Imagine A World Without Israel Issues & Insights
Since 1901, Jews, who total 0.2% of the world s population, have won 189 Nobel prizes for physics, medicine, chemistry and economics. Over that same period, Muslims, who make up nearly a quarter of the global population, have won four.
If it seems as Islamic groups, Hamas and Hezbollah prominent among them, are more interested in spreading nihilism, committing atrocities, and destroying civilization than making the world a better place, well, then there s a good reason for it. That is exactly what the heroes of an increasingly large number foolish Westerners are aiming for.
Meanwhile, Israelis see themselves as having a role in the world to repair the world, says Chemi Peres, managing partner and co-founder of the venture capital firm Pitango, chairman of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, and son of the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
We call it tikkun olam, and here at the Peres Center we have a mission statement, which is to introduce innovation and new ideas and new technologies, not only for ourselves but to solve the problems of the world.
Islam is part of that world, but too many of its adherents live to do just the opposite.
This point is not made enough and I suppose it should be made delicately. But delicate or not, it’s true. Jews comprise some of the most brilliant contributors to our common culture, or what has been our common culture, for centuries since the enlightenment, and before. I for one was educated largely by Jews. Plucked out of Idaho when I was but a teenager and dropped into Cornell, I was surrounded by brilliant Jews and quickly learned I was not the smartest person ever and much else besides. Unfortunately, I got a big dose of leftism at the same time, but that wore off while the rest of the education stayed, more or less. I met a lot of these brilliant Jews — Hans Betha, Steven Weinberg, Noam Chomsky, and quite a few others. This article in fact barely begins to do the magnitude of the Jewish accomplishment justice. However, where there is great accomplishment, there is great envy, and where’s there’s envy, there’s hatred.
Tikkun Olam, the Jewish idea of “repairing the world” is an admirable ambition, though I fear the world is beyond repair, and efforts to fix it often only make things worse. But the often misguided progressivism of well intentioned Jews is a far, far cry from what we witnessed by Hamas on October 7th. Israel not only has the right to defend itself from those horrors; God, or humanity, or fate has given them the duty to do so. Light against darkness.