For the Israelites this does not seem to have been the problem. Their concern was foreign rather than domestic policy. They were less worried about the internal breakdown of order than about their continued vulnerability to attack by warlike neighbors.

That linkage seemed to me to be the most damaging part of his speech. The Arabs had long complained that they were forced to pay the price of the Jews’ near eradication by Europe, which dumped the survivors in Palestine. That narrative denied three thousand years of unbroken Jewish connection to our land. It overlooked the fact that Jews had always