THE MORAL MEANING OF ISRAEL:
Novak, Michael
THE MORAL MEANING OF ISRAEL There is probably no major world civilization of which educated persons in the West are more ignorant, and toward which they are more condescending, than Arab-Moslem...
...They, with us, are "children of Abraham...
...In both camps, concrete practice is often at a variance with stated ideals...
...Yet some influential leaders and parties see in certain spiritual and political ideals— or, perhaps, liberties—nourished by the West possibilities less threatening .to the values they hold dear...
...Injustice there has been, and Israel, while not fully responsible, is implicated in it...
...Already in the war of 1973, all but one in nine European nations turned against Israel...
...The fate of some 700,000 (and now more) Palestinian refugees, still stateless, still without economic aid from their Arab confreres, still without sufficient economic recompense from Israel and the United Nations, depends upon action by the entire world...
...With all its flaws, and in the midst of that quantum of injustice to which all flesh is heir, Israel is perhaps as fully democratic, as fully socialist, and as fully free in its institutions and in its ideals as any western state...
...THE MORAL MEANING OF ISRAEL There is probably no major world civilization of which educated persons in the West are more ignorant, and toward which they are more condescending, than Arab-Moslem civilization...
...Beautiful in its visions, the UN has been consistently deficient in its defense of its pronouncements...
...But, in an imperfect world, even imperfections reveal ideals...
...In four assaults since then, the UN has put little muscle behind its own decisions...
...Two great symbolic ideals polarize the social systems of the globe...
...Against enormous economic power, and against a population ratio of 130 million to 3 million, Israel's long-range survival is not physically assured...
...The national self-interest of the United States and of the West is still more intimately and profoundly involved in the survival, and even in the health, of the state of Israel...
...the other by the concrete practice of the United States, Great Britain, France, and others...
...For generations, the Lebanese have cast their intellectual and cultural energies toward the goals of western cultures, without by any means having abandoned their roots in the history and culture of the Arabic world...
...In order to affirm the special moral bonds that tie the people of the United States to Israel, it is not necessary to deny the bonds that tie us to the Arab-Moslem world...
...There are problems of justice to be solved in Israel's future, problems that are many-sided and difficult...
...Specific nations in the Arab-Moslem world, like Lebanon, deserve our special loyalties...
...In America, Senator Percy and others are beginning to turn...
...How far will they go...
...the burden of survival—even of recognition—has been Israel's...
...but so is every member of the United Nations...
...The leaders of other Arabic nations do not want to tie the future of Arabic and Islamic nations to the secular and materialistic cultures of Russia and China...
...The enormous wealth of the Arab world—estimated by 1985 to be greater than that of the combined assets of corporations listed on the New York and the American exchanges, and more than sufficient to undermine the economies of Italy, Great Britain, Japan, India and other democratic nations—tempts many "realists" to reevaluate their support of Israel...
...In times past, and rather consistently indeed, Moslem cultures were more hospitable to Jews than Christian cultures were...
...Yet, to the best of its ability, and perhaps in a fashion superior to that of any western state, it tries to exemplify before history the best of the western spiritual, intellectual, political and artistic values...
...The founding of Israel, in its actual working out in the strife of the 1930s and in the embittered struggle of 1947-48 (in which the British Foreign Office played an ugly, subversive role), did not proceed according to the hopes and dreams idealists had entertained...
...Israel is, like the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany, and other western states, an imperfect, human state, not without sin...
...In the world of politics, moral respect often follows lines of wealth and power...
...Every state in the world, including the United States, Russia, and China, has been born in moral ambiguity...
...The UN gave them place...
...today the Arabs demand, and begin to receive, a just recognition of who they are, what they have been, and yet may be...
...Injustice was suffered by, and inflicted by, Israel...
...Yet the ideals for which Israel stands are ours: democratic government, western (Continued on page 468...
...In order to support Israel, it is not necessary to force the Arab nations into an alignment with interests and ideals not our own...
...There is much they justly abhor in the western world...
...Conceded existence by the UN, Israel had to go to war alone for its survival...
...the Arabs, feeling wronged, unwilling to negotiate, chose to fight...
...Let the nation without sin cast the first stone...
...One is represented by the concrete practice MICHAEL NOVAK of Russia, China and other nations...
...Morally, intellectually, politically, there may be none that is its superior, despite the daily dread of violence and war under which it lives...
...during the Spanish Inquisition, the Arab world opened its arms...
...Few have had such advance international legitimation as Israel...
...As a matter of intellectual justice, westerners should nourish a more attentive concern and conceive a long-range plan of serious appreciation for Arab-Moslem culture and its aspirations...
...After World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jews were homeless, gaunt, displaced...
Vol. 101 • March 1975 • No. 16
