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    Middle East
     Oct 21, 2008
Page 2 of 2
Sharansky's mistaken identity
By Spengler

This was written during World War I by a serving German soldier, and uncannily describes the quasi-religious attitude that the European nations brought to the war.

Mercifully, Rosenzweig died in 1929, before the triumph of National Socialism. But his sociology of religion would have recognized in Adolf Hitler's "Master Race" a Satanic parody of Election, and in the Aryan claim on eternity, the existential terror before the prospect of extinction.

Sharansky wants to fall back on old-fashioned national identity, yet in Europe, national identities were not a sui generis expression of ancient culture and ethnicity. On the contrary, as

 

Rosenzweig reports, Christianity turned European national identity into a parody of Israel's Election. Europe was only half-Christianized. Christianity - at least in its Western, Catholic or Protestant manifestation - demands that the individual repudiate the sinful flesh of his Gentile origin, and by water and the Spirit be reborn into a new people, that is, the People of Israel. From the (Western) Christian perspective, God's promise to Abraham remains valid: it is simply that Christ's sacrifice on the Cross makes possible the miraculous rebirth of each individual Christian into Israel.

The trouble with European nationalism is that the Europeans did not want to be saved by repudiating their Gentile flesh and joining Israel of the Spirit, namely the Church. On the contrary, they wanted to be Elected, that is, accorded eternal life, but in their own French, German, Italian or Ukrainian skins. That is the not-so-secret source of anti-Semitism. All European nationalism is hostile to Israel, for the existence of Israel stands as a reproach to the pathetic pretensions of each European nation to immortality. In its most extreme form, namely Hitler's, the obsession takes hold of the existentially challenged nation that in order for it to be the Chosen People, the original Chosen People must be exterminated.

European national identity is dead and gone for tragic reasons, which is to say very good ones, and the thin broth of European cosmopolitanism that bubbles in its place is not a substitute so much as tasteless residue. When the dogs no longer want to live forever, they don't trouble to have puppies, and in a few generations the problem resolves itself through depopulation and ruin.

It was the genius of John Paul II, the last great hero of Christian Europe, the pope who brought down communism, to understand that the true Europe needed Israel. Not the Europe of the peoples, but the Europe of the universal Church, required the living presence of Israel as the exemplar of a People of God, and John Paul II declared God's Covenant with the Jewish people to be eternally valid, and instituted diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

Sharansky's sympathy towards an old-fashioned European patriotism that never existed in the way he portrays it, and died a hideous but well-deserved death during the 20th century, stems from another motive. The legitimacy of the Jewish state is under attack by enemies who claim that the world has moved beyond the national state altogether.

At the conclusion of his book, Sharansky at last quotes the critic whose attacks on Israel well may have motivated the book, Professor Tony Judt of New York University. In an often-cited 1993 New York Review of Books essay, Judt denounced the fact that Israel "is an ethnic majority defined by language, or religion, or antiquity, or all three at the expense of inconvenient local minorities", in which "Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges", which do not belong in "a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law".

Judt wants the dissolution of the Jewish state into a bi-national state with the Palestinians. Long a utopian fancy among such leftists as the late Martin Buber, the bi-national state has become the core strategy of the Palestinians. Rather than conclude a two-state agreement with Israel, the Palestinians hope to drag things on until demographics and the world's impatience with the running sore in the Middle East give them the majority in a reconstituted Palestine. That is a serious danger, not merely a utopian project, and Sharansky is right to be alarmed about it.

His practical conclusions, though, seem quite odd. He argues that democracy will solve the problem, although it is hard to understand why. Hamas came to power in Gaza through democratic elections, and Hezbollah's power in Lebanon was enhanced by democracy. Israel's nemesis, Iran's missile-rattling President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, won democratic elections.

On the other hand, Sharansky denounces the "authoritarian Chinese regime that seems the smallest expression of identity as a threat to its rule" and "brutally represses Tibetans, Uyghurs and others". The fact that China has deep concerns regarding the intentions of Muslim radicals among the Uyghurs in its far west is of enormous strategic benefit to Israel, however. China has no particular sympathy for Israel, but Israel and China have a common enemy.

On the other hand, Israel's involvement with the Georgian cause against Russia (including the prominent role of Israeli advisors in the ill-fated Georgian army) may be one of the stupidest things the Jewish state has done since its founding. Russia appears to view Israeli missile defense as part of the overall American effort to encircle Russia with anti-missile systems in Poland, the Czech Republic, and so forth, and may retaliate by selling sophisticated anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems to Syria and Iran.

Sharansky has every right to detest Vladimir Putin, given his suffering at the hands of Soviet state security, but he is apocalyptically wrong to complain that the United States has not done enough to strengthen Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine against Russia. Russia is in a position to do enormous harm to Israel if it chooses to ally itself with Israel's enemies, and well may do so if it perceives that Israel has joined the United States in placing pressure on its borders. That, pardon the expression, could lead to a disaster of Biblical proportions.

Sharansky's mistaken view of identity does nothing to temper this writer's pessimism concerning Israel's strategic position. Perhaps God wants to call attention to Israel's Election by making the Jewish state depend on His miraculous intervention, rather than on its own good sense.

Note
1. Defending Identity, by Natan Sharansky with Shira Wolosky Weiss (New York: Public Affairs 2008. ISBN-10: 158648513X. Price US$26.95, 304 pages.
2. Der Stern der Erloesung (Suhrkamp 1988), pg 366. Author's translation

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