Time For Israel To Recalibrate Its
Raison D’etre

by: Schvach Yid

Once again it’s time to raytz about Israel’s domestic political situation, you know, those who know verses those who know better. Face it, everyone’s an expert, just ask me! You know, of course, that blog is actually a transposed acronym for clogged brain, right? (It’s not difficult to imagine the list of suggested etymologies for blog floating on the web).

Israel’s political left wing wants to adapt the ‘light unto the Nations’ bit from Tanach to conform with the prevailing stated aspirations of Western civilization – the great social causes of equality, affirmative action in matters of employment, housing, etc., and civil rights. These great principles championed by America are worthy social and legal goals for the USA, indeed for the world, but divestment of self is not a requirement for its achievement.

In America, the law of the land is the law, just as in Judaism, but the US Constitution is the law of America and not of the world. Torah is the law and life of the Jews – Israel – and there exists no justification for Jews and the State of Israel to supplant Torah with the US Constitution, worthy as it is.

I had, in my past, several Jewish bosses, all recipients of Ph.D.’s, all university professors, and all above it all. All were the grandchildren of Yiddish speaking emigrants from Eastern Europe. These grandchildren – my former bosses – were embarrassed by their families’ shared heritage; they couldn’t do enough to deny it and live down their Jewish identity. Marrying out of the faith was the least of their denial routines. Can you imagine being ashamed of what you are? Can you imagine living one’s entire life as an effort to negate one’s self?

Throw it out; replace it with something of worth, like the US Constitution. And the US Constitution is worthy in the extreme, but not in the Jewish State of Israel as a replacement for Torah, and not as a device that is used to spare self doubters from the facts and needs of their lives, and not as an excuse to subjugate the Jewish Homeland into a state of capitulation to the Jew haters.

The US Constitution is not an instrument of propaganda, to be invoked to bury one’s sense of shame. We Americans – the authors of the US Constitution – outlaw murder, manslaughter, theft, fraud, kidnapping, extortion, treason, and sedition. We don’t support or condone these crimes under the great rubric of Civil Rights. In America, under the US Constitution, Civil Rights is a serious matter, and not a flippant assertion made by people who pretend to know better because they are incapable of accepting themselves for what they are.

Equality Under Law, engraved across the lintel above the façade of the US Supreme Court building in Washington DC, means just that.

The political left in Israel will have it the other way. The Arabs aren’t accountable, according to their reasoning, for their aggression against the Jewish State. The Arabs of Israel – citizens of the Jewish State – can’t possibly commit treason or sedition against the Jewish State of Israel. Israeli Arab treason is oxymoronic. In their way of thinking there exists political categories of Arabs. Ask an Arab, any Arab, anywhere, about his/her opinion on the subject of Israel – should the Jewish State of Israel exist? You don’t have to bother – we all know the answer.

Enthusiasts of political theory like to indulge their intellects by pondering the question ‘does democracy have the right to vote itself out of existence’, to be replaced with non-democratic governance. Okay Jewish liberals, do you have the right to advocate for the abandonment of the Jewish State? What is the justification for condescension against the Palestinian Arabs and your implied assertion of Jewish superiority? There is no equality in that view. Peership is a function of accountability. The Arabs won’t accept accountability. They reject the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel as do many others. Tell a Moslem that in reciprocal fashion he/she is forbidden to enter the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem, just as non-Moslems are forbidden entry to the city of Mecca. Go ahead, try it. Under Moslem rule we Jews were denied entry to Jerusalem.

On what is the liberal Israeli political opinion based? Certainly not on equality (equality under law). The Arabs will have none of that where Jews are concerned. Got Dhimmi?

The entire argument for the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel is Torah – HaShem’s revelatory commandments. The entire argument posited by the ‘liberals’ – the anti-religious – is a negation of Torah – Mordechai Kaplan’s Judaism as Civilization, ‘know-better Judaism’, Humanistic Judaism, the ‘Judaism’ of embarrassed Jews. These are the Jews who have succumbed to the propaganda of the Jew hating world and who want to prove their detractors wrong by showing the Jew haters that we can do it too – Nobel Prizes and more published scientific papers per capita than anyone else - and that we too are a loving and compassionate people, like Christians, and we can prove it – we’ll sacrifice ourselves and our State for the benefit of others. Please don’t hurt us – we want to comply!

It’s time for Israel to take stock and recalibrate its understanding of its establishment – its raison d’etre. It’s Torah, not wannabe ‘me too-ism’. The US Constitution is laudable, but it’s the law of man. Israel is founded on Torah – the law of Gd. If it isn’t, it’s not Jewish. Judaism is Torah. If the political left thinks that’s primitive – or Gd help us, fundamentalist – and beneath them, then why bother to live in a Jewish State? The bigotry is theirs.