The governments that produce human rights and personal liberty are governments founded on ethical monotheism, the teachings of prophetic law and social justice. All Western countries have constitutions rooted in the teachings of ethical-monotheism-the Judeo-Christian ethic. This ethic provides the shared stories that hold people of different ethnicities together.
If on the other hand, the ethic is based on determinism-be it by religious or philosophical belief or by birth, the citizens will not have the freedom to excel. Only the privileged few will reap the benefits-we see that all over the Middle East and Africa. If a government does not prioritize care for the other or the stranger, then fear of the other, which is an instinctual, biological response deep from within the amygdale, will lead to tribal warfare and self-imposed ghettos rather than cooperation.
It isn’t Zionism, per se, that is the underpinnings of the success of Israel. It goes back to Zionism’s foundational ethic-ethical monotheism, a revolutionary idea introduced 3500 years ago that demands that all of us care for our brother, for the stranger, that we be active participants in our lives, exercising both rights and responsibilities, and that we behave in a way that honours the inherent value and dignity of the human being. These concepts were unheard of until Moses came down from the mountain. The ethic is superb-it is the human implementation of the ethic that is problematic.
