Why is Israel Retreating?

Israel Commentary

Professor Paul Eidelberg
The Jewish Press

2. POLL: Palestinians Endorse Violence
From: Week in Review
Compiled by Jason Maoz, editor, Jewish Press

3. Query to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

1. 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 G-d and the Sinai Covenant (with G-d Almighty) 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 so with 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 believe that the conflict between Jews and Arabs can be resolved by negotiations and mutual concessions. In contrast, the Arabs may agree to engage in negotiations, but their Koran 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, 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. 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 G-d from public discourse - omitting, therefore, Israel's G-d-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 nationalisms. Even if all political disputes were to be resolved, the two movements, Zionism and Arab Nationalism, (And, the entire Western world, for that matter) jsk, 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 elite who, even if they recognize Islam's genocidal objectives, fail to adjust their policies and analyses to the theological reality of the MiddleEast. They fail to see that Israel's only realistic approaches to sanctify G-d's Name, that is, to go on the offensive by emphasizing the Sinai Covenant, which alone can inspire and solidify the Jewish people on the one hand, and justify as well as perpetuate Jewish possession of Eretz Yisrael on the other.

Professor Eidelberg is the founder and president of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, a Jerusalem-based think tank for improving Israel's system of governance. He can be reached through the FCD website:
http://www.foundationl.org

And, to absolutely prove Professor Eidelberg's discussion above, From the same Jewish Press, Week in Review compiled by Jason Maoz, editor:

POLL: PALESTINIANS ENDORSE VIOLENCE:

A survey of 3,001 Arab residents in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, conducted last month by the PA-affiliated Arab World for Research & Development, found that 86.3 percent of respondents see violence for the purpose of achieving a Palestinian State as anywhere between "essential" and "tolerable."

In addition, 75 percent of those polled say the demilitarization of a future PA State is "unacceptable and over 84 percent say it is "essential" that all of Jerusalem, including the areas that have been Israel's capital since 1948, be part of a future PA state.

Query to PM NETANYAHU:
So with whom and for what are you negotiating and giving away in your obvious disregard of the simple facts above? Are you hellbent on destroying your own country? Do you really want another terror state breathing on your back and making you even more defenseless?

Jerome S. Kaufman