From Hadesh Vol. I, Issue No. 5 - Sovereignty
By: Ariel Yaari
It is never easy to offer a diagnosis. When a physician informs their patient of their terminal illness, the family views them as the harbingers of doom. Nonetheless, the doctor has a very important job. Only once a diagnosis is made can a treatment begin. While trials and tribulations may lay ahead, the road to recovery can begin. The earlier something is found, the earlier it can be treated. With any luck, the patient can return to his life as it was, with his time in hospice fading into the sands of time. Therefore, for the good of my people who I care so deeply about, I must issue a diagnosis of my own:
Jews are weak.
Weakness is not fundamental to Jewishness. In fact, it is antithetical to our very nature. Our God and our Law require strength of will and character.1 The Torah is for the bold, for the proactive. Joshua took action against the Canaanites. Yael took action against Sisera. David took action against Goliath. Esther took action against Haman. This is the true reflection of Jewish nature.
Jews became weak in Exile. Nearly all accounts of Jews in antiquity describe us as a remarkably bellicose people who were ready to go to war after increased provocation. Many know of the Great Revolt that brought an end to Jewish independence, and the Bar Kochba Revolt which followed it, but do not know about the three other Jewish-Roman Wars. We waged a total of five,2 in addition to us joining our Samaritan cousins during their revolts against the Empire.3 Even in Babylon, when the Sassanids adopted a persecutory form of Zoroastrianism which made Jewish life impossible, the Exilarch Mar Zutra II rebelled against them and founded a Jewish city-state at Mahoza.4
No one understood this better than the early Zionists. From Leon Pinsker to Theodor Herzl, all of these early Zionists shared similar backgrounds. They were largely bourgeois, “enlightened” Jews who were firm believers in Europe’s promise of emancipation.5 Since Napoleon, hadn’t valiant strides been made to ameliorate the material condition of the Jews in their host countries? Finally, after 1900 years of suffering in the ghettos, we would be liberated from our cages and join our fellow man in being noble citizens of the countries in which we lived.
The continuous reneging of this promise by various governments,6 accounting for the vicious antisemitism that came from the rank-and-file European, it soon became evident to all but the most “enlightened” Jews that emancipation was a cruel joke. The only way Jews would ever be free from the chains put upon them was by exercising strength to determine our own destiny. In the words of Herzl:
“We are a people – One people. We have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves in the social life of our surrounding communities, and to preserve only the faith of our fathers. It has not been permitted to us. In vain are we loyal patriots… in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens…”7
Our salvation will not come from without. Reliance on the nations of the world to ensure our security and common good is a futile and foolish endeavor. Only through national action can we save ourselves.
The most recent generation of Zionists forgot this fundamental principle of Jewish nationalism. How many times have you seen Jewish influencers, celebrities, professionals, administrators, and politicians complain or request help from the “international community”? It is nothing short of embarrassing. Antisemitism is rising in the world, of this there is no doubt.8 Why is it the collective responsibility of foreign governments to help solve this problem? Antisemitism is not an existential threat to America or Britain. It is an inherently Jewish problem and thus Jews should deal with it. Why are we asking others to solve our problems for us?
Like the “enlightened” Jews of old, there is a certain progressive cadre among our own that unwaveringly believe in the continuous progress of mankind toward toleration and pluralism. People are inherently good and as progress continues, the promise of universal toleration will liberate us from our chains, whether self-imposed or put upon us by others. Israel will become a hub of Middle Eastern cross-cultural mixing and Israel will be just one state among a broader Middle Eastern family.9
We have essentially reinvented the assimilationist Jewish argument for the modern era. History hasn’t been kind to assimilationists so far and I doubt that it will this time around.
Even where reactions against this kind of neoliberal/progressive politics have come about, they have always been sustained by grievance politics. We can’t rely on the nations of the world, yes, but the reason our state is legitimate is because we were wronged and deserve recompensation for being wronged. Sometimes you hear it as a justification for Israel’s founding after the Holocaust. Other times, it takes the form of an indigeneity argument, “We were colonized by such-and-such empire and therefore we have a right to be here.”
Recompensation and rights are tricky because they are almost always granted by someone else on behalf of a supplicant. Courts demand recompensation be paid to a victim. Governments grant rights. Who has granted us the right to live in Israel? God himself does not hand it to us, but tells us to take up arms and fight for it.10 The UN didn’t grant us it in 1947, but told us: “You can have this if you survive. Good luck.”
Rights did not guarantee us anything. The rifle’s crack did. Organizing power in institutions did. Statecraft did.
America is the most powerful nation on Earth today. America is sovereign, meaning that it defines the rules of the game for itself. America is agriculturally self-sufficient.11 It has the resources to produce its munitions at home.12 This is why for all the UN resolutions in the world, for all the finger wagging by the Europeans, America has been able to act with impunity despite them. Sovereignty is what sets the standard. The standard is tacitly dictated, but not followed when necessity demands something else. The sovereign is he who decides the exception.13
Jews must stop outsourcing our sovereignty. To bat our eyes at the nations of the world and proclaim that “Woe is us, look at how persecuted we are!” is not bound to elicit any respect, especially when we demand actions of others to maximize our security.
In Christian folklore exists a figure called “the Wandering Jew,” who due to some offense committed against Jesus, is cursed to wander the Earth aimlessly until the Second Coming, when he will be absolved of his sin and be allowed to rest.14 Many of us have been content to make ourselves “Wandering Jews,” hoping for the final day of universal equality that has been promised by the modern era. I, for one, am not content with this existence. The reason Jews have remained a distinct people is because we did not buy into the false promises of universal acceptance at the end of history. A promise first made by the Church, now by international institutions.
As we have done in the past, we must reject this siren song and return to the most fundamental of Jewish principles – Strength.
Joshua 1:6-7; The term חזק ואמץ (“Be strong and courageous”, is used both for conquering the land and observing the Law.)
These five were: The Great Revolt (66-73 CE), The Kitos War/Diaspora Rebellion (116-118), The Bar Kochba Revolt (132-136), The Revolt against Gallus (350-353), and the Revolt against Heraclius (614-617;625 as well). For more on the last two, see: https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11945-patricius and Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography, (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 2020) pp. 195-200.
Binyamin Tsedaka, The Byzantine Period - 324 C.E - 638 C.E
Jewish Encyclopedia, Mahoza, https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10292-mahoza.
Yoram Hazony, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul, (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pgs. 81-93. Herzl was a massive proponent of Deutschtum or “Germaness” as a way for Jews to join European society before his conversion to Zionism.
Ibid pgs. 93-97.
Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2019), pg. XVI.
“46% of Adults Worldwide Hold Significant Antisemitic Beliefs, ADL Poll Finds”
https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/46-adults-worldwide-hold-significant-antisemitic-beliefs-adl-poll-finds.
This argument happens to be most widespread among Zionist influencers. Go on social media for any extended amount of time and you’re sure to run into it.
Bamidbar 33:52; Devarim 7:1, 9:3, 20:17, etc. The sources for waging war against the Canaanites and Amalekites are extensive.
According to the World Population Review, the US only imports 20% of its food, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/food-self-sufficiency-rate-by-country. See also, https://impacts.savills.com/environment/self-sufficiency-in-food-production-an-international-comparison.html.
Most American ammunition and munitions are produced domestically. See, https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/HTML/IF12251.web.html. For bigger projects, such as more advanced missiles and aircraft, America may need to contract materiel from allies.
I go with Carl Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty here, as laid out in his 1922 Political Theology. We will return to Schmitt and his politics in future articles.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/wandering-Jew