Bad for you Too? The Iraq War and Israel
November 7, 2005 Issue Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative Bad For You Too? How the Iraq War disappointed Israel By Leon Hadar There is an old joke about an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German, and a Jew who are asked to write an essay about an elephant. The Englishman writes about “The Elephant and the British Empire.” The Frenchman writes about “The Love Life of the Elephant.” The pedantic German writes a large treatise on “The Toenail of the Elephant.” And the Jew writes on “The Elephant and the Jewish Problem.” It’s a Jewish joke dating back to the time when the fate of the insecure Jewish community in Europe depended very much on political and social changes in the surrounding non-Jewish environment. It pokes fun at the tendency of anxious Jews at that time to assess the latest news from this or that world capital—the Russian czar has the flu, the price of grain is going up, red shoes are becoming more fashionable—by whether or not it was “good for the Jews.” When Jewish surv