Partners in Paranoia
October 7, 2003
If you want to understand some of America's foreign policy problems,
you could do worse than to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. It's a gruelingly didactic experience, but the message it
labors to impart isn't necessarily the one you should draw.
The carefully structured tour includes a film strip on the history of
anti-Semitism which, you are encouraged to believe, culminated in the
Nazi murder of six million Jews (and unspecified "millions" of
"others," who don't seem to matter as much). It's heavily implied that
Christianity is the source of anti-Semitism and all the sufferings of
the Jews over the last two millennia. An earlier film strip, withdrawn
after Christian protests, was even more explicit, blaming
anti-Semitism on the four Gospels' accounts of Christ's death.
Unlike other peoples, you gather, the Jews never brought any of their
troubles on themselves. They were always the innocent victims of
vicious Christians. Many Christian countries are named — England,
Spain, France, Poland, Germany, Russia, et cetera — until you wonder
how such an intelligent people acquired such a bad habit of migrating
to anti-Semitic lands. You'd think that after a while they'd learn to
take the precaution of sending a scout ahead to any prospective new
home, who might return with the warning, "We'd better not move to
Poland. The Poles hate us even worse than the Spanish do!"
Perish the thought that Jewish behavior was ever a factor in provoking
the hostility that, according to the Jews' own account, has so
consistently greeted them in one country after another. But if
Christian teaching is the root cause of anti-Semitism, why did
anti-Semitism peak when Christianity was losing its influence? Why did
it reach its crescendo under an apostate Christian, Adolf Hitler,
rather than a devout believer? And why are Jews today far more
unpopular in the Muslim world than in the West?
Such a one-sided — even paranoid — polemical history invites
skepticism. We are now hearing equally lopsided explanations of the
unpopularity of the Jewish state of Israel. There again, we are told,
Jews are always the faultless victims, and all frictions are the fault
of the gentiles, in this case Arabs and Muslims.
But Israel has had the good fortune to enjoy the patronage of a
powerful country with a similar paranoid streak, the United States of
America. Americans have been significantly described, by Abraham
Lincoln, as "an almost chosen people." And many Americans still resist
the idea that their country can ever be in the wrong about anything.
When highly civilized, though perhaps unchosen, people like the
French, the Germans, and the Belgians recently found American conduct
in the Middle East arrogant and reckless, the welkin rang with
American voices crying "anti-Americanism!" In fact our chauvinists use
this charge in exactly the way Jewish chauvinists use the charge of
anti-Semitism.
No wonder so many people all over the world think America and Israel
deserve each other. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon both represent their countries' most belligerently
self-righteous tendencies, and they are thick as thieves. Both men
have apologists who defend their most extreme measures, equate
violence with defense, and regard criticism of the two countries as
enmity or treason.
Of course every country has its chauvinists, and sometimes they
prevail for a while. France and Germany have certainly had their
moments, but reality has had a chastening effect. Losing a war can
bring a country back to its senses when it has gone mad. For a time it
appeared that the Vietnam debacle had taught the United States the
limits of its power, and that the 1982 invasion of Lebanon had done
the same for Israel. But both countries soon forgot anything they had
learned from these bitter experiences.
It's no justification of terrorism to say that the 9/11 attacks on the
United States and the suicide bombings in Israel should have given
both countries second thoughts about their policies. Unfortunately,
these horrors have had the opposite effect: they've confirmed the
chauvinist attitude that the United States and Israel are hated for
their virtues, like a pair of beleaguered Othellos in a world of
spiteful Iagos.
Self-criticism can coexist with self-respect. Both countries can
afford to admit their faults and mistakes. In the long run, it may be
disastrous not to do so.
Joseph Sobran
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