McKinney judges without context
This is in response to Fred McKinney’s Jan. 6 column, “America’s special place in the world is grounded in our moral capital.”
Israelis, as well as Diaspora Jews, too often find themselves in a world that seems more comfortable seeing us as victims rather than as fighters. So we shudder when Mr. McKinney argues that Israel had a good deal of “well-earned” moral capital as a result of the Holocaust. It’s like suggesting African Americans have “well-earned” moral capital through slavery. Perhaps I can speak for both groups by saying, “spare us the moral capital.” And I ask Mr. McKinney why, in establishing Israel’s moral capital, he comments not on the many brilliant things Israel has done for the world, from life-saving medical technologies and irrigation techniques to providing assistance after natural disasters globally, but only on the worst calamity to ever befall us. No doubt unintentionally, he ends up reinforcing the stereotype: A good Jew is a victim, maybe a doctor, but not a fighter.
But the much bigger problem is that Mr. McKinney judges Israel’s actions — and President Joe Biden’s — without context, as if Israel decided to bomb a Gazan population that asks only to live side-by-side in peace. Why must it be said over and over again that Israel has been surrounded by hostile nations or terrorist entities since its independence in 1948? That it has been invaded, threatened with annihilation, denounced in the United Nations, subjected to acts of terror, without stop? That it has many times offered land for peace, even unilaterally pulling out of Gaza in 2005? That it has had to watch Iran inch closer to a nuke, Hezbollah amass an arsenal of 150,000 rockets and missiles, many capable of targeting Tel Aviv, and Hamas build an underground city of war and terror — all while a world sadly lacking in moral capital looks silently on? Yet it’s Israel, in Mr. McKinney’s argument, that needs to change its behavior to join a community of nations where it’s now, he says, a pariah. Israel, given a choice between earning more moral capital in another holocaust or living to fight another day, will choose to live and fight another day.
The deaths of innocents is a tragedy, and we should all hope that Hamas will surrender, return the hostages, and spare their own innocents whom they care nothing about except as fodder for their apocalyptic dreams.
Robert Neumann Westport