For the first time in our history, we Americans have learned what it is like to be the targets of irrational, international hatred. We have learned what is it like to be attacked without provocation. Most of all, we now know how it feels to be accused of being an aggressor when we simply act in self-defense.
Of course, these are things that the Jews have known for millennia. And this puts America and the Jews in a strange but shared category.
When other world nations are subjected to brutal and unmotivated attack, they are usually granted the world's sympathies. Not so with the Jews. Not so with America. The reaction of the world to September 11th was a few moments of shocked silence and then an immediate onslaught of, "I told you so's" and "what do you expect when you throw your weight around with such arrogance?"
Most Americans are rightly outraged as to how our preemptive actions of self-defense are interpreted as unprovoked American aggression. But for the Jews this is just so ho-hum. Israel has, of course, observed this phenomenon for decades. When Israel takes action against terrorists that wreak havoc with suicide bombing after suicide bombing, they are condemned as merciless aggressors. Throughout Europe, Israel is reviled as a state that tramples on Palestinian rights. China has virtually ceased reporting on Palestinian suicide bombings, choosing instead to report only on Israel's response.
How do we explain such patent absurdity (after all, Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein are the manifestly evil ones, right?) unless we see it in the larger context of America experiencing something akin to anti-Semitism?
And the clincher of how America has now become the world's Jews was the recent comparison, by the German "Justice" minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, of President George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler. The irony of comparing the leader of the democracy that liberated Germany from Hitler to the dictator himself is matched only by the constant comparisons of Israel, the country that was built by the survivors of Hitler's genocide, to the Nazi beasts who tried to extinguish them.
Now, these contemporary comparisons between the United States and world Jewry can be treated as a mere coincidence. Or else we can make the most of the hand the world has dealt us. I propose that this series of factors suggest a political and practical application. Now that the Americans have become the Jews of the world, I propose to formalize the arrangement by making Israel the 51st state in the Union.
Forming an alliance--officially--between Israel and the U.S. would indeed produce a mutually beneficial situation. Right now Israel is caught between a rock and a terrifying cliff. Israeli civilians are blown up and murdered with weekly and sometimes daily regularity. They cannot ride a bus in peace. They cannot feel comfortable eating pizza. And yet they cannot do what would be necessary to actually eliminate terrorism because of external pressure. To be sure, Israel easily has the military and economic resources to destroy the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure and exile the uber terrorist Yasser Arafat. But international pressures, exercised by the world through the medium of the United States, paralyze Israel. So Israel is prevented from acting firmly and resolutely--as the United States did in Afghanistan.
But what if Israel were actually an American state? Any attack against Israeli civilians would be an attack against Americans. Then it would be absurd for President Bush to be pressured by other world leaders to curb the military response. Israel-turned-American commando units would finally go in and remove Arafat's terror regime once and for all, just as the United States changed regimes in Afghanistan.
The strategic benefits to the United States are also considerable. To those Americans who will surely say, "Why would we want to adopt Israel which is always under attack," I say: Wake up, America. You're under attack anyway and making Israel into the 51st state would decrease, rather than increase terror.
What America most desperately needs in the post-9/11 world is a permanent presence in the region of the world that spawns all the terror. The only way to guarantee American safety in the long term is to have a permanent presence in the Middle East that can be used as a launching pad to eradicate terrorism. Right now, American B-2 bombers need to fly all the way from the United States in bombing sorties against Afghanistan, and America is practically begging the Saudis to allow us to use our bases there in a war against Iraq. For permanent military instillations we've been reduced to aligning ourselves with Qatar, a country that purports to be an American ally while simultaneously operating the worldwide Al Jazeera television network, a major source of anti-American propaganda throughout the Arab world.
To be sure, many Jews will oppose this idea. They will argue that for 2000 years the Jews struggled for their own state. Are we crazy to give it up? Well, it's time for a reality check. Israel doesn't do much even today without American approval anyhow. For better or for worse, Israel already behaves like an American client. Why not simply formalize what is already being practiced?
Furthermore, what Israel has discovered over the past 60 years is that the Arabs are an implacable enemy and seem far more ferociously dedicated to Israel's eventual destruction than the Jews are to Israel's survival. Just look at Arab gains and Israeli losses in the past decade alone. Israel allowed themselves to be pressured into the disastrous Oslo agreements. How Israel will survive an army of Palestinian militants that are directly on their border--especially with their hands tied by the international community--is anyone's guess. Let's call a spade a spade. The Arabs will only ever be satisfied when Israel is pushed into the sea, and without an American green light to get rid of the Palestinian terrorocracy, we cannot be entirely sure that there will even be an Israel, G-d forbid, in a decade. That is, unless it becomes an American state.
Besides, Jews and Judaism have thrived in the United States as never before. There are more Jews in the U.S. than in Israel, six million to four million. Israelis, too, love all things American. And Israel is just as close to Washington, D.C. as Hawaii--about ten hours by plane.
Similarly, Israel would be "Jewish country," preserving its uniquely Jewish heritage and character while being part of the larger American republic. And with the current state of the Israeli economy, federal dollars being put toward education and defense would come in very handy. The United States is already pouring billions of dollars into Israel in foreign aid each year, and millions of private citizens, in large part fundamentalist Christians, support Israel through private contributions. Why not just change all this and make it tax dollars instead?
And to those who fear that such a move would eliminate Hebrew as a vital language, just look at the propagation of Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens in California and Miami. Bilingual schools are a must in cities that have a large minority population. Hebrew as well could remain a living language, and Judaism a living religion.
While the idea might strike some as crazy, to me it is self-evident. The United States and Israel are both democratic nations. Both are deeply religious and are founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic. Both are united in their fight against terror, and are increasingly loathed by the world for taking actions to defend themselves against unrepentant murderers. Both require peace in the Middle East as their foremost foreign policy goals. And finally, both already have lots of Jews.
For two centuries, America has been seen by oppressed immigrants the world over as "a promised land." Why not have America officially acquire the real thing, and make it all official?
