Flashback 2011: So now we’re supposed to heed the U.N.

 

"Daniel in the Lions' Den," by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (National Gallery of Art)

      As promised, here is the column where the Samuel Johnson quotes published in Thursday's blog post appeared. While reading this, reflect on my dilemma — writing about situations which people seem to regard as unique to our current moment which in fact are revisiting the same evergreen problem we've been gumming ineffectively for years and years. 

     So here’s my question.
     The Palestinian Authority wants the United Nations to recognize the West Bank and Gaza as a nation.
     Why?
     Are they suggesting that being recognized by the United Nations means something? That it carries weight and significance?
     If that is the case, on Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. passed Resolution 181, dividing British Palestine into two states, one Jewish, one Arab. On May 11, 1949, Resolution 273 admitted Israel into membership in the U.N., declaring “Israel is a peace-loving state.”
     Yet, the Palestinian leadership balks at recognizing Israel as a legitimate nation, hoping to someday magically seize the country. It seems strange that they would put any meaning on a U.N. resolution now, given their rejection of past U.N. resolutions, and the rejection of Israel’s neighbors, which cynically use Palestinian suffering, year after year, as a cat’s paw to bat away their own failings.
     As satisfying as it is to smirk at this hypocrisy, the truth is, given how the U.N. has been hijacked by tin-pot dictatorships, some resolutions are indeed better than others.
     Besides, Israel might have been created by the U.N., but it endured on its own, forging its own legitimacy in the face of implacable enemies. It has its own government and politics, which tacking to the right and afflicted with the extremism that seems so popular everywhere, is sadly unable now to encourage the Palestinians, who at least, with this latest U.N. move, are pursuing their goals in a non-violent fashion, which wasn’t always the case.
     This is another feint in a very long stand-off. The key point for Jews to remember regarding Israel is: The world didn’t like us before we had a nation and an army, they sure aren’t going to like us now, with a nation and an army but, thank God, being liked by the world was never a prerequisite for the continued existence of Israel or the Jews, right up to the year 5772, which begins Wednesday night.

God assures me I don’t need facts

     If you’re wondering where 5772 comes from, that would be years since the universe was created in Genesis, and if you ask why we don’t see rabbis on TV pushing to have that tidbit taught in public school science class, the short answer is, as a tiny minority, Jews just aren’t accustomed to pressing their faith upon non-believers. Being allowed to practice our own religion ourselves is enough of a challenge, sometimes, without trying to dragoon local Baptists into believing too.
     That concept — the idea that faith is something that informs your private life, but not something you use to, oh, decide what kind of biology is taught to children of all religions in your public school, is one of the more important and timely lessons Judaism offers at this fraught moment in American politics, when the entire Republican Party platform seems to be formed, not by facts, but by faith.
     From rejection of global warming in the face of overwhelming consensus, to the notion that government safety and anti-pollution standards cripple business, to shearing gays of their human rights, to stating baldly that increasing taxes on the wealthy would wreck the economy, every other plank of the Republican platform seems based on faith, shored up by whatever stray fact that can be cherry-picked out of the mass of knowledge.
     To be fair, using faith in the public sphere is not a Republican monopoly — the Left has its own set of airy notions, from the rights of chickens to the equal worth of all moral values to the practicality of solar power.
     In fact, rather than just tar Republicans, which is just too easy, I’d like to end with the passage that sparked this line of thought, from a 1758 essay by Samuel Johnson. He sees trumping fact with faith as a universal practice, but try reading the last paragraph without thinking, as I did, “Tea Party!”
      Johnson writes:
     “Credulity, or confidence of opinion too great for the evidence from which opinion is derived, we find to be a general weakness imputed by every sect and party to all others, and indeed by every man to every other man.
     “Of all kinds of credulity, the most obstinate and wonderful is that of political zealots . . . [who] resign the use of their own eyes and ears, and resolve to believe nothing that does not favour those whom they profess to follow . . .
     “[They] deny the most notorious facts, contradict the most cogent truths, and persist in asserting today what they asserted yesterday, in defiance of evidence and contempt of confutation.”
     Some things never change.
            — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 23, 2011