Pence’s two days in Zion will be remembered for the religious tone of the visit, the reams of scripture in his Knesset speech (supplied apparently by Lord Professor Chief Rabbi Emeritus Jonathan Sacks) and the typical way in which female journalists were forced to stand behind their male colleagues when Pence prayed at the Western Wall.
Personally, I’m neither surprised nor scandalized by either. The Old Testament is a beautiful text, and better fodder for a speech than any other cliche, and I’ve complained here before about the gender-segregation antics of the “Kotel Rabbi” Shmuel Rabinovitch. Nothing new here.
What struck me about Pence however was a scene from the short visit he paid to Jordan, before landing in Israel. King Abdullah sat across from him, speaking at length of his concerns at the Trump administration’s unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the high-handed manner in which it has approached the Palestinian issue.
Say what you like about Abdullah, he is a Western ally and comes from a line of shrewd kings who have survived for nearly a century by maintaining their precarious balance between more powerful neighbors. His worries should, at least, be taken in to account.
I looked at Pence’s face while Abdullah spoke, and perhaps I imagined it, but that slight smile of derision at the corners of his mouth looked just like the one you see on the face of a rabbi when confronted with an earnest atheist. He knows the truth, but he’s polite enough to humor you as you try to convince him. “We agreed to disagree,” Pence said dismissively after. True believers are never perturbed.
There is nothing new, or wrong of course, about religious people playing pivotal roles in politics or diplomacy. Faith can inspire and motivate, but blind faith is dangerous. It’s blind.
Most Israeli and American critics of the love-fest between our current government and Christian Evangelicals dwell on their hardline ultra-conservative evangelist values and end-of-days Armageddon hallucinations some of them harbor.
I’m not that worried about any of those. Everyone is entitled to their illusions. God, Jesus, Elijah the Prophet, Moshiach Ben David or the Lubavitcher Rebbe are not about to descend from the heavens to deliver fiery justice or rebuild the Temple, but if you believe it may happen, good for you. Nothing wrong with believing.
It’s the certainty that’s scary.
For all its achievements in founding a state, the Zionist movement and its leaders were always wracked with self-doubt. Should the Jews in the 20th century strive for a cultural or nationalist renaissance? Was Zionism’s priority political recognition by the world or physical presence on the land? What came first, statehood or a safe haven?
These were essentially secular debates, dictated by the need for pragmatism. With Zionism fulfilled in 1948, Israel’s prime ministers have to a man (and one woman) been ruthless pragmatists. Even romantic dreamers like Shimon Peres and steadfast ideologues such as Menachem Begin, made pragmatic decisions under the crunch.
Benjamin Netanyahu is no different. An elitist atheist-nationalist, he has navigated pragmatically throughout his political career with a disparate coalition of underdogs, misfits and true believers, bending them to his will.
Paying lip-service to the rabbis and lavishing government funds on them, he has remained as secular as ever. He hasn’t made any real concessions to the Palestinians, while at the same time never annexing an additional inch of contested occupied territory and quietly reining in major settlement-building, despite the demands of his government colleagues.
He believes in the status quo, in the power of markets and geopolitics, and keeping his messianists in check. Netanyahu is a master at fostering the believers’ illusions while never actually allowing them to materialize.
Don’t be fooled by Bibi’s embrace of Pence and his pastors. He has even less interest in their doctrines than in the laws of kashrut he has never abided by. He is convinced he can harness their unquestioning support of his Israel to his political and diplomatic advantage, just as he has done with his own domestic Jewish fundamentalists.
So far it’s working for him. But can Netanyahu ride this tiger as it gets more powerful and could, potentially, begin to dominate American foreign policy under a President Pence?
For all his tough rhetoric, Netanyahu doesn’t want to go war with anyone. He is Israel’s most risk-averse politician. And he would like to see both the Palestinian Authority and the Hashemite Kingdom persevering, as weak and compliant collaborators in maintaining the regional balance and is wary of pushing them beyond their breaking-point.
However, the combination of the American true believers and their emboldened Israeli counterparts could prove too potent for even a cynical pragmatist like Netanyahu to hold back. The Friends of Zion may yet be the undoing of his status quo.
