Is it a Jewish flaw or merely human frailty that spawned Israel’s policy
of “land for peace,” a policy which has soaked the land of Israel in Jewish
blood?
Some say this policy is animated by a Je! wish death wish or by Jewish
self-hatred. But “land for peace,” as a policy of appeasement, is
not a Jewish idea. President Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia was not
Jewish; yet, despite the heavily fortified—some experts say impregnable—Sudetenland,
he succumbed to that spineless policy at Munich.
The truth ! is unpleasant: “land for peace”—the policy of Israel’s ruling
elites—signifies little more than cowardice, a human frailty. This
frailty may be more prevalent among Jews whose modern psyche, tainted by
egalitarianism, is oblivious of the aristocratic virtue Nietzsche called
the “pathos of distance.”
Israel’s ruling elites th! erefore lack not only courage, but also its
cousin, the sense of honor. It is this dual deficiency that produced
the policy of “land for peace,” which translates into the inane policy
of “land for nothing,” otherwise known as “unilateral disengagement.”
The “policy of the brave” is in truth the “policy of cowards.”
A word about courage. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates teaches us
that courage is a precondition of wisdom. The coward, rather than
stand up for truth, prefers to be “politically correct.” His
self-abasement, his lack of honor, makes him a liar.
A word about honor. Honor is not “prestige.” Honor depends
more on self-respect than on the favorable opinion of others. The source
of honor is respect for truth (so lacking among Israel’s ruling elites).
Honor demands more than truthfulness. Alfred North Whitehead saw
that “truthfulness as an element of one’s own self-respect issues from
a reverence for Reason in its own right”—hence for truth in its own right.
In Israel, politicians devoid of honor readily succumb to imbecility:
releasing and! arming Arab terrorists—Jew-killers—to protect Jews!
The Oslo Agreement will go down in history as the pinnacle of diplomatic
fatuity. This mindless agreement has murdered 1,600 Jews and shattered
the lives of tens of thousands more. And there is no end in sight!
Leaving aside the complicity of Israel’s ruling elites in the criminal
consequences of Oslo, here I only want to expose the principal vice of
these elites—for I am fed up with the obscurantism of “post-Zionism,” which
tells us nothing of the character of those elites.
Those who have foisted the policy of “land for peace” on the people
of Israel are not mere ignoramuses. They are not simply mindless
of Islamic history—a history punctuated by the plunder and destruction
of so many Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Hindu communities and the
slaughter of untold millions of “infidels.”
They know that Israel is surrounded by a “culture of hate.” Day
after day, year after year, the people of this culture have shed Jewish
blood. Israel’s ruling elites are not simply living in denial.
They know what is being taught in Muslim schools and mosques, that a generation
of Arab children have been trained to emulate suicide bombers. They
know that the successors of the Nazis are dedicated to Israel’s annihilation.
And yet, despite their country’s awesome military power, Israel’s ruling
elites lack the courage—and therefore the wisdom—to do what the genocidal
intentions of the Arabs require them to do: act with a view to conquering
their enemies.
Steeped in cowardice, they succumb to the absurdity of surrendering
Jewish land to a gang of murderous scoundrels.
This cowardice applies not only to the parties of willful
appeasement and its Leader, who knows nothing of honor. It also applies
to the parties of reluctant appeasement, to all parties in
the Knesset—secular and religious—whose poltroons advocate “reciprocity”
or territorial compromise, with or without a national referendum.
They too lack honor.
We are dealing here with utterly flawed human beings, secular as well
as religious. It’s not their minds that have gone astray so
much as their hearts. They are “men without chests.”
Desperately ne! eded, therefore, are men of valor and honor, above
all, men who love the God of Israel and who therefore hate—as the
psalmist hated—His enemies.
Only let such men unite on behalf of Israel’s sacred cause and the
future will be ours.