Do Pro-Israel Jewish-Americans Put Israel Before America?

I was sitting in Starbucks with a close friend of mine who also happens to be Turkish. Our conversation, as it usually does, ran the gambit of politics, religion, and women. This time he asked me candidly, who do I put first America or Israel? This was followed up by the hypothetical that if Israel went to war with America what would I do?

I looked at him and responded with my own question: If your brother and sister get into a fight, whose side do you take? This is the short of it. For most Jews Israel is our inheritance, it is a place we mention hundreds of times every day. The belief in our eventual return to Israel is a central tenet of Judaism. Moreover, to not support Israel is to ignore our family members, figuratively and literally.

For ALL Jewish-Americans and/or American-Jews (African-Americans or American-Africans etc.) America is our home and most of us love our home. Now if this home was a place where we would be attacked in the street by right-wing neo-Nazis and/or left-wing Islamists, as is taking place regularly in every part of world except America and Israel, then we would find it hard to call America home, but this is not the case. In America we are allowed to thrive and contribute, to serve politically and socially, to stand up for what we believe and support legally what we want to support. In no other continent in the world is there a place not soaked in the Jewish blood of government orchestrated anti-Semitism.

Jews have lived peacefully and productively in America since the governor of Dutch New-Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, was compelled by the Dutch East India company (incidentally the first multi-national) to receive a boat of Jews escaping the fiery stake of the Spanish-Inquisition inspired Brazilian auto de fe. True there was institutional anti-Semitism in America until the great universities of America abolished the quotes of Jews allowed to matriculate in the middle of the last century. And even today there are many blatant anti-Semites. Goons like Wright and Farrakhan who refuse to acknowledge that it was Jews who died, yes died for their civil rights. But Jews have never generalized, unless it is general. So we love this country and what has given us, and if need be we do and will die for it.

As far as the hypothetical goes. If there was a war between America and Israel that could only mean one of two things. Either America had lost what made it great and would be led by people like Farrakhan, Wright, or Brzezinski. Or Israel lost what made it great, and was run by people like Abbas, or the Haaretz crowd. In that case I would fight with the side that still stood for what America and Israel both stand for today, above all else. Freedom, Democracy, innovation, strength of character, and purpose.

Some reading this will no doubt raise the Liberty incident, for my response please see the post, “http://factoru.blogspot.com/2010/04/three-excuses-and-one-belief.html”.

But as I explained to my appreciative friend. Just as it would be impossible to ask a child to choose between two parents it is impossible for me to choose between Israel and America. As long as both are parents, I will do my best as a child to support both and keep them together. After all if it is a match made in heaven, let’s hope there is never a divorce.