Why stand with Israel

Antisemitism has risen throughout the Western world to the highest levels since the 1930s and World War II. But today’s antisemitism springs from both the left and the right, which is why CNAV spoke early of fractured coalitions. Now we see the United States government breaking previous resupply and other agreements with Israel – possibly in violation of U.S. law. The time has come to review the ostensible – and actual – motives for the antisemitism from left and right today. Likewise, CNAV wishes to state for the record why we stand with the State of Israel.

Latest in the Israel-Gaza War

Last week, the Israel Defense Forces moved into Rafah, on the Gaza-Egyptian border. When that happened, the Biden administration held up at least one delivery of ammunition to Israel. This apparently violates the Impoundment Control Act and thus represents yet another impeachable offense the “Resident” has committed in office. This morning we now learn that the Biden administration knows exactly where leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS) are hold up in the tunnel network they have created. And they won’t tell the Israelis. This came to light on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News program, Sunday Morning Futures. Bartiromo, as any normal human being would, exploded in apoplexy.

Senator [Mike Lee, R-Utah], let me just look at this one story. I’ve got to get your take from The Washington Post. The Washington Post apparently got this leak from, I assume, the Biden administration, but it says that the administration is working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, and they claim that they will give Israel valuable… quote, unquote, “Valuable assistance, if it holds back, including the US will share sensitive intelligence to Israel to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of the Hamas leaders to find them in hidden tunnels.”

In other words, The Washington Post is writing that the United States will share information about where the terrorists are with Israel if they don’t go into Rafah. Are you kidding me? In other words, the US knows where the terrorists are. They’re not going to share the information with Israel unless Israel [declines] to go into Rafah. This story is outrageous in The Washington Post.

Sadly, they are not kidding. “Resident” Biden is trying to stay in good with his base. And his base seems to have expelled its Jewish contingent and thrown in with HAMAS. (More on that below.)

As CNAV observed before, we observe that also on the right. Most Protestant Christians stand with Israel, on humanitarian, mutual friendship, and eschatological (study of the Last Things) grounds. An increasingly militant contingent, mainly from the Roman Catholic faith, have issued virulent judgments about these Christians’ probable spiritual destination. As CNAV will show below, this ostensibly proceeds from their understanding of the role of Jews in past and future. But it shows every sign of proceeding from simple resentment – or defensiveness over the chequered history of the Roman Catholic Church’s relations with the Jews.

Does anyone stand with Israel on the left?

Probably not. The most militant leftists have given every indication of expelling most Jews from their midst. Perhaps they retain friendships with Reform Jews, who in 1885 (the Pittsburgh Platform) declared that they were “not a nation” anymore. But with anyone who stands with Israel today, they have ended all friendships.

Erick-Woods Erickson, the “Georgia Political Junkie,” thinks he knows the reason for the left’s attitude. And he’s probably correct, if the left’s vituperations on social media are any indicator.

He says the left never retains any friendship with one who will not bow the knee to them. Benjamin Netanyahu won’t, and has never done that. That explains why Barack Obama turned his face away from Netanyahu during a White House photo-op. And then, in 2015, campaigned in Israel for Netanyahu’s electoral opponents. (Netanyahu won anyway.) And when Donald J. Trump not only welcomed Netanyahu with open arms, but instructed his Ambassador to Israel to move his office to the American Consulate in South Jerusalem, thereby transforming said Consulate into an Embassy, he earned the permanent, almost homicidal enmity of the Left. (They keep threatening to assassinate him, though any connection between the loudest leftist noisemakers and actual – and thus far failed – attempts on Trump’s life is still rhetorical only.)

In that same video clip, Erickson warns that riots and violence might break out if, as looks more likely every day, Trump wins in 2024. But Erickson missed another source of antisemitism – from the right.

Anti-Israel enmity on the right

When a leftist rails against Israel today, he might actually say the people of Israel deserved the atrocities of October 7, 2023. That’s what they get, leftists say, for voting wrong. (Which is why Erickson predicts political violence on the left after a Trump victory.) But a rightist railing against Israel knows better than to excuse, much less justify, atrocity. So he will say Israel did this to its own people. The most blatant such declaration is that “October 7 was a false-flag pseudo-operation.” Less blatantly, one might assert that HAMAS is a creation of Mossad, the Israeli equivalent of the CIA. (Elements of the John Birch Society suspect that HAMAS is a non-Muslim creation – of the CIA itself.)

Rightist opposition to Israel doesn’t get as much attention, because rightists do not take over buildings and assault people. But they still make their presence felt on social media, often crossing paths with their counterparts who stand with Israel.

Some of this enmity might stem from the observation that American Jews have traditionally been leftist in their politics. American rabbis (which name means teachers) literally “teach” leftism from their lecterns in their synagogues. In fact, Theodor Herzl, leader of the first Zionist pioneers, installed collective farming in the first Zionist settlements (kibbutzim). The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the second country to recognize Israel. Israel then gave every indication of evolving toward Communism. When Israel abandoned socialism, the Soviets gave planes and tanks to the Arabs.

Religious enmity

Jews might not be so quick to vote Democratic anymore, given the attitudes of the Biden administration today. But old habits of anti-Jewish animus will die hard on the right. Patrick J. Buchanan and former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) are two booby-prize antisemites on the right.

Besides the political angle, many on the right are Roman Catholics, with some Greek Orthodox mixed in. Roman Catholics invented the notion that, to quote the late Dutch Reformed radio empire builder Harold Camping,

God is through with national Israel.

The basis for this kind of thinking is Covenantal Theology, the notion that the Church inherits all the promises made to Abraham, then to King David. (Moses’ covenant does not count; that was conditional.) The Dutch Reformed Church continues that teaching, which they probably borrowed from the Lutherans. (Martin Luther famously wrote a tome he called On the Jews and their Lies.) The Roman Catholic Covenantal tradition predates the Great Schism between Catholic and Orthodox.

It also informed the Crusades. Thus when Pope Urban IX called on Christian kings to intervene militarily following the desecration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the European kings who responded, set up Crusader Kingdoms that were not friendly toward the Jews.

In contrast, most Protestants, especially Anabaptists, adhere to Dispensational Theoology. This divides history into seven Dispensations: Innocence, Conscience, Human Government, Promise, Law, Grace, and the Millennium. We are at Grace today. The Millennium – a thousand years of peace – remains ahead of us.

Further explanation of peace

As ever, a further discussion of peace in this context is in order. To quote the late Robert A. Heinlein:

“Peace” is a condition in which no civilian pays attention to military casualties that do not achieve page one, lead story prominence, unless said civilian is a relative of one of the casualties. But … there has [n]ever been a time in history when “peace” meant that there was no fighting going on…

The Millennial Kingdom will be a thousand-year reign in which “peace” will mean there shall be no fighting going on. King Jesus will, quite simply, not allow it.

It ill befits a Christian to “spiritize” this away, and assert that the fighting we observe is of no moment. But that’s all a Covenantal Theologian can do. A Dispensational Theologian knows well what the Prophet Daniel said:

War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. Daniel 9:26

Daniel also said,

The people of the prince who shall come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.

This happened in 70 A.D., at the hand of a Roman army under the command of a general named Titus. He later became Emperor of Rome. Which illustrates another important point. Almost every prophecy the Bible contains, has seen literal fulfillment. Those prophecies that have not seen fulfillment, give every indication of being imminent. Which means they can fulfill themselves any time. Covenantal Theologians must ignore this point. Dispensational theologians rely on it.

Why stand with Israel?

CNAV stands with Israel for a host of reasons. Consistency with Dispensational Theology is one. The reestablishment of the Jews in their own State, in the very Land of God’s choosing, was a Divine miracle. Beyond that, no other country takes care of its archaeological antiquities as carefully as does the State of Israel. And, contrary to popular belief, Israel does have valuable exports. Most of these are intellectual – and these can be even more valuable, on calm and sober analysis.

Without the establishment of the State of Israel, most of the antiquities of the Holy Land would be lost forever. Possibly no one would have found them. More probably the Muslim holders of the land would destroy them as they found them, except only for Muslim antiquities. Wholesale destruction of all non-Muslim antiquities would swiftly result from a mass evacuation of all Jews from the Holy Land. If the behavior of the Jerusalem Waqf doesn’t convince, then the destruction of the Palmyra ruins in Syria should. Israelis protect their antiquities; Muslims destroy theirs.

Furthermore, everyone should ask himself why so many Arab countries gladly made the Abraham Accords with Israel. (And haven’t broken any of them yet.) Arabs know that Iran, not Israel, is the existential threat to them. Without Israel – currently the most powerful country in the Middle East – Iran would reestablish the Persian Empire. An empire of which Arabs want no part.

A proxy for humanity

But one reason to stand with Israel looms larger than all the rest. Israel suffered an atrocity not seen since the Holocaust. An army that commits such atrocities rates total annihilation, for the same reason that first-degree murder rates death. Whoever commits atrocity against one enemy will likely commit it against anyone else that puts it in a bad mood. For that reason, humanity itself cannot permit such an entity to remain. Israel came under the direct attack, Israel is on the scene, so Israel is doing what must be done.

As a corollary, anyone who sides with an entity that has committed atrocity, shows utter lack of human fellow-feeling. Antisemites on the right blithely dismiss HAMAS as a nonentity, or a shell to excuse endless war. Those on the left do worse: they regard HAMAS as the righteous punisher of their political and spiritual enemies.

The Israel-Gaza War – or perhaps better called the First Israel-Persian War – has illuminated much that has remained carefully hidden. The suffering and deaths of so many Israelis, while tragic, revealed at least two, possibly three, enemies of humanity. To defeat those enemies is to ensure that those Israelis did not die or suffer in vain.