the geopolitics of scripture - dov s zakheim - july-august 2012

7/29/2019 The Geopolitics of Scripture - Dov S Zakheim - July-August 2012

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I srael , Iran and the bomb

Te

GeopolitcsofScripture

by Dov S. Zakheim

Wisdom of an oft-neglected

sort lies waitingin the Hebrew Bible.

Vacation (July/august) 2012 5


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6 the american interest

Israel, Iran and the bomb

The tough U.S. declaratory policy notwith-standing, the fraught decision to attack, theynow seem to believe, will be theirs alone.

At the same time, the government in Jeru-salem confronts a Middle East that is under-going upheavals unlike anything the regionhas seen in many decades. The so-called (andmisnamed) Arab Spring is no longer being led,to the extent it ever was, by the secular, liberalidealists who launched it. It has instead beenco-opted to one degree or another in variouscountries by Islamist elements, virtually all of

them implacably hostile to the Jewish State.The upshot of this is that Israels ba-

sic strategic circumstance since the early1970sdefined, on the one side, by closeU.S. support amid intense U.S. regional en-gagement and, on the other, by neighborsnear and far led by stable and predictable evenif often hostile rulersis no more. Despite itspowerful military and equally powerful econ-omy, both of which outclass any other state

in the region, Israels situation is neverthelessincreasingly parlous.

If we were to search for a model with whichto understand the changed circumstances in

which Israel f inds itself, we might be temptedto look to the period between May 1948 and

June 1967, before Israels strategic ties with theUnited States had formed, and when Arab poli-tics were more volatile than they have typicallybeen over the past forty years. There may indeedbe some good purpose served by examining thatperiod, but it is both a very short and also ananomalous one. Both Israel and the Arab states

were relatively new sovereign political entities,

and the Cold War encased the region as a wholein such a way that historically major regional ac-tors like Iran and Turkey could not, or at anyrate did not, play the increasingly autonomousroles they play today. For this reason, we might

well look to a different, more distant period forsome guidance: that of the ancient Jewish statesmore than two millennia ago.

It is exceedingly risky to propound any di-rect contemporary lessons from those ancient

times, not least because the oracle of historydoes not speak as clearly as we might wish. TheFirst and Second Jewish Commonwealths exist-ed, taken together, for roughly 900 years in oneform or another. From a strategic perspective,this history shows us not one but several pat-terns. Yet there aresuch patterns in Scripture;

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior associate at the Center

for Strategic and International Studies. He was

Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) from

200104.

F

or the better part of the past decade, as Israel continually warned thatIran was developing a nuclear weapon, Jerusalems strong preference forboth technical and political reasons was for the United States, rather than

Israel itself, to attack Iranian facilities. But with Americas departure from Iraq,its planned troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, rampant war fatigue amongthe American populace amid economic stringency, and the tightening of in-ternational sanctions on Tehran widely accepted, wisely or not, as a functionalsubstitute for military action, Israels leaders appear to have concluded that theUnited States cannot be relied on to take timely military action against Iran.


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The GeopoliTics of scripTure

most readers overlook them simply because theyhave other interests in mind when they read theBiblemoral, theological, literary. These pat-terns, too, have a notable virtue as a guide: Thepassage of time tends to pare away the super-

ficial hubbub of history-in-the-making from itsessence. Studying history can help us to discernthe distinction in our own time between what isfundamental and what is froth.

These patterns, and their uses, no doubtowe much to the fact that neither geographynor human nature has changed terribly muchsince Biblical times, even as technology and

what might be called the regions global situ-ational awareness have. Israels location as a

crossroads along the attack routes to and fromAfrica and Asia, and the fractious nature of itssmall population, were as much in evidence inthose days as they are in our own. Israel couldindeed find itself in a general situation paral-leling that of its Biblical predecessors: withouta geographically remote ally, and in a regionno longer tightly tethered to and constrainedby an extrinsic great power rivalry. Like itsBiblical predecessors, Israel may be forcedto confront its place in shifting local powerbalances among states that might be at timesfriendly and at other times hostile. It may alsohave to weigh alliances with and against pow-ers more geographically proximate: Turkey,Iran, India, perhaps Pakistan (if it survives asa state) and even China. Smaller or weakerstates on Israels far peripheryAzerbaijan,Cyprus and othersmight also become stra-

tegically more significant.How Israel shapes its foreign policy will also

be a function of its domestic social circumstanc-es. Different sections of the population, with dif-ferent priorities and ways of thinking, are likelyto prefer different national security strategies. Inparticular, the choice of whether to cast the na-tions lot in alliance with other states may wellbe colored by the differing views Israelis haveabout themselves and the nature of their state.

The Israeli polity today is no more monolithicin those regards than it was 2,500 years ago. So,the debates and differences of opinion that gov-erned political, economic and military policy asoutlined in Scripture may offer particularly in-teresting insight into issues that could confrontthe modern Jewish state in the years ahead.

The Kingdom Not of Heaven

The place to start a historical perspective ofsome 900 years is at the beginning, withthe foundation of the First Commonwealth.

That foundation bears a poignant lesson aboutthe interplay of domestic politics and geopoliti-cal circumstance.

As is well known to even casual readers of theBible, it was King David who managed to unitethe 12 fractious Israelite tribes under a centralizedmonarchy after a nine-year insurgency againstKing Saul and his successor. The monarchy wasonly able to preside over a unitary state for littlemore than a single generation, however. Davids

youngest son Solomon obtained the thronethrough a palace coup engineered by his motherBathsheba and the Prophet Nathan. Consolidat-ing his fathers conquests of Ammon in the east,Moab and Edom in the southeast, and Syria inthe north (II Samuel, 8:115, 10:611:1), Solo-mon ruled an empire that stretched from theriver [Euphrates] unto the land of the Philistines(I Kings, 5:1). Through sheer brilliance that cap-tivated neighboring monarchs, marriages thatsealed dynastic alliances and a commercial policythat included dominating trade routes to Arabiaand the development of a wide-ranging merchantmarine, he increased the states wealth whilemaintaining peace with its neighbors so that Ju-dah and Israel dwelt safely, each man under hisvine and under his fig tree (I Kings, 5:5).

Nevertheless, Solomons rule became in-creasingly autocratic with the passage of time.

His marriages to idolatrous women, his extrav-agant lifestyle and the taxes he levied to sustainit, and his press-ganging of large numbers of hispeople to support a massive public and personal

works program, fueled popular resentment, es-pecially in the North where tribal loyalties stillheld sway. It was left to his son Rehoboam topreside over the splitting of the kingdom, withthe ten northern tribes forming the breakawayKingdom of Israel in 922 BCE under Solo-

mons talented but rebellious administrator,Jeroboam. Less than a year after succeedinghis father on the throne, Rehoboam was mas-ter only of a small rump state, which came tobe called the Kingdom of Judah and consistedonly of the kings eponymous native tribe andthe neighboring tribe of Benjamin.


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Apart from the friction that naturally ag-gravated relations between the breakaway king-dom and its original parent, several other factorshighlighted their differences as well. The north-

ern Kingdom of Israel, though its capital lay inthe hill country of Samaria, bordered the Medi-terranean Sea and was more open to external in-fluences, whether religious, economic or politi-cal, than its southern counterpart. Its focus wason trade, and its orientation was to the northand west. The southern Kingdom of Judah,

however, was landlocked, bordering on wilder-ness to the east and south. More religiously con-servative, its economy was based primarily onsmall farms, animal husbandryand on revenues

deriving from the fact that it was home to theTemple in Jerusalem. It appears that Solomonsvast trade routes, whether land- or sea-based, allbut dried up with the division of his kingdom.

Parallels with modern Israel are obvious,and have become increasingly so with thepassage of time. Virtually all of the ancient

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Kingdom of Judah is located on what is nowcalled the West Bankexcept by its settlers,

who call it Judea. The West Bank also in-cludes the interior parts of the ancient north-ern Kingdom of Israel, which its settlers term

Samaria, but it is in Judea that the majority ofsettlers are to be found. Like the Kingdom of

Judah, Judea and Samaria today are far morereligiously and politically conservative than therest of Israel; a major proportion of the settlermovement, if not a majority, is dominated bynationalist-minded Orthodox Jews. This is in-creasingly the case in Jerusalem as well, wherethe ultra-Orthodox haredim form a pluralityand constitute the most potent political force

in the city. That portion of Israel inside theGreen Line, particularly the urbanized stretchalong the Mediterranean coast from Tel Avivto Haifa often referred to as North Tel Aviv,reflects many of the characteristics of the an-cient northern kingdom. Dominated by secu-lar values, far more prosperous and diversifiedeconomically, it is the heartland of what hasbeen termed recently the start-up nation. Thecoastal area and its elites have little sympathyfor the settlers, the haredim and the politicaland religious values they espouse.

The two Israels have been cohabiting in anincreasingly uncomfortable manner since May1977, when the election of Menahem Begininitiated a seismic political shift away from thesecular, Ashkenazi (that is, European) elite thathad dominated the state since its creation andthe Zionist movement before that. The growth

in both the settler and haredipopulationstheformer fueled by an influx of modern Ortho-dox Jews from English-speaking countries, thelatter by astonishingly high birth rateshassustained that shift and promises to perpetuateit for years to come.

The gap between Orthodox and secular isreminiscent of ancient divides along similarlines that prompted rebukes from a host ofprophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah in the

south, Elijah, Elisha, Hosea, Joel, Micah andAmos in the north. This was the case especiallyin the north, where Jeroboams creation of a ri-val Jewish ritual led to a virtual disintegrationof the peoples commitment to their ancientrites and the growing influence of pagan cults.The Kingdom of Judah was often no less prone

to paganism, but it generally veered betweenbouts of strict adherence to the law and its re-

jection, depending on who ruled at the time.Perhaps the starkest contrast in that regard wasthat between the pious Hezekiah and both his

father Ahaz and son Manasseh, both of whomScripture describes as importing the worst fea-tures of the rites practiced by neighboring pa-gan peoples.

Not by Bread Alone

I

sraels present day religious divide is but oneof the schisms roiling the Israeli polity that

could affect the states foreign policy in future.Economic issues and ethnic tensions are alsoeating at Israels societal fabric, much as theydid in ancient times.

Israels widening gap between rich andpoor, particularly those of non-European eth-nic origin, and indeed the outright discrimi-nation against Ethiopian Jews, evokes theexploitation of the poor in both Judah andIsrael that the Prophets so eloquently con-demned. Isaiahs rebuke of those who focusedon religious ritual while ignoring the cries ofthe downtrodden reflected conditions in theKingdom of Judah. Referring to Yom Kippur,the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, theprophet fulminated (58: 4, 67):

Behold, ye fast for strife and contention,

And to smite with the fist of wickedness;

Ye fast not this daySo as to make your voice to be heard on high . . .

Is not this the fast that I have chosen?

To loose the fetters of wickedness,

To undo the bands of the yoke,

And to let the oppressed go free,

And that ye break every yoke?

Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry,

And that thou bring the poor that are cast out

to thy house?

When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him,And that thou hide not thyself from thine

own flesh?

Matters were no better in the northernkingdom. In a particularly stark manifestationof the class divide, economic hardships often


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drove the poor into servitude when they failedto pay off loans (see II Kings, 4:1). The Proph-ets Hosea and Amos, in particular, lambastedthe mistreatment of the lower classes by therich. Amos noted that not only were the poor

exploited by their creditors, but the entire legalsystem was so corrupted in favor of the wealthyand powerful that they had no redress any-

where (see Amos, 5:1112).Amos and Jeremiah argued that religious

backsliding and socio-economic inequalitywere the fundamental causes of the politicaland military insecurity that haunted both Jew-ish states. Yet geopolitics is a not a matter ofbread alone. It was certainly the case that the

two small kingdoms, like modern Israel, oftenfound themselves surrounded by potentiallyhostile enemies, with only intermittent peri-ods during which they were at peace with oneor another of their neighbors. The Psalmistsummed up their strategic situation in the fol-lowing manner (83:49):

They hold crafty converse against Thy people,

And take counsel against Thy treasured ones.

They have said: Come, and let us cut them

off from being a nation;

That the name of Israel may be no more in

remembrance.

For they have consulted together with one

consent;

Against Thee do they make a covenant;

The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites;

Moab and the Hagrites;

Gebal and Ammon, and Amalek;Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;

Assyria is also joined with them. . . .

He might have written the same verses aboutmodern Israels situation in 1948 or 1967, withonly the names of its enemies having to bechanged.

The Prophets generally encouraged bothkingdoms to adopt a policy of armed neutral-

ity. No doubt they feared the corrupting influ-ences of outside powers. The Kingdom of Judahwas more responsive to prophetic advice thanits northern neighbor, but only marginally so.Both states were constantly shifting alliancesand often adopted the pagan practices of theirerstwhile allies.

The founder of the Davidic dynasty in Jeru-salem, King David, did not join in any allianceswhen conquering neighboring kingdoms. He didenter into one treaty relationship, with Hiram ofTyre. Nevertheless, Scripture does not explicitly

outline his motives for doing so, merely recordingthat Hiram loved him (I Kings, 5:15). Whatev-er Davids reasons may have been for his arrange-ments with Hiram, Solomons were driven byeconomic motives. When Hiram reached out tohim, seeking to maintain the relationship that theTyrian king had established with David, Solomonresponded by seeking the latters provision of Leb-anese cedar for the construction of the Temple inJerusalem. Hiram was only too happy to oblige.

In addition, in order both to maintain peaceand to recompense Hiram for all he had done(Hiram had also provided cedar and fir trees,as well as gold, not only for the Temple, butfor Solomons palace), Solomon did somethingthat would be unthinkable to those who pressfor the absorption of modern day Judea and Sa-maria into Israel proper: He relinquished ter-ritory. Scripture recounts that Solomon gaveHiram twenty cities in the Galilee. But the ges-ture was less than it seemed: The land Solomonhanded over was barren and useless. Hiramprotested, but did nothing more. (Scripture re-lates that he actually gave Solomon an addition-al subvention, though it does not seem likely tohave been payment for the cities he received.)

Solomon pursued a second crucial partner-ship, again driven by economic calculations.The renowned Queen of Sheba came north-

ward to Jerusalem to engage him in an intel-lectual contest. Their relationship is the stuffof legend, beginning with the location of herkingdom. Some say it was located along theRed Sea, in modern day Yemen. Others, amongthem the former royal house of Ethiopia, placedSheba in their landsperhaps in what is nowEritrea, formerly a province of Ethiopiaandclaim descent from the marriage of Solomon tothe Queen. It was for that reason that Haile Se-

laissie, the last king of Ethiopia, styled himselfthe Lion of Judah.

Solomon and Shebas motives for a pact wererooted in something far more significant thanthe solving of riddlesnamely, trade. Solomonhad built a merchant fleet, headquartered inEtzion Geber (present day Eilat) that rivaled


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that of the neighboring Phoenicians. Sheba hadgold and spices to sell. The partnership madesense for both.

It is noteworthy that Solomons allianceswere both economic rather than military ar-

rangements. Solomons state had no militaryalliances, and Solomon does not appear to havesought any. Modern Israel has not sought anyformal alliances either but, like Solomon, haslong sought friendships among both neighbor-ing and more remote states. Unlike Solomon,however, it generally has been unable to do sosuccessfully for very long.

The original post-1948 Israeli policy of rely-ing on an outer circle of friendshipsIran,

Turkey, Ethiopiato counter the hostility ofneighboring Arab states proved modestly use-ful for a time. It came apart when Israel signeda peace treaty with Egypt in March 1979,

which seemed to reduce the need for a periph-eral strategy. It came completely apart whenIran was taken over by the mullahs that sameyear. Israels strained relationship with Turkeyafter a kind of golden age of cooperation lastingno more than two decades, and the general re-gional unrest of the past two years, have forcedIsrael to look further afield for support, to Indiaand China, for example. But it has no real alli-ances other than with the United States. Should

America indeed pull back from the MiddleEast, even if it were to continue to arm Israel,the Jewish state would in effect have become akind of super Swedenade facto non-alignedregional superpower, much as was the kingdom

of David and Solomon in its day.

War and Insurgency

Perhaps because of the combination of hispowerful armed forces, led by Benaiahuben Yehoyada, and the treaties that protectedtwo of his flanks, Solomon never engaged inoutright warfarea circumstance foreign to

modern Israel. In the latter years of his reign,however, Solomon did engage in two low-in-tensity conflicts, one domestic, one external.

The former conflict was sparked by Had-dad the Edomite, a scion of the royal family ofEdom, who, together with a band of supporters,had escaped to Egypt when David conquered

Edom. Haddad, having married into the royalfamily in Egypt, received Pharaohs permissionto return to Judah when news came of Davidsdeath. Scripture states that he then becameSolomons adversary. Whether Pharaoh ac-

tually supported Haddads campaign in Judahis unclear; in any event, Solomon took no ac-tion against Egypt. The second conflict was

with Syria, where Rezon ben Elyada, a formerservant in the court of Haddadezer the kingof Zova, had seized power. Scripture also de-scribes Rezon as an adversary but is silent asto whether Solomon took any major militaryaction against him.

The parallels with the challenges for modern

Israel are striking, for Solomon, like modern Is-rael, was essentially confronting non-state ac-tors. For Haddad the Edomite, an indigenousresident stripped of his territory, one might sub-stitute Hamas or Islamic Jihad; for Rezon theSyrian, one might substitute Hizballah. As withmodern Israel, neither threat to Solomons state

was existential. Solomon was prepared to toler-ate some level of violence in his more remoteterritories as long as he could preserve the peacein Judah and avoid entanglements with majorforeign powers. That was not the case for those

who ruled after him, whether in Judah or inIsrael. Few of Solomons successors avoided ma-

jor conflicts with other states. Modern Israel,likewise, cannot now and probably will not inthe future be able to avoid conflict with states,

whether with Iran or with some as yet unfore-seen threat.

But apart from having to cope with foreignadversaries, the nature of threats to the twoancient kingdoms was particularly complexbecause they were so often at war with eachother. The consequences of these seeminglyendless rivalries were already evident duringRehoboams reign. Upon the Ten Tribes seces-sion, Rehoboam mobilized his forces to snuffout the fledging kingdom at birth. It was onlydue to the intervention of the prophet Shemaya

that he left off doing so. Nevertheless, tensionsbetween the two states often flared to the sur-face, fueled in part by the legacy of Jereboamsdecision to close the border with Judah, there-by preventing his subjects from making the tri-ennial pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem,and instead constructing two new temples in


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the northern cities of Shechem (modern dayNablus) and Dan.

Rehoboam eventually did go to war with thenorthern kingdom, as did his son, Abijah; thelatter successfully recovered part of its territory,

but failed to reunite the kingdoms (II Chron-icles, 13:120). Perhaps because his attention

was diverted by those hostilities, Rehoboam wascaught unawares by an Egyptian attack on Jeru-salem during his fifth year on the throne, in 918BCE. Scripture relates that Shishak (ShoshenqI), the Egyptian pharaoh, no doubt recogniz-ing that the Kingdom of Judah was not morethan a shadow of the empire that had flourishedunder Solomon, plundered Jerusalem and made

off with the royal treasury. According to someaccounts, Shishak also devastated the entirecountry. Rehoboam was unable to respond ef-fectively to the Egyptian aggression.

While the Egyptian attack was clearly mo-tivated by a desire to seize Solomons riches, itpointed to another serious challenge for both

Jewish kingdoms: the fact that they were on thecrossroads between Western Asia and Africa.

As such, they were especially vulnerable to theregional superpowers seeking control of bothareas. Geographys harsh reality forced eachkingdom constantly to confront the choice of

whether to ally itself with one or another of itsneighbors, particularly Egypt, often the regionssuperpower, or to go it alone, seeking all the

while to maintain its neutrality and to avoid be-ing overrun by the superpowers forces.

Perhaps because of their weakness, and

no doubt because of the wars between them,one or another of the two Jewish states usu-ally elected to seek military alliances withoutside powers. When Israels third king, Baa-sha, launched an attack on the Kingdom ofJudah, Rehoboams grandson Asa respondedby bribing his ally Ben Haddad of Damascusto revoke his treaty with Baasha. Ben Haddadpromptly attacked and despoiled the northernkingdom, forcing it to halt its offensive against

Judah. But the long-term implication of thisintervention was that the Syrians (then calledArameans) were never far from interfering inthe politics of both Jewish states.

Geography has not changed much in theMiddle East over the past several thousandyears. Modern Israel remains at the crossroads

of the Middle East and in the crosshairs of po-tential regional and extra-regional great powerrivalries. Egypt is certain once again to emergeas a strong regional force; so too, for that matter,will powerful states to the north, be they Iraq

or its successor state, Iran/Persia, or Turkey. Thedilemma of whom to choose as an ally, if anyone,and how to resist predations by external powerswill never be far from the thoughts of future Is-raeli policymakers, just as they were for those ofthe rulers of the ancient Jewish kingdoms.

The Assyrian Menace

By the time Assyria rose to prominence,the lines had clearly been drawn in Israeland Judah between those who sought alli-ances to counter the external threat and those

who advocated neutrality. The northern king-dom, wracked by a succession of coups, fellincreasingly under the sway of the Assyrians.Initially, Menahem ben Gadi, who had as-cended to the throne after killing the reigningmonarch, bribed the Assyrian king Tiglathpileser III (known in Scripture as Pul) not toattack his territory and, at the same time, tosupport his claim to the throne. Menahemrecognized that the Assyrian king was un-stoppable. In reaching out to the Assyrians,however, Menahem effectively made Assyriathe arbiter of politics in his kingdom in returnfor a modicum of independence. Tiglath-pi-lesser was not so easily bought off, however,

and seized a large sector of the northern king-doms territory in 733 BCE, four years afterthe anti-Assyrian general, Pekah ben Rema-liah, assassinated Menahems son and accededto the throne.

Meanwhile, King Yotham of Judah pursuedan independent policy and had successfully at-tacked the Ammonites, rendering them sub-servient to his kingdom. His son Ahaz, whomthe prophets condemned for conducting pagan

rites, nevertheless promptly presided over thefragmentation of his kingdom. Pekah joinedforces with Rezin of Aram to attack the King-dom of Judah; together they exiled or killed alarge number of Judahites. At the same time

Judah was attacked by the Philistines to thewest and the Edomites to the south, the latter


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directly supported by Rezins forces.Facing a combined Israelite and Aramean at-

tack on Jerusalem, Ahaz panicked, ignoring theprophet Isaiahs advice not to fear these twotails of smoking firebrands (7:4, 8). Indeed,

Isaiah foretold the Assyrian occupation and de-struction of the northern kingdom in the not-too-distant future. Ahaz offered the Assyrianking a bribe consisting of the royal treasury in

Jerusalem. The Assyrians promptly plunderedDamascus, and Ahaz sought to propitiate the

Assyrian king even more by hurrying there togreet him.

Isaiahs advice proved correct, as the com-bined assault on Jerusalem failed. Pekah was

soon assassinated by Hoshea ben Elah in 732BCE. Hoshea promptly accepted Assyrianoverlordship but, seeing external alliances as ameans of salvation, he reached out to Egypt forsupport. Hoshea seriously miscalculated Egyp-tian power, however. The country was hardlythe superpower it had oncebeen, having broken up intoseveral rival states. When,on the strength of what hethought was a formidablealliance, Hoshea withheldhis annual payment of trib-ute to Assyria, Shalmanesser, now the Assyrianking, captured and imprisoned him and overranhis kingdom. Two years later, in 722 BCE, theKingdom of Israel was no longer in existence.

Hezekiah, King of Judah, who succeededhis father in 715 BCE, along with the coun-

trys leaders, observed developments to theirnorth but also noted that Assyria had ceasedany new predations southward, the AssyrianKing Sargon II having been preoccupied else-

where. Given the revolt of the Philistine townof Ashdod the following year and a new, morepowerful Egypt under Ethiopian rule, Heze-kiah and his advisers debated whether theyshould join a coalition against Assyria beingformed under Egyptian leadership. Once

again, as he had done to Ahaz, Isaiah coun-seled neutrality, prophesying that, so shallthe king of Assyria lead away the captives ofEgypt, and the exiles of Ethiopia (20:4). He-zekiah appears to have followed the Prophetsadvice; when Sargon responded by crushingthe rebels, Judah escaped unscathed.

When Sannecherib ascended the Assyrianthrone in 704 BCE, Hezekiah, a conservativeand pious man who was disgusted by Assyr-ian pagan rites, promptly declared his inde-pendence and withheld the payment of annual

tribute. He also recaptured the Philistine ter-ritories his father had lost. At the same time,other states under Assyrian dominion, mostnotably Egypt, also revolted; Hezekiah seemsto have joined the anti-Assyrian alliance, muchto the annoyance of Isaiah, who argued that therevolt would fail. It did.

Sannecherib responded by attacking andseizing a large number of Judahs fortifiedtowns. Hezekiah had to sue for peace and in

701 BCE, once again accepting Assyrias suzer-ainty and the tribute that went with it. In ad-dition, Hezekiah emptied the Temple treasury,transferring it to Sannacherib; he even sent thegold-plated Temple doors to the Assyrian king.The Assyrians remained unsatisfied, however,

and sent a delegation to Jerusalem calling forits surrender and appealing to those elements of

Judahs leadership who were prepared to settlewith Assyria on any terms. Isaiah remainedinsistent that Judah not capitulate, and that itrely on divine assistance rather than alliances.

This time Hezekiah heeded his advice. Scrip-ture records a major defeat for the Assyrians atthe walls of Jerusalem, preserving the Davidickingdom for several more generations. But Ju-dah did not immediately become independent;it continued to function as a vassal state to As-syria during the reign of Isaiahs son Manassehand his grandson Amon.

The Assyria of yesterday could, for modernIsrael, be Turkey, Iran, India or China tomor-

row. Being initially called in to resolve local dif-ferences or protect Israel from an attack by animmediate neighbor, they may find the tempta-tion to meddle in Israeli affairs too great to re-sist. Perhaps none of these states would actuallyseek to control the Jewish state. Economic in-fluence, however, is an entirely different matter,

The Assyria of yesterday could,

for modern Israel, be Turkey,Iran, India or China tomorrow.


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and a powerful outsider, initially viewed as aprotector, might impose one-sided trade or eco-nomic agreements on a weakened Israel. Thefact that the United States has never done so,despite Israels dependence on Washington for

its support in so many ways, simply underscoresthe exceptionality of the United States and itsunique role as a superpower. Others simply willnot behave the same way.

Ancient Israel and Judahs extended encoun-ters with the Assyrian empire thus point outanother lesson that may have a future: While

we in our day tend to think of national sover-eignty as an all-or-nothing proposition, realityoffers up many shades of autonomy in between.

For small states in dangerous neighborhoods,degrees of deference and vassalage were morecommon historically than either total indepen-dence or complete submission to foreign rule. Itmay happen again.

Confused over Babylon,Redeemed by Persia

Empires arise, and empires collapse. Assyriawas no exception. By the time Amons sonJosiah ascended to the throne, the Assyrianempire was falling apart and Judah once morebecame independent, if only by default. Whilestill a minor, Josiah appears to have easily re-gained territory in the former northern king-dom and rid the territories of pagan practices.

Judahs independence did not survive Josiah,

however. The Babylonians and Egyptians bothcontested for the western remains of the Assyr-ian empire; Judah found itself caught in themiddle of that rivalry.

Thus, when the Pharaoh Neco (Neco II)sought to transit what is today known as geo-graphical Palestine en route to the Euphrates,

where he planned to attack the Babylonians,Josiah confronted his forces at Megiddo, re-fusing to allow the Egyptians to proceed.

Neco responded by attacking Josiahs troops,resulting in Josiahs death. Shortly after Jo-siahs son Jehoahaz was crowned, he wasdeposed by Neco, who placed a clientJe-hoahazs brother Elyakim, whom Neco re-named Jehoiakimon the throne, and Judahbecame an Egyptian vassal state. The end of

the Judahite state was fast approaching, as theBabylonians attacked and Jehoiakim switchedsides, becoming a vassal of the Babylonianking Nebuchadnezzar. The Judahite king wasno more comfortable as a vassal of the Babylo-

nians than he had been of the Egyptians, andafter three years, in 601 BCE, shortly afterthe Babylonians and Egyptians had fought amajor but indecisive battle, Jehoiakim tried to

wriggle free in revolt.Although the Prophets generally encour-

aged independence and neutrality, Jehoia-kim had fallen afoul of Jeremiah, the leadingprophet of his day, by flouting Jewish law.

When Jeremiah had called for public repen-

tance, the king had rebuffed him, and theProphet predicted that both the king and hiscountrymen were destined for destruction.Indeed, a combined force consisting of Baby-lonian, Syrian, Moabite and Ammonite forcesravaged Judah prior to Jehoiakims death, andhe was assassinated, no doubt at the behestof the Babylonians. He was succeeded by hisson Jehoiachin. Nebuchadnezzar immediate-ly besieged Jerusalem. Within three months,in 597 BCE, the young king surrendered and

was carried off into exile.Nebuchanezzar then placed a royal uncle,

Mattaniah, renamed Zedekiah, on the throne.Once again, however, a king of Judah plot-ted with other states to revolt against the su-perpower, despite admonitions to the contraryfrom the leading prophets. Spurred on by falseprophets, Jews in Babylonia became involved in

revolts against Nebuchadnezzar, and Zedekiahfollowed by plotting with ambassadors of manyof the countries that had so recently invaded histerritoryEdom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre andSidon. Recognizing that both events and theroyal courts irreligious behavior foreclosed anypossibility of a successful revolt, Jeremiah urgedZedekiah and his nobles to bring your necksunder the yoke of the king of Babylon and servehim, and his people, and live (27:12). Once

again, the secular rulers ignored the words ofthe far more realist-minded religious leader, andin 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar brought an endto the First Commonwealth era established byDavid around 1000 BCE, destroying Jerusa-lem, burning its Temple, blinding the king andexiling him to Babylon.


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I t is something of a mystery why the Zionistmovement, in its original secular and largelysocialist manifestation, insisted that its purpose

was to restore the Jewish people to the normalskein of its history. True, life in exile, scattered

hither and yon, had often been tragic, but it isnot as if the historical path the Jews were forcedto leave after 136 CE, when Rome crushed theBar Kokhba revolt, had been one of unbrokenglory and joy. The history of the Second Com-monwealth in many ways mirrored the tragictrajectory of its predecessor.

After Babylon fell suddenly to the upstartPersian Empire in 539 BCE, Judah found it-self a sub-province of the Persian satrap of Eber

Nahara. In 538 BCE Cyrus the Great issuedhis famous edict permitting the Jews to returnto their land and rebuild their Temple and, un-der Zerubbabel and his successors, they did so.

While the province of Judah was led by Jews, itremained a Persian vassal state. Alexanders de-feat of the Persian Empire and his conquest ofgeographical Palestine in 332 BCE initially re-sulted in that land becoming a part of the Gre-co-Egyptian empire of the Ptolemies. Just overa century later, Palestine fell under the controlof the Seleucids, who defeated the Egyptians ina decisive battle at Banias (in the Golan) in 198BCE. Geographical Palestine remained a vas-sal state of the Seleucids until the Maccabeanrevolt that Mattathias the priest launched in166 BCE.

That revolt, whose successful consumma-tion is celebrated by Jews today as the festival

of Hannukah, was as much a civil war be-tween Jews who adhered strictly to the lawand those who were prepared to adopt some,if not all, of the Hellenistic practices prevail-ing at the time. In that regard, it foreshad-owed tensions between futuregenerations of Jews who ab-solutely refused to assimilateto the surrounding culture,and those who, to a greater or

lesser extent, were prepared todo so if only the opportunitypresented itself.

The Hasmoneans prevailedin both the civil war and therebellion, and in 164 BCE pro-claimed themselves kings of an

independent state of Judea. Genuine indepen-dence actually took much longer to achieve,however, as the Hasmoneans continued tofight the Seleucids on a sporadic basis for thenext 35 years. When the Seleucid king Antio-

chus Sidetas was defeated by the Parthians in129 BCE, the Hasmonean king John Hyrca-nus fully recovered Judean independence.

John Hyrcanus and his successors, Aristobu-lus, Alexander Jannaeus and Queen Alexandra,pursued a policy of armed neutrality, and thefirst three monarchs seized considerable terri-tory from their neighbors. Independence andempire did not last long, however, as dynasticrivalries between Alexandras sons led to Roman

intervention at the request of one of the partiesclaiming to succeed to the throne. That inter-vention, by Pompey the Great, who actually de-cided which claimant was entitled to the throneof Judea, marked the end of Judeas indepen-dence in 63 BCE and the beginning of the endof the Second Jewish Commonwealth, whichfell in 70 CE with the destruction of Jerusalem.

The Prophet Isaiah


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Do the foregoing events bear any lessons formodern Israel? In one sense they do not,because never in the past did Israel or Judahhave a powerful external ally that simply lostinterest or patience with the region and with-

drew from it; ancient centers of power based inmodern-day Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Tur-key were all too much a part of the region toleave it. But in another sense these events mightindeed offer some guidance for the future.

Even in ancient times allies of Jewish politiesexerted cultural influence among Jews, and of-ten enough, too, many Jews lived in the lands ofallied countries, including Egypt, Babylonia andPersia. These cultural/communal relationships

had broad geopolitical significance over time,just as one would expect, since geostrategic de-cisions are never completely divorced from poli-tics at large. So it matters that internal divisionswithin Israel today abrade against the sensibilitiesof some Americans and American Jews in par-ticular. American Jews are becoming progres-sively more disenchanted with Israeli domesticreligious policies that increasingly favor an ultra-Orthodox community whose mores are alien tothem. Ever more American Jews are also unhap-py with Israels policies toward the Palestinians,even if the vast majority is not in principle hostileto Israel itself. Finally, as more and more Ameri-can Jews drop their synagogue and communalaffiliations, put forth little to no effort to learnabout their own culture and history, and thinkof themselves as just Jewish (and then, oftenenough, only if someone asks them), their emo-

tional stake in Israel wanes accordingly.There certainly remains a wellspring of

strong diaspora Jewish support for Israel, andeven for many of its right-wing policies. Butthat support increasingly is limited to Ameri-can Orthodox Jews, who themselves are in-creasingly alienated from the rest of the Ameri-can Jewish community. (Most Americans whosupport right-wing Israeli policies are religiousChristians, who far outnumber American

Jews.) While the high birthrates of the Ortho-dox point to their growing proportion withinthe American Jewish community, there couldnot be an Orthodox majority among Ameri-can Jews for several more decades. What thismeans is fairly obvious: If the American politi-cal class judges that U.S. interests in the Middle

East and in Israel no longer warrant the atten-tion and expense characteristic of the past halfcentury, the power of pro-Israel sentiment in

American society is increasingly insufficient tothwart or reverse that judgment.

How then should Israel look to the future?This is a difficult proposition for a country

whose leaders are notorious for their short-termperspectives on policy. Nevertheless, it is a ques-tion that Israelis and their American supportersmust face. Geography is relatively unchanging,and Israel will always find itself caught betweenrival great powers, whether those proximateto it, like Egypt or, more likely, those furtherafield, like Turkey or Iran, or those even more

remote, but with expanding military reach, likeChina and India.

Scripture and post-scriptural history bothteach that the Jewish polity does not fare wellinternationally when it is divided internally,

whether for reasons of politics, economics orreligion. Scripture also teaches that the voicesof reason are often found outside government,and that extremism is as often found within.The Prophets were consummate realists: Isaiahpreached independent neutrality when it wasappropriate; Jeremiah preached submission tothe superpower when the external correlationof forces had changed.

Nor were the Prophets religious fanatics.They were especially vocal in their denuncia-tions of empty ritual, the kind of behavior thatseems all too common among many haredimtoday. And they preached economic justice,

recognizing that a country consisting of a fewhaves and many have-nots simply could notthrive, or even survive, for very long.

Perhaps that is the true lesson Scripture of-fers modern Israel. Realism in foreign policy,moderation in religious policy, openness in eco-nomic policy and equality in social policy maybe the best path for the Jewish state as it con-fronts its uncertain future. None of the forego-ing will be easy to implement in a country that

is bitterly divided across all four axespoliti-cal, religious, economic and social. But the al-ternative in an uncertain world simply cannotbe acceptable to a small, beleaguered state that,sixty years after its founding, still faces enemies

who remain bent on its submission, if not on itscomplete destruction.

the geopolitics of scripture - dov s zakheim - july-august 2012

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