Tsuris From Soros

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Super-tycoon George Soros, it’s been announced, has decided to sponsor a new “progressive Jewish lobby” that will counter the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Israel Jewish organizations in order to help “promote Israeli-Arab peace.”

Mr. Soros’s fellow Jews are no doubt supposed to feel grateful. And why not? A Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who reached London after the war, proceeded to New York, made a mega-pile managing investment funds, and has reportedly spent over $5 billion of his fortune promoting good will around the world, Mr. Soros has not been renowned in the past for his devotion to Jewish causes. He has in fact avoided them like the plague. Until recently he has let it be known that Jewish solidarity was based on “tribal loyalties” that he considered himself to be above and that Jews and Israel were responsible, by virtue of their self-centeredness, for much of the world’s anti-Semitism.

So if Mr. Soros has finally decided to display a bit of tribal loyalty himself by bringing peace to the Jewish state, we should all be delighted, no?

Well, actually, no. Even were his motives as pure as the driven snow, something about his past history permits one to be skeptical about his “progressive lobby” — it will not be doing Israel any favors.

It isn’t just a question of whether the kind of “progressive” ideas about Israel that are entertained by Mr. Soros and his associates are wise. I, like many Jews, happen to think they’re extremely foolish. But let’s imagine for a moment that they’re not. Let’s assume, as does Mr. Soros, that Israel is its own worst enemy and could achieve peace by making concessions it has refused to make if only it were pressured into them by America.

This is, after all, what the “progressivism” of the new lobby will amount to. Mr. Soros’s group will be dedicated to convincing American politicians that Israel’s arm needs to be twisted, and that the American Jewish community, far from protesting when this happens, will stand up and applaud. If Aipac and its like are well-funded Jewish organizations that encourage the belief that American Jews always support Israel, let there be, for Israel’s own good, an even better-funded Jewish organization that encourages the belief that this isn’t so.

Fair enough. And now let’s step back for a moment and look at things in Mr. Soros’s favorite mode of looking at them: globally. Who in the world today agrees with him that Israel needs to be forced to do what it doesn’t want to? A brief list might include: Russia, China, India, just about all the countries of the European Union, just about all the countries of Latin America, just about all the countries of Africa, and of course, all the countries of the Arab and Muslim worlds that wouldn’t prefer simply to wipe Israel from the map, as has been suggested by the prime minister of Iran.

And who in the world disagrees with Mr. Soros? To begin with, there’s the government of America. And after that there’s also … have we already mentioned America’s government?

It’s true, of course, that with America as solidly behind Israel as the Bush administration has been, there’s not much the rest of the world can force Israel to do. But let’s look for a moment at America. Who here agrees with Mr. Soros? This time the list includes much of the press, a large part of the academic community, the liberal Christian churches, the oil lobby, most of the State Department, a lot of the CIA, some of the Pentagon, the left wing of the Democratic Party, several million Arab-Americans, and roughly a third of the American public who tell public opinion polls that American support for Israel is exaggerated.

And who strongly disagrees? The current American president and vice president, the American Jewish community, a large part of the evangelical Christian community, members of Congress who are dependent for votes and/or contributions from American Jews and/or evangelicals, and … well, that’s about it.

This doesn’t make Israel’s position in America weak. But it does make it potentially vulnerable. Vulnerable enough that, if Mr. Soros’s “progressive lobby” were to succeed, and American presidents and congressmen were to get the idea that American Jews wouldn’t mind if the heat were turned up on Israel, there would be plenty of hands itching to reach for the switch.

Now this is of course exactly what Mr. Soros and his friends want to happen. The problem is, though, once the heat is turned on, who is going to see to it that it is ever turned off again? Suppose Israel were to make all the concessions demanded of it, withdraw to its 1967 borders, evacuate all its West Bank settlements, return all of Arab Jerusalem … and 10 years later its Arab neighbors were to make new and even more dangerous demands. Now that Mr. Soros has proved that American Jews don’t stand behind it, who exactly will stand there at such a juncture?

It’s not a question of whether Israel is right or wrong about this or that. And it’s certainly not a question of whether American Jews have the right to say that Israel is wrong. It’s a question of whether, when the balance of forces in this world is tipped toward Israel’s detriment and likely to tip more so, anyone who cares about Israel’s survival — and let’s assume for the sake of the argument that George Soros really does — should want to straighten that balance. Today this might not seem like a bad idea. But what about tomorrow? For someone with a reputation for outguessing the market, Mr. Soros isn’t thinking very far ahead.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.


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