Posted by
Moshe Phillips on Friday, September 26, 2008 9:19:32 AM
A Jewish National Strategy for the New Year
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
It requires no great wisdom to enumerate the axiomatic requirements of a Jewish national strategy. Only needed is candor and courage, without which no Jewish leadership movement is worthy of moral and financial support. The axiomatic requirements of a Jewish national strategy are simply these:
? Public affirmation that Israel is the State of the Jews.
? Public affirmation that a Jewish State must be based on Jewish principles and values.
? Public affirmation that the primary source of Jewish principles and values is the Torah.
? Public affirmation that only Jews, whether religious or not, can formulate a Jewish national strategy.
? Public affirmation that Israel’s system of government — its laws and institutions — must be consistent with the foregoing axiomatic requirements.
Authentic Jewish leaders and their financial supporters must acknowledge these axioms — meaning these self-evident truths. Having done so, they must then go on to expose those basic flaws in Israel’s system of governance that make an authentic Jewish State impossible. The following flaws, which are largely responsible for Israel’s disasters and humiliations, should be publicized throughout the country:
1. The dictatorial concentration of power in the Executive Branch. An Israeli prime minister can (a) make agreements with foreign states and even criminal organizations without serious Knesset or public debate; (b) dispose of the land and holy places of the Jewish People; (c) release Arab terrorists who have murdered Jewish men, women, and children; (d) ignore the convictions of those who elected him to office (as Likud PM Ariel Sharon did when he adopted Labor’s policy of “unilateral disengagement").
2. The impotence of the Legislative Branch. Lacking constituency or regional elections, Knesset Members are subservient to party leaders, hence incapable of exercising independent judgment vis-à-vis government policies. Conversely, citizens, compelled to vote for anonymous party slates, lack power to influence government policies via their own elected representatives.
3. An unrestrained Judicial Branch. The absence of a Knesset accountable to the people augments the power or “activism” of the Supreme Court — a self-perpetuating oligarchy — many of whose decisions violate fundamental Jewish principles and values.
4. A grotesque Electoral System. Making the country a single electoral district necessitates proportional representation which, combined with a low electoral threshold, multiplies parties, fragments and destabilizes the Government, and renders the Government incapable of pursuing coherent, resolute, and long-term national policies.
5. The lack of a clear, concise, and coherent body of fundamental laws renders it virtually impossible to educate youth and thereby promote civic virtue and national unity.
These flaws point to only one remedy: a Constitution. Anyone who thinks Israel can be a Jewish State without a Jewish Constitution, meaning a Constitution that institutionalizes the primacy of Judaism, is suffering from ignorance or intimidated by the bogeyman of “racism.”
Fear of the racist canard dominates Israel’s political and intellectual leaders. Even among Jews who want a Jewish State, most are afraid to draw the logical consequences of such a state, namely, that its laws and policies must be determined by Jews as prescribed in a Constitution.
Summing up: Authentic Jewish leadership is impossible given the flaws in Israel’s governing institutions, which flaws can only be remedied by a Constitution that empowers the Jewish people. This Constitution must put an end to Israel’s inept and divisive system of multiparty cabinet government, which makes it impossible to pursue a Jewish national strategy on the one hand, and foster Jewish national unity on the other.
The Jews of Israel have only two alternatives: preserve the existing system of governance, which can only lead to Israel’s demise, demise, or promote a party committed to regime change — one that advocates a Constitution that adapts democratic principles to Torah ideas and values. Without such a Constitution there can be no authentic Jewish State.
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