Israel: Role Model For America

Ilana Mercer, May 16, 2008

Much to the consternation of professional racism spotters, a couple of disobedient commentators and at least one wayward presidential hopeful have pointed out that to win the general election in November, a candidate must enjoy the “broadest base of support.” In other words, whites; Anglo-Americans, also America’s historical majority.

However, the majority that dare not speak its name is on the wane.

A couple of election cycles down the road and this segment will comprise less than half the population. If mass immigration continues at current levels, predicts the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2050, approximately 130 million people will have been added to the United States, mostly from the Third World. Embittered Americans may still cling to guns and God, as their founding fathers did, but they will no longer decide elections.

Ironically, Bill Clinton has spoken glowingly about the prospects of the demise of the very historical majority upon which his wife’s candidacy now depends. Likewise, Barack Obama would hardly be inconsolable. If his immigration policies are any indication, McCain, to whom Bush has passed the baton, has also embraced this end-of-days scenario.

Israel hasn’t. The plucky Jewish state can teach the US a thing or two about cultural and creedal survival. Israel has endured to celebrate its sixtieth birthday in so small part because it has rejected American style immolation by immigration.

Despite Israel’s protestations to the contrary, it is neither a multicultural state, nor a free-for-all pluralist pottage, with open borders à la post-1965, Immigration Act America. Rather, Israel upholds the right to retain its religious and cultural distinctiveness and its Jewish majority. It therefore controls immigration and guards its borders.

While (unofficially) rejecting multiculturalism, Israel retains liberal, democratic institutions and accords equal rights and protections to minorities. Israeli Arabs have equal voting rights, freedom of speech, assembly and press, as is evident from the many hate-filled Islamic journals that thrive in Israel. Israeli Arabs run for the Knesset, hold government posts, and serve on the bench. Israel is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote. Arabic, like Hebrew, is an official language in Israel.

That Israel arrogates to itself the right to decide who will join the polity enrages its enemies. They consider Israel an illegitimate entity in part because it is not a true multicultural state, but a Jewish state, to which only Jews have a right of return. There is no corresponding Palestinian right. The selectivity with which the Jewish state confers citizenship is thus reflexively conflated with racism and “apartheid.” “Nazi” is another sobriquet favored by the far-gone left, which would prefer that its Palestinian protégés be masters in a failed state than a minority in a functioning one.

All Western nations have adopted immigration policies—a global “right of return,” if you will—that are hastening their disintegration as liberal democracies.

Israel has rejected death by demographics because, very plainly, it understands that the lives of its citizens, and certainly the liberal nature of its institutions, depend on retaining a Jewish majority. I believe Israel’s correct. Considering that Israel’s Arab citizens are reluctant to accept her Jewish-Zionist identity, and their brethren outside the Green Line believe Israeli real estate ought to be confined to the Mediterranean Sea, retaining a Jewish majority is a matter of life and death.

Some Americans believe the same about the US. In Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow called attention to the need “for some degree of ethnic and cultural coherence” in order to safeguard the free market and freedom itself. Before Brimelow, John Jay conceived of Americans as “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and custom.”

Americans no longer think of themselves this way. Israelis still do.

Unlike Israel’s legions of enemies, I’d argue that Israel is a role model for the US—it insists on the right to remain what it was when founded. In 1948, as classical liberal philosopher David Conway has pointed out, the territory within which the State of Israel was established did not form part of any larger state that opposed its creation. The territory was, moreover, one where Jews formed a majority on land they had purchased.

Unanimously, this Jewish majority issued a declaration of independence promising that “the State of Israel will … foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,” not for the benefit of mankind. They promised that the country would “be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel”; that it would “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,” and “safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

At 60, Israel has demonstrated that a country can at once respect the rights of all its inhabitants, retain its historical majority and reject the mass of mankind.

    

 ©By ILANA MERCER

    WorldNetDaily.com

    May 16, 2008

CATEGORIES: Immigration, Israel, Jews & Judaism, Multiculturalism, Nation & Nationhood, Racial issues

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