Britannia Radio

Caroline Glick for Prime Minister

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

In Caroline Glick's extraordinary article "A prayer for 5771" (Jerusalem Post, September 8, 2010), I behold a woman who, in my considered judgment, is more qualified than any other public figure to be the Prime Minister of Israel. I have arrived at this conclusion because she has at last transcended her acute political analyses of the government's destructive foreign policy by presenting a candid and courageous diagnosis of Israel's protracted spiritual malaise in these simple words:

"Since Theodore Herzl's untimely death in 1904, Israel has lacked a leader who recognized the importance of espousing the Jewish creed both to the world and to the Jewish people. That is, since Herzl, Israel has lacked leaders who have understood the first principle of statecraft."

In this statement, Ms. Glick clearly indicates that even David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin lacked the quintessential quality of statecraft—the ability to articulate the Jewish creed, the Torah. Allow me to reformulate Ms. Glick's devastating statement by citing a passage from my book Jewish Statesmanship: Lest Israel Fall published ten years ago:

"Jewish statesmanship does not exist in Israel. Of course Jews become prime ministers, as did Benjamin Disraeli and Pierre Mendes France. But no sober person expected Jewish statesmanship from these remarkable English and French Jews. No one expected them to incorporate Jewish laws and principles into the legislation of their respective countries, or to pursue foreign policies inspired by distinctively Jewish goals.

These Jews did not think like Jews but like Gentiles. Much the same may be said of the prime ministers of Israel."

This, in effect, is Ms. Glick's message. Hence I am delighted that a person of her eminence and perspicacity has put her name to a Jewish message I have been articulating during the past three decades. We now see in clear and simple terms that Ms. Glick surpasses in wisdom and spiritual integrity the prime ministers that have ruled Israel since 1948. Here is a woman of valor who ought to be Israel's prime minister.

With this idea in mind, I am now going to throw realism to the winds and ask you to ponder this scenario. Imagine Prime Minister Netanyahu inundated by letters and emails urging him to appoint Ms. Glick to his cabinet as a minister without portfolio. Her primary function would be to channel certain strategic assessments of American think tanks to Israel's Defense Ministry.

Of course, BB will not do this, if only because it would induce Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a serial bungler, to resign and remove his Labor Party from the government coalition. I would then urge Ms. Glick's admirers to organize two movements: one negative, the other positive.

First, I would urge her admirers to initiate a Movement to Abrogate the Oslo Agreement—a movement, not a party. Under the auspices of this Movement, imagine Ms. Glick addressing an international press conference attended by the media and foreign ambassadors. Her audience would be presented with documentary evidence showing that the PLO-Palestinian Authority has repeatedly violated the Oslo Accords, especially since Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister in May 1996. Also at this conference will be videos showing how the PLO-PA indoctrinates and trains Arab children to hate Jews and emulate terrorists—the staple of Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah organization whose Constitution, like that of Hamas, calls for Israel's destruction.

The Abrogate Oslo Movement will publicize the fact that Netanyahu failed to abrogate Oslo even though his own office published daily reports on PLO terrorist activities. The Movement will show that Netanyahu, after concluding the Wye Agreement, failed to uphold its security provisions—a failure resulting in the murder and maiming of hundreds of Jews for which his and other Israeli Governments are complicit.

The Movement will show how the Netanyahu Government yielded land to the PLO-PA in violation of international law, which prohibits rewarding any terrorist organization.

The Movement will show that Netanyahu and his predecessors betrayed the Jewish people and the Jewish heritage by ignoring Israel's historic and lawful possession of Judea and Samaria according—I say lawful even according to international agreements, including the San Remo Convention of 1920 and the Anglo-American Agreement of 1925—both valid to this day.

Before continuing, we need to inquire why Netanyahu persists in upholding the Oslo Agreement despite its deadly and disastrous consequences.

For Netanyahu to abrogate Oslo is to tacitly confess that he and his predecessors and their Arab negotiating "partners" are responsible for the murder and maiming of some 10,000 Jews.

The plain truth is that Israeli prime ministers have failed to stand up like men and put an end to the Oslo killing machine. Let's face it: they betrayed the nation by not abrogating Oslo on the one hand, and by not eliminating the PLO terrorist network on the other. Lacking was courage and Jewish loyalty.

Caroline Glick said as much on June 21, 2005. Two months before the Sharon Government committed the unspeakable crime of expelling 8,000 Jews from their homes and flourishing communities in Gaza, Ms. Glick wrote an article in The Jerusalem Postentitled "A coward for a prime minister"! What did this cowardice and expulsion signify if not a betrayal of the Jewish creed? As Caroline stated in her September 8, 2010 article,

"God gave us the Law of Israel.

He gave us the Nation of Israel.

And He gave us the Land of Israel." All three gifts have been trampled on by various Israeli prime ministers. That's what Ms. Glick is quietly telling us. Hence let me add what a great rabbi would say of these faithless and feckless prime ministers.

In his famous Michtav Me-Eliyahu, the illustrious Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler (1892-1954) quotes some disturbing verses of the Prophet Isaiah (6:10):

Fatten the heart of this people,

Deafen its ears,

Turn away its eyes!

Lest it see with its eyes

And hear with its ears

And understand with its heart—

And return … and be healed.

Rabbi Dessler comments: "The meaning … is that the rasha [the wicked] is afraid to look, afraid to listen and understand, because he realizes that if he were only to look at the truth he would be compelled to return [to repent]—and this he is determined to avoid at all cost."

He denies what he sees, he denies what he hears. So Rabbi Dessler adds this razor-sharp remark: His "Denial is a deliberate pretense." (Emphasis added.)

Israeli prime ministers, along with the countless others who support Oslo despite its obvious cost in Jewish blood and suffering, are not living in denial, as is commonly thought. No, they are living a deliberate lie. But this means that along with moral callousness they are animated by cowardly egoism or self-aggrandizement. Notice, however, that unlike typical critics of Oslo, Rabbi Dessler would not call the prime ministers who appeased Israel's enemies as self-deceiving or self-hating Jews.

No, he would regard these blind, deaf, and dumb politicians as wicked!

We are not used to such language in this age of moral relativism. Nevertheless, one may wonder why Israeli prime ministers are not impeached or punished for their culpability. This brings me to the positive and goal—a constitutional goal—I would urge Ms. Glick's admirers to pursue, animated by her bold and majestic judgment that Israel has lacked authentic Jewish statecraft or statesmanship since its rebirth in 1948.

Can we rightly call Israel a democracy if its prime ministers can betray, in Glick's words, the "Law of Israel," the "Nation of Israel," and the "Land of Israel" and do so with impunity? Must we not conclude that, in addition Israel's flawed prime ministers, Israel's system of governance is also flawed—fundamentally and fatally flawed?

Is it not obvious that Israel lacks institutional checks and balances to prevent perfidious abuses of executive power—the power of prime ministers to betray Israel's foundational principles: Torah Yisrael, Am Yisrael, and Eretz Yisrael?

I have written about this subject so often that I hesitate to say again that Israel needs an independent legislature separated from the executive branch; a legislature chosen by the people in constituency elections; a legislature that can guard against abuses of executive power; a legislature whose advice and consent are necessary for ratifying executive agreements with foreign nations or entities; a legislature whose enactments cannot be overturned by a judiciary that arrogates to itself the power to negate the abiding beliefs and values of the Jewish people—the creed of which Ms. Glick speaks and has the courage and candor to say has not been articulated, as it should and must by Israeli prime ministers—to say nothing of Israel's Supreme Court.

It is my fondest hope that Ms. Glick will rise to the challenge set forth in this report.

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*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, 13 September 2010.