The idea that there is a “Judeo-Christian” moral tradition is a recent one. George Orwell used it in the 1940s and in 1952 President-elect Eisenhower famously stated:
Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept but it must be a religion that all men are created equal.
21 November throws up three curios in the relationship between the US and Jewry.
First, 21 November 1861 when Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed Judah P Benjamin Secretary of War. Benjamin would flee with Davis from Richmond four years later before escaping to London and Davis later said he was the best of the cabinet. He had been one of the best appellate barristers in the US and became one of the best appellate barristers in England. When asked how he kept his income, he is said to have replied:
First, I charge a retainer; then I charge a reminder; next I charge a refresher; and then I charge a finisher.
From 21 November 1918, the Lwów pogrom took place during the Polish-Ukrainian War. It is alleged that 52 to 150 Jews and perhaps more Ukrainians were killed by Polish soldiers and civilians.
The event received wide publicity and President Wilson appointed a commission under Henry Morgenthau, a Jewish lawyer cum businessman who had been the US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. The report avoided the word “pogrom” and preferred “excesses”. Whatever the correctness of the report, Morgenthau is usually remembered for his recognition of the Armenian genocide during the Great War. Oddly enough – or not oddly at all – one of America’s greatest Great War scholars, Barbara W Tuchman, was Morgenthau’s granddaughter.
On 21 November 1985, Jonathan Jay Pollard and his wife sought asylum at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. They were ordered to leave by guards and Pollard was arrested by the FBI for espionage, in this case selling secrets to Israel. In 1987 he was sentenced to life imprisonment but he was released in 2015 and in 2020 he moved to Israel where, on arrival, he was handed his documentation by PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
A couple of aftermaths.
First, a few weeks later on the last half-day of President Trump’s office, a full pardon was granted to Pollard’s recruiter, Aviem Sella.
Second, PM Netanyahu – no shrinking violet whose relationship with President Obama was not good – has had some colourful dealings with Poland and with the successor of the Ottoman Empire.
As to Poland, he has been closely involved in the ongoing debate about the accuracy of the expression “Polish concentration camps”.
As to Turkey, relations with President Erdoğan are, um, low. Also no shrinking violet, the president once tweeted the PM was “the thief who heads Israel”. Whatever the basis of the allegation, the PM had the experience of being indicted by his own attorney-general on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust on 21 November 2019.
