Victor Davis Hanson
An Outsider’s Superficial Impressions
For a supposed global recession, COVID pandemic, and war in Ukraine, Israel seems booming. Traffic is snarled. Tourist spots are full. Prices are high. People are upbeat.
We talk about the ex-nihilo boom of modern China from a Maoist hellhole to a gleaming autocracy. But that was material progress only for half the country.
Israel’s story is far more impressive.
It is hard to imagine a tiny, impoverished, beleaguered Israel of little more than seventy years ago, survivor of at least four major wars—hated by its neighbors, the United Nations, and superpowers from Russia to China—not just surviving, but creating ultramodern cities, top ranked science, Western prosperity, and entire new industries—and all under continued democratic auspices.
I contrast Tel Aviv with San Francisco. The former city pressure-washes its sidewalks in the early morning. But unlike the latter—the anchor of a $6 trillion market–capitalized Silicon Valley—excrement does not fly up from the pavement. Needles do not roll into the gutters.
There are no shouters on the corners eager to confront and bully. Everyone in Israel in contrast seems frenzied and working. There are labor shortages, but because there are too many things to do rather than too many who won’t do them.
With such success comes confidence, pride, and on occasion,haughtiness. Israelis believe that they deserve global recognition because they have accomplished the impossible and yet are hated not for what they do, but because of the envy of it and the hatred of who they are. The result is a worried frustration when you discuss the world with Israelis—the subtext a frustration that the world applies a double-standard to them on almost every issue from “occupied land” (compare Tibet and Cyprus) to “refugees” (500,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands since 1947–49) to supposedly asymmetrical uses of force (cf. us).
They seem bewildered that their sizable Arab population—1/5 of the Israeli population—freer and more prosperous than Arab neighbors on the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, consistently poll they are unsympathetic to their neighbors among whom they live and sympathetic to their Arab brethren among whom they chose not to live.
That is a natural sentiment given our human tribal instincts. Indeed, such paradoxical ethnic chauvinism is somewhat like I saw in many of my former Mexican-American and Mexican-national students when I taught for two decades at CSU, Fresno: quite critical of the U.S., chauvinistic about Mexico, furious about border enforcement and deportations, but under no circumstances eager to return (if Mexican nationals) or to see family members (if non-citizens) return to their glorious motherland.
Israel so far has avoided the Western disease of leisure and affluence leading to complacency and onward to ennui, apathy, and decadence.
Why and how? Greater religiosity explains much. So does its dangerous neighborhood, a place where a “woke” Israel would likely perish promptly. Any country with neighbors like Israel’s who did not believe that the nation was better than the alternative would shortly become the alternative.
I walked the nocturnal streets of Jerusalem. At 9:30 PM preteens were still out singing, carrying Israeli flags and celebrating the 1967 capture of eastern Jerusalem. I cannot fathom American teens on July 4 or Memorial Day doing anything remotely similar. Many were preteens without parents marching and chanting on their own.
The more one travels throughout the West, whether in Europe, North America, or its outposts in Asia, the more one gains a pessimism that its leisure and material progress are resulting in moral regress. Westerners lack the confidence in the values that made them rich, secure, and privileged and are wary about passing them down to the next generation—a fact known to their domestic and foreign critics. My biggest gripe is that the present disappointing generation (say, born between 1940 and 1980) is the most critical of a prior cohort (e.g., born between 1900 and 1940) who by any measure of achievement were as great as we the former are pathetic.
Israelis seem aware of these dangers arising from these woke contradictions. They certainly are present among the Israeli Left. But most of the population accepts that the very second Israel appears sluggish in defending its existence, either intellectually or militarily, it will be overwhelmed by its nearby enemies. A southern border like ours would destroy Israel in days. A general like Mark Milley would doom the IDF in months.
We, in contrast, assume that we are so large, so protected, or so affluent and anointed, that we can institutionalize the idea that our Founders were racists, their successors worse, and the present country most toxic of all.
We have codified racial prejudice to the point that university admissions and hiring, media accounts of crime, law enforcement and criminal prosecution, entertainment and popular culture are all predicated on diversity/equity/inclusion sloganeering, itself a euphemism for “good” institutionalized racism. Like former Warsaw Pact beaten-down populations, we all live daily lies by not dare mentioning the reality we see before us.
Most of the intellectual and academic world in the U.S. has been Sovietized, in the sense that the life of the mind serves politics, and deviation from that prime directive earns career disaster.
I walked slowly the streets of Israeli cities in the evening (in efforts to get over this month-long post-COVID fatigue) and just watched people interact, talk, and work in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. Strolling was completely safe at all hours. I saw very few homeless. There was no excrement on the sidewalks or flotsam and jetsam trash. I witnessed zero street violence. No one as in LA or San Francisco was confronting anyone on the sidewalk. The idea that a nut would begin slugging someone on the bus without repercussions is unimaginable here.
We should think about that in our arrogance.
One thing I did encounter was the following from strangers who recognized an American, “What happened to the U.S?” “What is America doing to itself?” “Is there any hope for you?”
All this was offered not out of arrogance and condescension but in the spirit of fear that Israel’s greatest friend is turning into a strange, hateful dystopia.
Pray God that November saves us all.
Discussion (12)
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Log In to CommentProfessor Hanson recently spoke about transcendence in religious thought. It's everywhere in Israel. Chanukkah is celebrated with lights to commemorate freedom from the great power and influence of Greece. Matza is everywhere over Passover for fear of divine punishment for disobeying the command. There are commemorations for the millions who died by Nazi murder and commemorations for those who died defending Israel against total destruction. Purim and more define the transcendental religious nature of thought by the citizen in Israel. Immigrants come from wealth in the west and from deprivation in Ethiopia. Jews come from India, Russia, South America, North America, Europe, South Africa and Australia with preconceived longing and love for the Land of Israel. It's nothing short of true miracle that a people can come back speaking the same language, reading the same books and obeying the same religious tenets of 2 millennia ago.
It appears that Israel is benefiting from from diversity and homogeneity: the diversity of the varied, physical backgrounds/makeup of the people who have chosen to immigrate into it and the homogeneity (for the most part) of their shared culture and attitude -- that is, the content of their characters.
The streets in Israel are extremely safe (children walk themselves to school) compared to the USA. There is always an Israeli soldier every 25 -50 yards with an AR-15. However, the soldiers are fearful to shoot attackers as the liberal judges are prosecuting them for stopping a terrorist attack.
I'm glad to learn that Israel is a happy and busy place. We have a close family member who is working in Israel for another year, and we worry about her. Perhaps we should be more worried about other family members who currently live in Portland. Your hope that the coming election will mark the begin of the restoration of America to a place where the Rule of Law and Libery are cherished and honored is understandible. But I am less hopeful. If we assume a landslide of Republicans, that will just be the start. The real question is whether they have the knowledge and courage to use their budgetary powers to restrain the tyranny of the administrative state. The critical action will be to resurrect the old practice of using department- and agency budgets to discipline the bureaucracy. My fear is that they will fall back into the "omnibus" budget practice, which makes it impossible to hold anyone accoutable for their flagarant misdeeds. My take on the establishment politicians of both parties is that they worry mostly about their reelection, and are indifferent to attending to their constitutional repsonsibilities. Worse, the Republicans seem paralyzed by the use of the FBI to arrest and harrass political opponents like Navarro and Giuliani. We need men of courage, not the current placeholders.
I would posit that yes, someone IS afraid of congressional subpoenas...every one of Trump's appointees. Such is the state of our "dirty, rotten, stinking, corrupt, DOJ ( Mark Steyn ).
I certainly hope that you are right.
Amen Victor--and thank you. As an Israeli, I can only add one other cogent point which has also contributed to the country's success and unity; a unity which so contrasts with the political divisions in the United States. And the irony is that it was inspired by an unmitigated disaster: not a war but rather the second intifada, which broke out as a result of the refusal of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian authority to accept Israel's very generous peace proposals. Yes--a tragic and terrible period ensued--with more civilian casualties than in any of Israel's many wars. But there was one extremely positive result: in its aftermath the country's huge political division was over--and a huge moderate political center became the national consensus, with the extreme fringes on both sides relegated to the sidelines. I mention this to Victor and his American audience if only to comfort them with the thought that possibly, out of the current catastrophe of Biden politics in the United States, there too lies hope for better days ahead...
Voting harder isn't going to fix this. You don't vote your way out of tyranny, especially with rigged elections
BTW, I hope your long COVID Sx are improving and you’re feeling better. Take care.
Dr. Hanson, Has your optimism for the November elections been tempered a bit? I know mine has. I was listening to Michael Gableman on Lou Dobbs’ podcast the other day. He explained in some detail how the Zuckerberg dark money had warped the election results in Wisconsin in 2020 and the need for reform. The problem seems to be at the local level where Democrats control the county election commissions, so not much has changed. And Gableman says the Zuckerbucks are being replaced by federal money. In Georgia recently, thousands of votes appear to have been miscounted by voting machines during their primary races. And surprisingly, even though the turnout has been at record highs, the establishment RINO candidates seem to be winning comfortably. I thought these problems would’ve been corrected by now. According to Mark Levin, the sham January 6th commission has been colluding with the DOJ in what he fears ultimately could lead to an indictment of Donald Trump. Liz Cheney may you burn in Hell. But what makes me even less optimistic is the fact that even if we do have honest elections in which we go back to what Sidney Powell is advocating of paper ballots, voter ID, same day elections, we will still have just a temporary reprieve. Guys like Merrick Garland and Alejandro Mayorkas know that a GOP controlled House and Senate will be nothing but a temporary inconvenience. I mean, the Republicans won’t shut down the government and no one is afraid of a congressional subpoena.
Thank you, as always, for your cogent, thoughtful, and keen insights. Sir, we need to get you out to the midwest more often. California is a plague haven. I live in Missouri but am in Iowa for a wedding this weekend. Here people say "excuse me", help the elderly, and tell rowdy kids, "mind your manners." Manners...what a concept. They still are observed in our heartland. Will look forward to your podcasts when you return. Give the Israelis our best. Meanwhile, when they ask about American Jews, you might tell them that it's seems they have chosen Leftism as their main religion.
Always a refreshing perspective, free of egotism or superficiality. The homeless, litter and crime in California are fair game for comparisons with other advanced countries. Most working people I meet in the U.S. are asking the same questions about the U.S. being in serious decline as are people around the world. Godspeed Mr. Hanson