Those who attack Jews attack the West

The two American academics, Mearsheimer and Walt, who caused a stir some time ago with a modern re-working of an old conspiracy theory are back with a book on the same theme: the "world Jewish conspiracy" line deployed by 1930s fascists is back in a new guise as the "Jewish lobby" that allegedly exerts too much influence on American policy.

The political anti-semitism of the twenty-first century is, ostensibly at least, of a rather different nature to that of the twentieth. The Nazis and their fellow travellers used to attack the Jews for "cosmopolitanism" - in other words, not having allegiance to any nation state, but to the world-wide community of Jews with their alleged stranglehold on the international financial system, among other things. These days it seeks to be excused for precisely the opposite reason: modern antisemitism hides behind the label of anti-Zionism, in other words, it purports to be an attack on Jewish nationalism - or more precisely, the right of the Jewish people to a nation state of their own, a right of self-determination which for some reason is unreservedly accepted for all other peoples. Double standards abound, when discussing Israel or the Jewish people. Victor Davis Hanson comments:

Israel is always lambasted for entering homes in the West Bank to look for Hamas terrorists and using too much force. But last week the world snoozed when the Lebanese army bombarded and then crushed the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, which harbored Islamic terrorists. The world has long objected to Jewish settlers buying up land in the West Bank. Yet Hezbollah, flush with Iranian money, is now purchasing large tracts in southern Lebanon for military purposes and purging them of non-Shiites.

Here at home, ‘neoconservative’ has become synonymous with a supposed Jewish cabal of Washington insiders who hijacked U.S. policy to take us to war for Israel’s interest. That our state department is at the mercy of a Jewish lobby is the theme of a recent high-profile book by professors at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

Yet when the United States bombed European and Christian Serbia to help Balkan Muslims, few critics alleged that American Muslims had unduly swayed President Clinton. And such charges of improper ethnic influence are rarely leveled to explain the billions in American aid given to non-democratic Egypt, Jordan, or the Palestinians — or the Saudi oil money that pours into American universities.

In reality, while Jew-hatred has persisted in various forms for thousands of years, the modern attack on Jews and Israel both in this century and the last is an attack on Enlightenment values. Today Israel represents not only the Jewish people but is also a beacon of the success of liberal democracy in a part of the world where liberal democracy hardly has a long pedigree. An attack on Israel is certainly an attack on the Jewish people, but it is also a surrogate for an attack on the west in general.

Antisemites are quick to point to Jewish influence (or pro-Israel lobbies) over the governments of, say, Britain and America. The evils of the west are at least in part attributed to the influence of Jews by a number of leftist commentators (including now, Mearsheimer and Walt). This is a trend which must at all costs be opposed. Liberals worldwide should support the state of Israel in defence of its security and borders; they should stand against the demonisation of Israel and the oppression of Jews both in Israel and elsewhere. Anti-Jewish prejudice is as vile as any other form of racism and should be resisted for that reason alone. However, its exploitation by supposedly "progressive" elements pursuing a political agenda within western society is particularly repellent.

[Thanks to Melanie Phillips]

The accidental Enlightenment

Here's a depressing thought from Oliver Kamm:

I make no confident predictions of the resilience of Enlightenment values, largely because the Enlightenment itself is so recent and contingent a development. Its spread in the 17th and 18th centuries was to a large extent bound up with the fortunes of Protestantism. The Enlightenment's advocates in England, Scotland and America were rightly perceived to be the opponents of Papist superstition, but they were also (and much less widely recognised as) deriders of the notion of the inerrancy of Scripture. Unfortunately the attractions of religion and nationalism commonly press against the notions of a common humanity, and religious and political liberty.

Enlightenment values were advanced by elites rather than through popular agitation. Those elites gained influence and office in spite of, rather than because of, their wider views. In England, the prominence of the Whigs in the Glorious Revolution derived from their wish for a Protestant succession. The Declaration of Rights and the Bill of Rights of 1689 are great achievements in the pursuit of a constitutional order, but it is a stretch to see them as precursors of secularism. It is partly because the Enlightenment is so recent a phenomenon but also because it's an unlikely one that I am not especially hopeful for its future.

These two paragraphs (actually the first is Kamm quoting himself) paint a grim view of the prospects for liberalism. Francis Fukuyama once made a name for himself by proclaiming that the victory of liberal democracy represented the "end of history". Kamm's remarks suggest rather that the liberal ascendancy of the past two hundred years or so is more of a historical dead end. Could it be that the emergence of modern liberal democracy is an accidental outgrowth of 17th Century Protestantism? And if so, what does that mean for us?

The good news is that Enlightenment values and the societies they have guided seem to be a good deal more robust than the totalitarian and authoritarian systems with which they have competed. The United States of America is now well into its third century. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics lasted about seventy years. Hitler's thousand-year Reich lasted merely twelve. The Christian world, and especially Protestant Christianity, has tended to dominate, whereas other religions and cultures, even Islam, have not so far managed to compete. In other words, those systems and cultures which offer security at the expense of freedom ultimately offer neither. They cannot compete with a free society.

The bad news, however, is that the intellectual elites in the West which spawned the Enlightenment and sustained it, have now to a large extent turned against it. Although socialism itself has been largely discredited, the mindset which it has instilled in generations of our people continues to undermine Western society. Freedom of speech and expression was once a keystone of liberal society. Indeed, it is enshrined as such as the First Amendment of the American Constitution. Yet now, it has to take second place to a spurious agenda of "respect". Liberal democracies such as Israel are held to be the equal, or even the inferior, of the criminal and terrorist gangs such as Hamas and Hezbollah which seek to destroy them. So-called progressives denounce the so-called "war crimes" of Blair and Bush while overlooking the atrocities of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

It is indeed true that Enlightenment values are threatened today as never before. But the external enemies of the Enlightenment can never defeat it. Ultimately a free society can only be destroyed from within. The struggle for Enlightenment values begins at home.