Rabbi's Musings

There is an old comedy album my dad used to love to play for us, entitled, “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish.” On the album there is a skit about a Jewish man who is very successful in business. To celebrate, he buys himself a yacht as well as a complete captain’s uniform, including a peaked cap. He goes to his immigrant parents and announces, in all his garb, that he is a captain. His parents reply, “Son, to your mother you’re a captain. To your father you’re a captain. But to a captain…you’re no captain!”

This story sheds light on the continued Palestinian bid for legitimacy as a sovereign state. You can appeal to the U.N. all you want for recognition as a state but until you earn that right on the ground, it’s just empty words. All the U.N. resolutions in the world won’t change that.

Let’s look at Israel as an example. In 1947, the U.N. voted to accept the idea of a Jewish state on a very small piece of the land that the League of Nations had promised the Jewish people, along with the British government, decades before. It was a terrible deal, but it was better than nothing, as the pragmatic Jewish leaders in Palestine reasoned. The Arab states — there were no Palestinians as a people then — flatly rejected the deal to create an Arab state next to the Jewish one. Instead, they sent their armies to attack the Jews and, in their words, "strangle" the Jewish state in its crib.

Eventually, in May 1948, the British decided to leave and David Ben Gurion seized the opportunity to declare Israel a state. Through much political maneuvering, President Truman agreed to recognize the state. But I would argue that Israel did not become a state when it declared itself a state. Nor did it become a state when it offered to make peace with its neighbors. Israel became a state, I would argue, a month later when it faced battling its enemies on all fronts and was sorely in need of weapons. Sailing towards Tel Aviv was a ship carrying the weapons it needed. Unfortunately, this ship, the Altalena, was under the control of the Irgun, a right-wing Jewish group commanded by Menachem Begin. Although the state had been declared, the Irgun had refused to give up its arms and take direction from the Israel Defense Forces. David Ben Gurion then made a decision that would be the hardest of his career. He ordered his junior officer, Yitzchak Rabin, to go to Tel Aviv and sink the Altalena, weapons and all. And Rabin did just that. Why? Why kill other Jews and forfeit the desperately needed weapons? Because having a state means you have one army and one government. That’s the price of power.

Palestine will be a state when the West Bank and Gaza have one army and one government. It may only come after a civil war. And it will come when the government decides to make a genuine peace deal with Israel. That’s what a state is all about.

In the meantime, we American Jews can support Israel because she will take a lot of heat for insisting that the Palestinians must earn a state, not be given one. Like everyone else. So, this is a time to remember why we — and all of America — must support Israel.