There have been a lot of great speeches in Israel’s history, from the orator Abba Eban (“Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”) to Menachem Begin’s retort to Joe Biden: “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”
Gilad Erdan’s recent lecture to the United Nations General Assembly about backing a Palestinian (terror) state surely ranks among the best, especially considering the sad context of anti-Israelism in the West.
But we need to consider just what great speeches can accomplish in the face of hatred against our People.
The Israeli envoy to the United Nations warned that its obsessive criticism of Israel alone among the nations was so unjust that the United Nations’ “days are numbered”.
Gilad Erdan told the U.N. General Assembly that body’s anti-Israel animus is the reason U.S. “universities are permitting (the) Nazi-like behavior” of harassing Jewish students and calling for students to emulate Hamas, without telling Hamas and the Palestinian Arabs that they must make concessions for peace - and give up their long-held dream of expelling or murdering the Jews of Israel to be replaced by another Muslim-only state, this one with borders from “the river to the sea”.
Erdan said that by attempting to move forward with fuller recognition of Palestinian Arab statehood, “you are telling the child-murdering Hamas rapists that terror pays off.”
Erdan said member states have done “nothing for the victims” of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre but have “mobilized for the murderers.”
Erdan was clear that the Palestinian Arabs and their associated organizations were responsible for the violent anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses around the United States, which have included assaults, the blocking of access for Jewish and Israel university community members and calls for genocide.
“We always knew that Hamas hides in schools,” said Erdan. “We just didn’t realize that it’s not only schools in Gaza. It’s also Harvard, Columbia and many elite universities.”
Erdan expressed the feeling that we should all share that siding with unrepentant terrorists such as those who participated or otherwise supported the obscene attacks of October 7th, should result in the United Nations being brought down by its “moral hypocrisy and blindness.” He suggested that it has prompted the “establishment of a new world institution” that will not “give dictators a free pass and terrorists a lifeline.”
After the speech I was in touch with a great pro-Israel activist, Canada’s Goldi Steiner, founder of Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights www.israelslegalrights.org which continues the work of the late Salomon Benzimra who authored The Jewish People’s Rights to the Land of Israel.
Steiner posed a question that flowed from her long commitment to persuading others that Israel’s right to its land is firmly based in international law. She asked me whether those seeking the destruction of Israel would react to such speeches to “simply beat their chests — pride themselves for causing the suffering and pain Gilad is describing.”
And so Goldi identifies the problem that so many have become so evil that they welcome more suffering for the Jewish people, no matter how eloquent are our speeches. And this includes some “self-hating Jews”.
In my new book Second Generation Radical: The World Through One Man’s Second Generation Lens, I try to come to grips with the cultural, psychological and ideological causes of antisemitism and its associated anti-Israelism which seem quite apparent to me as a son of a Holocaust Survivor. Unfortunately, I have seen that there are many Second Generation and Third Generation groups that are self-focused on transgenerational trauma and seldom see that Israel is a better solution to antisemitism than assimilating to Western woke culture.
We need to understand that anti- Israelism has passed into the realm of antisemitism through its holding of Israel to different standards than any other country, and its focus on the retributive aspects of Israeli reactions, rather than the actions of murderers attacking Israel.
I believe that modernity and culture, whether it was the modernity of a supposedly cultured German society in 1939, or whether it is present day modernity and culture, offers no protection for the well-being and safety of Jewish civilians. To the extent that modernity has embraced moral relativism, it is by nature hostile to our cause. And no assertion of a higher morality, be it religious, secular, or (as the Jews and later the American founding fathers saw it), a type of hybrid where religious notions could be adapted to a liberal, secular, and just democracy, will be attractive to post-modern relativists.
The relativists, however, have eliminated the notion of personal and community responsibility from their lexicon. The severance of rights from responsibilities is the essence the cause of today’s anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. If the Palestinian Arabs are going to have the right to a sovereign nation, they must accept the responsibility to stop killing Jewish civilians, and the responsibility to create some kind of justice system and some freedoms in their own society. If the relativists simply critique Israel’s reactions without dissecting the actions that caused those reactions, that is bias, and a rather nasty bias, too.
And so, I am unafraid to stand with another great orator, the American conservative Barry Goldwater who said: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And … moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
Unfortunately, in a world of injustice, in a world of moral relativism, in a world of violent Islamism where European countries again are sacrificing Jews to aggressive totalitarianism (this time Islamism), we need more than ever a vigilance in our pursuit of justice. Tragically, the more vigilant we Jews are, the more we are labeled “vengeful”, “disproportionate”, “unmerciful” and “extreme”. In other words, we risk being seen as Shylocks.
At least, Shakespeare gave Shylock the voice to ruminate over his situation (“Hath not a Jew eyes?”); the vast majority of persecuted Jews, including those of the Holocaust, had no Shakespeares to emphasize in their profound moral struggles and their ultimate fates, which were certainly no more palatable than Shylock’s.
Jonathan Pollard, about whom I wrote in my novel The Second Catastrophe, stepped outside the law; Shylock tried to have his “contract” enforced within the law. In fact, Shylock was judged in a sham of a trial, presided over by Portia impersonating a Roman doctor named Balthasar. Driven to madness by his faith that a Court controlled by anti-Semites could ever dispense justice, Shylock continues to assert his claim for a surety’s pound of flesh, even when presented with the option of taking three times the monetary indebtedness.
Pollard’s greatest error, ultimately, was also his faith in a corrupted Justice system (corrupted by Caspar Weinberger’s secret memo to the Judge.) He also passed into a form of madness due to the refusal of his superiors to pass on a clear threat to an ally, and so he also ignores justice while he continues to insist on it. He thought a plea bargain for a charge of passing secrets to a friendly nation would attract the appropriate sentence for that crime, not a sentence commensurate with treason.
Shylock’s fate was forced conversion to Christianity; Pollard’s fate was abandonment by his community – many American Jews would “excommunicate” him if they could. Finally, after serving his unjust sentence he has been released and is now living in Israel, proud and unafraid to contribute to national debates.
If, as Goldwater argued, “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue,” and if there were some severe problems in the administration of justice when it comes to both Pollard and the fictional Shylock, there is a problem, that too many commentators have glossed over. The actions of Pollard and Shylock can be seen as neurotic responses to travesties of justice, rather than themselves being unjust.
In Shylock’s case, look at what the Duke, who presided over the Court in Venice (before turning it over to Portia’s impersonation) had to say to Antonio, at the very start of the trial, about the other litigant:
“I am sorry for thee: thou art come to answer a stony adversary, an inhuman wretch.”
A Court this predisposed against him could not render justice to Shylock, and he knew it. That knowledge more than anything else explains why he turns aside an offer of three times the debt, and instead insists on his contractual “pound of flesh”. As he states, having been called a “dog” without any cause, and since he has been pre-judged to be a dog, then, he states, “beware my fangs.”
The Jewish “dog”, says Shakespeare, is forced to seek salvation in justice because he cannot understand Christian concepts of mercy. Says Portia in another famous speech which starts with the words, “The quality of mercy is not strained...”:
“And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.”
So, says Portia to the Jew, who, prisoner of a thoroughly anti-Semitic culture and society, takes refuge in “Justice”: We anti-Semitic Christians will subvert justice when we want and if you complain we shall assert our Christian concepts of “mercy” over your Jewish concept of “justice”.
Goldwater disagrees: Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Goldwater says that the Americans are with the Jews on this one. This is the key to understanding our current cultural struggle against Islamism, and why the Americans (if they survive Biden) and the Israelis are on one side, and most Europeans are on the other side. It is an issue of Justice and Liberty.
Unfortunately, any Jew in England or France today who insists on Justice, may find himself descending into that particular madness of Shylock. Given their situations, neither Pollard nor Shylock had any alternative to the courses of action they tried. If their sad fates are meant to serve as a warning, however, I think we should rethink the whole matter of just what the warning tells us.
We Jews must give more thought to Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock and understand that Gilad Erdan at the U.N. General Assembly is like Shylock at the Court of Venice. We are not condoning Shylock’s acts of madness, but instead we are showing mercy towards one whose very existence is marginalized by an anti-Semitic society that allows him only the occupation of a usurer.
We are showing mercy to one who clings to Justice as his only friend, his only protector, even as it is clear that the rules of justice have been subverted, subverted by the Duke who at the outset of the trial calls him an “inhuman wretch” and then abdicates his judicial duties by turning over the decision-making to a supposed Roman doctor, who is actually Portia in disguise.
The anti-Semite focuses on Shylock’s evil character. We focus on the evil character of the Justice system as described by Shakespeare. Surely, the Judge in the trial between Shylock and Antonio could simply have directed Shylock to accept the funds tendered by Bassanio and release the bond. Instead, Portia tricks Shylock by pointing out that his bond is only a pound of flesh and not any blood, so that it is impossible to take the flesh without causing bleeding, thus voiding this evil bond. Throughout the Court scene, the Duke and Portia (in her disguise as Balthasar) subvert justice rather than carry it out.
Poor Shylock – surely the modern mind realizes that his sanity has been jeopardized by the actions toward him; his actions and words are not as much the result of his evil character, or the evil Jewish character, as they are of the anti-Semitism of Venetian society. And so we embrace him, embrace him for the pitiful example of what happens to the Jew who is powerless, who ceases even to recognize that it is ridiculous to insist on Justice in a world in which the justice system is itself corrupted and used against him.
We empathize with him because of what he tells us about the world today. Even in America, the left is weaponizing the justice system and using injustice such as lawfare and removal of candidates from the ballot. Can Donald Trump get a fair trial in front of a partisan judge? Israel in the United Nations is like Shylock in the Court of Venice. Jonathan Pollard in the American Court system in the time of Caspar Weinberger and CIA Director Bobby Ray Inman, was like Shylock in the Court of Venice.
Israel, defending itself against Hezbollah missiles aimed at Israeli civilians and operating in Rafah, is seen by much of the world as exacting its “pound of flesh” against the “innocent” Lebanese or Gazan civilians, notwithstanding that these civilians had allowed Hezbollah or Hamas to use their apartment blocks as launching sites, and notwithstanding that Israel dropped warning leaflets before bombing the launching sites.
Shakespeare’s Shylock was powerless. In the end, he is forced to convert to Christianity. We do not empathize with him for the sad fact of what was his fate in 16th century Venice but because of what it tells us about 16the century Venice, about 20th century Europe, and now about 21st century Iran.
The evil is not in the Jew; it is in the anti- Semite.
The Duke characterizes Shylock as inhuman even as the trial begins. The mullahs of Iran characterize Israel as deserving of destruction as they prepare their nuclear weapons. Shylock tried to adhere to Justice, but in his society, justice was not meant for the Jews. Israel tries to adhere to Justice, and then is told by the United Nations that it is a Shylock, it is vengeful, it uses “disproportionate force”, and its ruthless neighbours are hardly criticized.
We return to Shylock’s words:
“Thou call'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause;
But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs:”
No, we do not depart from our quest for Justice and Liberty, but be sure, if you make us into dogs, because of your animal conduct, beware our fangs.
Yet here is the question: how do we use our fangs, in a just and productive manner?
To use our fangs is to empower Shylock, and thus to transform him. Have we not learned anything from the history of the Holocaust and modern-day Israel? Strength of the Jewish state, Israel, creates respect; Weakness conduces to anti-Semitism. It is that simple.
Diaspora Jews must learn that lesson, above all. Weakness in Israel’s security performance on October 7th induced the worst type of antisemitism, within days. Respect does not come from our accomplishments, it does not come from our wealth, and it does not come from great speeches. Look how quickly Europeans are turning on their Jews in the last few years. Shylock’s wealth did not save him. Only a strong Jewish state could inhibit the unjust actions of the corrupt Venetian Court. Only the option of removing himself entirely from their jurisdiction (to a jurisdiction where a Jew could obtain justice) would give Shylock the strength and sanity he lacked.
And that perhaps is why Erdan raises the possibility that the United Nations, in its current state, might have to be discontinued. And so, with that statement, it was indeed a great speech.
Howard Rotberg is the author of the novel The Second Catastrophe, about Israel during the Second Intifada, and four books on ideologies, culture and values. His latest book is Second Generation Radical: The World Through One Man’s Second Generation Lens. See www.howardrotberg.com.