The Fixation
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
A friend asked: “Why is Israel fixated on the policy of “territory for peace” with the PLO-led Palestinians?”
This fixation is indeed weird fixation in view of these palpable facts:
(1) the charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as its name implies, calls for Israel’s destruction;
(2) Palestinian terrorists have killed or wounded some 15,000 Jewish men, women, and children since the 1993 signing of the Israel-PLO Agreement;
(3) any leader of the PLO who made peace with Israel would suffer the fate of Anwar Sadat—assassination’;
(4) PLO terrorism pays: thousands of Palestinians would be out of a job if the PLO made peace with Israel. Indeed, as long as its conflict last, the
PLO will continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars each year from Arab states and the suckers of the United States.
Still, isn’t it strange that regardless of which party is at the helm, every prime minister of Israel—from Yitzhak Rabin to Benjamin Netanyahu—has been fixated on the “territory-for-peace” policy?
Notice, however, a fact not reported by any political analysis: if Israel’s current Prime Minister, Mr. Netanyahu, was to denounce this bloody policy as foolish and fatal—let alone question its legality—he would be casting the most damaging aspersions on his predecessors. Turmoil would follow and the house of cards called “Third Commonwealth” would collapse. This alone may explain Israel’s fixation on “land for peace.” I perceive in this fixation, however, a causality that transcends politics, and which may be gleaned from the prophet Isaiah and the Mishna.
Accordingly, let us ascend Jacob’s ladder and graduate from the domain of politics to the domain of prophetic philosophy, beginning with Isaiah.
Apropos of infantile Israeli prime ministers who believed that Israel could obtain peace from the PLO by giving these villains Jewish land, we read in Isaiah 3:4: “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.”
Add Isaiah 5:20: “Woe unto them that call evil good, And good evil …” which anticipates the moral egalitarianism and degeneracy of Israel Prime Ministers who negotiate with Arab Jew-killers as if they were civilized people. These useful idiots Jews scorn decency.
Most revealing is Isaiah 28:14-18: “…hear the word of the Lord, you scorners … in Jerusalem. Because you have said: we have made a covenant with death, and with the nether-world are we in agreement; When the scourge shall pass through, It shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge … in falsehood have we hid ourselves …
Isaiah chastises these scorners of the Torah. He foresaw that they would in make a “covenant with death” not protect them. Remarkably, the Targum translates the words “covenant with death” as a contract with “terrorists” (mechablim)!
The Prophet Hosea (12:1-3) avers that the scorners of the Torah will fill Israel with lies and deception. “They will strive after wind [‘peace’] and make alliances with Israel’s enemies. And no one will rebuke them.” The Zohar (Exodus 7b) states that in the end of days certain Jews will make an “alliance” [i.e., an agreement with Israel’s enemies—the PLO. This agreement was consummated by the Labor Party and slavishly upheld by the Likud. Has any Israeli prime minister been held accountable for Oslo’s murderous consequences?
The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 98a), tells us that in the end of days Israel will have a “cheap” government. How else are we to describe politicians who pose and smile with Arabs responsible for the murder and maiming thousands of Jewish men, women, and children? Do these demotic politicians display any sense of shame or sense of guilt?
Let me therefore paraphrase the conclusions of Mishna Sotah (49b), and pardon my frankness:
“With the footsteps of the Moshiach, arrogance shall increase and honor will dwindle. The government shall turn to heresy [secularism] and there shall be none to utter reproof. The council-chamber [the Knesset] shall be given to corruption…. [T]he dwellers on the frontier [in Judah, Samaria, and Gaza] shall go from place to place with none to take pity on them.
The wisdom of their writers [journalists and academics] will become insipid and degenerate [i.e., morally neutral and even anti-Jewish], and they [Torah observant Jews] shall be despised. The truth shall nowhere be found [silenced in universities steeped in nihilism]. Youth shall shame their elders, and elders shall stand up in the presence of youth. The face of this generation is as the face of a dog [servile and impervious to shame] ... Upon whom, then, can we rely? Only on our Father in heaven.
● Is it not obvious that Jews in Israel cannot rely on political parties to save them from disaster?
● Is it not obvious from Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza that Jews cannot rely on the Israel Defense Forces, whose policy of “purity of arms” and “proportionality” is nothing but degeneracy or madness?
● Is it not obvious that Jews cannot rely on rabbis who pontificate about pikuach nefesh (saving Jewish life) without a word of criticism about the IDF’s suicidal “rules of engagement” which favor the enemy?
● Is it not obvious that Jews cannot rely on political and strategic analysts to stop the suicidal course of Israel’s government as long as these analysts do not wield the intrepid spirit of the Torah?
● Is it not obvious that Jews cannot rely on the United States to save them from worldwide anti-Semitism or its corollary, Iran’s Islam-inspired threat to “wipe” Israel off the map?
Hence the Mishna asks, “Upon whom can we rely?” and answers “Only on our Father in heaven.”
But wait! If we can rely only on God for our salvation, this suggests that we cannot rely on ourselves, which implies that we have lost free will. Has Israel’s peace process transformed Jews into virtual Muslims? What has this mendacious peace process done to Jews?
Alternatively, has Israel’s fixation on this bogus “peace process” so conditioned Israeli Prime Ministers that they cannot reveal the truth without incriminating themselves as LIARS?
It seems to me that Israel is in a straightjacket. This straightjacket may be compared to the one that entrapped pharaoh of Egypt. I will go ever further. I dare say that all the Prime Ministers of Israel, from Rabin to Netanyahu, had to be serial liars to be fixated on Oslo’s fraudulent peace process when hardly day passed without Arab attacks.
Let me be even more provocative. If you go back to Oslo 1993 and add up Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, Olmert, and another Netanyahu, you create a creature comparable to the Egyptian pharaoh who, because of the evil he perpetrated on the children of Israel for so many years, was deprived of free will, was unable to overcome an ego-driven fixation. That is, he was unable to repent by letting the children of Israel go, in consequence of which one plague followed another. This despot, who thought he was god, did not recognize the God of Moses.
As a consequence, his country was struck by plague after plague. He was indifferent to the suffering of his people—of men, women, and children—resulting from one attack after another, year after year. This terrifying and deadly situation was not enough to undo the pharaoh’s ego-driven fixation. That pagan, inflated by his enormous power, and admired by other pagans, could not yield, could not acknowledge the God of Moses—a Being superior to himself, to whom he must genuflect.
It seems to me that at least since September 13, 1993, the day Rabin signed the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, an even witnessed by the entire world, Israel’s leadership has been afflicted by an ego-driven fixation of perhaps demonic proportions. It recalls Milton’s Paradise Lost, “Evil be thou my Good,” which intersects Isaiah 5:20.
Israel’s dilemma is not simply self-inflicted. Again Isaiah: “I am the Lord that makes all things … that turns wise men backward, And makes their knowledge foolish” (44:24-25). This describes politicians and political scientists who apply such notions as “conflict resolution” and the “two-state” solution to the indissoluble Arab-Israel conflict.
Since this conflict is a theological one, it cannot be solved by any secular government. The solution (or dissolution) will require the intervention of God, as implied in the Mishna cited above. But as may be inferred in that Mishna, the situation of the Jews will have to be so precarious that they will perforce have to turn to their Father in Heaven.◘
Posts
