The Almighty State of Israel
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Modern Israel is referred to as a “State” as well as a “Democracy”; and of course public life in this so-called democratic state is dominated by “politics.” But to practice “politics” in Israel, or to conceive of Israel as a “State” or as a “Democracy,” is to enter a world of thought, action, and passion utterly foreign to the Torah and out of place in the Holy Land. I shall limit this inquiry to the concept of the “State,” and I will show that insofar as the power of this state is virtually unlimited, it borders on fascism and sometimes crosses that border.
Alfred North Whitehead, the great gentile philosopher and mathematician, wisely said, “The Jews are the first example of [a] refusal to worship the state.” The reason is this. The “State,” like the city of Babel, manifests the self-glorification of man. The State is wholly a human product, based on the autonomy of human will. The principle, l’état c’est moi, may be traced to Machiavelli’s Prince, from which we learn that the laws of the state depend solely on the will of the sovereign, be it the One, the Few, or the Many. This idea of the State is fundamentally opposed to the Torah’s conception of Israel.
Israel is supposed to be a non-sovereign state created by God to be the teacher of mankind. Perhaps this explains why Israel today, by using foreign concepts, often fails to act like a sovereign state. Notice how Israel relies on Washington to mediate conflicts with Arab neighbors. This may not seem unreasonable, until we recall that Israel’s government invested the CIA and the American State Department with the power to supervise PLO compliance with the Wye River Memorandum!
It would seem that Israel cannot act as a normal sovereign state. Or as the prophet Ezekiel says: “That which comes into your mind shall not be at all; in that you say, We shall be as the nations ...” (20:32). What is there about the Sovereign State that Israel cannot readily or comfortably assimilate?
The State is ever seeking to concentrate all power in itself, and this is usually at war with family life and family loyalties. Indeed, one may see in history a fundamental conflict between the State and the family. Israel, however, is supposed to be, more than any other, a nation of families with a godly mission. Unlike the State, which pursues power, wealth, and glory, the family, the nucleus of a God-oriented community, honors the pursuit of wisdom and virtue.
Consider America, ostensibly a benevolent state. The permissiveness fostered by the Judicial and Legislative branches of this liberal or secular democratic state is a constant assault on family values—an assault now augmented by America’s Executive branch of government under the Statism of Barack Obama.
Notice the apparent contradiction: permissiveness on the one hand, Statism on the other. But this Statism is at the service of permissiveness. In fact, this permissiveness is actually a consequence of the State’s arrogating to itself the power to decide the question of morality, even while insisting that it is not the function of the state to legislate morality!
The State’s laissez-faire attitude toward morality is itself a decision not to support traditional morality, which is tantamount to granting a license to a new morality, which, from the traditional perspective, is nothing but immorality. That decision constitutes a subtle but tremendous exercise of power, for it has subverted the long-established morality of the Bible, a precondition of family life and of what families most cherish.
This subtle war against family morality is occurring in the Land of Israel. As may be seen in my book, The Myth of Israeli Democracy, Israel’s Supreme Court, influenced by American jurisprudence, has legalized homosexuality and same-sex marriage—now on the agenda of Barack Obama, who therefore is neither a Muslim nor a Christian but a neo-pagan.
Neo-paganism, which is conspicuous in Hollywood, is on public display in Jerusalem, in its annual Gay Parade, whose legal justification may be found in the permissive rulings of Israel’s Supreme Court. But what enables the Court to issue such rulings—which violate 3,500 years of Jewish history and morality—is not simply the Court’s ultra-secular agenda, but the palpable fact that the Court is an organ of the all-powerful State of Israel.
When we utter the word “State,” we have in mind an entity possessing a monopoly of power. But the power of the State of Israel is extraordinary. There is not a single state among the world’s 88 democracies whose power over its own people equals that of the so-called democratic State of Israel. Where in the world is there a democratic State that has expelled 10,000 of its own citizens from their homes, destroyed their schools, their places of worship, their cemeteries, their community centers, their farms and factories? And where in this world is there a State whose leader has arrogated to his government the authority to commit the same unspeakable crime, only now to 300,000 human beings as if they were cattle?
I am appalled by the absence of outrage among academics and journalists, who gloss over this crime. I am dismayed by academics and journalists, who, out of ignorance or insouciance, have failed to say that this crime stains the State of Israel with FASCISM. I am horrified by the fact that academics and journalists do not denounce this State’s in the clearest terms, that its territorial polices show no serious concern for the heritage and therefore the future of the Jewish people.
But such is the power of this almighty State that it can betray the heritage of the Jewish People with impunity. It is the only State in history that has voluntarily surrendered land its people repossessed in a war of self-defense against Arab despots. It is the only State in history whose government supports the establishment of a hostile state on its people’s own territory, indeed, in their very heartland. This almighty State has therefore arrogated to itself the power and authority to sever the bond between Israel’s heartland and the sacred teachings and historical memory of the Jewish People! The power of this State is cruel, tyrannical, beyond all reason and justice.
Hence this secular State must perish for the People of Israel to obtain a new birth of freedom.
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