Britannia Radio

Needed: A Testosteronic Prime Minister*

Paul Eidelberg

Urgently needed in Israel is a testosteronic prime minister. Hence, the Netanyahu must go and the Likud must be reformed root and branch. Just consider the Likud's recent record: Sharon negated the 2003 election by adopting Labor's policy of unilateral disengagement, and last year Bibi endorsed an Arab state in the homeland of the Jewish people. The Likud is more treacherous than Labor. It wins the premiership using rightwing campaign rhetoric only to shift to the left when its chairman becomes prime minister. This was Sharon's and Netanyahu's tactic.

I can hear the objection: "You want Tzipi to take Bibi's place?" I ask: "Is Bibi very different from Tzipi: Both supported Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, both endorsed the "two state solution," and both lack testosterone!

Like Sharon, Netanyahu makes it exceedingly difficult to galvanize the nationalist camp. He fragments, mesmerizes, and emasculates the "Right." The "Right" would unite if Livni were the alternative. Absent Bibi and the Likud could consolidate with National Union, form a bloc with the religious parties, and pursue—at last—a non-compromising territorial policy essential to Israel's survival.

Contrary to what one politician has said, the Likud does not represent the "trunk" of the nation. It lacks not only testosterone but also intellectual and moral integrity, which can only be derived from the ethical monotheism of theTorah.

The Likud poses as a nationalist party under the banner of Zionism. But the Likud has not even fulfilled the limited goal of political Zionism. Has the Likud restored the dignity of the Jewish people? Has it diminished anti-Semitism and secured Israel's existence? Since Israel has never been more insecure, let us at least be clear about the subject of Jewish dignity. From what do Jews derive their dignity? Solely the Torah.

But the Likud is a secular party. Its Zionism—or what remains of it—is based on the territorial nationalism of Christian Europe. Its feeble Judaism cannot transcend the "religion-state dichotomy" of Christianity. This dichotomy, on which modern Israel was established, falsifies and emasculates Judaism. It reduces Judaism to a "religion" whose role is limited to the personal or private domain in contradistinction to the public or nationaldomain. Likud Zionism excluded God and the Torah from statecraft, especially the domain of foreign policy. This is why Israeli prime ministers, Likud as well as Labor, are serial bunglers.

Yes, Israel's system of multiparty cabinet government has burdened Likud prime ministers with inept defense ministers like Labor leaders Amir Peretz and Ehud Barack. But it’s the decrepit Zionism of Likud-led governments that emasculates and demoralizes Israel. Let's probe deeper.

Likud Zionism is imbued with European humanism or what may be termed Christianity without the Christian God—say Christianity with gefilte fish. When it comes to war, a prime minister imbued with gefilte fish Zionism will pursue a non-heroic form of warfare. He will be excessively concerned about enemy as well as about Israeli casualties. This can only prolong the war and increase both Jewish and enemy casualty rates.

Moreover, he will be paranoid about public opinion at home and abroad. Stupefied by the absurdity and hypocrisy of "proportionality," he will sacrifice the lives of Jewish solders to minimize collateral damage. Furthermore, he will fail to amass sufficient military force to defeat, disarm, and humiliate the enemy and thereby eliminate the enemy's physical capacity and psychological inclination to wage another war. Ponder why Germany and Japan, despite their militaristic past, are now peace-loving nations.

It bears repeating that Likud Zionism falsified Judaism by reducing it to a religion. The word "religion" (dat) does not appear in the Torah. It appears only in the Book of Esther, and there it does not mean "religion" but "decree." Even the term "Jewish" can be misleading when referring to Israel as a "Jewish state." "Our people," said the tenth-century sage Saadia Gaon, "is a people only through the Torah." Judaism is a nation-creating religion, so that "Israel" denotes a people created and constituted by a religion unlike any other.

Eliezer Berkovits writes that religions, as rule, do not make nations. Nations and peoples are biological, racial, political units. They may accept a religion, but the religion they accept is accidental to the national group. Christianity, for example, created no people, and neither did Islam. These religions were imposed on pre-existing peoples whose pagan character, by the way, was not entirely eliminated despite the passage of centuries. Both Christian Europe and Islam have been periodically drenched in rivers of blood.

Although Judaism is a national religion, it is not a theocracy. This I have shown in my book Toward a Renaissanceof Israel and America. There I discuss the nineteenth-century Italian philosopher and theologian EliyahuBenamozegh, a rabbi thoroughly familiar with European thought. Rabbi Benamozegh refutes the idea that the Torah posits a theocracy. As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch has emphasized, Judaism can't be understood by concepts foreign to the Torah. Terms like theocracy and democracy distort Judaism and the meaning of the Sinai Covenant. This Covenant makes Jewish particularism the standard bearer of universalism.

The Sinai Covenant is not merely a covenant between the individual and God—as may be the case in other religions. Judaism is a national covenant with God. This is what makes Judaism and the Jewish people unique—and this was never part of the Likud ideology. The Likud separated Zionism from the Torah, just as it has separated the Land of Israel from the Torah, which is why this land is being truncated.

When Judaism becomes merely a religion and ceases to be a religious nationality, it loses national pride and manliness. Conversely, when Israel's government abandons the Torah, it too loses Jewish pride and manliness. In both cases the governing elite becomes irrational, meek, defeatist, even paranoid, as witness Israel's inane and self-effacing policy of "territory for peace." Notice the government's unilateral concessions to the Arabs. Notice how it seeks the approval of European nations. Notice how it kowtows to Washington. Lacking testosterone, such a government can easily be intimidated, even bought like a common prostitute. To put it more gently, without the Torah, Israel's government becomes a court Jew.

Give me the old Ghetto Jew, who was more manly than the assimilated Jews that dominate Israel's government. No less than the psychiatrist Max Nordau, a Zionist leader ranked with Theodor Herzl, admitted that the Ghetto Jew was more proud and intellectually independent than the “enlightened” and assimilated Jews of Western Europe. Let's be honest: What is one to say of Likud and Labor prime ministers that have consorted with a villain likeYasser Arafat?

Today the Ghetto wall has been replaced by the "Security Fence." Instead of proud and independent-minded Jews, we have meek and thoughtless politicians who concoct dysfunctional multiparty governments walled off from the people, most of whom identify with the Torah.

And so it was when the Ghetto walls fell, Judaism became a religion relegated to the home and the synagogue. This was the abridged Judaism prescribed in Herzl's book The Jewish State. Although Herzl was a heroic personality, but his truncated Judaism has emasculated Israel. You call Judaism an all-embracing way of life? But is it prominent in the economic relations of people? Is it conspicuous in their cultural media? Nay, it barely breathes in their public schools.

Does Judaism illuminate and elevate the deliberations of the Knesset? Does it have much to say about the laws and the structure of Israel's government? Alas, Judaism has ceased to be a creator of history. It limps along without any clear sense of national purpose. No Likud leader addresses this decadence.

While secular Jews are tainted by the materialism of modernity, religious Jews have yet to endow modernity with Jewish meaning. Recall the first prophecy in the Bible: Yafet—Yavan, meaning Greek philosophy—shall dwell in the tents of Shem. Despite all the good yeshivas do in Israel, they might as well be in Borough Park: they do not train students in statecraft! Jews must be faithful to the Torah without rejecting secular wisdom and the blessings of modernity.

Israel needs a testosteronic leader learned not only in the Torah but in the rigorous sciences, such as physics, astronomy, microbiology. The fact that Golda Meir was called the only man in the cabinet is more than a joke.

Israel needs the courage to resume its world-historic mission. The West, unknowingly, is crying out for Israel! Jews need to know that Israel is the only nation created to reveal the infinite wisdom, power, and graciousness of God in every domain of existence. Only a nation so dedicated can inspire and elevate mankind. This must be taught to every child, in every classroom, so that from Zion, the word of God—the Truth—shall come forth again in all its splendor.

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*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, June 28, 2010.