The United Nations, as an institution, was designed to be an impartial party which would bring peace and order to a chaotic world.
If only.
The opening lines of the UN Charter note the “equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,” and Article 2 specifically called out the “principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.” Equality seemed a cornerstone of the principles of the organization.
But the United Nations has continued to prefer a particular non-member OVER AND ABOVE an existing member. Specifically, the Palestinian Authority over the State of Israel.
The head of the United Nations, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, appointed a Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, by all accounts a good idea to keep the volatile region from spinning out of control and to serve as an impartial envoy to bring the PA and Israel together to forge an enduring peace.
But Guterres did not pick someone to act as a neutral party. He appointed Tor Wennesland, who has a history of working and supporting the Palestinians and other Muslim Arabs in the region. He served as:
Norway’s chairman of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee for Palestine
Norway’s Representative to the Palestinian Authority from 2007 to 2011
Norwegian Ambassador to Egypt and Libya from 2012 to 2015
Even worse and more telling, Guterres also asked Wennesland to act as his Personal Representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority. This person was not selected to bring the warring parties together but to act on behalf of only one party – the PA – a non-member of the United Nations.
The appointment should have been roundly rejected by Israel as an affront to the peace process and by the entire membership body of the United Nations, as the leader of the organization promoted the agenda of a non-member state over those of a member.
The systemic anti-Israel bias in the United Nations is found in every corner, from the dozens of member states that refuse to recognize the Jewish State, to the Secretary General himself, who by now has become deeply stained in that toxic sea of anti-Semitism.
The United States relocated its embassy in Israel to the Jewish State’s capital of Jerusalem in 2018. Its website seemingly moved to Ramallah.
The embassy in Israel’s website has eight main categories: Visa, US Citizen Services, Our Relationship, Business, Education & Culture, Embassy, News & Events, and Palestinian Affairs Unit. The last category is designed to handle the needs of the Stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs). The website offers translation options for each category:
category
languages
Visa
Hebrew
US Citizen Services
Arabic and Hebrew
Our Relationship
Arabic and Hebrew
Business
Arabic
Education & Culture
Arabic
Embassy
Arabic
News & Events
Arabic
Palestine Affairs Unit
Arabic
Translations offered on US Embassy in Israel website
Why would the US State Department not have a consistent method of handling translation for all of its services? It would make sense for translations of the English-language site to be in Hebrew and Arabic for every section of its website. However, the site is mostly translatable only into Arabic, making those only speaking Hebrew – Jews – unable to use the site.
Is the US embassy deliberately excluding Jews from being able to access some of its services? Is it a dynamic because the US State Department is populated by a bunch of Arabists – even in Israel?
screenshots from US Embassy in Israel’s website, showing translations only available in Arabic
The current Charge d’Affaires is Michael Ratney. His bio reviews that from 2015 to 2017 he was based in Syria. From 2012 to 2015 he was “responsible for the U.S. political, economic, and cultural relationship with Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.” Before that he did tours in Qatar, Iraq, Lebanon and Morocco. He speaks Arabic and French fluently. No Hebrew.
The Deputy Chief of Mission is Jonathan Shrier who spent much of his recent career in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His previous work in Israel was “aimed at improving economic conditions for Palestinians.” His foreign languages “include Chinese, Arabic, French, and Spanish.” No Hebrew.
The prioritization of Arabs in the US State Department shows up in every day matters as well. Consider comments by the US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield about Israel on October 19 featured on the embassy website (pictured above). She acknowledged Palestinian Hanan Ashrawi and Israeli Daniel Levy giving comments to the UN Security Council – both vilifying Israel – mentioning the Palestinian first. She didn’t protest the fact that no one called out Palestinian terror, corruption and incitement for the lack of peace before the UN body.
When Ned Price spoke about Secretary of State Blinken meeting with Israeli officials, he also mentioned Palestinians first. When Sen. Chris Murphy, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism spoke to Christiane Amanpour on CNN about his trip to Israel, he led with the critical thing about his trip to Israel was “outreach with the Palestinians.” It’s a persistent theme.
The current configuration of the US State Department – even in the embassy in Israel – is oriented towards Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, not Israeli Jews.
Maybe when Tom Nides, who is Jewish, is confirmed as ambassador to Israel, the embassy and its website will actually start to constructively address Jews in the Jewish State.
When people look back in history to January 2015, they immediately think about the massacres committed by Muslim fanatics in Paris, France at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices and at a kosher supermarket nearby. Muslim extremists wanted to kill the writers at the magazine because they lampooned the Islamic prophet, and at the kosher store because they hated Jews.
Another kind of battle was taking place at the same time in Jerusalem, Israel. The United States Consulate, which serviced Arabs living east of the Green Line, decided it was going to begin arming Arab guards at the compound.
The United Nations map shows the Green Line of 1949. The blue arrow has been added here, showing the location of the American Consulate at 18 Agron Street, on the western side of the Green Line.
History of 18 Agron Street Consulate
The United States first appointed a U.S. consul to Jerusalem in 1844, at the direction of President John Tyler. The U.S. consulate moved to 18 Agron Street (circled in blue on the map above) in 1912, when the city was still under the control of the Ottomans. Within a few years the Ottomans lost most of their empire at the end of World War I, and Palestine fell under the British Mandate which was directed to continue to facilitate Jewish migration to Palestine which had been actively going on for many decades. The western portion of Jerusalem where the consulate was located was already mostly Jewish in 1912 (Jerusalem has been majority Jewish since 1867), and only became more so over the following years.
When Israel declared itself an independent state in May 1948, the United States quickly recognized it, while the Muslim and Arab world rejected the declaration completely. The armies of five Arab nations invaded Israel and at war’s end, occupied the eastern half of Jerusalem. The dividing line between Israel and Jordan, which illegally occupied and annexed in 1950 the eastern part of the city along with what is now often called the “West Bank”, was marked in green in maps, as shown above. As the United States had originally supported the 1947 UN Partition Plan which called for Jerusalem and Bethlehem to be an international city, it withheld turning the consulate into the official Israeli embassy. Instead, the US placed its embassy in Tel Aviv and opted to use the 18 Agron Street location as an office to handle local meetings, even though it considered the Jordanian annexation of the eastern part of the city illegal.
After Jordan attacked Israel again in June 1967 and lost all of its illegally annexed land to Israel, the US decided to continue to keep its embassy in Tel Aviv and used the 18 Agron building to handle issues for Arabs living east of the Green Line, who had Jordanian citizenship until 1988 and are now referred to as Palestinian Arabs.
War in Peace
In 1993 and 1995, Israel and the newly created Palestinian Authority (PA) signed the Oslo Accords I and II. The PA was handed by Israel a number of cities – including Bethlehem – to administer, and in turn, the PA recognized Israeli authority in all lands that the PA did not control, including Jerusalem. The Oslo plan was for more land to gradually be handed to the PA, with a goal of reaching a full peace deal in five years, in September 2000. Over the five years 1995 to 2000, the PA was handed West Bank land so that most of the Palestinian Arabs living there were either in Area A under full PA control, or Area B, where PA had administrative control and Israel had security control. In September 2000, the head of the PA, Yasser Arafat, refused the peace deal and launched a terrorist war gently termed the “Second Intifada” halting the transfer of any more land to the PA.
Ten years after Oslo II, in 2005, Israel decided to leave Gaza with assurances from US President George W Bush that it would not be forced to assume borders along the Green Line nor would it need to take in Palestinian “refugees” who would be settled in a new Palestinian state. That action enabled the political-terrorist group Hamas to take over and launch wars repeatedly from the territory.
Another decade on, in January 2015, the US consulate in Jerusalem decided that it was too difficult to drive to PA-controlled land in Area A without a single continuous military escort, as the Israeli-armed guards at the consulate were forbidden by law from entering PA-controlled territory and needed to hand security of American diplomats to Palestinian security guards upon reaching the perimeter of Area A. Therefore, the head of security at the US consulate, Dan Cronin, decided that he would train and arm 35 Palestinians from eastern Jerusalem who could enter Area A without difficulty. The problem was that it’s illegal for these Palestinian Arab security guards to carry weapons in Israel. Three Israeli guards at the consulate quit in protest, saying that it’s “in effect setting up an armed Palestinian militia in the consulate. They are being trained with weapons, in Krav Maga, and tactical driving. It’s irresponsible. Who can guarantee that such weapons in the hands of Palestinians won’t spread to terror?””
In 2018, President Trump moved the US embassy to Israel’s capital in accordance with Congress’s Embassy Act of 1995 and shut the consulate offices. Services for Palestinian Arabs are now handled out of that office at 14 David Flusser Street.
In January 2015, when President Obama said he was angered at “an attack on journalists” in Paris while he ignored the attack on Jews which he later belittled as being “random,” he was simultaneously arming Palestinian Arabs inside of the US consulate in Jerusalem in blatant disregard of US-Israeli agreements. Obama’s vice president at that time is now President Biden, who has promised to reopen a consulate to Palestinian Arabs, even as he is warned that such an action will likely bring down the Israeli government.
The Obama Administration essentially set up an armed Palestinian militia inside the US Jerusalem consulate in 2015. Today, Biden is writing his own playbook on using the consulate to destabilize the Jewish State.
I planned on hosting a kiddush in shul the Shabbat of reading Parshat Lech Lecha. Approaching my 1,000th article on Israel, Jews and Judaism, it seemed that the weekly portion about God giving the land of Canaan to Jews for an ever-lasting inheritance would be an appropriate time to mark the milestone. Further, as I was planning on returning from a three week holiday in Israel just the week before, I could wrap up all of the messages very nicely.
Life does not always move according to plan.
In early summer, when I booked the flights for my family to see my son studying in Israel over the Jewish Holidays in September, it seemed that the trip would happen without issue. The May missile barrage against Israeli towns launched by Palestinian Arabs in Gaza had stopped, and Israel was leading the world in vaccinations against COVID-19. But the pandemic cases and deaths in Israel began to spike as the summer went on, so the country instituted a number of policies which made the trip a remote possibility. Would we spend two weeks in quarantine in our hotel room for a three week trip? Yes, we would see our son for a week, but the entrapment seemed excessive for the duration of our visit.
We cancelled the flights and made plans to stay at home for Yom Kippur and Sukkot.
The kiddush was still on, although we pivoted it to Parshat Noah as there was a bat mitzvah already on the calendar for the desired Shabbat. The question of when was addressed, but the how-what was now the focus.
Israeli-themed food was obvious, but what selections? Jews in Israel come from around the world and each have brought their own delicacies. Shwarma, kruv, Israeli salad, kebabs and Moroccan carrots were early choices, to be accompanied by chulent, fish balls, tabouleh and a wide assortment of salads.
The how was equally important. Since the start of the pandemic, the synagogue had been hosting small kiddushes outside in an open tent. With the weather getting colder in October, it was unclear if we could have a larger than normal event in the current configuration.
We opted to take our chances.
The day arrived and indeed the weather was a bit cold and the wind surpassed breezy, but people seemed to enjoy the tasty food. It was nice seeing people from different shuls of varying denominations from across the political spectrum, celebrate the milestone together.
Towards the end of the kiddush, a friend from a different community arrived to my great surprise and delight. While far to the left of me politically, we both try our best to promote Israel in the United States. I had not seen him since before the pandemic.
After our hellos, he asked “where’s the chulent?” and we headed off towards the table near the scotch and drinks. As he made a plate for himself, I looked to the drinks table to pour something to accompany his dish. My eyes were drawn to a bee flying around inside a virtually empty large bottle of grape juice.
The bee went up and down repeatedly, never getting quite so high to emerge from the narrowed opening, nor so low as to get trapped in the remaining juice on the bottom. It shuttled a bit forward and backward, up and down. I had seen other bees checking out the exposed salmon, but how did this one fly into a bottle? I imagined that it must have landed near the opening and then tasted the droplets of grape juice while it walked around drinking to its delight. Before long, it was inside the container upside down and opted to take flight, finding itself effectively locked inside.
As I stared at the phenomenon, a gust of wind took the stacks of paper plates and napkins airborne and scattered them around the parking lot, breaking my gaze. After gathering them up, my friend and I went back to staring at the bee, comfortably ensconced in the jar.
Just then, it dropped to the bottom and splashed into the juice. As its wings got covered in the purple liquid, my friend exclaimed “aha!” as I pointed at the spectacle. We were not sure if this was a moment of triumph for the bee, reaching the core of its desires, or marking its end, forever trapped.
We exchanged glances and questioning smiles. As we turned back to the show, we saw that the bee had taken flight again.
I nodded a grin as I tapped my friend’s shoulder, and told him that I will be booking my flight to Israel before the end of the weekend.
Pro-Palestinians argue vehemently for an independent Arab state and complain about the treatment of Arabs in Israel. One rarely hears what an Arab State of Palestine would be like so perhaps it’s worth a review.
Israel’s Model in a Palestinian State
Minority population. Non-Jews make up roughly 25% of Israel. Were a Palestinian State to have 25% minorities, they would account for well over 1 million people. But the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded a country completely devoid of Jews. Pro-Palestinians want to see every Jew evicted from the West Bank, leaving it Jew-free, just as Israel did in the Sinai for Egypt (1982) and in Gaza for the PA (2005).
Land ownership. Israelis of all religions buy and sell homes around the country. In a unique and evil law, the Palestinian Authority calls for the death sentence or life of hard labor for any Palestinian Arab selling land to a Jew.
Freedom to Worship. Mosques with minarets dot Israeli cities. Jews, Muslims and Christians can pray throughout the country. However, the Palestinians demand that Jews be denied the right to pray at Judaism’s holiest location, the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem. They clearly don’t expect synagogues in a Palestinian State that doesn’t contain any Jews.
Language. The street signs and currency in Israel are in Hebrew and Arabic as well as English. Upon entering Area A or Gaza which are under Palestinian control, all signs are only in Arabic.
Parliament. Israel’s parliament includes Jews, Muslims and Arabs. An extremist Arab party actually sits in the governing coalition.
Arab women entering the Western Wall Plaza (photo: FirstOneThrough)
Palestinian Model in Israel
Terrorist group as political party. HAMAS is a designated terrorist group according to the United States, the European Union and many western countries. Still, it sits as the majority of the Palestinian parliament, having won 58% of the seats in elections. If Israel used such format, the Meir Kahane-inspired group Kach would sit in parliament today, but the Israeli government banned them.
Paying for murder. The Palestinian Authority pays the families of terrorists who kill and maim Israeli, encouraging violence. No country in the world has such a “pay-to-slay” program as a cornerstone of public policy.
Naming schools and square for terrorists. The PA names girls schools, soccer tournaments, public squares and many other fora after Arabs who murder Jews. There is no school or basketball in Israel named for Baruch Goldstein, which Palestinian Arabs probably don’t understand.
If Palestinians sought to build a country with 1 million Jews as Palestinian citizens, with the ability to be in parliament, build synagogues and worship freely around the country, acquire property openly and have meaningful jobs without fear of violence, Israel would not only recognize such country but endorse its creation.
If Palestinians would use Israel’s model for dealing with a minority population there would be a Palestinian state today. The lack of a state stems from the PA’s refusal to coexist peacefully with Jewish neighbors.
The past month was already horrible. Members of Congress, most of them far-left Socialists, voted to defund Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. The New York Times wrote about one of the extremists, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who cried at the floor of Congress because she abstained from voting rather than “voting with her conscience” due to “influential lobbyists and rabbis.“
The anti-Zionist paper pulled the comment about rabbis in its online edition, trying to be clear that it only hates Israel supporters and not all Jews. However, the paper continues to insert its bias against any support for the Jewish State, even for its defenses.
In a soft piece about considering the new host of the television show “Jeopardy,” the Times wrote that the Jewish actress Mayim Bialik was a difficult choice, as she has been involved in a number of controversial topics. Sandwiched between her decisions about not vaccination her children and promoting a health supplement that was sued over false advertising, the opinion-paper f/k/a newspaper wrote “she blogged about donating money to buy bulletproof vests for the Israel Defense Force.“
New York Times on October 13, 2021 called donations for bullet proof vests to Israel “controversial”.
When the Times reported on the far-left’s votes against Israel’s defenses, it was covering an event. Now the Times made clear its own identical opinion as the anti-Israel extremists: Israelis should not have protection and should be vulnerable to assailants from Gaza, Iran and elsewhere.
The spectacle of Congress voting to replenish the Iron Dome funding was heart-breaking. Voting to replenish the interceptor missiles that saved hundreds – if not thousands – of civilians in Israel was a no-brainer, but nine members of Congress thought that any support of Israel was too much.
Democratic leadership noted that their eight anti-Israel colleagues (there was one Republican that also voted to block the funding) were a small minority and the vast majority of Democratic members of congress voted in favor of defensive support. The leadership insisted that those who pointed out the fracturing of the party were trying to inflate the radicals.
But polls of American civilians show that the left-wing has already pulled away from Israel.
In June 2021, a AP-NORC poll showed the left was pushing the administration for greater support of Palestinians over Israelis. Three times as many (47% to 15%) liberal Democrats as Conservative Republicans thought that the United States is too supportive of Israel. Three times as many (61% Conservative to 17% Liberals) thought that the US wasn’t supportive enough of Israel.
The same poll showed the opposite in relation to support of Palestinian Arabs. Eight times as many (58% Conservatives to 7% Liberals) think the US is too supportive of Palestinians, while seven times as many (62% Liberals to 9% Conservatives) thought the US should devote more support to Palestinian Arabs. To lay that out more directly, 62% and 47% of Liberals think the US should be more supportive of Palestinians and less supportive of Israel, respectively. That’s in sharp contrast to 61% and 58% of Conservatives who think the US should be more supportive of Israel and less supportive of Palestinians.
A University of Maryland poll held around the same time yielded similar results with different questions. Regarding the May fighting between Israel and Gazans, ten times as many Democrats as Republicans blamed Israel for the violence (34.8% Democrats to 3.7% Republicans). Conversely, seven times as many Republicans as Democrats blamed the Palestinians (59.1% Republicans to 8.1% Democrats). Not surprisingly, seven times as many Democrats than Republicans (43.7% to 6.3%) want the US to apply more pressure on Israel, including withholding aid. Many more Republicans (49.0%) prefer applying pressure including withholding aid on the Palestinians than Democrats (8.5%). Independents were much more neutral on the issue.
These poll results show a very different dynamic than argued by Democratic politicians. The far-left (and growing) fringe of their party is becoming more anti-Israel. This makes it easier for the leaders of deep blue districts to vote against Israel in concert with their base.
The redistricting that is occurring around the country based on the 2020 census will certainly change Congress at the next election. It will also likely produce a large increase in the anti-Israel voices in congress.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN), leading anti-Israel voices in Congress
Turkey has been descending into one of the most intolerant and dangerous promoters of terrorism under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan for several years, but the United Nations seems intent on blessing this particular brand of anti-Semitism and barbarism.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi, Russia September 29, 2021. (photo: Sputnik/Vladimir Smirnov/Pool via REUTERS)
Consider the country’s treatment of journalists. Turkey has jailed 312 journalists since 2016, the most in the world, 38% more than second worst, China.
Erdogan promotes blood libels against Jews. In May 2021, he said that the “Jewish Prime Minister” in Israel’s “greatest pleasure” was killing Palestinians because it “is part of their nature” as “they are only satisfied by sucking blood.” The United States senate quickly issued a bill condemning “Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s invocation of the blood libel myth, which has historically been used to justify violence against Jews.”
The anti-Semitic slurs are consistent with Erdogan’s desire to kill Jews. The country was granting citizenship to members of the political-terrorist group HAMAS which the European parliament noted would allow them to set up a base in Turkey and freely travel, affording them “greater freedom in planning attacks on Israeli citizens around the world.“
Turkey’s crimes are not confined to only being against Jews. Turkey’s military invaded Syria in 2018 and continues to control Afrin, home to thousands of Kurds. The Kurds used to account for 96 percent of Afrin’s population and has now been driven down to 25 percent as Turkey has turned the area into a haven for Syria’s Islamic population fleeing the war zones. Turkey treats the minority group as pariahs inside Turkey as well, and has extended its oppressive reach against them and Yazidis until today. A number of senators have urged U.S. President Biden to “forcefully condemn President Erdogan’s escalating efforts to disband the country’s largest pro-Kurdish political party,” as Erdogan continues to purge non-Islamists from the region.
Remarkably, none of this seems to irk the leader of the United Nations.
On September 20, 2021, UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres issued a proclamation praising Turkey as the UN General Assembly gathered to meet. Guterres said:
“Turkey is engaged across the spectrum of our work, as we deal with challenges from the climate crisis to long‑standing threats to peace and security. I am personally familiar with enormous generosity of Turkey and Turkish host communities towards refugees. I offer my sincere appreciation for your support to people in need of protection.
“The number of people fleeing wars, violence, persecution and human rights violations is at record levels. I count on Turkey to continue doing its utmost, with the support of the international community. This is an act of solidarity that concerns us all.
“Peacemaking is another critical dimension of our work. I welcome Turkey’s consistent support to our mediation efforts, including by co-chairing the Group of Friends of Mediation — one of our most important tools to reduce, manage and end conflict.
“I would also like to take this opportunity to highlight the leadership of His Excellency, Volkan Bozkir, as President of the of the seventy-fifth session of General Assembly. We have been fortunate to rely on him through a difficult year.
“I look forward to our continuing close cooperation with the Government and people of Turkey, and wish you many years of productive work in the new Turkish House. Thank you.“
Gutteres had no similar comments for any other countries’ efforts on behalf of refugees.
The head of the United Nations singled out for praise an anti-Semitic, authoritarian regime which crushes free speech and minority rights during the latest gathering of world leaders. It is a clear indication that the extremist Islamist factions have assumed control of the global body.
By the eleventh chapter of the Bible, it appeared that mankind had reached perfection. United in time, place and purpose, the whole world appeared ready to accept the word of God. Yet God rejected this model of the human race, and instead opted to give his holy texts to a sliver of the world in entirely inverted circumstances. The message embedded in the choice is as timeless as it is important.
The Tower of Babel and the State
About 300 years after God destroyed the world in the flood, “the entire earth was of one language and uniform in words.” They assembled together in “a valley in the land of Shinar” and decided to make bricks to “build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens to make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of the earth.” (Genesis 11:1-4)
This Tower of Babel was an incredible accomplishment. Ten generations – from Noah through Abraham – lived in this city and tower. The people were not just “of one language” but coordinated in a common goal. To a modern reader, this situation appears too good to be true – mankind working constructively to build a place where everyone could live together. It seems so aspirational that it puzzles the reader as to why God was upset and said “Lo! they are one people, and they have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do? Come let us descend and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion’. And the Lord scattered them from upon the face of the earth and they ceased building the city.” (Genesis 11:6-8)
To appreciate God’s objection, biblical commentators compared this generation to that of the flood.
The Bible states that God destroyed the world in the flood because of “חָמָֽס” (Genesis 6:11) which is translated as ‘robbery’ by Rashi and the Ramban. While at first, robbery doesn’t seem so terrible a crime worthy of destroying a world, it does invite a reader to imagine the nature of such society.
If the world operates on the basis of theft – that the ownership of personal property has no inherent meaning – people prioritize stealing over work. In such environment, a person will invest his or her efforts in how to take the fruit, cattle or spouses of their neighbor rather than engaging in the actual work of cultivating such things. There would be no effort in saving or developing anything as it could be stolen, making people live for the day rather than invest in the future. Such a world cannot mature nor endure.
The society that built the Tower of Babel had a different notion about personal property. Rather than one person stealing another’s belongings for themselves, they collected it for the state. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik said “the generation… had a strict political code. The were not weakened by abundance [like those in the Flood]…. They were aggressive in undertaking, bold in design, and arrogant in execution. The ideology of Marxism as interpreted by Lenin and Mao Tse Tung could not have been better portrayed than in these verses.”
Rabbi Solveitchik combined two principles in his critique of this society – one led by an authoritarian leader and one based on Socialism. He criticized this society that “tried to create a new social world order. In order to realize this ideal, they destroyed individual freedom, dictating to everyone what to do and how to live.” People can see this at play today in the alt-left’s efforts to institute a new social order under the marketing banner of the common good as it advocates for “canceling” those who break with their orthodoxy while they attempt to redistribute personal property.
Rampant robbery for personal gain that existed before the Flood was obsessed with the indulgence of living in the moment and needed to be wiped out as it destroyed the possibility of long-term development. The seizing of personal property for the state during the Tower of Babel, needed to be disrupted as well. God had previously directed Noah and his children to “be fruitful and multiply upon the earth” three times (Genesis 8:17, 9:1 and 9:7) and instead they constrained themselves to a small valley, thereby limiting their progeny and directed their efforts to building man-made structures rather than cultivating the land for personal use.
God “came down” (Genesis 11:7) to this authoritarian socialist society and did not see an ideal society worthy of receiving his holy words, and decided to “confuse their language” and “scattered them from there upon the face of the earth, and they ceased building the city.“
Which makes one consider the society that actually did receive the Torah.
The Tower of Babel and Mt. Sinai
God handed the Ten Commandments to a very different society in a very different place. Mount Sinai and the Tower of Babel could not be more different:
Mount Sinai
Tower of babel
Natural mountain
Man made structure
Located in remote desert away from people
Center of the world with all humanity
In the afterglow of the Exodus and destruction of Egyptian army
In the shadow of the destruction of every living thing in the Flood
Only Moses ascended the mountain and the Israelites barred from approaching it
The entire world inhabited the tower
God “descended” to Mt. Sinai to see a man he had spoken to before who had followed his command
God “descended” to find a society which ignored the direction he had given to some of them (Noah and his children)
Laws given to a single man to teach to a single tribe over time
Laws not given to the entire world at a moment in time
That tribe was scared and acting out, looking for leadership as the commandments were being given to Moses
The world was working seamlessly in concert, building their man-made city and tower which didn’t need a God as it reached the heavens via the work of its own hands
When God dispersed mankind in the year 1996 after Creation, He set in place the ability for humanity to follow his command to “be fruitful and multiply upon the earth” but simultaneously made engaging with everyone more difficult, as God’s preference for speaking to one person at a time would require multiple prophets to interact with local communities and tribes, even as the miracles would capture the attention of the whole world.
As noted above, God opted to give the Ten Commandments to a people who were just freed from slavery and eager for leadership and a new society. This was in sharp contrast to the people on the Tower of Babel who may not have been receptive to taking upon themselves the word of God, having seen the impacts of global devastation. Consider that they decided to build their city and tower in a valley. They were highly confident in their own abilities to reach the skies, almost as a further insult to God as they didn’t want any advantage from the natural world.
The Shortened Life
The dispersion had ramifications beyond the change in language, the abandonment of the tower and setting in motion the establishment of nations around the world. The lifespans of people dropped considerably as well.
Peleg, a descendant of Shem, died during the dispersion. Curiously, he was either named with prophesy as the name was derived from the Hebrew word for dispersion, or he was renamed at his death כִּ֤י בְיָמָיו֙ נִפְלְגָ֣ה הָאָ֔רֶץ (Genesis 10:25).
Peleg died when he was 239 years old, considerably less than his father, grandfather and great grandfather who were 464, 433 and 438 years old, respectively. The reduction of 225 years of Peleg’s life relative to his father is the numerical equivalent of the word scattered in Hebrew “הֱפִיצָ֣ם” (Genesis 11:9). From this day on, the lifespan of people continued to decline – all the way to 120 years old, the lifespan of Moses, the great teacher of the Torah.
There are people today – like Senator Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists – who view the idea of collective global action on behalf of a powerful state that shuns religion as an ideal to be pursued. The Bible clearly instructs otherwise, as conveyed in the short story of global unity at the Tower of Babel.
“The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
– Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
For thousands of years, people thought of themselves as the center of the universe. People believed that they were the most sophisticated animal and assumed that Earth was the only planet to house life, let alone intelligent life.
Religions encouraged such beliefs. The story of Genesis made humans the pinnacle of God’s creation and center of His plan, as the master of all other life forms. As late as the early 17th century, when Galileo posited that the Earth rotated around the sun, not the other way ’round’, the Catholic Church called him a heretic, banned his books and sentenced him to prison.
Religion appeared vain, anchored in self-absorption, and in opposition to science.
Map of world with Jerusalem in the center by Heinrich Bunting (1581)
As science became widely accepted over the following hundreds of years, people came to appreciate how small the Earth is in a remote edge of the galaxy. Mankind shifted from writing mythology about Gods in the stars, to scripting stories of alien life traversing the universe. Man seemingly embraced science and eschewed religion.
But people remained equally as arrogant.
Beyond the wave of science fiction books and movies over the past sixty years, sci-“fact” shows like the new “UFO” documentary have considered that aliens from other planets have come to Earth. The guise of awe for the unidentified flying objects at first conveyed humbleness in considering that humans are neither alone nor the center of the universe. Yet that premise fell completely flat. What kind of unbridled arrogance must someone have to believe that in the vastness of space, an alien managed to find earth and visit that one special person. Such remarkable conceit!
A profound faith in either religion or science could mask the same egotism with a different veneer of humility.
Carl Sagan, an astronomer and popular author about space strongly believed in science and of life on other worlds, and also believed in religion. He once said that “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” Despite the appreciation for both belief and science, he nevertheless acknowledged the issue with fundamentalism in his book ‘Contact‘ and how religion and science could be at odds for those with profound faith.
At its worst, profound religion acts as a cudgel, enabling those who believe they speak with divine authority to dictate demands. Deep faith facilitates massacres like the Christian and Muslim crusades as well as the Inquisition.
This stands in sharp contrast in humble faith. Humble religion serves as a guide for people to act towards one another with kindness. The belief in a powerful God who judges people’s seen and unseen actions is designed to shepherd society with humbleness as a check on power.
Faith can act as rein or a weapon. It depends on whether it is embraced with humility or conceit.
Jews have often been accused of arrogance as they believe that much of the bible is particular and not universal. Yet it is a unique monotheistic religion in believing that all people can ascend to heaven: Jews need to follow 613 commandments while non-Jews only need to follow the seven Noahide Laws related to universal morality. That is why Judaism does not try to convert people as their souls do not require “saving.”
Judaism encourages a humble faith in God and science, pursuing both knowledge and coexistence.
The notion that there is a dichotomy between religion and science is widely touted and deeply false. The divide is between profound faith and humble faith. The latter will serve to the betterment of all mankind.
First One Through 