What Cleaves the Hearts of the World
Though each of us read “Mein Kampf” at different points in our lives, we were both surprised in the same way by the same thing. Expecting a racialist tract — and there is plenty of that — we got a materialist sermon. Hitler was no less a materialist than Marx.
Hitler saw a world of limited and finite resources. A zero-sum universe. He believed the destiny of human beings was to fight to the death to claim as much of the earth as they could, and that the warrior was destined to prevail. The man who was willing to risk his life in war and remove his rivals was the epitome of virtue.
This conviction motivated his hatred of the Jews. He thought that Jews were cheating! Against all that is natural, the Jews somehow got rich without invading other countries or without seizing others’ wealth. They got rich.
“Mein Kampf” is an attack on capitalism. Alien to Hitler was the idea that wealth is created by human ingenuity and that its creation opens new opportunities for others and enriches human life. Hitler was entranced by the materialist superstition, the idea that we have nothing but dirt, and we are in an eternal struggle for more dirt.
Knowing this, it is unsurprising is that “Mein Kampf” has long been a best seller among the Palestinians. In Hitler’s day, it was distributed by Palestinian leaders, including the Grand Mufti, who was close to Hitler. Ever since, it has been perhaps the most popular book in Palestine. Materialism — not to mention those “cheating Jews” — is a perfect excuse for Palestinian poverty vs. Jewish wealth. “If only the Jews had not stolen our land, we would be rich,” an antisemitic person might say.
The truth is just about the opposite: As George shows in his newly updated book, “The Israel Test,” the more Jews emigrated to Palestine and the more land they occupied — by buying it, often from Turkish absentee landlords—the more prosperous non-Jewish Palestinians became.
In the 1850s, there were only 200,000 to 300,000 Arabs in the Israel territory. Their average lifespan was a little over 30 years. As Zionists began to enter Palestine in numbers, Israel was transformed by the Jews. One of the most amazing Jewish efforts was to bring water to the desert through desalinization and irrigation technology that makes Israeli farmers the most efficient users of water in the world. The result is that this tiny desert land is a net exporter of water via bumper crops of fruits and vegetables sent abroad.
As Israelis struck the rock to bring forth water, they brought also a massive migration of Arabs. The Jews’ imagination and creativity enabled the Arabs to take part in the suddenly blooming desert phantasmagoria. Neither Hitler nor Marx could have seen the water for the desert.
How did the region respond to this amazing achievement? When David Ben-Gurion told Musa Alami, the Arab leader back in the 1930s, that he believed Zionism would bring more such blessings, Alami’s reply was, “I would prefer the country remain impoverished and barren for another hundred years until we ourselves are able to develop it on our own.” The Arabs responded to the Jewish gift by hatred and resentment—and by continuing to come. Since that period, the number of Arabs in the Palestine area has increased from 1 million to 5.5 million.
Nihilist is the idea that it’s better to have the Arabs impoverished and immiserated rather than having to participate—like everybody else in the world—in an economy that depends on the genius of a relatively few people. Less than 1% of 1% of the world’s people are the pioneers of new technologies, new enterprises, new visions, that make our lives longer and better and richer.
The Palestinians call Israel’s successes a “Nakba,” a catastrophe, even though it is to Israel the Palestinians owe their vastly enhanced longevity, their wealth, and their opportunities. Israel and the Jews have been their greatest beneficiaries.
And not just the Palestinians. The leading figures in 20th century science and the winners of a third of the Nobel Prizes, and the most critical ones were Jewish, though Jews are but 0.2% of the world’s population. Jews, many of them Israelis, are a great driving force behind the U.S. technology economy. We all benefit, but Cain whispers in our ear “only wickedness can bring such wealth.”
From the beginning, envy has been the root of the evil in men’s hearts. Envy is natural to all of us. It is, however, particularly a vice of materialism. A war of all against all is the inevitable result of the belief that wealth springs from the land, rather than from the mind.
The great Jewish gift to the world has been to demonstrate that our opportunities are unlimited because we live in an infinite universe of mind. The Jews remind us that Western civilization depends on a tiny minority that has the genius to thrust beyond material constraints. This people formed by the Book testify that wealth is knowledge and growth is learning. And the source of knowledge is human minds created by and acting in the image of their Creator.
Ultimately, Western Civilization springs from the monotheistic vision Jews vouchsafed to the world. St John, the Apostle most steeped in Jewish learning, begins his Gospel proclaiming, “In the beginning was the Word.” The most important truth men can know is that Word precedes the world and made the world.
Materialism proved suicidal for the Nazis as it is for Hamas. The greatest choice facing America today is whether we side with the envy of the materialists or the grace of the creators. This is the Israel Test and it cleaves the hearts of the world.
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