Biden Policy Divides at Home and in Israel

But the Oneness that is the heart of both America and Israel is stronger and will survive.

By Shmuel Klatzkin   AMERICAN SPECTATOR                        23 March 2024

Separation wall erected by Israel to defend against terrorist attacks (Saeschie Wagner/Shutterstock)

The Berlin Wall was an emblem of oppression. Driven through the heart of a city, it spoke of immense and brutal power set against human liberty, by people so in love with their utopian vision that they would break up the lives and legacies of whatever they thought stood in their way.

A divided city, a divided country, speaks of divided lives. It is something good people may have to suffer. It is something that bad people create. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Is Chuck Schumer Motivated by Honor or Power?)

The biblical tradition sees unity underlying all the wondrous individualization of the world. How many are your works, it exclaims, You have made them all in wisdom. From the perspective of wisdom and the perspective of love, the differences from one creature to the next, from one person to the next, add wonder and amazement to the whole.

To the ideologue, though, difference is anathema. They drive walls through cities, through countries, through minds. They break the wholeness of things into parts which they set against each other.

There was another divided city all through my childhood.

When the Holy Land was promised by Balfour as a home for the Jewish people, there was a condition: the political and human rights of all had to be respected. And indeed, when Israel declared independence, it made that commitment: “It will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

That it has done, despite living in a state of war. And while in most countries in even a short war, such commitments erode, in Israel it did not. Its Christian community thrives. Muslims vote, sit in the parliament and in the judiciary, fight in the military and hold rank. Holy places are protected, schools are funded, Arabic is an official language.

But when Israel’s war of independence ended, Jerusalem was divided. Barbed wire ran through its middle. The Jewish Quarter of the Old City had been conquered and every Jew was either killed or expelled. The synagogues were razed.

What does the Temple Mount mean? The twelfth century rabbi, physician, and philosopher, Moses Maimonides wrote of it in his code of law, drawing on centuries of literature and tradition:

It is a universally accepted tradition that the place on which David and Solomon built the altar, the threshing floor of Ornan, is the location where Abraham built the altar on which he prepared Isaac for sacrifice.

Noah built [an altar] there when he left the ark. It was also the place of the altar on which Cain and Abel brought sacrifices. Adam, the first man, offered a sacrifice there and was created at that very spot, as our Sages said: “Man was created from the place where he [would find] atonement.”

It was the place described by Exodus as “the place of Your dwelling that You made, that sanctuary, L-rd, that Your hands established.” It is the place that King David sang of. It is the place that King Solomon declared would serve as the portal of prayer for all peoples of the world. It is the place about which Isaiah declared:

“Many peoples shall go forth and say, ‘Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways and we will walk in His paths.’ For out of Zion shall come forth the teaching, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

What few know and fewer yet talk about is that access to the holy places, the hospital, the university, and the Mount of Olives were guaranteed in the agreement. Here is the relevant part of the Jordanian-Israeli General Armistice Agreement of April 3, 1949, which testified to agreement to be carried out to see to “resumption of the normal functioning of the cultural and humanitarian institutions on Mount Scopus and free access thereto; free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives.” (READ MORE: A West Point Scholar and Soldier Stands up for Truth)

In fact, the holiest place to Jews remained off-limits to them; their homes in the Jewish Quarter denied; and all access cut to the Western Wall and all the other holy sites behind the armistice line.

You don’t hear in today’s discussion that formerly, Jews had only the most limited access. The Western Wall was along a small alleyway, and Jews were not allowed to hold any prayer services there. This was true of other places of special holiness, The graves of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of Israel, the Cave of Machpelah, had been off-limits as well, long before there was Zionism. Jews could not enter to pray, only climb an outside stair and look in.

When Israel declared its independence in 1948 it proposed another way, more consonant with the Bible’s love and wisdom:

[Israel] will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.

Even though attacked by five states, Israel declared:

WE APPEAL in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months — to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

Israel has held to its commitments. Muslims and Christians have political equality, and vote, hold public office, sit in the judiciary, fight in its defense, pay its taxes, under uniform law. Contrast that to the plummeting Christian populations everywhere else in the Middle East, and the fear to which those who remain are subjected.

Compare as well to the absence of a single Jew in many of the places where Jews had lived for millennia: Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jerusalem, Gaza, and all but a handful gone from Egypt and Tunisia. All told, close to a million Jews left under severe pressure during the years that Israel came into being, about the same number as Arabs who were displaced by war or were urged to flee by Arab leaders to Israel during the war for independence.

There are no Jewish refugee camps in Israel, despite it being a very Third World nation during its first years, with pressing military needs, as there was no peace, only an armistice. As it protected itself from deadly threats, it also assimilated refugees by the hundreds of thousands. No UNRWA. No help from oil-rich and cash rich brothers in Saudi Arabis, Syria, or Iraq.

It was the principle of oneness at work, seeking the wisdom and seeking the love to bind together many very different people as one, to the benefit of all. (READ MORE: Antony Blinken Declares Israeli Settlements Illegal)

The theme of oneness in this biblical sense is at the core of American consciousness from the get-go. It’s expressed famously in Latin as E pluribus unum, out of many, one, for we committed in principle to respect the rights of all and have devoted immense and sustained effort to realize that respect. We recognize Israel’s commitment to that ideal of oneness, we see its incredible success in the face of lopsided odds, in quickly developing into a First World powerhouse and a vibrant democracy embracing science and technology, artistic creativity, and fidelity to ancient traditions all together in a heady mix.

For all our commitment to this great principle, we are still humans. We must remember our civic responsibility when our government and our culture forget the wisdom and love, cultivated by our biblical heritage, that has nourished our greatness.

Our Administration has lost sight of oneness. Ever since its culture began to deride half its population as bitter clingers, as deplorables, as hopelessly tainted by their race, America has acted as an agent for division. Instead of looking to the divine at the core of the human soul and betting on it, Obama embraced Machiavellianism and made it the core of our policy, pushing Israel away as fast as was politically feasible and appeasing and encouraging Iran at every turn — Iran, whose murderous exterminationist intent is proclaimed more often and more publicly than Hitler’s.

And now the Biden/Blinken/Obama policy has taken off the gloves. It has the tell-tale fingerprint of division all over, even to the point of self-contradictory policies — division of the self of this country into parts at war with each other. In the Middle East, they seek to reward the orgiastic terror of Hamas by making them the ones who finally achieved Palestinian statehood. Far from bringing peace, that gives every terrorist the green light — all they need to do is make their terror mind-boggling enough, and they will get whatever they demand.

And that new state’s citizens say in repeated polls that they really like what Hamas did. Yet the Administration thinks of the people everywhere as superfluous, automatons who will think as they are told to do. The people don’t matter. At least they are consistent, drawing a dividing line between the master class and everyone else.

Of course, the Administration has allowed another nine billion dollars to come to Iran, to fund fully its agents of peace: Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and others less infamous at this time. Here the divide is between the active aid to our sworn enemy and the cut-off of aid to our ally for seeking to destroy the power of Hamas to do what they will do again if not defeated.

At home, the Administration has completed Obama’s project of  bringing bipartisan division to the support of Israel; to impose a split of the Holy Land carving a separate enclave, utterly free of even a single Jew in its population — tell me that Israel is an apartheid state! — dedicated culturally and politically to the extinction of the state on the other side of the border. And of course — dedicated to splitting Jerusalem in half again.

Strange how some American leaders let guarantees to Israel lapse when it is inconvenient. What is good faith to a Machiavellian? Despite the clear words of the armistice, Jews were sealed off from their holy sites until a war they didn’t ask for united the land. The undertakings of the so-called partners in peace from the Clinton era are routinely ignored. Generations of Arab children have grown up educated in hatred of Jews under UN auspices. When it comes to Israel, the laws of war are interpreted in ways that no army in history has ever complied with; but when it comes to the blatantly criminal acts of hiding an army behind a civilian population, and trying to constrain that population by force, America has been not only silent, but is now joining the game. In collusion with Egypt, America holds Gazans around where the last battalions of Hamas wait for Blinken to hand them their victory. Blinken’s State Department issues grave warnings that Israel must not attack as long as those civilians whom they are helping to hold in place are still there.

This way lies hell. Most Americans see that, But we are being bombarded by all the furious might of those who think themselves our betters, who think they can successfully divide us, and who think that they at last can humble Israel to their purposes, in which it is entirely disposable.

Their manipulators of the media will make it seem as if we are isolated — for they are good at isolating and they bet their souls on division. But the Oneness that is the heart of both America and Israel is stronger and will survive, ride on, and prosper. No matter how dark the regime makes it, fear not. Our mettle will be tested. We can make sure we will not be found wanting.