God Bless America

There are only about 14.6 million Jews in the world. Of every four Jews, three live either in the United States, with 5.9 million, 2% of the population, or Israel, with just over 5 million, where they make up only 80% of the population. Jews make up as much as 1/2 of one percent of the population of only a very few countries (the U.K., Belarus, Belgium, France, Russia, Argentina, Canada, Brazil, Hungary, almost Australia).

They're only the twelfth largest religion in the world. There are 30 times as many Buddhists as Jews. Nearly twice as many Sikhs. There are 60 times as many Hindus.

For every Jew on earth there are one thousand Muslims.

It is a truly wondrous thing, then, that these few Jews are so very, very important in certain circles. They seem, for example, to positively obsess James Baker and the rest of the Iraq Study Group, and Jimmy Carter has quite a thing about them as well. Go figure.

We've previously noted that Mr. Baker and the Iraq Surrender Group seem to believe that Israel is uniquely important to solving the problems of security in Iraq. But that report is even more bizarre when touching upon the Jews, in a way we had overlooked. It calls for the future of Iraq to be hashed out by something called the "Iraq International Support Group." Mark Steyn realized something rather interesting about the makeup of that entity:

"RECOMMENDATION 5: The Support Group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq, including Iran and Syria . . ."

Er, OK. I suppose that's what you famously hardheaded "realists" mean by realism. But wait, we're not done yet. For this "Support Group," we need the extra-large function room. Aside from Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait, the ISG -- the Iraq Surrender Gran'pas -- want also to invite:

". . . the key regional states, including Egypt and the Gulf States . . ."

Er, OK. So it's basically an Arab League meeting. Not a "Support Group" I'd want to look for support from, but each to his own. But wait, Secretary Baker's still warming up:

". . . the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council . . ."

That would be America, Britain, France, Russia, China. A diverse quintet, representing many distinctive approaches to international affairs from stylish hauteur to polonium-210. Anybody else?

". . . the European Union . . ."

Hey, why not? It's not really multilateral unless there's a Belgian on board, right? Oh, and let's not forget:

". . . the Support Group should call on the participation of the United Nations Secretary-General in its work. The United Nations Secretary-General should designate a Special Envoy as his representative . . ."

[snip]

Oh, but lest you think there are no minimum admission criteria to James Baker's "Support Group," relax, it's a very restricted membership: Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions -- return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it's in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys. Wow. That's what Hollywood would call "high concept."

My goodness: Iran needn't abandon its nuclear bomb program, or stop running guns and explosives to Iraq, and Syria isn't required to put a hold on its assassination of troublesome Lebanese politicians, but it's Israel that's in line to make concessions and, by the way, isn't invited to the party where the goody bags will be handed out.

Which brings us to Jimmy Carter. As all the world knows, Mr. Carter's new book (judiciously titled "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid") is so biased, tendentious and inaccurate that its publication sparked the resignation from the Carter Center of Kenneth Stein, a Fellow there and its first director.

Sunday's Washington Post has a review of our worst ex-President's newest anti-Israel screed, titled "What Would Jimmy Do? A former president puts the onus for resolving the Mideast conflict on the Israelis":

Carter's interest in the Middle East is longstanding, of course; he brokered the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979, and he has been rightly praised for doing so. But other aspects of his record are more bothersome. Carter, not unlike God, has long been disproportionately interested in the sins of the Chosen People. He is famously a partisan of the Palestinians, and in recent months he has offered a notably benign view of Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that took power in the Palestinian territories after winning a January round of parliamentary elections.

There are differences, however, between Carter's understanding of Jewish sin and God's. God, according to the Jewish Bible, tends to forgive the Jews their sins. And God, unlike Carter, does not manufacture sins to hang around the necks of Jews when no sins have actually been committed.

The Jews escaped Pharaoh, Titus, Diocletian and detouring Crusaders, and were the objects of repeated pogroms by the Tsars of All the Russias (both Romanov and Red), scheduled for extinction with industrial efficiency by the Germans, repeatedly set upon by the armies of more than 100 million Arabs, and subject to threats of being "wiped off the map" by Iran and its puppets. What is it about them that simultaneously earns them the enmity of James Baker, Jimmy Carter, and much of the world, but at the same time permits them to survive year after year, century upon century, for nearly 4,000 years?

Why, one might say it's positively miraculous. And to think that nearly 6 million of them live here in the United States.

God Bless America.