How come?

When my grandson was a young boy we would spend many a day together. That time led me to write a series of poems capturing those moments when life seems at once wondrous and mysterious. One of them is entitled How Come? The question seems as appropriate as ever when twenty years later I see so many of my contemporaries wonder how lopsidedly hostile the world has become in its attitude to Israel. I reproduce the poem here as an introduction to my answer to this question, which follows this paean to the perennial songs of innocence.

How Come?

"How come?" you ask these days.
"How come there are only two fire trucks
in the fire station? How come this park
is not a stony park and how come stony park
has a fire hydrant? How come you forgot
the shovels and how come hatikva is
on the other side of the tape?"

How come I wonder? How come? How come?
Life is selection, I could say,
and every yes has its rhyme or reason,
all except for hatikva, which is always
on the other side of the tape.

But at night when I put you to sleep,
after we have read the stories we wrote
during the day about our day,
after I have sung you the songs from my book,
songs of evening and songs of wind,
songs of honey and thorns,
songs of hatikva including hatikva,
and after I have watched you fall asleep,
seen the ups and downs of your lungs
and your softly breathing lips at rest
become the very wind and evening,
become the smooth sweet brush of hand
that sweeps repose to the weary
and comfort to travail,
I want to tell you something else:
how come is hatikva, you are hatikva,
even the song hatikva is hatikva,
and little it matters if it is
on the other side of the tape.

It is shocking to see how the governments of the western world abandoned Israel shortly after the invasion of the country by Gaza on October 7, 2023 and the horrific massacre of Israeli civilians carried out by armed Palestinian thugs under Hamas supervision. Even the government of the United States, the foremost democracy of the West, has seen fit to indulge in moral equivalence and pressure Israel in various ways not to pursue a policy of total victory. It matters little that a majority of Americans and possibly of peoples in western countries stand behind Israel. Their elected leaders do not, nor do their academic and cultural elites, nor do the people who staff their civil services, including their intelligence agencies and foreign affairs departments. How come? we wonder. How come?

One might say this is not surprising given the decision by the Barack Hussein Obama foreign policy of seeking to integrate Iran into a revamped Middle East under American hegemony as a counterweight to Israel. Given the ability of the United States to bend its many partners and allies around the world to its will, it is not surprising that so many of them have fallen in line. Nonetheless, the ease and alacrity with which they have done so would suggest that many of them shared Mr. Obama’s animus toward Israel and needed little prodding. Josep Borrell of EU fame certainly did not. Nor did President Macron of France nor former UK Foreign Minister Cameron. Germany has been more than happy to increase its trade with Iran over the years. But what of their advisers? What of the newspaper barons of the democratic world’s free press and their journalists? Why did Mr. Obama’s much touted nuclear deal find such a willing echo chamber among this slice of the intelligentsia? Why did we not see 200 U.S. State Department staffers pen a letter suggesting this reorientation of American foreign policy was sheer lunacy? And how explain the link between the Iran nuclear deal and the explosion of anti-Israel venom on college campuses following Israel’s response to October 7?

Yes, the former president did suggest that we needed to contextualize Palestinian depravity by invoking Israeli occupation - his words, not mine; but even his historically false and morally fatuous pronouncement is insufficient to explain the campus outbursts across the western world that spread like wildfire with slogans so outrageous they are an embarrassment to decency. Which did not stop President Biden and Vice-President Harris offering up quips that their emotions ought to be listened to, that their demands are not entirely wrong, however much these future societal elites spouting “free Palestine” slogans resemble the ravings of rabid dogs. And therein lies the rub, for even Jewish Americans in the high circles of power, from Chuck Schumer to Tom Friedman, subscribe to the thesis that Israel can do no right and therefore deserves to disappear. Noblesse oblige, and their virtue too. When such idiocy and depravity take hold across the spectrum of what can only be described as the nomenklatura of western society, we have to look elsewhere for an explanation. Beyond the perimeter of political elites we must ask ourselves the question: how do so many supposedly intelligent people endorse an outlook which history has already shown to lead us down the darkest paths? Paths, one might add, that require a Ph. D., for only a credentialed educated person could give credence to such a misreading of reality that similar academics have fostered, and then proceed to put it into practice. And so we come to the dilemma which confronts us all: how to understand the society in which we live so that we read reality with a modicum of accuracy.

Societies are ways of organizing difference so that people can live together without constantly misunderstanding each other. In the course of human history there have been three ways society has found to do so: kinship, rank, and functional differentiation. Each generates a set of expectations which lead people to orient themselves in their relationships to others. Kinship societies, for example, lead people to differentiate between friend and enemy according to blood ties. Defending the honour of kinfolk becomes an overriding principle, one that trumps truth and fact, drawing lines in the sand whose disrespect leads to conflict and even murder. Belief in it blinds people to other ways of settling differences. One example. In the Jordanian parliament some decades back one member bit off the ear of another because the honour of his tribe was impugned over a dispute about collusion with Israel. When this matter was brought up in the press as a questionable means of behaviour to settle disputes, a third member of parliament retorted that there was nothing exceptional about the incident; such behaviour was a common occurrence in parliaments throughout the world, he rejoined. Little wonder that most people in Jordan think that people who would normalize relations with their Israeli counterparts are traitors, even though Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel. Tribal honour trumps diplomatic treaties, which is why the Arab Muslim world continues to refuse to accept Israel’s legitimacy, even when they sign accords, as the Palestinians did the Oslo Accords, which say otherwise.

Modern societies, organized according to the difference of function, have different institutional spheres to take care of the activity that goes on within them. Not only is kinship no longer the organizing principle of social behaviour; rank or status also no longer determines how people orient their lives in relationship to others. The lord of the manor no longer has first right to the body of his serf’s’ new wife; indeed, there is no longer any lord of the manor who alone rides horses, bears armour, metes out justice and even, in extremis, forges coin. Deference to the aristocracy has been replaced by the equality of all. With a market economy separate from the government, with the romantic market emancipated from the dictates of power and class, with artistic endeavour freed from religious oversight, freedom becomes built into every pore of society. Arranged marriages which are typical of honour societies are considered an outrage because people in functionally differentiated societies believe that one should be free to choose one’s intimate partners. Such choice is self-evident, just as it is self-evident that all people are created equal even though in fact they are not. This is modern society’s blind spot, which makes it difficult for people who live in modern societies to accept that there are societies that operate totally differently. How else explain why then President George W. Bush or then Prime Minister David Cameron would keep telling us that Islam is a peaceful religion when the historical record shows it is not? How many Jews have I heard tell me that all the Palestinians want is a better life for their children even when their behaviour indicates time after time that eradicating Israel is foremost in their desires? Did not the Democratic candidate for President recently repeat to us that Palestinians deserve “the right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination” as if that is their main agenda and not, as their behaviour has shown time and again, the annihilation of Israel and the Jews?

In rank ordered society where society, literally what counted, was restricted to the aristocracy, the social order was legitimated by doctrines like the divine right of kings and sanctioned by the institutional order of court and church. The divine right of kings doctrine was not true in fact, but it was true in so far as it was socially operative, meaning people who lived in such societies gave it credence. In similar fashion, people who live in functionally differentiated societies give credence to the shibboleths that govern them. Politically, such societies assume the form of democracies, which people take to mean government of the people, by the people, for the people. In fact, democracies are characterized by the bifurcation of power at the top, which means the separation of power between crown and parliament, and then between government and the opposition, leading to the involvement of people in the political process, with no end in sight. For the first time in history people start to believe that society is not made up of kinship groups or status orders, but of people; and since all people are created equal, it is inconceivable to people in modern society that there are other people who would not want the same basic things that they do: dignity, security, freedom, summed up in the word democracy.

There even used to be a pop song like that when I was a kid called The House I Live In - That’s America To Me. Frank Sinatra would sing it, asking what is America to me? And the answer came back: “A certain word, democracy…A plot of earth, a street…All races and religions…The things I see about me, The big things and the small…But especially the people, That’s America to me.” But if society is made up of people rather than ways of organizing difference, then of course people who live in democracies think all people are the same, deep down want the same things, which in some sense people who live in democracies do because they see the benefits that accrue from thinking and living like that. Tolerance. Cohabitation with others even if they think and pray and dress and do God knows what else differently. Which is why democracies do not go to war with each other even when they have disputes. But it is also why democracies have trouble going to war even with societies that are organized in ways that are opposed to democracy. It is also why democracies have trouble even confronting regimes like Iran that announce clearly they seek to destroy them. They cannot believe that they will do what they say because they cannot believe that deep down other societies do not want what democracies want. And so, if America is democracy, as the pop song would have it, how can Iran be serious about calling America the great Satan? Surely, elites like Obama delude themselves, they can be brought into the community of nations through diplomacy, through respect for their way of life, by overlooking their execution of women, gays, and dissenters who challenge the religious dictates of mullahs and imams calling for holy war against the infidels. They are people too after all, are they not, a slogan printed on western t-shirts.

Ironically, paradoxically, democracies produce the very blindspot that makes it difficult for them to recognize that they have enemies who seek their destruction and should be dealt with firmly and energetically. Not because democracies and the societies of which they are the political expression are perfect; indeed, they are very complex societies, more complex than any that have evolved yet historically. But because, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, they sure beat the competition. Yet if the elites who run democracies do not get that, then there is little hope the vast majority of their citizens will. Even in democracies elites count, just as they did or do in kinship or rank ordered societies, for they provide the coherence which organized social formations require to function. The failure of our contemporary elites, starting with our intellectual elites, is stunning in that respect. One has only to look at the so-called expertise which the academics in the social sciences produce as observations on how our societies work.

For them society is still composed of people divided into those that count and those that do not, people with power and people without power, top and bottom, the racists and the discriminated against whether overtly or subtly. For them modern society is hardly different from pre-revolutionary France. The ruling class has only changed the mask it wears. America was not founded on a revolt against tyranny but as a cover for slavery. 1619 was much more important than 1776, so they hold. Deconstructing how all this works is the task of sociological inquiry and changing the society to make it the edenic paradise of global equity is their end game. That all their scientific premises are completely faulty is of little concern to them. Like Marx, they remain moralists to the bitter end, lecturing people on the need for even more diversity in a society that thrives on difference rather than addressing the complex issues that such a society throws up. Their endeavour is laughable if it were not so devastating in its consequences. Imagine astrophysicists who observe the universe to tell the stars how to behave in order to improve it. Such are social scientists who would analyze society in order to perfect it. Little wonder they get everything wrong, including Israel.

I will not bother the reader with all the silly articles I read in prestigious journals like Foreign Affairs or the silly pronouncements of Antony Blinken and company on the need for Israel to withdraw from Gaza and install therein a revitalized Palestinian Authority, the very one which has broken the Oslo Accords countless times and continues to foment the genocidal blood lust that has taken root in the organic base of what passes for Palestinian society. If people in western democracies do not get it by now that Israel is a democracy and whatever name goes for Palestinian society is a horrific mix of kinship, Islam and modern totalitarian methods of rule, then there is not much hope they will until that mix hits them in the underbelly of their own countries. Israel does not have that luxury because the hit has already happened. It only remains for them to stand fast and destroy their enemies so that they are unable to threaten them again. The Palestinians have forfeited any right to what Vice-President Harris has claimed they deserve. They should consider themselves lucky to be alive. That they are still alive is due more to Jewish humanity than anything else. But Israel being a democracy, it too suffers from the same blindspot detailed above. It too has its share of elites and ordinary citizens who still cling to the nonsense that animates western foreign policy, which repeats ad nauseam that it supports Israel’s right to self-defence while undermining it in practice. Hatikva is Israel’s national anthem. It also means hope. But as I wrote in my poem to my grandson, it matters little which side of the tape it is on. There is only one Israel. Only one hatikva. Not only can Israel not be destroyed. Jews should not be dying to give Palestinians the means to continue to kill them. Only Israel should be free from the river to the sea. Only Israel would be free from the river to the sea. And only a fool would think otherwise. But there is nothing like blindspots to turn otherwise intelligent people into fools. And nothing like the fools that run amok in the hallways of academia and on the campuses of western universities to turn democracy into a fool’s paradise. Nothing too like Jewish fools to support them.