OPINION:
The last number of years have seen dramatic ideological shifts in American and global political thought. Those shifts have created some measure of spiritual and intellectual anarchy that is threatening to erode the freedom and security that has defined much of the postwar era.
Among the most significant is the open shift on the political left in this country and among many young Americans toward support for forces who champion the elimination of Israel. Today tolerance of anti-Israel and even antisemitic voices in the Democratic Party is as welcome as support for the welfare state, abortion on demand, and transgenderism.
The ramifications of a weakened Israel are significant for the future of American freedom and values. Little did the powers who helped create Israel know back in 1948 just how critical its survival would be to the fate of the West and our own.
Israel is far more than a political distinction or lines on a map. It is an indelible connection with the God who gave us the moral framework for this life and a pathway to the next. That validation of God’s existence is antithetical to today’s cultural and political Marxism that seeks revolution against free societies.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “The nations are God’s great family, but Israel is the ’firstborn son’ and, as such, belongs to God in a special way.”
Of course, he wasn’t referring to the political jurisdiction of Israel, but Israel in the biblical context. It is God that the militant secularists are seeking to marginalize, if not totally remove, from the world in favor of the state.
Israel is simultaneously a symbol of the pluralistic democracy and capitalism that are hallmarks of a free society unified with God’s chosen people, from whom Christ was born. Times like these should not only breed an unbreakable solidarity between Christians and Jews but also between Americans and Israelis.
Israel as a state is a representation of biblical truth. It is by its very existence an acknowledgment that the God of Moses and Abraham exists.
Erasing Jews from the face of the earth through force, as the jihadis attempt to do, or through cultural, political or academic derision, as the Marxists attempt to do, is not just an attack on one religion. It is an attack on the foundations of all Western civilization, especially the United States.
Marxism and jihadism are complementary with respect to the justification of violence to achieve revolution. Marx framed his violence as a benefit, stating, “There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”
Israeli capitulation to Islamic terrorists or other forces that seek its destruction will ultimately lead to more violence. It would affirm both the Marxist and jihadi professed justification for violence, whether for political or religious revolution.
The weakening of Israel is linked to the designs of those tearing at American society today. Its existence and stability as a liberal democracy is therefore critical to buttressing our own values as a Judeo-Christian country.
The amoral and atheist proclivities of Marxism or “wokeism” as a political movement and socialism or communism as government structures cannot be underscored enough here as central to shifts in tone toward Israel. Truly advancing the designs of these ideologies requires the liquidation, to paraphrase Stalin, of religious institutions.
Socialists, whose philosophy stems from Marxism and, therefore, militant atheism, attack Israel because of what it represents on a global scale, namely the existence of God and biblical truth, including the teachings of Jesus Christ.
If there is no Israel and there are only cultural Jews, if any Jews are left at all, then the Judeo-Christian construct that is the underpinning of Western morality and freedom collapse.
The story of the Jewish people that buttresses so much of human history is one of struggle, sacrifice and survival against the designs of pagan forces dating back thousands of years. It is not one of victimhood. It rejects, through both history and faith, the popular victimhood narratives of Marx, Engels and latter-day left-wing activists.
It is precisely for these reasons that Israel is a target of the left.
Leftists and Democrats are shaming and weakening Israel, accusing it of committing genocide without evidence. The designs of Islamist extremists have not changed. It is the Democratic Party, with its deepening socialist veins, that has changed, thereby emboldening those ideologically opposed to both Israel and American freedom.
The secularists and militant atheists in the Democratic Party know that Jews and Israel are the genesis of and connection to a biblical history that is transcendent. It connects Moses and the Ten Commandments with King David, laying the groundwork for the teachings of Christ, the Apostles and the saints of the universal church.
If you eliminate Judaism, weaken Israel or associate either with abhorrent behavior like genocide, then you also begin to eviscerate the underpinnings of Christianity as well.
By seeking to diminish Israel, Democrats are playing into the hands of the jihadis for the sake of advancing their religion of the state. Their unjustified castigation is an attack on the Creator, who endows us with individual liberty and, therefore, freedom itself.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and a Washington Times columnist.
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