2 days Ago
On the first day in American history, on the evening of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson – if one might paraphrase his words – declared: Let there be inalienable rights to all mankind. There was also a first day in modern Israeli history, on the afternoon of May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion – in Israel’s Declaration of Independence modeled on the United States’s – declared that among these inalienable rights is the right of the to be in their sovereign homeland. Both Declarations drew on the same, common heritage of political rights that scholars have traced to the English Bill of Rights and the Book of Deuteronomy.
Thus, a philosophical rejection of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and its right to exist is, at the same time, a philosophical rejection of America’s Declaration of Independence and its right to exist. Fundamentally, an attack on Israel is . Some scholars have found that America and Israel’s Declarations of Independence were racist, colonialist documents with a people’s “ancient” claims to their national lands based on fictional history and lies.
Yet these Declarations were not meant for their academic analysis. They were written in the passion of the moment by countries and peoples fighting for their survival. Of course, antisemites do not really care about any of this because they believe that Jews control both America and Israel anyway.
Therefore, if I might update Jefferson’s words on America’s Independence Day, I hold this t.
