MADNESS IN HIGH PLACES
by David Basch
by David Basch
December 17, 2009
"As relevant as Caroline Glick's recent observations
are concerning the rampant madness among world
leaders, it seems that some focus ought to be
given to the kind of persistent madness that
afflicts Israel's leaders...."
"What has to be worrisome is that all the noted
dire outcomes Israel faces were the results of
deliberate policies of Israel's leaders. If this
is not evidence of Israeli madness, what is?
It is a phenomenon crying for examination...."
Caroline Glick recently described the madness, the narcissistic and
ego driven views, that characterizes that of many world governments
that zealously seek to combat the "global warming problem," doing so
at horrendous cost and suicidal risk to past ways and traditions. This
persists despite recent exposures of scientific fraud in establishing
this undertaking as a valid goal. Nevertheless, Glick notes that these
misbegotten goals remain at center stage while real world dangers,
such as the nuclearization of Iran, are ignored. She wonders whether
"this is simply the Era of Madness."
As relevant as Glick's observations of this madness are, it seems that
a useful focus could be given to the madness that afflicts Israel's
leaders. What else but madness can have led a victorious Israel to
pursue an Oslo process that restored the defeated Arab enemy,
returning from exile Arafat and his terrorist army, giving them
control of Israeli lands, weaponry, and adopting the enemy's
definition of the war between Israel and the Arabs, in which Israel
emerges as the robber and "occupier" of alleged "Arab lands"?
And even when the dire consequences of this Oslo madness was brought
painfully home through tens of thousands of Israeli deaths and
maiming, this did not deter Israel's leaders from continuing this
madness. Thus, following Oslo, Prime Minister Ehud Barak unilaterally
withdrew Israeli forces from the buffer in Lebanon that had for 18 years
protected northern Israel and he offered Arafat -- who had violated
all his promises and obligations under the Oslo process -- a
virtually complete withdrawal from Israel's territories, including
portions of Jerusalem.
Again the Arab response to Barak's "gestures" was dismal. Arafat
prosecuted a new and more violent intifada and Arab forces moved into
the Lebanese vacuum to bombard the entire northern tier of Israel
with tens of thousands of rockets and they hold even more rockets still
aimed at Israel.
Astonishingly, these consequences did not halt the Israeli madness.
For soon after, Ariel Sharon embarked Israel on a shameful conquest of
herself in the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish communities of Gaza and
the surrender of the Gaza strip -- a policy supported by Netanyahu.
This exercise of madness opened Gaza to direct military supply from
the Arab world and brought the entire southern tier of Israel under
Arab bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets and a like number
held in reserve and capable of reaching as far as Tel Aviv. Recent
videos have shown a massive and exultant Arab populace vowing to use
the Gaza beachhead to conquer all of Israel.
What has to be worrisome is that all these dire outcomes were the
results of the deliberate Israeli policies. If this is not madness,
what is? It cries for examination. Conveniently, Ehud Barak's
leadership offers a paradigm.
Who can fail to remember Ehud Barak's declaration almost a decade ago
that, had be been an Arab, he too would be doing what the Arabs were
doing, that is, mounting violent attacks against Israel. Not only did
Barak think he understood the Arab mind -- it was, he thought, none
other than his own kind of thinking -- he was also sympathetic to it.
Here is an illustration liberal ideology in action, a view that
regards all men, down deep, as sharing common values of peace and
brotherhood, as Barak thought he shared with the Arabs.
Barak's explanation for the enmity of the peace-loving Arabs that his
ideology told him were there was that Israel had egregiously provoked
the Arabs by seizing their land. Hence, were Israel to withdraw, peace
would be sure to break. That is the way Barak would have reacted and
he understood the Arab mind. Of course, Barak's view ignored the fact
that the Arabs attacked Israel in 1948 and 1967 when Israel held no
such "Arab" territory. This revealed how distorted was Barak's view of
events, his blindness a product of his obsession with liberal ideology
that took precedence over reality, in other words, his madness.
Of course, the Arab response to Barak's "gestures" told that they do
not think like Barak. Rather, they follow a different drummer, namely,
the behests of Islam and its jihad that demands expansion of the
Islamic realm, including recovery of all lands once held under Islamic
rule, like the land of Israel. Unless the Arabs were to change their
religious beliefs, they could have no willing peace with infidel
nations like Israel, hence the Arabs could be depended on to continue
their war on Israel unless decisively defeated.
But persons driven by madness -- liberal obsessions -- refuse to recognize
such reality. Moreover, they are encouraged in their madness by the
reigning propaganda of a liberal media and academia that offer liberal
leaders the praise that is so satisfying to the egos of such leaders.
They are hailed as "wise statesmen" and exemplars of "high morality,"
reputations further used to win and hold the adulation of the public.
But believing in high-sounding values is not the same as being
wise and moral. Thus, Barak's surrender of hard-won Israeli military
positions that had kept dangerous enemies at bay because he thinks
they are really not so bad and are enemies only because Israel holds
their territory may have seemed to Barak a noble gesture, but it turns
out not to have been that at all. It was rather a betrayal of the
security and safety owed to Israel's people.
With Barak as the paradigm, is it not evident how obsessed, moralistic
Israeli leaders -- blind to a reality that contradicts their ideology
-- could bring back and strengthen defeated enemies? Is it not also
clear how with these same views, Netanyahu could openly exult
when he turned over the Hebron region to the Arabs that seek to
destroy Israel, having betrayed those who voted for him, succumbing
to what he regarded as a misshapen "higher morality"?
And can we not visualize the moralistic tremors of joy when Israel's
leaders turned over Gaza to dangerous enemies -- dangers rendered
unseen by a flawed ideology -- without a shred of thought to security
down sides or even to the pain inflicted on dispossessed, innocent
Jews? This is hardly the expression of a higher morality.
We come now to what may well be the latest phase of Israeli madness.
Netanyahu has announced his acceptance of a new Arab state on Israel's
lands, the very lands set aside for the Jewish people by the League of
Nations, and he has declared a freeze on Jewish construction in them.
The implications of this are frightening, presaging a new round of
Jewish ethnic cleansing. This time it could amount to hundreds of
thousands of Jews expelled and the transformation of the West Bank
into another version of Gaza/Lebanon, from which Israel's population
centers will face new rocket bombardments.
Rightly anticipating these developments, anxious Jews, including
Israeli soldiers, declare that this time they do not intend to sit
passively in the face of such advents. Ominously, these anxieties are
not responded to by government assurances that this will not occur.
Rather, fears are denigrated by Israeli officials as "insubordination"
and "threats to democracy" -- as though the many surrenders by
Israel's government in violation of the people's will expressed in
elections were not in themselves "threats to democracy" and
"insubordination" to the rule of the people.
The fear is that Netanyahu has reverted to the earlier policies, for
which his right wing constituency ousted him. Here again is seen
the same liberal craving to demonstrate "high morality" and
"statesmanship" by now surrendering the Israeli heartland to the same
Arabs that have again and again betrayed earlier agreements.
As occurred with the Gaza surrender, such policies of surrender are
called practical and wise. But, as we have seen, such views are made
possible by liberal obsession not to recognize that Israel faces an
Arab enemy that is implacably determined to destroy her.
The only difference now is Netanyahu's eagerness to demonstrate his
depthful understanding of economics. On this trip, he thinks this will
change past outcomes since he believes past agreements failed -- not
because the Arabs are implacably opposed to the acceptance of infidel
Israel, a thought precluded by liberal ideology -- but because
necessary economic underpinnings were absent. However, now, Netanyahu
proudly declares that under his leadership the economic infrastructure
of the territories will be developed with Israel's help.
Such thinking reveals Netanyahu as another version of Barak with the
variation in thought that Karl Marx's economic determinism will yield
the peace impossible before. It seems, once again, just like the moth
is attracted to the flame, an Israeli leader is lured by his liberal obsession
to engage in a new Israeli surrender.
This is the dismal trajectory of liberal madness that Netanyahu seems
to be embracing. That is the story, unless he is preparing to pull a
rabbit out of his hat and change Israeli and Jewish history by
embracing policies to confront the nuclear danger coming from Iran and
the danger of Arab forces that surround Israel to this day.
******
David Basch is an architect and city planner in New York as well as the Freeman Center's political philosopher. Basch is also an expert on Shakespeare and the author of the book, The Hidden Shakespeare, which proves through talmudic and other Jewish sources that Shakespeare was in fact Jewish.
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