Once upon a time, back in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there was an adorable little country called Israel. It was a unique country of Jews. It was a thriving young country.
Soon after the adorable little country was born, the wise leaders of Israel granted the right to hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees, later calling themselves “Palestinians,” to return to live within the borders of Israel from the neighboring countries to which they had fled during the War of Independence.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
After the Six-Day War, large numbers of Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza managed to attain the right to live in Israel’s prewar territory while others were granted to right to move into the West Bank and Gaza from other places where they had been living.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
Later the wise leaders of the country granted Vietnamese “boat people,” ethnic Chinese refugees escaping Vietnam after the communist takeover, the right to live in the country. After all, said the wise leaders, who knows better than the Jews the tribulations of being a refugee.
And so, ever so slightly in that case, the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
When civil war broke out in Lebanon, the wise leaders of Israel granted some Lebanese the right to escape their strife-torn country and move to Israel. And some years later, members of the Southern Lebanese Army, after Israel under Ehud Barak betrayed them and abandoned them to their fate in Lebanon, were granted the right to live in Israel.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
When civil war tore Bosnia to smithereens, the wise leaders offered some of the Bosnians – including Bosnian Muslims – refuge in the adorable country.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
When things got tough in the Sudan and Sudanese of different creeds and races were massacring one another, the wise leaders of the country granted huge numbers of them the right to move to Israel.
The wise leaders tuned a blind eye as countless thousands slipped across the unguarded border of the adorable country to make their homes in Israel. They of course had to pass through Egypt to reach Israel, and no one was murdering them in Egypt, but they were allowed into Israel anyway.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
When other Africans learned of the deal, thousands of them joined in the trek to the adorable country, sometimes pretending to be Sudanese.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
When Bashar Assad started massacring his own people in the last months before his regime fell, thousands of Syrians were allowed to enter the adorable country on grounds that this was the humane thing to do, and that a country of Jews could not turn its back to refugees escaping tyranny and seeking safety.
Israel soon became the largest home for Alawis in the world. When there were proposals to repatriate the Alawis back to Syria, the adorable country’s poets, writers, journalists and professors all objected. How can Israel expel Alawi children? It would be inhuman to deport them, almost as inhuman as were similar earlier efforts to deport the Sudanese.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
When the Iranian regime was snuffed out in Operation Alexander, with American, NATO, and other allied forces destroying the country’s nuclear stockpiles and liquidating the Islamofascist ruling class, tens of thousands of Iranian civilians trekked across the
deserts to demand refuge and warm beds in Israel. The wise leaders of the Jewish state insisted that no Jew could turn down the pathetic sufferers.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
When the North Korean regime was overturned in a bloody revolt and civil war, tens of thousands of starving refugees arrived by the at the ports of the adorable Jewish state. “We demand to be allowed to enter,” they wailed.
And so the country’s proportion of Jews declined.
Soon came tens of thousands of Tibetans, escaping the ethnic cleansing the Chinese regime was implementing against them. Along with them came tens of thousands of Kurds escaping oppression, myriads more Burmese, Greeks escaping the enormous taxes implemented to extract that country from bankruptcy, Gypsies from all over Europe, and the entire population of Moldova.
And after helping so many groups of people, after absorbing so many sets of refugees, after solving so many of the world’s problems, there were no longer any wise leaders to govern the adorable little state. Because the adorable little state had ceased to exist altogether. It had humanitarian-ized itself into oblivion.
Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. His book “The Scout” is available at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].