The Fabric of Freedom

Something has been nagging at us about the jibe by President Obama’s national security director, Susan Rice, in respect of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s pending speech before Congress. By virtue of the invitation given to him by Congress and his acceptance of it, she said, there has been “injected a degree of partisanship” that’s “destructive of the fabric of the relationship” between Israel and America.The remark prompted us to go to C-Span’s archive and watch Mr. Netanyahu’s first speech to a congressional joint meeting, when he spoke about that fabric. He began by saying he recognized that the “great honor you have bestowed on me is not personal” but is, rather, “a tribute to the unshakable fact that the unique relationship between Israel and the United States transcends politics and parties, governments and diplomacy.”Mr. Netanyahu then spoke of our “total commitment to the spirit of democracy, an infinite dedication to freedom. We have a common vision of how societies should be governed, of how civilization should be advanced. We both believe in eternal values, we both believe in the Almighty. We both follow traditions hallowed by time and experience. We admire America not only for its dynamism, and for its power, and for its wealth. We admire America for its moral force.”Then this: “As Jews and as Israelis, we are proud that this moral force is derived from the Bible and the precepts of morality that the Jewish people have given the world.” This is when the Congress first interrupted with applause. What is so striking about that ovation is how it underscores the fact that vast numbers of Americans in both parties admire Israel — even look up to it — precisely because they perceive the Jewish state in the light of Sinai.It is not our intention here to suggest that Israel is superior to America. Nor the Chosen to any other people. But it is our intention to suggest that neither Israel nor America is inferior to the other. They are sovereign states. President Obama, by our lights, erred when made it clear that he views Israel as — in the phrase of Jeffrey Goldberg, the reporter closest to him — the “junior partner” in the American Israel partnership.Ambassador Rice was a slightly ambiguous in her accusation in respect of how the invitation to Mr. Netanyahu had injected partisanship into Israel American relations. But where was she when Mr. Obama or Vice President Biden or one of his aides — a “senior official” in journalistic convention could be any one, including the president or the vice president — described the prime minister of Israel as “chickens**t”?In any event, there is a reason the Congress offered an ovation when Mr. Netanyahu spoke about the precepts to morality. Those precepts, brought down from Sinai, are the warp and woof in the fabric of the relationship between Israel and America. And in the fabric of freedom. Over the millennia and the centuries of our American Republic, this fabric has been stressed by a lot worse than the feuding over the speech Mr. Netanyahu is set to deliver on Tuesday. It turns out to be hard to destroy.

The Fabric of Freedom

The Fabric of Freedom

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