Brainless and Heartless
Albert Camus wisely said, “How many crimes are committed simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.” This applies to Israel’s ruling elites. Thirteen years of Arab terror and 6,000 Jewish casualties have cowed and stupefied these elites. Ehud Olmert is committed to the policy of his comatose predecessor. Brainless and heartless, he promises more territorial retreat on the one hand, and the deportation of more Jews on the other.
The American educator Max Lerner once said, “Man’s will creates the things that paralyze his brain and brutalize his heart.” This applies not only to recent Israeli prime ministers, but also to Israel’s Supreme Court, whose decisions have given Arabs a license to kill Jews. To cite only one example: Supreme Court president Aharon Barak quashed the indictment of Arab Knesset Member Talib a-Sana, who, in an interview on Abu-Dhabi TV, not only praised a suicide bombing attack in Israel but also called for more of the same. Did anyone in the government denounce this brainless and heartless ruling?
Of course these Israelis lack a firm sense of Justice. Notice that whereas Arab leaders invariably defend their cause in terms of justice, Israel’s ruling elites speak only of “peace and security.” Perhaps this underlies their brainless policy vis-à-vis Arabs and their heartless policy vis-à-vis Jews?
Consider: How can any Israeli prime minister defend the justice of Israel’s cause and yet advocate a Palestinian state? How can he speak of the justice of Israel’s cause if, following Judge Barak, he calls Judea and Samaria “occupied territory”? But this is not all.
A Palestinian state would seem to be the logical consequence of the democratic principle of self-determination; and who dares oppose this democratic principle? But how can any conventional or secular democrat who believes in this principle justly defend Jewish control of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza where some 2.5 million Arabs make their homes? “Aren’t all peoples equal and equally worthy of self-determination?”
Thomas Jefferson would say “No!” But he said this more than two centuries ago, when democracy was in its youth, whereas today (as we see in Europe) democracy is in its old age. In its youth, when it had just overcome despotism, democracy exalted freedom above equality. Today, however, our democratic epigone exalts equality over freedom. Indeed, so far is it removed from the aristocratic tradition that democracy today is steeped in egalitarianism, an ideology that subordinates all values to equality. Strange as it may seem, this egalitarianism has made Israel’s ruling elites brainless vis-à-vis Arabs and heartless vis-à-vis Jews!
To clarify what is at stake here, let us distinguish between two kinds of democracy, one secular, the other Jewish. As everyone knows, freedom and equality are the two basic principles of democracy. However, in secular democracy, freedom and equality are derived from the abstract and pedestrian concept of humanism. This is not the case of Jewish democracy, where freedom and equality are derived from the concept of man’s creation in the image of God. This concept endows freedom and equality with ethical and rational constraints absent from secular (and decaying) democracy.
It should also be emphasized that the logic of man’s creation in the image of God places freedom above equality in the hierarchy of values, because it is precisely freedom or creativity and not equality that distinguishes the human from the subhuman. However, freedom-cum-creativity makes possible an elevating equality rather than a leveling equality, and this is why Jewish freedom is linked to Justice—to an aristocratic justice. And that’s why a Jewish democracy would be a universal aristocracy!
Obviously, Israel is very far removed from being a Jewish democracy. Indeed, despite Israel’s periodic, multi-party elections, a candid analysis of its political and judicial institutions reveals that Israel does not even qualify as a conventional democracy! Nevertheless, and as already indicated, the mentality of Israel’s political, judicial, and intellectual elites is thoroughly egalitarian, and this alone makes it virtually impossible to speak of the justice of Israel’s cause vis-à-vis the Arabs. Hence the policy of “territory for peace,” the policy of “disengagement,” and now the policy of “convergence”—all brainless and heartless lies.
