Home

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion read a rainbow.

"In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations," Ben-Gurion recited in the declaration of Israeli independence. "On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel…. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state."

The juxtaposition of WWII and the founding of the Jewish state bears a significance that must not be overlooked. The official establishment of the state of Israel was a declaration that will echo off eternity's walls: Never again.

Last Shabbat, we read the Torah portion Noah. After the flood, God produces a rainbow to serve as His stamp on the royal decree that the destruction visited upon the earth by the flood will never be reproduced. That night in Tel-Aviv, Ben-Gurion broadcast a pronouncement that as long as the Israeli state stands, there will be no concentration camps, no "final solution" to the "Jewish problem," no extinguishing of the pintele yid.

Not that some won't try, of course. Every war waged against Israel has been, in the words of its perpetrators, a war to annihilate Israel and the Jews. The Hamas charter calls for such destruction, as does Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad knows that the survival of Israel represents the strength and spirit of the Jewish people, and therefore it must be destroyed if our enemies hope to destroy us.

This is a fundamental understanding of what the state of Israel means for global Jewry. It is so basic that our enemies don't even attempt to deny it.

But does the modern Jewish community understand it? I have to admit, sometimes, it's clear many of us do not.

We have just witnessed history, as the first half-white, half-African-American U.S. president is now prepared to be sworn in this January. President-elect Barack Obama will begin his term in office with the support of the American Jewish community - no matter for whom each member of the community voted, Obama will be our president, and as such will have earned that support.

But something was exposed during the election between Obama and Sen. John McCain that must be examined: too often, as the country tried to discern whether Obama took the Iranian threat of a second Holocaust seriously, it became clear that many in the Jewish community don't take that threat seriously.

This isn't a column about The Rally. This is about the problem of which the now famous anti-Ahmadinejad rally was merely a symptom. In contrast to the demented ranting of people like Time Magazine's Joe Klein, many American Jews - cheered on by Jewish "journalists" - voted in this election with nary a thought of Israel, instead choosing their candidate first and then justifying his positions on Israel.

This led to an unprecedented explosion of creativity in the Jewish world. How to attack the McCain campaign while the campaign defends Israel in the clearest terms possible? Jewish journalists tried their best.

For example, witness the following demonstration of intellectual flexibility that would make pretzel dough jealous. A N.Y.-area Jewish female columnist, who often writes about women's issues in Judaism, was upset back in March after hearing over and over again from people that they would vote for a woman for president, just not Hillary Clinton. The columnist thought this was sexist, and the people who said it were being dishonest to hide their bias.

"Meanwhile, the 'I would love to vote for a woman president, just not that woman' refrain certainly sounds suspect to me," she wrote. Yet last month, she wrote this about McCain's vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin: "It's great to have a woman running for national office. The problem is in this woman."

Presumably, she wrote that with a straight face.

When author Naomi Ragen said Obama has a "strong Muslim background," Jewish columnist Jeffrey Goldberg called her a "conspiracy monger" and compared her to racist "cretins." But when Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne shouted at Goldberg that Palin's "a hockey imam!" Goldberg, who obviously hates any unfounded association with Muslims or terrorists, responded that Dionne's comparison was… "pure genius."

There was a problem, however, for Goldberg: "What does it, in fact, mean? We couldn't figure that one out; she's a fundamentalist, and so are many imams?" Nope, actually, she's not a fundamentalist. But he wasn't troubled for long: "No matter. I'm reasonably sure Palin will say something, to the extent that she says anything, in the coming days that will fit the label."

Pretzels all around!

And when Palin said in an interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson that, as per the Iranian threat, "we are friends of Israel, and I don't think we should second guess the measures Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security," Israeli columnist Bradley Burston followed immediately with a column about "what is truly frightening about Sarah Palin".

What is "truly frightening" about her? Well, Burston explained, her "faith-based rigidity" reminds him of President George W. Bush.

What did he mean by that? Possibly this: when Bush visited Yad Vashem earlier this year, the president said: "I came away with this impression, that I was most impressed that people, in the face of horror and evil, would not forsake their God, and in the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls young and old stood strong for what they believe."

The Jewish people will survive only because of those who practice such "faith-based rigidity." Bush understood that practicing "never again" entails, in Palin's words, not second-guessing Israel in the face of a genocidal threat. Israel declared that rainbow - never again, and as such the lion of Judah will never fall prey to the practitioners of ethnic eradication while the sons of Zion stand guard with a prayer book, a faithful heart, and an M-16.

That's not what former PLO mouthpiece Rashid Khalidi thinks, however. Khalidi, whose experience speaking on behalf of Yasser Arafat naturally paved the way for a teaching career at Columbia University, was the guest of honor at a 2003 party in Chicago after he announced he was leaving for New York. Here is what Obama, then a state senator, said about Khalidi and their friendship at that party: their conversations have been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases…. It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation - a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but "this entire world."

It's the biases line that is troubling. Here is what Khalidi has said about American pro-Israel bias: "Israel has killed three times as many innocent civilians as have Palestinians, for all the media hysteria about suicide bombers"; America has been "brainwashed" by Israel; and that the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, at the time headed by Bill Clinton's chief Arab-Israeli negotiator Dennis Ross, was "the most important Zionist propaganda tool in the United States."

Are those the biases to which Obama was referring? Has Khalidi helped Obama "correct" those biases? I'm not asking the president, I'm asking the Jeffrey Goldbergs, the Bradley Burstons, the columnists like the aforementioned proponent of it's-sexist-to-oppose-the-woman-running-unless-it's-Palin.

I'm asking Jewish columnist Marty Peretz, who defended Khalidi on Oct. 30 thus: "I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute. And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work." Before Peretz had endorsed Obama, however, he had called Khalidi's work "intellectually run down" and snidely dismissed Khalidi as a "a Palestinian moderate, whatever that means."

In fact, I'm asking all the Jewish journalists who traded their credibility for a ride on a candidate's bandwagon, who became advocates instead of much-needed skeptics. I'm asking the overwhelming majority of Jewish writers who became obsessed with a narrative they irresponsibly helped create, demanding answers of everyone except the new leader of the free world. I'm questioning the non-questioners.

And it's so quiet, you could hear a pretzel drop.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.