Unprepared For Bush’s Praise

George W. Bush’s extraordinarily supportive 60th Independence Day address to the Israeli Knesset last week may not have been a rhetorical masterpiece, but it was well-crafted and had its moments of eloquence.Above all, it was a demonstration of why Mr. Bush’s feelings about Israel have been not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively, different from those of any American president before him. These feelings have to do with his Christian faith, as was already made clear in the opening paragraph of his talk, when he referred to the state of Israel’s establishment as “the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham and Moses and David — a homeland for the chosen people in Eretz Yisrael.”These are not the kind of words that have been heard from American presidents before, starting with “Eretz Yisrael” — the traditional Hebrew name, meaning “the Land of Israel,” for the country generally known in European languages as Palestine.Nor has the “ancient promise” of this land made to the ancestors of the Jewish people ever been a part of the vocabulary of Pennsylvania Avenue, let alone of international leaders and diplomats dealing with the Israel-Arab conflict.Indeed, it has never been part of the vocabulary of Israeli diplomats or leaders, either. International diplomacy has accustomed us to phrases like Israel’s “right to security,” Israel’s “need for defensible borders,” and Israel’s “legitimate existence as a Jewish state.” We are not used to hearing from it, or from an occupant of the White House, about God’s promises in the Bible.And we are certainly not used to hearing the Jews referred to by an American president as “the chosen people.” Actually, this is a phrase that most Jews find acutely embarrassing. Except for the Orthodox, who don’t make a habit of boasting about it, few Jews in today’s world are of the opinion that they have been chosen by anything or anybody apart, perhaps, from bad luck and anti-Semites; the last thing they want non-Jews to think is that they harbor the outrageous notion that God has singled them out for some special purpose.And that’s why President Bush’s support for Israel, too, is embarrassing to so many Jews. It’s bad enough that as an evangelical Christian the president has all kinds of absurd beliefs, such as that stem cell research is sinful, or that homosexual marriage is an abomination, or that children deserve to have two parents, one of each sex. But that he also should also believe that the Jews are God’s people? How kooky can you get?And most embarrassingly of all, what President Bush believes about the Jews is something that nearly all Jews once believed about themselves. It’s aggravating to be reminded of the you you once were and would like to forget. Remember the time back in high school when you had great ambitions and thought you had a God-given talent that the world would hear about some day? Not really, because now, decades later, you’ve done everything you can to banish it from your mind — which is why you cringe when you run into an old classmate who recognizes you and exclaims with a slap on the back, “Hey, it’s you! I’ll never forget the impression you made on me.”For many Jews, President Bush is like that classmate. They wish he hadn’t recognized them.The president, it was observed rather ruefully in Israel, gave a Zionist speech such as hasn’t been heard from mainstream Israeli politicians for many years. If by that is meant that he invoked the Bible, rather than the Oslo “peace process” or his own “road map,” this is certainly true. The Bible has long ceased to be bon ton in Israeli intellectual life. It has become politically incorrect for Israelis to think that just because some possibly imaginary progenitors of theirs had religious fantasies about God’s pledging them a country, their contemporary thinking needs to take this into account. If an American president feels comfortable with such fairy tales, that’s no reason why they should.President Bush clearly believes the Jews are central to history in a way most Jews themselves no longer do. They find such thinking primitive. The only problem is that history itself shows signs of agreeing with the president.This, really, is the astonishing thing about the country Mr. Bush addressed last week when he said, “Citizens of Israel: Masada shall never fall again and America will be at your side”: How central to everything it is. A tiny place with a population that wouldn’t fill any of the world’s ten largest cities, it finds itself in the middle of all the great conflicts of our times: The battle for democracy, the war against terror, the fight against Islamic fundamentalism, the campaign against nuclear proliferation. Practically every scenario for a nuclear Armageddon, ranging from that of the most wild-eyed preacher of the Gospel to that of the most cool-headed political scientist, revolves around Israel.Perhaps it really is primitive to believe, as President Bush does, that this has something to do with the Jews being the people of the Bible. Certainly, most Jews themselves would like to think that it has to do with other things. They would rather not be at the center of anything. It makes them nervous when someone reminds them that, despite their best efforts, that’s where they still are. The role of being a chosen people is big on them.The president of the United States disagrees. That’s part of the reason why many Jews will be relieved to see him leave office next January. It’s not just stem-cell research, or even the war in Iraq. The man thinks too much of us. That’s something we’re not prepared to put up with.Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.

Unprepared For Bush’s Praise

Unprepared For Bush’s Praise

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