 1215, Jews had to wear a badge of shame, pay extra taxes, and were denied public sector jobs.
- There were forced conversions in the kingdom of Leon in 1231.
- There was a ban on Jewish learning and Talmuds, thousands of Talmuds were burned in Paris France in 1239.
- We suffered confiscation of property, and were imprisoned, burned, converted and expelled in 1240 Austria.
- The council of Vienna declared Jews must wear pointed caps, and thousands were murdered in 1264 Germany.
- Jewish men, women, and children were imprisoned, and hundreds were hung in 1270 England.
- Jews were expelled and 180 were burned at the stake in 1276.
- The council of Offon denied Jews civic positions, and we had to wear a badge of shame in 1279 Hungary and Poland.
- Kind Edward issued an edict banishing all Jews from England, and many were drowned in 1290.
- Jewish refugees from England were also expelled from France in 1291.
- Libel of “desecrated host” and forced conversions of Jews took place in 150 Jewish communities 1298 Germany.
- We were expelled from upper Bavaria in 1442.
- We were expelled from Nassau 1478.
- We were expelled from Spain, and Calabria Italy in 1492.
- We were expelled from Portugal 1496-1497, expelled from Nuremberg 1499, and expelled from Naples in 1540.
- We were expelled by Pope Pius V from Papal states in 1569.
- We were expelled by Pope Clement VIII from Papal states in 1593.
- We were expelled from Frankfurt in 1614.
- We were expelled from Ukraine in 1649.
- We were expelled from American territories in Tennessee and Mississippi under Ulysses S. Grant in 1862.
- There were pogroms in Russia in 1880-1910.
- Then, the nations of the world weren’t expelling us anymore. They wanted a “final solution”, the Holocaust in Europe, in which 6,000,000 Jews murdered between 1933 and 1945. Many nations cooperated, and few nations helped, proving after thousands of years of this, that Jews need a place of refuge to call home to prevent our extermination.
- Despite 22 Arab countries controlling 99.6% of the land in the Middle East, the founding of the modern state of Israel on May 14, 1948 in our ancient Jewish homeland triggered immediate attack by the armies of Egypt, Transjordan (Jordan), Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon the very next day on May 15, 1948.
- Having failed in genocide, Egypt, Syria and Jordan attempted to attack and destroy Jewish state again in June, 1967.
- Then, again, when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on the holiest Jewish day, Yom Kippur 1973, seeking to destroy the Jewish state.
- Meanwhile, millions of Jews, virtually all Jews, were forced to leave nearly all Arab lands in up to 22 nations, between 1948 to the present, leaving no Jews in the rest of the Arab world.
- Various attacks on the Jewish state by Iranian-sponsored groups surrounding Israel continued since.
- Finally, on October 7, 2023, some 1,200 Jews were murdered, and around 240 were taken prisoner.