The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

The Annapolis speeches of President Bush, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were of roughly equal length. They reminded the present writer of the congratulatory toasts of President Bill Clinton, King Hussein, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the White House after the signing of the October 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty. The frequency of Mr. Rabin’s use of “I” was rather astonishing, compared to its relatively modest use by Clinton and King Hussein.

Regarding the speeches at Annapolis: Mr. Bush used the first person singular (“I”, “me”, and “my”) no less than 7 times. Mr. Abbas used the first person singular no less than 20 times. Mr. Olmert used the first person singular no less than 39 times! (more…)

Overwhelmed by the ineptitude, cowardice, and even treachery of various Israeli governments, many Jews here and abroad despair of Israel’s future. Hardly a week passes when one or more of our brothers and sisters are not murdered by Arabs, while a devious government lies about peace and is preoccupied without how to transfer more Jewish land to the children of Ishmael—the pere adam. What is the pere adam?

Some commentators have translated pere adam as “a beast in the form of a man.” Genesis 16:12 says of Ishmael: “His hand shall be against everyone, and everyone’s hand shall be against him.” Midrash Rabbah (Genesis 45:9) refers to pere adam as “a savage among men in its literal sense, for whereas all others plunder wealth, he plunders lives.” (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, November 26, 2007.

1. Since the Camp David Summit of 1978, Israel has had no less than ten governments led either by the Likud, Labor, or Kadima. Whether “Zionist” or “post-Zionist,” “rightwing” or “leftwing,” all have pursued the same policy of “territory for peace.” All have contributed to the physical truncation and spiritual emasculation of Israel—and with the collaboration of the religious parties.

2. It were as if the same government had been in power for almost 30 years! Yet certain Knesset members—with the American presidency in mind—tell us: “How can we endure four years of Olmert?” This ad hominem argument betrays unforgivable ignorance about Israeli government as well as about American government. On the territorial issue, Israel has had 30 years of “Olmert.” (more…)

1) Israel started on the road to Annapolis ten days after the Six-Day War, when a government of national unity offered to give the land Israel regained in that war to the Arabs. That same government allowed the Wakf (the Supreme Muslim Council) to retain control of the Temple Mount.

2) Oslo was initiated by Peres, not by Clinton. In 1978, Peres wrote Tomorrow is Now, in which he warned that a Palestinian state would threaten Israel’s existence. Ten years later he and MK Yossi Beilin arranged clandestine and illegal meetings with the PLO. The motive was not “Arab demographics” but “Jewish demographics.” Peres saw that Labor’s electoral base was shrinking, that religious Jews would eventually gain political ascendancy. To stop this process the Rabin-Peres government that came into power after the June 1992 elections eliminated the Jewish content from the public school curriculum. But it was also necessary to destroy the Jewish people’s historic memory, which was rooted in the prophetic teachings about Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount. Hence “territory for peace.” (more…)

“I’m turning in my uniform to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and so are my buddies!”

Why? I asked.

“Look we fight, we fight against Fatah and Hamas other Arab terrorists, right? We risk our lives, some of us are wounded, some of my friends have been killed by these terrorists, and Barak and Olmert agree to releasing 435 of these bastards as a good will gesture to their terrorist leaders, like Mahmoud Abbas, Why the hell should I fight and risk my life when these politicians are more concerned about their seats and pleasing others than protecting us?”

But if everyone took your attitude, every soldier would lay down his arms and Israel would be slaughtered. Jewish mothers and fathers, wives and children, would be butchered and raped just as they were in Hebron in 1929. (more…)

by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
November 22, 2007

What’s wrong with American liberalism? What happened to the self-assured, optimistic, and practical Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy? Why has Joe Lieberman, their closest contemporary incarnation, been run out of the party? How did anti-Americanism infect schools, the media, and Hollywood? And whence comes the liberal rage that conservatives like Ann Coulter, Jeff Jacoby, Michelle Malkin, and the Media Research Center have extensively documented?

In a tour de force, James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute offers an historical explanation both novel and convincing. His book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism (Encounter), traces liberalism’s slide into anti-Americanism back to the seemingly minor fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was neither a segregationist nor a cold warrior but a communist.

Here’s what Piereson argues: (more…)

Part I

I was recently invited by Pastor James Vineyard to speak to an audience including a group of American Baptist ministers in Jerusalem. This is what I said.

We meet here in dread of the forthcoming Annapolis Conference. We fear that the government of Israel may completely undo the miracle of the Six Day War. We fear that this government may yield the Temple Mount to our enemies. We fear that rewarding terrorists with the Temple Mount will accelerate the onward march of Islamic imperialism now threatening humanity.

Our Jewish Sages have said that the Temple Mount is of greater significance to the Gentile world than it is to Israel. Listen to the voice of Israel, to disparaged Pharisees regarding the sacrifices of seventy calves during the eight days of Sukkot, and note their humanitarianism. (more…)

The only thing truly reliable about Mahmoud Abbas is his boundless mendacity.

But what does this tell us about Ehud Olmert?

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, November 12, 2007.

In June 2002, President Bush announced a fundamental change in US Mideast foreign policy. Instead of maintaining the status quo or stability, which would perpetuate Arab autocracies, the US would promote democracy or regime change in the Arab world.

It seems that Mr. Bush or his advisors had a superficial view of the prerequisites of democracy—as if little more was needed than democratic elections and a constitution delineating the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Lacking was an understanding of the ethos required for a constitutional democracy—an ethos utterly foreign to the Arab world.

I discuss this ethos in my booklet “The Myth of Israeli Democracy.” In theory, constitutional democ­racy, as conceived in 18th century America, presupposes a fairly well educated community whose structure of government is rooted in ethical principles. (more…)

Political journalism is not politically neutral or “value-free.” This may also be said of political science, pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding. The reason is this:

The reporting of news, like academic discourse on politics, inevitably involves criteria of importance: some things are intrinsically more important than others. But criteria of importance are not politically neutral.

Moreover, the criteria employed by any political commentator depend on his intellectual breadth and depth. Some journalists, like some political scientists, have more experience and wisdom than others. They are not value-free, which is not to say that political commentary is a species of autobiography.

Confronting the journalist is a chaos of news data. What he selects for emphasis depends on objective as well subjective factors. (more…)

When a prime minister persists in pursuing the policy of “land for peace,” a policy that repeatedly results in destructive consequences, what interpretations can be made of this prime minister?

• (1)  He’s a fool.

• (2)  He’s insane (perhaps an egomaniac).

• (3)  He’s a coward intimidated and controlled by a foreign power.

• (4)  He’s a scoundrel who, unknown to the public, derives financial rewards for this policy.

• (5)  He’s a Machiavellian who deliberately employs the anti-Jewish policy of land for peace to transform the national identity of his country. (more…)

November 7, 2007

The United Coalition for Jerusalem

Emergency Campaign to Save Israel!

“If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem”

By capitulating to foreign interests and to the tiny but powerful anti-Zionist Left in Israel, the government is shattering the social contract that is the source of its right to govern. By violating the foundational principles and norms of the Jewish State, this government has delegitimized itself.

At the “Munich Conference” in Annapolis, the prime minister intends:

• To establish an Arab terrorist state to be called Palestine;
• To divide Jerusalem and give the Temple Mount to the Muslims; (more…)

Introduction

Sudan, the largest African and Arab country by area, derives its name from the Arabic Bilad-al-sudan, literally “country of the blacks.”

Sudan has been dominated by chronic, exceptionally cruel warfare that has starkly divided the country on racial, religious, and regional grounds; displaced an estimated four million people (of a total estimated population of thirty-two million); and killed an estimated two million people.

Darfur, conspicuous in the news, has been the scene of tribal war between the predominantly black Africans of Muslim beliefs and Muslim Janjaweed Arabs. The Darfur conflict has been termed a “genocide” and acknowledged as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. There have been reports that the Muslim Janjaweed tribes have been launching raids, bombings, and attacks on villages, killing civilians based on ethnicity, raping women, stealing land, goods, and herds of livestock. So far, over 2.5 million civilians have been displaced and the death toll is variously estimated at 200,000 to 400,000 killed.

Churchill’s Message of 1899 (more…)

To begin to understand why so many Arabs don’t vote in Israeli elections, consider this passage from G. E. Von Grunebaum’s Modern Islam (1962):

“It is essential to realize that Muslim civilization is a cultural entity that does not share our [Western] primary aspirations. It is not vitally interested in analytical self-understanding, and it is even less interested in the structural study of other cultures, either as an end in itself or as a means of toward clearer understanding of its own character and history.”

Consistent therewith, Bernard Lewis, in his essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage” (1990), not only portrays Islam’s profound hatred of the West, but its inordinate pride on the one hand, and utter contempt for Western civilization on the other. Convinced of its possession of absolute truth, Islam deems it of no value to study cultures steeped in error. Hence it discourages among the faithful any incentive to understand other cultures from the latter’s own point of view. (more…)

If a writer offers a Freudian analysis of the Israel’s ruling elites, it does not follow that he regards their libido as the one and only cause of their political behavior.

Similarly, if he presents a Machiavellian interpretation of Israel’s policy of land for peace, it does not logically follow that Israel’s ruling elites are simply animated by a struggle for power.

It’s reasonable to assume, however, that the lust for power more than for sex animates most politicians. Moreover, in this era age of reductionism, where the higher—say morality—is explained in terms of the lower—the passions—it’s all the more reasonable to surmise that egoism more than altruism is the primary motive of politicians. (more…)

A new theory has surfaced to explain why Israel’s ruling elites have relentlessly pursued the policy of land for peace with the Palestinian Authority despite the PA’s incessant, murderous attacks on Jewish women, men, and children. The new theory is called the “Battered Person Syndrome” (BPS).

BPS refers to any person who, because of constant and severe domestic violence usually involving physical abuse by a partner, becomes depressed and unable to take any independent action that would allow him or her to escape the abuse. The condition explains why abused people often do not fight their abuser, or change the abusive situation. (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, November 5, 2007. This Report is an abbreviation of a 24-page policy paper, “The Fixation of Israel’s Elites on Land for Peace: Five Interpretations,” scheduled for publication by a major journal in December.

Part I

People everywhere are bewildered by Israeli politics. They cannot fathom the motives of Israel’s ruling elites, their addiction to the futile and fatal policy of territory for peace. What really motivates these politicians?

Some pundits say they are stupid or mad or suffer from a Jewish “death wish.” Others say that Israel’s dependency on U.S military aid compels Israeli prime ministers to genuflect to Washington. Let me offer an alternative explanation.

When I made aliya in 1976, I was amused to hear people say that the paramount concern of Israeli politicians is their “seats.” (more…)

Several years ago, the heads of Modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism spoke of the need for Jewish unity. Lack of Jewish unity is especially obvious and needed in Israel.

Some critics asked: “Yes, we need Jewish unity, but for what national purpose? And what hinders Jewish unity in Israel?” Here I limit myself to the second question.

Perhaps it will be helpful to substitute for unity “friendship,” and inquire into what militates against friendship in Israel. (more…)

Eminent persons across political spectrum in Israel—judges, academics, and lawyers—have said that Israel’s Supreme Court, especially under its former President Aharon Barak, has exceeded its prescribed powers and has handed down many decisions that violate basic principles of democracy, to say nothing of Zionism and Judaism.

Since the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee is presently engaged in drafting a constitution for the State of Israel, it behooves the members of this Committee to curb the judicial imperialism of the Supreme Court. The mode of appointing the judges of the Court should be crafted in such a way as to deter the Court from arrogating to itself powers or functions which, as a matter of principle and of prudence, rightfully belong to the Legislative and Executive branches of government. (more…)

PEOPLE OF ISRAEL—YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE!

Whereas Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is going to Annapolis, reportedly willing to declare the Government’s recognition of an armed Palestinian state;

Whereas Basic Law: The Government empowers the Government to conclude agreements with foreign entities without Knesset approval;

Whereas the opposition parties in the Knesset are incapable of toppling the Government by a vote of no confidence; (more…)