"Why Israel is Retreating" - Paul Eidelberg

 Israel is constantly retreating.

Why?  Is it U.S. pressure?  What prevents Israel from standing up to pressure?  There may be several answers to this question, but I dare say the decisive answer is this:

Israel's policy-makers and opinion-makers—politicians and political analysts—have removed God and the Sinai Covenant from the domain of statecraft. Israel's ruling elites have therefore emasculated themselves and eroded the Jewish people's confidence in the justice of Israel's cause.  This is not the case of Arab rulers, and that's why they are advancing.

Stated another way: Whereas Israeli politicians and political analysts view the conflict between Jews and Arabs in political terms, Israel's enemies view the conflict in religious or theological terms.  As a consequence, Israel's elites—soft, secular, liberal democrats—believe that the conflict between Jews and Arabs can be resolved by negotiations and mutual concessions. In contrast, the Arabs—hard rock religious autocrats—may agree to engage in negotiations, but their Quran precludes them from reaching any lasting agreement with "infidels" based on compromise or "reciprocity."

Now, you don't have to be religious to understand that compromising with an uncompromising foe is self-defeating.  But if you lack religious convictions and the courage of such convictions —the case of Israeli elites— you're likely to succumb to a smug political "realism" even though such realism is demonstrably unrealistic in the Arab-Israel conflict.

Furthermore, once politicians and political analysts have pursued and construed the Arab-Israel conflict in secular or political terms—and have done so year after year—it would be extremely difficult for them to change their language of discourse and adopt a religious or meta-political approach to the conflict. It needs to be stressed, however, that their failure to change their secular "peace process" rhetoric has pernicious consequences.

First of all, their pliant political language encourages Arabs to persist in their religious objective, to destroy Israel.  Second, their merely political approach induces the people of Israel to believe that by making territorial concessions to the enemy, "reciprocity" will follow and thus lead, eventually, to an end of the conflict. 

Gulled by their political and intellectual leaders, Israelis do not understand that reciprocity is impossible!  It's impossible because the Arabs can offer no equivalent to Jewish territory—nothing more than words on a piece of paper.  But while Israeli politicians and political analysts persist in omitting God from public discourse—omitting, therefore, Israel's God-given right to the Land of Israel—they render the people of this country more inclined to support territorial concessions to the enemy, thus risking their survival.

Now, in contrast to Israel's secular elites, who minimize the all-important religious dimension of the Arab-Israeli conflict, consider their Arab counterparts.  Thus, even before the Six-Day War, one Arab commentator declared:  "The propagandists of secularism, who leave out of account the religious factor in the Palestine problem, ignore the fact that this is the only bone of contention in the world which has persisted for thirty centuries ..." Another Arab spokesman avowed: "... apart from the political conflict, there is a basic philosophical and spiritual incompatibility between the two contending nationalism's.  Even if all political disputes were to be resolved, the two movements, Zionism and Arab Nationalism, would remain, spiritually and ideologically, worlds apart--living in separate 'universes of discourse' which are incapable of communication or meaningful dialogue." 

These Arabs are serious—something that cannot be said of Israel's secular elites who, even if they recognize Islam's genocidal objectives, fail to adjust their policies and analysis to the theological reality of the Middle East.  

They fail to see that Israel's only realistic approach is to sanctify God's Name, that is, to go on the offensive by emphasizing the Sinai Covenant, which alone that can inspire and solidify the Jewish people on the one hand, and justify as well as perpetuate Jewish possession of Eretz Israel on the other.