Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman J. Ruether. 1989. Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco

Pro-Israeli Myths: The Jewish Victim Card and Delegitimizing the Palestinians

The authors are neither Jewish nor Palestinian: They are two leftist Catholic intellectuals. Although this book was written nearly 40 years ago, it is amazing to see Jews use the same recycled apologetics to defend the State of Israel today as they did then.

PRO-ISRAELI MYTHS: ADDRESSING HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY

Ruether and Ruether get right to the point, “The effort to elevate Jewish suffering to unique status, incomparable with any other suffering, is self-defeating. It signals to other people a lack of generosity and solidarity with their suffering. It evokes a response of like ungenerosity.” (p. 217).

PRO-ISRAELI MYTHS: THE MYTH OF THE JEWISH VICTIM

Jews have played the victim card to the hilt. The authors comment, “Contrary to the Zionist myth that all Jews were forcibly ejected from their homes and have lived ever since longing to return, it is evident already in the Persian period that many Jews emigrated to the Diaspora by preference and were not interested in return.” (p. 227). They add, “In fact, the Diaspora has been ‘normal’ for most of Jewish history, not atypical, even in antiquity it was mostly voluntary rather than forced.” (p. 230).

Now consider the residential segregation of Jews, which usually was not forced on them. The authors comment, “The ghetto of Jews among the nations was created as much by internal religious regulations that demanded separatism as by external antisemitism.” (p. 227). A counterpart of this continues in the modern State of Israel, “Increasingly, religious Jews withdraw into their own separate enclaves, refusing to have any contact with their fellow Jewish citizens on the grounds that they are unobservant and hence unclean.” (p. 237).

ARE JEWS ONCE AGAIN AVOIDING PHYSICAL LABOR IN FAVOR OF EASY MONEY?

For many centuries, Jews were widely resented for avoiding farming, and for living off the hard work of the farmers as parasites. For a time, Jews subsequently developed agricultural colonies in Palestine, evidently realizing that you cannot build a nation where almost everybody is either a shopkeeper or a usurer. This partial Jewish concession to agriculture has apparently faded. Ruether and Ruether write, “Many Jews no longer work the land with their hands or do any kind of manual labor. For many, such labor is now seen as ‘Arab work’, unbefitting a Jew. Some Israelis have become an urban managerial elite ruling over lower classes and races who do manual labor.” (p. 237).

PRO-ISRAELI MYTHS: THE PALESTINIANS ARE A “REAL” PEOPLE. NAKBA

Against the Jewish idea that Palestinian nationalism is a recent invention, Ruether and  Ruether point to different styles of nationalism in time, and conclude, “But this does not mean that the peoples of these regions did not have distinct regional identities within the larger context of Arab identity…” (p. 103).

This also addresses the leftist myth that would have us believe there was no such thing as patriotism and nationalism until the advent of mass literacy and mass education.

NAKBA. SO THE PALESTINIANS LEFT VOLUNTARILY? A CYNICAL LAUGH

The authors debunk another common Israeli apologetic, “The Israeli government has denied expelling the Palestinians, and has claimed that the Arab governments called them to come out. Careful studies of the radio broadcasts of the Arab of the Arab states were urging the Palestinians not to flee.” (p. 259). This should be a moot question. Since the Palestinians were subject to Jewish terror, and under wartime conditions, their leaving should not be considered “voluntary” in ANY case, and should not in any sense legitimize the Jewish confiscation of “abandoned” Palestinian property. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2023/05/26/property-restitution-hypocrisy-naqba-nakba-jews-rob-palestinians-and-keep-stolen-palestinian-land-while-self-righteously-demanding-property-restitution-from-poland-kagan/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/08/13/nakba-and-holocaust-jewish-intelligentsia-slain-first/

PRO-ISRAELI MYTHS: ISRAEL A MAJOR RECIPIENT OF U. S. AID

The authors speak a forbidden truth, “Israel…is not even an economically viable state, but its military expansionism has been purchased by more than $4 billion of American foreign aid a year, as well as a constant flow of contributions from world Jewry.” (p. 229).

In addition, “The Israeli military was never stronger. It enjoys the lion’s share of American military aid. It is the fourth strongest army in the world and the only nuclear power in the Middle East…Jews in the Diaspora, especially in North America, enjoy unparalleled power, prosperity, and acceptance…A primary cause of hostility to Jews today springs from anger against the policies of the State of Israel.” (p. 224).

IS ISRAEL TRULY A DEMOCRACY?

Ruether and Ruether trenchantly write, “The statement that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is a Zionist commonplace. It is repeated endlessly with no effort to recognize the lack of democratic rights for Palestinians and also the erosion of democracy of Israelis.” (p. 259).

In conclusion, “The punitive violence meted out to the Palestinians by the Israeli military far exceeds any actual military threat that Palestinian commandos have ever offered to Israel’s national security.” (p. 220).