Look to the future. Beware of the future. Give up your comfort, your money, your peace of mind for the "foreboding" future. Don't pay any attention to our hands in your pockets. Worry about the "crisis" coming with its doom and gloom.That's the standard refrain of the reactionary conservative apologist for the greedy capitalist exploitation machinery.
So here we go again with Pat Buchanan opining about the future of the Jewish people.
Why Pat? Why is this your concern? Why is this your business? Have you run out of topics?
Or did you just get it into your head that you had to write an article with the clever title, "The Lost Tribes of Israel"?
OpinionThere is more... but hey let's make it clear.
Pat Buchanan
The Lost Tribes of Israel
As Israel enters its 61st year, Israelis may look back with pride. Yet, the realists among them must also look forward with foreboding.
Israel is a modern democracy with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. In the high-tech industries of the future, she is in the first rank. From a nation of fewer than a million in 1948, Israel's population has grown to 7 million. In seven wars — the 1948 War of Independence, the Sinai invasion of 1956, the Six-Day War of 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the Lebanon wars of 1982 and 2006 — Israel has prevailed, though some of these wars were, as Wellington said of Waterloo, "a damn near-run thing."
Israel has revived Hebrew, created a new currency, immersed her children in the history, ancient and modern, of her people, and established a homeland for Jews from all over the world, millions of whom have migrated there to settle. Israel is now home to the largest concentration of Jews anywhere on earth.
Here, however, we come to the heart of the existential crisis.
Israel became home to the largest Jewish population on earth in part because American Jews in the 1990s fell in number from 5.5 million to 5.2 million, a loss of 300,000, or 6 percent of the U.S. Jewish population....
We are 16 million out of a world population of 6.6 billion. We are never going to be significant in quantity.
Did Pat just realize this? The Jewish people are a quality entity.
Well, if the Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed and Reconstructionist branches ever got their acts together (outlawing abortion on demand), there could be a better ending. (Don't even think of challenging me on this issue, Rabbi, because you'll get scorched on it, and I'm not kidding.)
ReplyDeleteI am a young Japanese/American Roman Catholic. I am presently studying for an M.A. in History (Ancient History-Egypt, Greece/Rome, Mesopotamia, ancient Israel, also China and Japan (up until 16th century).
ReplyDeleteI researched Jews, and read where you don't have 16 million, but rather only 12.5 million, and that Jews are declining across the board (not just USA, but everywhere...even in Israel where Jews in Israel are terrified to be a minority in their own state in 30-40 years.).
So accuracy in important. Not 16 million, but 12.5.
I should think that rather than antagonizing your neighbors (Syria,Iran,Iraq), and Arab Israelis (about 20% of the population of Israel), by attacks on Gaza (which is slaughter plain and simple), you would try to dialog....since in about 40 years population wise Jews will be a minority and at a disadvantage even in their own country.
Not smart.
Kenjiro Takemitsu.