Letters to the Ledger Opinion

Letter to the Ledger

Biden must reject Obama’s flawed vision of Israel and the Jews

Many Jews are wondering what President elect Biden will think and to about the Jewish people and Israel.  We can’t let him ignore Israel or, especially with the benefit of recent events, pretend that Obama’s “colonial” era view of Israel, should be part of his thinking. 

Biden should be urged to  define the Jewish people in an up-to-date way: An origin and genetically indigenous Middle East people, some of whom, for centuries,  remained in their homeland or other parts of the Middle East (half of Israel’s population today is from the Middle East, not Europe); and that the Jewish people have returned to the new and improved nation of Israel, a model  – albeit imperfect – for the world.

Yes, never forget the Holocaust; but stop defining the Jewish people solely as the victims of the Holocaust. Yes, it happened. But the Europe where it happened was just an interim stopping point for the Jewish people, many of whom, since 1948, have returned to their ancient homeland.

Biden should reject Obama’s notion that Israel is just a result of “evil” 18th, 19th and 20th century colonialism. And, by the way, even under that notion, everyone, including Biden, should acknowledge that most of today’s current Middle East nations are simply the result of the same colonial dynamics that resulted in the rebirth of the Jewish nation of Israel. Yes folks, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan et al are all figments of colonial era imaginations.

Lester Freundlich
Stamford

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