The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

When George Orwell coined the spine-chilling line, “A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses,” he was referring primarily to England’s intelligentsia—the deaf, blind, mutes who were incapable of recognizing the enormity of evil that had come to power in Hitler’s Germany (as well as in Stalinist Russia).

Orwell saw that moral relativism had stupefied the mentality of university professors, novelists, and of course journalists. This stupefaction, he saw, had influenced the foreign policy of Britain’s political elites vis-à-vis Nazi Germany. Instead of preventing German rearmament and thereby precluding evil’s ascendancy in that country, or by failing to nip German expansionism in the bud, Britain’s ruling elites obscured the looming danger and pursued the policy of appeasement that led to World War II.

The mentality of that unteachable generation is very much alive in Israel. Consider two Hebrew University professors, Shlomo Avineri and Yehoshafat Harkabi. In the mid-1970s, Avineri was Director General of the Prime Minister’s office, and Harkabi was Israel’s Chief of Military Intelligence. Both advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state, which they thought would dissolve the Israel-Arab conflict.

Throughout the 1980s, and culminating in the September 1993 Oslo Agreement, many pundits thought that by recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization—a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s annihilation—and by allowing its chairman, Yasser Arafat, to preside over a Palestinian state, the PLO would undergo a profound metamorphosis. Moderation would replace terrorism. The terror war which Arafat launched in September 2000, a war that has thus far resulted in the murder of more than 1,600 Jews, has not taught the blind, deaf, mutes of Israel about the implacable evil that animates Israel’s enemies.

A Palestinian state remains on the agendas of Israeli political parties—certainly of Kadima, Labor, and Meretz, but even of the Likud, notwithstanding Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu’s obfuscations about “reciprocity” and “defensible borders.” Doesn’t Bibi know that the term “reciprocity” is foreign to Arab mentality? Doesn’t he know that borders don’t stop Qassam missiles?

Doesn’t Bibi—nay, doesn’t Israel’s political and intellectual elites—know that Arafat educated a generation of Arab children to emulate suicide bombers? Apparently not, for notice how shocked they were when Hamas trounced Fatah, the PLO’s leading terrorist faction, and won an outright majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council election (about 58%). These elites, who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil, had learned nothing from the fact that the Palestinian street supported the slaughter of Jewish women and children by means of homicide bombers. And they have drawn no strategic conclusions from the fact that more Palestinians voted for Hamas than Germans had voted for the Nazis!

The pathological Jew-haters of Israel’s far left are celebrating Hamas’ victory. They regard Hamas as the uncorrupt representatives of the down-trodden and “innocent” Palestinians. Other benighted pundits offer the soporific that Hamas’ participation in elections will lead to its “moderation.” But for Hamas to “moderate” would be to renounce its sacred creed, Islam. That the less devout Fatah did not “moderate,” indeed, that it continues to reject Israel’s legitimacy and now opposes terror only on temporary, tactical grounds, means that Hamas will not “moderate.”

Nevertheless, Shimon Peres, who said “we can learn nothing from history,” has indicated that Israel can do business with Hamas. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter suggested the same when he said the Palestinian elections were “completely honest.” For Carter, this was enough to sanitize Hamas and erase its history of evil. Justice has no place in the mentality of these unteachables. Heaven forbid that Israel’s government should wreak vengeance on Hamas for murdering innocent Jews.

It took one 9/11 to awaken President George W. Bush to the existence of an “Axis of Evil.” That was enough for him to order the military forces of the U.S. to destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. Israel suffered the equivalent of no less than eighteen 9/11s under the premiership of Ariel Sharon, yet that reputed warrior never ordered the destruction of the Palestinian Terrorist Authority or of Hamas. Why get exercised over Hamas after tolerating Fatah?

Israel appears as comatose as its ailing prime minister. For example, apropos of the coming March election, The Jerusalem Post sponsored a symposium at which representatives of all the Knesset parties were given the opportunity to enlighten an audience of about 1,000 people at Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue. Despite the fact that Hamas had just won a landslide victory over Fatah, not a single speaker advocated a national strategy to eliminate that gang of Jew-killers.

Labor MK Collette Avital, who favors a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, had the audacity to speak of the need to foster “Jewish identity.” Hasn’t she been taught that Judea and Samaria are bound up with the teachings of the prophets and sages of Israel, and that the loss this land would erase the historical memory of the Jewish people?

But what can we expect from Avital when even MK Shaul Yaalon of the National Religious Party did not rule out a Palestinian state, and one can expect no better from the Ultra-Orthodox parties, seeing that United Torah Judaism signed the death warrant of Gush Katif when it joined the Sharon-Peres government in 2004. More unteachables.

From a strategic point of view, Judea and Samaria constitute Israel’s Sudetenland. There can be no compromise over this land—not with Hamas or Fatah, the successors of the Nazis. Yet we look in vain for any well-known intellectual to advocate a national strategy designed to win the war against these genocidal enemies of the Jewish people. Asked to comment on Hamas’ victory, professor Avineri admits that “the Hamas victory makes negotiations even less realistic, and strengthens the case for unilateral steps on the part of Israel as the only realistic option” (The Jerusalem Post, January 29, 2006).” Avineri said the same thing about Gaza, now a center of world terrorism.

Although Bar-Ilan University professor Gerald Steinberg, another political scientist, does not call for unilateral retreat from Judea and Samaria, he said that with Hamas’ victory there is “very little chance of political compromise” (ibid)—which suggests that territorial compromise over Judea and Samaria is desirable and that it was possible with Fatah! Obviously Steinberg does not take the genocidal objectives of these Arabs seriously. He too obscures the enormity of evil.

The only intelligent response to decades of Arab terrorism against the Jews is a national strategy whose goal is the elimination of the PA and the entire Arab terrorist network west of the Jordan River.

Such a strategy logically requires the incorporation of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza into the State of Israel, which in turn will necessitate a Land Act to settle 200,000 more Jews in these areas in five years while prompting Arabs to leave by means of financial incentives. Needless to say, Israel’s ruling elites lack the intestines for such a strategy—which is why they are unteachable.

And so the symposium sponsored by The Jerusalem Post was not encouraging. More talk by small politicians about another election—an election that will change nothing. No party called for parliamentary electoral reform, and of course none called for “regime change,” which is the only thing that can curtail institutional corruption and prevent Israel’s demise.

All I could do at that symposium was hand out flyers of the Jewish National Alliance, Hazit. The flyer challenged the so-called nationalist and religious parties to issue a joint statement calling for the abrogation of Oslo. The flyer also contained Hazit’s 10-point national strategy, which, despite its brevity, has no equal in depth and comprehensiveness.

Israelis will waste their votes voting for any other party!