The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

Israel’s Problem, and Getting Back to a National Camp
A WORKING PAPER PREPARED BY THE FOUNDATION FOR CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

PART I. DIAGNOSIS OF ISRAEL’S MALAISE

1. In 1992, two Arab parties with five Knesset seats made the Rabin Government and Oslo possible. Seven years later three Arab parties had 10 Knesset seats. In two decades, the democratic principle of one adult/one vote will transform Israel into an Islamic dictatorship. Long before that, however, Israel will succumb to a Lebanese-type civil war. Yet no party in the Knesset has the courage to address this ominous state of affairs. (more…)

BY PROF. PAUL EIDELBERG

While Ariel Sharon and his colleagues dither about “disengagement,” and thus dwell in denial, the enemy from which the prime minister wants to distance Israel is accumulating long-range missiles. What is the nature of this denial? To answer this question I turn first to the recently deceased Edward Said, an Arab professor at Columbia University.

Said admitted that “The Arab world is a sink of corruption and mediocrity and the most appalling and murderous tyrannies.” Said did not dwell in denial. Contrast Israel’s ruling elites.

These elites refuse to take the murderous tyranny of the Arab world seriously, a world steeped in hatred of Jews and Israel. Devoid of Jewish pride, they long to “negotiate” with a tyranny called the “Palestinian Authority,” which uses Arab children as human bombs to kill Jews. (more…)

BY PROF. PAUL EIDELBERG

Part I. National Amnesia

We are very much our memories. Memory endows us with a sense of personal identity. A total amnesiac must recreate his or her identity—no easy task. Imagine how infinitely difficult it would be for a people to create a new identity if it were afflicted by national amnesia, i.e., had lost its historical memory! (more…)

PROF. PAUL EIDELBERG

INTRODUCTION

ARIEL SHARON puzzles Israelis. Yesterday the Right portrayed the aged warrior as a hero; today the Right portrays him as a villain. Indeed, one critic called him Labor’s surrogate prime minister! Sharon is many things to many people. What confuses their perspectives is that the variable and “visible Sharon” obscures the “concealed Sharon.” We begin with the former.

In evaluating an Israeli prime minister, two criteria come immediately to mind: whether he has augmented Israel’s security, and whether he has elevated Israel’s dignity. Given these criteria, Ariel Sharon probably ranks as Israel’s worst prime minister. However, if Israeli prime ministers are evaluated in terms of their friendship with the president of the United States, Mr. Sharon ranks among the best. (more…)