WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: I don’t often disagree with key conservatives’ views on Jewish homeland issues, but this week I do with a pundit. Isaac Herzog is Israel’s President, not its Prime Minister, and his task in addressing Congress as Head of State and not of Government was not what Bibi’s task would have been.
Herzog’s Task Was To Connect With America and By Me He Did
This week, Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, not its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed a joint session of the American Congress.
Conservatives’ Dissatisfaction with Herzog’s Speech
Let’s look first at some of my fellow conservative Jews’ concerns with his speech.
As conservative columnist Melanie Phillips correctly pointed out in a JNS article titled (by me lamentably) Herzog’s Lamentable Performance, there exist today serious matters clouding the U.S.-Israel relationship. By me, the most deadly serious, which Secretary of State Blinken brought up with Herzog during his visit, is the U.S. pressing Israel on “the two-state solution” – Israeli and “Palestinian” states “along the 1967 [1949] lines with mutually agreed territorial swaps,” which by me would be meaningfully and militarily suicidal for Israel. Another, cited by Phillips, is President Biden’s intervention in an internal Israeli concern – adjusting checks and balances between Israel’s legislative and judicial functions. Another is America’s displeasure with Israel building homes for Jews beyond the long-gone 1949 ceasefire lines, even in the heart of Jerusalem, and the Biden administration’s recent terminating of support for Israeli public works projects beyond them. Pundit Phillips finds it “lamentable” that Herzog in his speech didn’t reject these Biden administration positions.
In ZOA Analysis: Israeli Pres. Herzog’s Speech to Congress – Important Positives, But a Few Concerns, America’s leading Zionist voice cited “many important positives in President Herzog’s speech that the ZOA strongly praises” – the Jewish people’s three-millennia connection to its homeland; the need to stop Iran’s attainment of nuclear weapons; and condemning Palestinian Arab terrorism. But the ZOA laid out a long list of concerns that Herzog should have more fully addressed on Palestinian Arab terrorism, judicial reform, the Jewish people’s long unique connection to its Jerusalem capital, and Biden’s long involvement in “undermining” Israel through calling for “two states,” providing aid to the PA “which ends up financing terror,” easing sanctions on Iran, calling Israel’s current government “extreme,” nominating “hostile-to-Israel officials to virtually every position dealing with the Middle East,” and pressuring Israel into the “terrible and illegal maritime deal” with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.
The U.S. Connection-With-Israel Context of Herzog’s Speech
I agree with the ZOA and Phillips that these are real and deeply troubling concerns in America’s relationship with our people’s Jewish homeland of Israel. Both Israelis and American Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel need to advocate the Jewish homeland position on them.
But that’s not the context in which Israel’s President, its Head of State, not its Prime Minister, its head of Government, this week addressed the American Congress. Beyond with the U.S. administration itself, there are real concerns about diminishingly bipartisan support for Israel within America’s two political party system, and even among American Jews.
Never mind the Palestine Mandate with its “Jewish national home” west of the River. America’s mainstream Reform and Conservative Jewish movements, rabbis and all, signed onto an open letter to then-President Trump calling for “two states” with borders that would “hew precisely to the 1967 borders” [never mind they were only ceasefire lines expressly declared not to be borders] save for agreed “adjustments,” and denouncing Israeli “annexation” (Encyclopedia Britannica, quoted by Microsoft Word: “a formal act whereby a state proclaims its sovereignty over territory hitherto outside [emphasis added] its domain”) of any territory in “the West Bank.”
A Precedent of a Foreign Leader Seeking to Cement American Alliance in Address to Congress
This week was not the first time a foreign leader, faced with the critical task of connecting the sentiment of the American people and its elected representatives to support of his own people, addressed a joint session of Congress. On December 26, 1941, with Americans not yet fully on board with a war in Europe, Winston Churchill began: “I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own.”
So let’s talk, rather let Israeli President Isaac Herzog talk, for a moment about connecting the American Congress with foreign leaders’ fathers and sons. Jerusalem Post, 7/20/23, Herzog’s Message of Hope to Congress – Editorial:
“Herzog’s speech to Congress was the second ever by an Israeli president, the first having been delivered by his father 35 years ago, which he mentioned at the outset: ‘Standing here today, representing the Jewish, democratic State of Israel in its 75th year, at the very podium from which my late father, president Chaim Herzog spoke, is the honor of a lifetime. And I thank you wholeheartedly for it.’”
“Herzog’s Message of Hope”
So did Israeli President Isaac Herzog succeed in his task of connecting Americans and their elected representatives to the hope – Hatikvah – of our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel? The JPost editorial’s sub-headline put it this way:
“In an eloquent 41-minute speech that elicited 29 standing ovations, Herzog appealed to both Americans and Israelis across the political spectrum.”
So what did he say? By me, he spoke forthrightly about key issues and with self-respect.
Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism: He said he respected criticism, especially from friends, but that “one does not always have to accept it.” He drew the line at “negation of the State of Israel’s right to exist,” saying, quoted JPost: “’Questioning the Jewish people’s right to self-determination is not legitimate diplomacy – it is antisemitism,’ he said to raucous applause.”
Palestinian Arab Terrorism: Herzog: “Palestinian terror against Israel or Israelis undermines any possibility of a future peace between our peoples. Israelis are targeted while waiting for buses, while taking a stroll on the promenade, while spending time with their family. At the same time, successful terror attacks are celebrated, terrorists are glorified, and their families are financially rewarded for every Israeli they attack.”
Iran: Herzog: “Allowing Iran to become a nuclear threshold state – whether by omission or by diplomatic commission – is unacceptable. The world cannot remain indifferent to the Iranian regime’s call to wipe Israel off the map. Tolerating this call and Iran’s measures to realize it is an inexcusable moral collapse.”
Homeland Jewish History: ZOA: “Herzog provided a stirring reminder of the Jewish people’s history,” citing Abraham, Moses, the Jerusalem Temple, the long exile “throughout which Jews continued to long to return to their ancestral homeland,” the return and rebuilding and gathering in of Jewish exiles from over a hundred countries.
U.S.-Israel Relationship a Two-Way Alliance: Herzog called today’s U.S.-Israel relationship a “two-way alliance, in which Israel has been making critical contributions to the national security and interests of the United States in numerous ways.”
Might Herzog Have Said Some Things More?
Sure. Every Jew gets to play “Israel’s President.” I’d have stressed two more things. One, correcting the widespread misperception, even among Jews, that the Western Wall is “the sole surviving remnant” of Herod’s Temple Mount. Read Ritmeyer. As Elder of Ziyon recently put it, the whole Mount, a good deal of which remains as Herod built it, is standing evidence of Jews’ connection to our people’s Jerusalem capital, which is not “Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem” [UNSC 2334]. Second, I’d have had Herzog make clear the demographic proof that Israel is not “majority White … racist … apartheid … etc.,” but that the biggest segment of its population is Mizrahi, descended from Jews who never left North Africa and the Mideast, and that today its Mizrahi, Sephardi and Ashkenazi streams are blending through marriage and descendants into Israeli, as far from “apartheid” as a nation can get.
Bottom Line for Us Grassroots American Jews
President Herzog’s task was to strengthen the bonds of connection between the State of Israel he represents as Head of State and the U.S. Congress and its constituents. I believe he succeeded in this. May his visit’s after-effects include calmer, more mutually respecting pro-Israel dialog and relationships within our liberal through conservative grassroots American Jewish community.