Amid some actually quite pleasant ruminations on Easter at Commentary, the neoconservative flagship, there was this little comment at the end of a post by D.G. (David) Myers about the calendrical confluence of Judaism’s Passover and Christianity’s Holy Week:
What might also be recognized at this season is that Christians and Jews are no longer enemies, but the intended victims of a new enemy who is common to both.
Leaving aside the jab at Islam, so thinly veiled that no public ban would be necessary, the comment (and the post) raises interesting political, religious and philosophical questions about Zionism and Christianity.
It is my decidedly not expert understanding of Zionism that the notion of Jewish self-determination in the Holy Land — as opposed to just Jewish presence there by religious justification — is based at least somewhat on the perceived dangers Jews face when solely in the Diaspora. Anti-Semitism could lurk behind any turn of history, and Jews would need a place to go as a permanent refuge.
Some might wonder why a secular, democratic, pluralistic and inclusive America (or other Western country) would not provide the same kind of refuge sans the exclusivist nationalist flair. The response, so far as I can tell, is the idea that even America — despite the virtual eradication of anti-Semitism and a meritocracy that has allowed American Jewry to flourish — remains potentially unsafe for Jews. After all, German Jewry were probably just as if not more entrenched in the establishment during the Weimar Republic as their contemporary American counterparts. Beyond historical analogues, anxiety also springs from America’s overwhelming Christian character, due to that faith’s sordid history with anti-Semitism. The goyim, and particularly the Christians, can never be fully trusted.
But if, as Myers contends in Commentary, those dreadful days are behind us, one must wonder why the need for an exclusivist Jewish state in the Middle East remains so strong. If Christians have now awoken from the drunkenness of anti-Semitism, might Jews just be suffering its hangover, manifested in the fear of rising annihilationist sentiment in the West?
Commentary, I’d venture to guess, would offer up the potential of secular leftist ‘new anti-Semitism’ as a risk for Diaspora Jews. This would bolster the odd marriage of Evangelicals and neoconservatives at the right-wing of the pro-Israel lobby. Commentary, in fact, is central in trying to force critical liberal Zionist voices out of the pro-Israel tent, often promulgating the theory that the lost support can be made up for by the legions of Christian Zionists. But that raises additional questions: If Christian Zionists are enough to keep Jews in Israel safe, then why can’t they do so in the old red, white and blue?
