Empty Words From Western Allies | The American Spectator

What does it mean to recognize a country that hasn’t existed before?

To understand, we can look back at a case that some may be old enough to recall. 

Within mere minutes of its declaring independence in 1948, President Harry Truman offered the new state of Israel de facto recognition. Great Britain had just lowered its flag and left what they had called the Palestine Mandate — the section of the now-defunct Ottoman Empire that stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and that Britain had invaded and taken to govern after World War I.

The United Nations had voted in late 1947 on a partition of that territory into regions to be under Jewish or Arab sovereignty as well as a section in the middle, including Jerusalem, that would be under international control. The UN’s plan was to give each distinct community living there its own area to govern. The map was drawn, the borders of were precisely defined. 

The Jewish community had a long-established quasi-government, the Jewish Agency. The British constituted the official government of the Mandate under the treaties that ended World War I and backed by the League of Nations, the predecessor to the UN, which had not yet been exposed as unable to keep the world from another world war. 

Nonetheless, the Jewish Agency served as an effective government of a Jewish community who for centuries gave allegiance to a law whose grip on the people’s affection was deeper than anything that could be forced by a king or prince. When the British left, that fully functioning government seamlessly took over the helm of the newly independent state.

At the moment it declared its independence, this new fully functional state set before the world exactly what it was about and to what principles it held itself accountable. Notable is this paragraph: 

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.

At its very start, the Declaration set out the historic basis of the Jews’ claim for statehood in this place, making clear that Truman’s recognition would be not of a new state, but of a resurrected one.

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

So, in sum, when Truman offered his recognition, it was to a renewed state, with defined borders, with a working government formally dedicated to equality of social and political rights for all its inhabitants, whatever their religion, race, or sex. 

This week, the Left governments of Canada, Britain, and Australia all recognized a Palestinian state. Clearly, they wish their recognition to have the power of Truman’s recognition of nearly eighty years ago, the significant recognition of an actual, defined, self-governing state dedicated to the high principles that make modern nationhood legitimate.

But these leftist governments, who are each dependent on a bloc of voters steeped in the tradition of Middle East tyranny and contemptuous of a West they see as fatuous and immobilized by guilt. These leftist governments are in craven fear that this bloc will desert them if they do not take a stand for a “free Palestine,” and so to buy some time before the next demand, they have decided to recognize — exactly what? 

To begin with, there are no defined boundaries for the state they “recognize.” Do they include Gaza? Do they include all of Jerusalem? Do ABC (Australia, Britain, Canada) recognize the boundaries over which Jordan sent its armies in 1967? Do they recognize the boundaries set by the 1949 armistice, which was never accepted by any Palestinian political organization other than as a ceasefire line? Do they recognize the UN-devised boundaries of 1947, which were rejected by every Arab government at that time? Are they recognizing boundaries that those whom they are patronizing do not use to define themselves?

Are they recognizing a government? If so, which? The ever-diminishing tunnel scum who emerge to strut and prey on civilians on October 7? Who validate their manhood by torture and rape, not sure that they are enough of a man unless they can force unwilling women and make them suffer and die? Are ABC recognizing them? If not, whom? The ones Hamas already executed when in 2006 they won the only election Gaza ever had? Or the ones growing up on a culture of hate, a Hitler Youth given not ten years but more than a half-century to work?

Or perhaps they are recognizing the Palestinian Authority government, with its head elected by the people to a five-year term in 2005 — and that five-year term seems to stretch without end! True, elections have been announced several times since then, but, well, you know. Is this the government they are recognizing, to help peace? For democracy?

What about a national, historical connection? Search the history books for a Palestinian nation, for a Palestinian language or culture. Good luck. The name Palestine was given to the area by the Romans almost 2,000 years ago, punishing the rebellious Jews by changing it from Judea to the name of the ancient Philistine enemy of old Israel, a people that long ago lost the distinctive language, culture, and organization that they had in Biblical days. Jewish books of the day knew of Arabs, one of many people in a land that has had many conquerors and immigrants. No one identified them with the Philistines of old. Both according to the Jewish literature of that time and of established scholarship, those groups were ethnically, politically, and linguistically distinct.

What about a moral right? ABC are signifying that they are bowing to the endless propaganda that complains of an apartheid, genocide state, and that ABC will fix by recognizing those who claim to suffer such injustices.

Yes, indeed, it is true that in the Middle East, followers of religions are being persecuted, decimated, forced to convert, disadvantaged economically and dispossessed, not allowed to live in their ancestral home solely on the basis of their religion, their population steadily decreasing and now homing in on zero.

True! But of whom? 

Before World War II, the 2,000-plus year old Iraqi Jewish community still had about 150,000 members. Today they are gone. Gaza had an ancient Jewish community as late as 1910. Gone — until the IDF was forced to come in by the mass slaughter and rape that Hamas members affirmed would be its permanent policy.

How about the PA in Judea and Samaria (“West Bank”)? Hmm. Christian population there has plummeted, even though it is home to the formerly flourishing Christian communities of Nazareth and Bethlehem. In fact, the only country in the Middle East where Christians are thriving and sharing all political rights is — Israel. And as for genocide, Israel has shown its military capabilities. If it had wanted to maximize rather than minimize civilian casualties in a war forced upon it, there is no question that it could have hit the entire Gaza Strip on day one and killed almost everyone there in one day.

But who was it that actually targeted civilians — families in their homes, kids at a dance festival — and called it legitimate means for achieving their political goals? And in all the years since Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, when the propagandists say that a genocidal blockade was at work, the population increased from about 1.44 million to about 2.11 million today, even with the losses in war.

So what then are ABC recognizing? Not anything identifiable by boundaries, even though the famous “from the river to the sea” chant identifies what Hamas supporters really want. But that claim the moral exemplars leading ABC cannot embrace, for fear of alienating a larger bloc of voters. Caught between two blocs, they fudge, hoping both sides don’t realize how they float contradictory expectations.

The pretensions of the ABC leaders are as transparent as the mythic emperor’s new clothes. They are infected with abracadabra moralism: moral action can be achieved by the mere mouthing of correct words. Britain’s Keir Starmer seems to imagine that transparently empty assertions of virtue clothe the absence of the hard engagement with reality that true moral virtue requires, even in domestic affairs.

Only recently, Starmer assured the world of Britain’s immovable commitment to the bedrock of civilized politics, freedom of speech. Quoth the Prime Minister: “Free speech is one of the founding values of the United Kingdom, and we protect it jealously and fiercely and always will.” 

Of course, however, he proposed a reasonable limit on this freedom. Said Sir Keir: “I’m also for protecting children from things that will harm them: pedophiles, those that peddle suicide.” 

Fine words, sir. But how does that jibe with what the British government over which you have responsibility actually does? 

Ask Irish comedian Graham Lineham, who posted online advice about what women should do to protect themselves if a human with male sexual organs enters a female-only space. Quite reasonably, he recommended attracting help by protesting this abusive intrusion. Quite reasonably, he suggested as a last resort disabling the intruder by striking him in that part of the male anatomy that is inordinately sensitive to pain.

One would think that the valiant knight would be as concerned about women’s rights to a secure and private place, free from assertive men, as he would about children. The moral issue is the power imbalance making the women and the children particularly vulnerable and therefore virtue requires we protect them and take away the freedom of those who demonstrate their abusiveness.

But no. The virtue of the Starmers of the world so often ends with the words. What actually happened in this case was, as Lineham described in The Spectator:

The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two — five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets. In a country where pedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilized five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for … tweets (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up).

If moral-sounding pronouncements about his own nation’s bedrock principles mean nothing in the land under Sir Keir’s governance, then it is more than clear that his fine-sounding words about bringing Middle East peace by recognizing an undefined Palestinian state has not the slightest chance of bending the curve of history towards peace. The bad players from that rough neighborhood are not impressed. It only confirms their opinion that the West is a rotten civilization, ready to be smashed.

And were the ABC leaders truly representative of the West, they would be right.

It is up to us to join words with action and sweep away these leaders so inadequate for this stern moment. There will be no end of the violence and assassinations until the West chooses once again to back its words and ideals with action. 

It is only faithful service to our highest ideals that will overcome the preening, empty platitudes of the temporarily powerful.

READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin:

We Can and Will Triumph Over the Subversion of Language and Thought

Kirk Was Loathed by Those Who Hate Independent Thought

The Religious Roots of Separation of Church and State