Toward a New Kind of Israeli Prime Minister
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
From time to time I feel compelled to write about the lack of Jewish honor displayed by Israeli prime ministers. Never is this more timely than on Purim, which dramatizes Mordechai’s refusal to bow down to Haman, the enemy of the Jewish people. Mordechai reminds me of an incident that took place in the Land of Israel in 1929.
In that year, the Arabs, with British connivance, indulged in an orgy of rape and murder that destroyed the ancient community in Hebron. The British mandatory government invited prominent Jews to Government House, presumably to express condolences for the pogrom which included the most savage mutilation of men, women, and children. When the British Secretary of the Mandatory Government extended his hand to greet Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the religious leader of the Yishuv, that great Rabbi refused the handshake saying it was a hand “besmirched with Jewish blood.”
Contrast the behavior of Israeli prime ministers who have shaken hands with Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, both responsible for the murder of so many Jewish men, women, and children.
Frankly, I do not see how this country can long survive with such prime ministers, that is, without proud, Torah-oriented at the helm. It matters not whether this or that prime minister is a “nationalist.” Indeed, what is a Jewish nationalist if he does not uphold that which created and preserved the Jews as a nation: the Torah?
On the other hand, I do not believe that Israel’s salvation depends on a religious prime minister, unless he is learned in the rigorous sciences. Only such a prime minister can reveal Biblical Hebrew as the one and only designed and mathematically precise language, a language that encodes, in the letters and words of the Torah, basic principles of science—today the paradigm of true knowledge. Only such a prime minister can overcome Israel’s secular-religious divide and unite the Jewish people.
Israel has a number of scientists who are revealing the convergence of science and Torah, but their findings have reached only a small number of people. This is why I have often urged the formation of a team of professional individuals to seek out a person whose knowledge of Torah and science will enable him to win the support of both religious and presently non-religious Jews.
It is thoughtless and misleading to hail this or that person as “Israel’s next prime minister” merely because he supports a “nationalist” or even a “faith-based” agenda. If Moses could decline the leadership of the people of Israel, we should be skeptical of anyone that poses as Israel’s savior. Israel cannot afford another vain or semi-educated politician at the helm.
Let us bear in mind that two Likud prime ministers—reputed “nationalists”—advocated the establishment of an Arab-Islamic state in the heartland of the Jewish people. One had the audacity to unequivocally repudiate the Covenant between God and the fathers of the Jewish people—and did so, no less, at a religious university! Steeped in arrogance and ignorance, such prime ministers would emasculate Israel, would empty Israel of all meaning and purpose (Gen. 1:2).
Israel under such prime ministers cannot possibly persevere vis-à-vis 1.5 billion Muslims dedicated to Israel’s annihilation. The only effective way of putting an end to Islam’s threat to Israel, as well as its unceasing invasion of the West, is to enlighten civilized humanity by revealing the convergence of science and Torah. Israel has the intellectual means of doing this. Indeed, therein is the hidden reason for Israel’s surpassing achievements in the life sciences—a manifestation of Israel’s love of life as opposed to Islam’s love of death.
So let us find and rally behind a new kind of prime minister, a person learned in Torah and science.
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