Balak: [inter]nationalism

Jews get it from both sides, but the explosion comes  from the inside.

I do not defend antisemitism,. What the bigots call reasons are actually excuses.  But these excuses have some relationship  to reality and that increases their danger

The parsha deals with Balak, the current king of Moab,  hiring Bilam (a name that can be deconstructed to bli without and am nation ) a Midianite, to subvert the will of Gd and turn it against the  Israelites. 

Balak is a nationist.  even though he is an interloper ( see Rashi: he was an outsider) He wants to protect the nation against a force, the Israelites,  that are in conquest mode. Not only are they an army, but they are carrying threatening ideas of liberation and justice. Interlopers make  the most forceful nationalists ( Napoleon was from Corsica, Stalin from Georgia, Hitler from Austria).To Balak, the nationalist, the Israelites are an internationalist force (bourgeois communists)  that threatens his rule.

Bilam is a global thinker Have parable, Will travel.  He is in contact with Gd, the universal force.  From his perspective,  the Israelites  are a nation,  another people looking for territory,  and possibly,  expansion.

The Jews in the modern world are  subject to these dual and opposing characterizations.  To the nationalists [ Stalin, Hitler ] Jews are internationalists. Jews have interests, stemming from their dispersal and their values, that make the  nation a secondary concern, at best.  The Jews want to bring their version of universal peace and harmony. The Messiah of the Jews brings world peace as well as national prosperity.

To the internationalists, Jews are the Zionists, religious nationalists, willing to displace indigenous peoples for their own religious dreams. They treasure their separateness, their racial purity .  They do not intermarry.

Both  threads are real inside the Jewish community, now,  after the holocaust and after the declaration of the state of Israel.  The Jewish holocaust experience is the basis of an international law that includes concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide ( East West Street)

The election of Donald Trump clarifies how things were before.  Up until now, since, at least the 1940's, the United States was  as much a symbol of freedom, liberty  and protection of human rights  ( despite the hypocrisies) as it was a nation state.   The US was the liberator of Europe, the money behind the Marshall Plan.  Now,  nationalism (fascism?) has ascended.

The story of the donkey is important to remember.  Bilam was among the greatest of prophets, he was a seer,  but he cannot see what the least intelligent beast of burden, the donkey, the ass, can see.  The donkey acts in his benefit and is beaten for her service,

Don't ass ume you see the whole picture.