After you’ve read Jeffrey Goldberg’s analysis of Michael Oren’s Yom Kippur sermon, you’ll feel like you’ve just heard from Rabbi Goldberg on the topic of the threats to Israel’s existence over the millennia. I can’t do it justice with an excerpt; read the entire essay.
Update: Oops. Michael Oren wrote it all. I mistook the quoted text for Goldberg’s. Thanks, Laura. (Boy, I musta been tired when writing this one.)
At 62 years old, Israel’s democracy is older than more than half of the democratic governments in the world, which, in turn, account for less than half of the world’s existing nations. Israel is one of the handful of democracies that has never succumbed to periods of undemocratic rule. And Israel has achieved this extraordinary record in spite of the fact that it is the only democracy never to know a nanosecond of peace and which has endured pressures that would have crushed most other democracies long ago. In a region inhospitable–even fatal–to government by and of the people, Israel’s democracy thrives.
Democracy in Israel is not only personal and vibrant, but also grave, because the stakes are so enormously high. Recalling Jonah’s paradox, the leaders we elect are confronted with grueling decisions.
Of course, the tone of the essay will be handing Stephen Walt and Andrew Sullivan more grist for their “Zionist tool” mill, but Jeffrey Goldberg lived in Israel and served in the IDF, and as such has valuable insights that few Americans can have—and that Israel’s unfriends and enemies don’t want publicized.
Read it. Trust me on this one.
Um… I think Jeffrey Goldberg was *quoting* the sermon in its entirety. The only part Goldberg wrote was the intro at the top, the part that isn’t against a blue background.
So Walt & Sullivan & such can’t blame Goldberg for the language… and Oren is allowed to be a “Zionist tool.” :-)
Chag Sameach!
Oops. Updated the post.