Israel in the UN: Annapolis and other American Stories
by Eugene Narrett
For decades The Economist has maintained British imperial policy, loving Israel to death. It is apt that its November 24 cover featured the photo of George W. Bush beneath the caption, “Mr. Palestine.” As Daniel Pipes has noted, this title was previously held by Yasser Arafat and, one adds, initially by the Emperor Hadrian. Hillary Clinton pants to inherit the title.
The cover-push does more than illustrate the Anglo-American tango regarding the Jewish people since the Evian Conference of 1938 locked the Jews of Europe into the fate the British knew awaited them. It also clarifies the perennial role of Israel among the nations, the whipping boy and scapegoat whose light the world does not want unless it can steal or pervert it in the primal identity theft.
This fact, attested in Torah repeatedly, “it is a nation that shall dwell apart and not be counted among the nations” (Numbers 23:9), “Israel shall dwell secure, solitary in the likeness of Jacob” (Deut. 33:28) — is underscored by the designs of the Annapolis chaos-fest and by numerous little-known stories of Jews in early American history. Thanks to the AJHS journal Heritage we may examine them here for the light they shed on the current darkness [1].
As middle and high school students we learned that the state of Rhode Island was settled by Roger Williams and its history is all about freedom of religion and conscience and liberal pluralism. We learned a lot of lies. Consider the experience of Aaron Lopez and his family.
These Jews had managed to live as conversos in Portugal for almost two hundred fifty years from the time the Portuguese imported from Spain the inquisition and forced conversion or expulsion for Jews. In 1740 the Lopez family sailed from Portugal to New York, subsequently moved to Newport, Rhode Island and established themselves in the shipping and candle-making industries. Heritage recounts that after nine years of living in Newport, Aaron Lopez applied for citizenship as did another Jewish man, Isaac Eliezer.
The legislature stated that “inasmuch as the said Aaron Lopez hath declared himself a Jew, this Assembly doth not admit him or any other of that religion to the full freedom of this Colony. [No member] of said religion [Jews] may be chosen into any office in this colony or be allowed to give vote as a free man for choosing others” (4-5).
Not as bad as Spain of Portugal; it’s not being burned alive but it’s not citizenship, either. As it states, “it is a nation that shall dwell apart…”
When Aaron Lopez appealed to the Superior Court that august body, on March 11, 1762 showed an evocative sense of drama to frame its principles. After disposing of a murderer, arsonist, thief, and perjurer, they heard and rejected Aaron Lopez’s petition for redress. Rhode Island had become “too crowded,” they commented so the charter for settlement no longer upheld their right and request. The next year the Court commented further that Jews would interfere with the “free and quiet enjoyment of the Christian religion” and that “no person who does not profess the Christian religion can be admitted [as a] free” man and full citizen in Rhode Island [5]. That is, your existence interferes with our religion. That attitude, not new in 1762, led to iron gates and ovens…
The story gives perspective on the undeserved reputation of Rhode Island, — or perhaps on the hypocrisy of its dissenters from Puritanism. It certainly seems predictive of Israel’s place among the nations as enacted daily for decades at the United Nations, the “world community” of the New Babel, backed up by American efforts climaxing at Annapolis to bury or drown Israel in an Arab Federation and regional holocaust.
It is noteworthy that Ezra Stiles, later a President of Yale and proponent of enshrining the Jewish basis of Western civilization in the curriculum commented on Lopez’s experience with the Courts and legislature by alluding to the Scriptural verses cited above: “Providence seems to make everything work to the mortification of the Jews and to prevent their incorporating into any nation that thus they may continue a distinct people.” This is according to the Divine Plan by which Israel is “Holy to the Eternal One,” the control group within but also set apart from the rest of the human family. It is this unique identity that Israel’s ruling cadres like the cultists and globalists of the West continue trying to dissolve with predictably convulsive results.
Another story serves a similar lesson and also highlights unique similarities between being a Jew and the American Republic, when it was a Republic and the almost super-human strengths of character required of individuals in the holy nation (Exodus 19:6).
Benjamin Nones, another Jewish fugitive from the inquisition, immigrated when he was fifteen from France to America in 1772. He fought under General Pulaski in the Revolution, receiving the rank of major and a citation for bravery. After the War, he returned to Philadelphia working as a government interpreter and notary and raising a family of fourteen children.
Benjamin was a partisan of Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans, recognizing in them the social model of a nation of independent small farmers that his ancestors had carried in their hearts for three millennia. In August 1800, Philadelphia’s Federalist newspaper, the Gazette, singled him out for criticism as “a Jew, a Republican, and poor” [6-7].
His response was memorialized by the Jeffersonian paper, Aurora:
“I am a Jew. I glory in belonging to that persuasion which even its opponents, whether Christian or Mohamedan allow [admit] to be of divine origin, — of that persuasion [Judaism] on which Christianity itself was founded and must ultimately rest – which has preserved its faith secure and undefiled for near three thousand years, whose votaries have never murdered each other in religious wars or cherished theological hatred so general among those who revile them…
“I am a Republican! I have not been so proud or prejudiced as to renounce the cause for which I have fought as an American throughout the whole of the Revolutionary War. I am a Jew and for this if no other reason I am a Republican. In republics, we have rights…
“I am poor, I am so and my family also is large but soberly and decently brought up. They have not been taught to revile a Christian because his faith is not so old as theirs.”
This short piece expresses dignity, patriotism and national, not personal pride in the nation and eternity of Israel. The entire story also reveals the rift, the eternal and essential singularity of identity and mission as witnesses that non-Jews inevitably are tempted to use in words or deeds to wound, pillage or destroy Jews. This is the story of the Jewish land for worthless promises of peace process, a war of attrition process to which the elites are addicted and which is embedded in their seemingly inextinguishable envy. Edom and Ishmael, thirty-five nations each, each ruling half of the world cannot rest except in alliance against the small nation chosen by the Creator to bear his testimonies and statutes to the end of time, carrying therein all the science, healing and wonders of creation [2].
The Bush administrations have betrayed the American people in many ways. Not the least are their relentless efforts to continue the work of at least seven previous administrations in betraying Israel; at this point, check has been announced and check mate is in view. All these administrations have cursed where they should bless and so have joined with the neo-colonial, neo-imperial Jew haters of the world community, Amalek in our days (exodus 17, Numbers 24:20) [3]. Their willing executioners in the Israeli government have been foreseen [4] and the fact of Israel’s unique identity is being asserted the difficult and bumpy way. Having been prevented by American forces from preempting an Iranian strike it is being set up again, as it was by the Nixon administration in 1973 to absorb a first strike and then be blamed for the world disruptions that follow its life saving counter-strike. This might just break the hold of the new Nimrods, too.
As Benjamin Nones, the patriot twice over stated, “ we have preserved our faith secure and undefiled for three thousand years,” just as the great gentile sorcerer was compelled to admit: “for from its [Israel’s] origins I see it rocklike” (Numbers 23:9). “Those who bless you are blessed and those who curse you are accursed” (24:9).
1. Heritage the journal of the American Jewish Historical Society (NY), fall 2007. Page numbers cited in text refer to the special insert, “the Blessings of Freedom” that is paginated separately from the rest of this issue.
2. See Psalm 83:1-7 and Elijah the Vilna Gaon commenting on Psalm 20:8, “some with chariots and some with horses, but we…” and on the psalm’s seventy words as an allusion to the seventy nations of the world (Deuteronomy 32:8 cf. Exodus 1:1-5).
3. Maimonides identifies Amalek in Hilchot Melachim, “The Laws of Kings and their Wars” I:1-2 and 5.
4. Talmud tractate Sanhedrin, 97a - b (NY Mesorah 2002; 2004
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