Michael Oren has written a fantastic piece in today’s Wall St. Journal called “Jimmy Carter’s Book: An Israeli View” (subs req) in which he points out that Carter “in revealing his unease with the idea of Jewish statehood, (sic) sets himself apart from many U.S. presidents before and after him, as well as from nearly 400 years of American Christian thought.”
Mr. Oren offers numerous examples which I found to be quite informative. He provides a great histoical perspective and context. For example he points out that:
Generations of Christians in this country, representing a variety of dominations, laymen and clergy alike, have embraced the concept of renewed Jewish sovereignty in Palestine.
Here is a sampling of what some of our Founding Fathers and Presidents thought of the Jewish people and the Jewish State that Oren cites in his piece:
The passion was already evident in 1620 when William Bradford alighted on Plymouth Rock and exclaimed, “Come, let us declare the word of God in Zion.” Bradford was a leader of the Puritans, dissenting Protestants who, in their search for an unsullied religion and the strength to resist state oppression, turned to the Old Testament. There, they found a God who spoke directly to his people, who promised to deliver them from bondage and return them to their ancestral homeland. Appropriating this narrative, the Puritans fashioned themselves as the New Jews and America as their New Promised Land. They gave their children Hebrew names — David, Benjamin, Sarah, Rebecca — and called over 1,000 of their towns after Biblical places, including Bethlehem, Bethel and, of course, New Canaan.
Elias Boudinot, president of the Continental Congress, predicted that the Jews, “however scattered . . . are to be recovered by the mighty power of God, and restored to their beloved . . . Palestine.”
John Adams imagined “a hundred thousand Israelites” marching triumphantly into Palestine. “I really wish the Jews in Judea an independent nation,” he wrote.
During the Revolution, the association between America’s struggle for independence and the Jews’ struggle for repatriation was illustrated by the proposed Great Seal designed by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, showing Moses leading the Children of Israel toward the Holy Land.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln said that “restoring the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans,” and that the U.S. could work to realize that goal once the Union prevailed.
By the century’s turn, those advocating restored Jewish sovereignty in Palestine had begun calling themselves Zionists, though the vast majority of the movement’s members remained Christian rather than Jewish. “It seems to me that it is entirely proper to start a Zionist State around Jerusalem,” wrote Teddy Roosevelt, “and [that] the Jews be given control of Palestine.”
Oren also desribes how pro-Israel Truman, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and both Bush 41 and the current 43 were (especially according to Oren- 43) and concludes his assessment of Carter’s book with this:
In his apparent attempt to make American Christians rethink their affection for Israel, Jimmy Carter is clearly departing from time-honored practice. This has not been the legacy of evangelicals alone, but of many religious denominations in the U.S., and not solely the conviction of Mr. Bush, but of generations of American leaders. In the controversial title of his book, Mr. Carter implicitly denounces Israel for its separatist policies, but, by doing so, he isolates himself from centuries of American tradition.
I could not agree more.