Critically Needed: Moral Clarity - Paul Eidelberg

Israel has never been in greater need of moral clarity. Why? Because it faces annihilation.

To begin with, let's consider a worst case but not an unrealistic scenario.

Any of Barack Obama's statements to the contrary notwithstanding, this self-professed and mendacious Muslim wants Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. Why? To enable Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to fulfill his Islamic vow to "wipe Israel off the map."

If so, Israel must preempt, despite the danger of Iran turning off the oil flowing through the Persian Gulf (which Iran could readily do anyway if it has nuclear weapons).

However, if Prime Minister Netanyahu lacks moral clarity, more precisely, if he remains paranoid about "world opinion," he may not give the IDF the green light.

This paranoia is a Jewish problem primarily resulting, of course, from millennia of European Jew-hatred, and secondarily from a servile view of morality, whereby Jews prefer victim-hood.

Even the Six-Day War did not cure Jews of this malady or lack of moral clarity, since their timid government offered to return the land regained by the IDF for "peace."

Another but related factor is the loss of Jewish national pride, the obverse of Israel's paranoid quest for the approval of the nations. Ariel Sharon proclaimed that his cozy relationship with George W. Bush was Israel's strongest asset. Netanyahu was crushed by Obama's rude treatment of him earlier this year in Washington.

I told a religious member of the Knesset the following: "Obama bowed to Saudi King Abdullah. Bibi bowed to Obama. This was followed by the Gaza Flotilla. A Prime Minister of Israel should not even go to the United States. Upholding Israel's honor should be his paramount concern."

Let me add this. Anwar Sadat was assassinated because he went to, and thus dignified—in Muslim eyes—the Jewish state.

Now ponder this double entendre. Bibi, after degrading Israel by endorsing a Palestinian state on the homeland of the Jewish people, laid down the humiliating condition—humiliating primarily to Israel!—that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Why would any Israeli prime minister with a stitch of Jewish pride give a hoot what the nations of the world think of Israel—nations that worship Mammon and respect only Power?

The people of Israel, degraded by one morally obtuse prime minister after another, are in critical need of moral clarity.