SUICIDE
BY MOUTH
By
Dr.
Ronald A. Brauner
The year 1998 truly is a remarkable one for Jews throughout
the world and for Gentiles who know that the Jewish people
prove miracles still happen. Who would have thought that
out of the duplicitous and lethal statesmanship of the
British Empire, out of an America whose first four decades
of the 20th century were corrupted with often energetic
antisemitism and that out of the ashes and despair of the
Shoah, the Jewish State would be reborn? Who would have
thought, despite all the badmouthing of American liberal
Judaism in those days (and, sadly, ours) that two Reform
rabbis, Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver would play
the most determinative role in gaining United States'
support for the establishment of Medinat Yisrael? Who would
have thought that a newly-declared state would be voted
into existence by the United Nations and who would have
thought that thirty years later Zionism would be equated
with racism by that same body? Who would have thought that
as soon as the UN would announce Israel's birth, seven
hostile Arab neighbors would seek to perform a post partum
abortion on the Jewish state? Who would have thought that
when the British evacuated their Palestinian Mandate, they
would not leave so much as a slingshot for the Jewish
community (the yishuv) to defend itself and who would have
thought that Czechoslovakia would be a major surreptitious
supplier of arms when no one else would help? Who would
have thought that a bit more than a half million Jews would
prevail over all those bent on Israel's destruction? Who
would have thought that from the time it came into being
until this very minute, Israel, against its will, has been
at war? Who would have thought that a world which once
applauded Israel's tenacity and survival would become a
harsh critic, aided by the perverse, corrupt journalism of
Reuter's, Peter Jennings and CNN?
But nobody would have guessed that Israel's fiftieth
birthday would see an increasing barrage of harsh Jewish
public condemnations of Israel? Nobody would have guessed
that Jews would provide more ammunition for the
delegitimization of the State than its sworn enemies!
Nobody would have guessed that our noble prophetic
tradition (we are all sons and daughters of the prophets)
for self-criticism would be used by our detractors as
evidence against our own unworthiness. Perhaps they didn't
read what Catholic scholar Rosemary Ruether wrote in Faith
and Fratricide when she indicted two millennia of Christian
antisemitism for misappropriating the internal,
self-critical teachings of Isaiah and Jeremiah and turning
them into a case validating the church's persecution and
demonization of Jews and Judaism.
To be sure, modern day Israel has many defects and, to be
sure, the work of building a Jewish and just state (they
are synonymous) is still quite incomplete. Much remains on
the agenda: alleviation of social injustice, expansion of
effective social services, developing a just and peaceful
modus vivendi with Arab Palestinians, developing a
pluralistic religious life. . . . But, they way we contend
with Israeli politics and practices makes all the
difference; we may never wash our dirty linen in public,
only to have such linen turned into burial shrouds for Jews
the world would rather not put up with. The world watches
and listens. Who would have believed that some Jews would
commit suicide with their mouths?
©1998, Foundation for Jewish Studies, Inc.
