Thinking Outside the Cave - Paul Eidelberg

Part I: In Search of a Jewish Agenda

Journalists necessarily focus on daily or transient political events. I try to understand the unseen meta-political causes of these events. Hence I invite people to think outside of what Plato called the "Cave."

(1) Ask any pundit why the world is so focused on Israel and most will blame Israel's handling or mishandling of the "Palestinian problem"—today the "Free Gaza Flotilla."

(2) Ask Israeli pundits why so many nations support Hamastan in Gaza, a terropolis, vis-à-vis Israel, and a large majority will point to "anti-Semitism."

Apropos of the Flotilla fiasco, one pundit said Israel's Government lacks a strategy. "The first rule of strategy," says this pundit, "is to keep your opponent busy attending to your agenda so he has no time to advance his own." Okay, but what is Israel's agenda?



I've been studying Israeli governments for more than three decades, and regardless of which party or party coalition is at the helm, its agenda is preoccupied with the Arab-cum-security problem. It seems to me that this fixation is a quasi-paranoid manifestation of a cave mentality.



I contend that the world is down on Israel because its Government, by focusing on the Arab problem, ignores what is far more fundamental—the Jewish problem. Cave dwellers can't deal with this problem. It demands thinking outside the Cave.



Put another way: Although Israel's Declaration of Independence refers to Israel as a Jewish state, Israel's ruling elites don't even know what is a "Jewish state"! None has formulated, in terms comprehensible to the average citizen, the ends, the institutional means, and the foreign policy appropriate to a Jewish state ensconced in the hostile environment of the Middle East. More important, none has set forth the kind of public education required to enlighten Israelis and toughen them vis-a-vis their genocidal enemies.



Perhaps this compounded failing is the esoteric reason why the world is down on Israel? After all, if Israel is supposed to be a light unto the nations, how can it fulfill this function if Israel's Government doesn't know what a Jewish state is? This ignorance, however, is inevitable because the term "Jewish state" is an oxymoron!



The world believes that the "state" makes and enforces the laws of a nation, which laws are of supreme authority. This contradicts Judaism, which posits the Torah as Israel's Supreme Law. The state is nothing more than the custodian of that Law. The Torah Jew regards the idea of the sovereign state—an idea advanced by Machiavelli—as idolatry, akin to paganism. A world of sovereign states unconstrained by Divine Law is equivalent to polytheism as opposed to ethical monotheism.





Strange as it may seem, the laws enacted by Israel's Government tacitly conform to Machiavelli's idea of the sovereign state, in consequence of which Israel cannot possibly be a light unto the nations! Perhaps this is the unknown reason why many nations question Israel's legitimacy as a sovereign state, an attitude pundits will attribute to anti-Semitism—a correct but superficial conclusion. It never occurs to them that this anti-Semitism may be the effect of a hidden cause, namely, that Israel today is unworthy of its Jewish reputation!



Can it be that the world is down on Israel because its posing as a Jewish state is factitious, like the Palestinian state endorsed by Prime Minister Netanyahu?



Can it be that Israel is declining because its Government's agenda is not a Jewish agenda?



Can it be that Israel's Government has shirked its world-historical responsibility, to enlighten mankind by comporting itself as a Torah nation in which Equality dwells with Excellence, Freedom with Virtue, Wealth with Beauty, the here and now with love of the Eternal?



Can it be that Israel is going downhill because its Government has forsaken the Torah which endows not only Jews but also Christians with dignity, self-confidence, and fortitude? Can it be that the Government's abandonment of the God of Israel is the ultimate reason why Europe has given up on Christianity and is succumbing to Islam? This is thinking outside the Cave.



And yet, any well-educated Christian knows that Christianity stands on the foundations of the Torah. Any well-educated Christian knows that the "Higher Law" doctrine of the American Declaration of Independence is rooted in the Bible of Israel. Any well-educated Christian will agree with the eighteenth-century divine, Yale President Ezra Stiles, who, along with Harvard President Samuel Langdon, recognized that the American Constitution was ultimately based on the Ten Commandments. Can one say this of the modern state of Israel?



Were not some of the founders of this state Marxists or atheists? Did it ever occur to the architects of this state that its paramount purpose is to reveal the infinite wisdom, power, and graciousness of God in every domain of existence? But if Israel shirks this sacred duty, is it not contributing to the irrationality that has gained ascendancy in postmodern Western civilization?



Contrast Nietzsche, who said: "Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they have taught to analyze more subtly, to argue more acutely, to write more clearly and purely: it has always been their problem to bring people to 'raison.'" Is not Judaism called the "religion of reason"?



The rationality for which Jews are famous has its origin in the Torah, where reason is linked to ethical monotheism. The Torah, elaborated in the Talmud and codified by intellectual giants like Maimonides, habituated Jews to rational debate and deliberation in public affairs, which fructified the thinking of many judiciaries and parliaments.



Therefore, if Israel forsakes the Torah, which infused reason in the laws governing the social and economic relations of mankind, what is one to expect of the behavior of nations? Will they not succumb to nihilism?





I marvel at America, the Judeo-Christian nation par excellence, which has repeatedly saved Europe from tyranny and which alone can save mankind from Islamic imperialism. How could such a nation elect as its president a Muslim whose agenda is anti-American, hence contrary to Judeo-Christian civilization?



But what are we to expect of America when Israel doesn't have a Jewish agenda, indeed, whose elites have sacrificed their intellects to the shadows of the Cave cast by the fabricators and followers of Oslo's fictitious and fatal peace process?



Israel, the staggering superpower of the Middle East, cannot even surmount paltry terrorist groups like Hamas and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority! And so vile nations tainted by Jew-hatred enter the imbroglio in support of Muslim thugs and murderers! How did this happen? Is Israel's Government responsible for this grotesque state of affairs?



I hesitate to engage in recrimination at this precarious juncture; but if Israel remains in the Cave, it will never see the light.



Part II: The Cave Dwellers



What are we to think of the Rabin Government that allowed Yasser Arafat, the godfather of international terrorism, to establish a base in Israel? This is the same government that erased the words "Judaism" and "Eretz Israel" from the Soldiers Code of Ethics.



What are we to think of Rabin's Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the mastermind of Oslo who applied for Israel's membership in the Arab League? And what shall be said of the MKs that elected this genius Israel's President?



What are we to think of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, in addressing a joint session of the American Congress in 1996, said there is no clash of civilizations in the Middle East? This is the Netanyahu who, as a member of the Sharon Government, voted for the expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza and Northern Samaria—the same Netanyahu who, without any authority, endorsed an Arab state in the homeland of the Jewish people.



What are we to think of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak—now Israel's Defense Minister—who once said that had he been born an Arab, he too would be a terrorist?



What are we to think of former Prime Minister Sharon who said that his son Omri—mind you his son—had taught him not to think in terms of black and white—this, while Allah's homicide bombers were reducing Jewish men, woman, and children to body parts?



What are we to think of Ehud Olmert, who told a New York audience in June 2005: "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies." The following year the Vinograd Commission reported on Israel's defeat in its Second War in Lebanon, for which it blamed the ineptitude of the Olmert Government but failed to reveal a basic cause of that ineptitude: Israel's irrational system of multiparty cabinet Government which made Amir Peretz Israel's bungling Defense Minister.





The same system obscured the responsibility of the political echelon in Israel's failure to pre-empt in the Yom Kippur War—a fact the Agranat Commission of inquiry ignored. We can expect more of the same in the investigation of the Government's mishandling of the "Free Gaza Flotilla"—for which many fault Ehud Barak but obscure the system of multiparty cabinet government that made this flawed character Israel's Defense Minister.



Conclusion



During the past two decades, Oslovian cave dwellers have been at the helm in Israel. They remained or remain in office even though their policies terminated or tormented the lives of thousands of Jews. Yes, but even their critics say nothing of an obvious cause of this suffering: Israel's irrational as well as corrupt system of government. So Israel limps along from disaster to another, and one cannot but wonder whether Jews will have the opportunity to leave the Cave and establish a rational form of government inspired by a Jewish agenda