I have deep respect for the UK author and columnist Melanie Phillips. Her book published a few years ago, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power, offers her characteristically astute analysis.
In a recent illuminating essay she rightly points out that "The core of the left’s agenda is to remake the Western world; and the agenda of Obama and the American left is to remake America."
Since this means that the nation state must be abolished, Israel, she says, is a sticking point.
The nation, its specific attributes and the borders that define its territory must instead give way to a Kumbaya vision of the brotherhood of man expressed through transnational institutions and laws.
Phillips notes that:
The principal target of liberal universalism is the Western nation-state, which was supposedly brought into being in 17th-century Europe. The belief, however, that the nation was essential to safeguard life and liberty was pioneered thousands of years ago by the Jews.
Her following point is absolutely true, and far too little noted:
The template for the nation-state was the ancient kingdom of Israel, composed of a particular people in their own land bound by their own laws, which expressed the history, traditions and principles that formed their shared identity and purpose.
As Yoram Hazony observes in his book "The Virtue of Nationalism," ancient Israel, which formed a nation out of the unification of tribes, laid down a formula for national unity that created England in the ninth century, the Dutch Republic in the 16th century and, in the 18th century, the United States of America.
Melanie Phillips continues:
The profound influence of the Hebrew Bible on America has been dwelt upon at length by the New York Rabbi Meir Soloveichik. In his preface to the book he helped edit, "Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land", he records how the founders of the United States constantly turned to the Hebrew Bible as their shared heritage and foundational text.
Soloveichik writes:
“From the Puritan fathers to the American Framers, from slavery to abolition, from the Liberty Bell to America’s celebration of national Thanksgiving, the Hebrew Bible is one of America’s formative books, reflecting in the new continent, in the new nation, in America’s rebirth of freedom, the moral and narrative inspiration of ancient Israel
A nation, however, ceases to exist as such if it cannot defend itself within its own borders. One reason why Israel falls foul of the Western left is that it is single-mindedly determined to defend itself as a nation.
