The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

Identifying the enemy is a precondition of fighting and winning any war—and the United States and Israel are at war with the same enemy. Indeed, the strategic issue of the presidential election, the issue that most clearly divides Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, is precisely their different views of the enemy. It may even be said that Obama lacks any serious conception of the enemy!

Perhaps no one has understood the enemy of the United States better than Lee Harris. His book Civilization and Its Enemies is a classic, and unless its insights are internalized by the next President of the United States, Western civilization, now on the slippery slope, may perish.

Harris mentions two kinds of enemies. “First, the enemy is someone whom we have mistreated and oppressed. Second, the enemy is someone who demands to be recognized for his superiority.” The second describes Islam, which regards all “infidels” as sub-human.

If the enemy was simply an oppressed group fighting to have equal recognition of his status vis-à-vis other groups, his enmity could be eliminated or gradually abated by granting him the status he is seeking. (more…)

It requires no great wisdom to enumerate the axiomatic requirements of a Jewish national strategy. Only needed is candor and courage, without which no Jewish leadership movement is worthy of moral and financial support. The axiomatic requirements of a Jewish national strategy are simply these:

• Public affirmation that Israel is the State of the Jews.

• Public affirmation that a Jewish State must be based on Jewish principles and values.

• Public affirmation that the primary source of Jewish principles and values is the Torah.

• Public affirmation that only Jews, whether religious or not, can formulate a Jewish national strategy. (more…)

A. Introduction

1. Israel is confronted by implacable foes. This is not well understood or acknowledged by many who profess support for Israel, most importantly, the President of the United States. By advocating a Palestinian state, Mr. Bush reveals that he—like countless others, including Jews—does not understand the nature of Islam, He foolishly calls Islam “a religion of peace,” even though it is obviously a religion of war, a religion whose believers have slaughtered some 270 million people since Muhammad. War or jihad has been the driving force of Islam for fourteen centuries. Islam is inherently implacable. This makes Islam an enemy of civilization as brilliantly articulated in Lee Harris, Civilization and its Enemies (2004).

2. As an implacable foe, Islam is animated by a hatred that can only be described as demonic—a hatred that cannot be assuaged, a hatred rooted in satanic evil. It is this hatred that impels Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to vow, again and again, to wipe Israel off the map. Such, however, is the moral decline of Western civilization, that the supposedly religious President of the United States allows this despot to enter the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave to address the United Nations.

3. Note the irony: the religious toleration for the most intolerant of religions in a country that excludes the Ten Commandments as well as the Menorah from the public sphere. (more…)

On behalf of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, we extend to all our members and supporters, indeed, to all lovers of Israel, greetings and best wishes for a Healthy and Happy New Year. We have reason to believe that the New Year will witness the beginning of serious structural changes in Israel’s System of Governance for which our Foundation has worked so long and so hard. Indeed, we are collaborating with certain politically influential professors in designing, for Israel, a unique presidential system of government, one that should appeal to various party leaders. So, on this positive and promising note, we want to thank all our members and supporters for making the Foundation’s progress possible.

Shana Tova!

Edited Transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, September 22, 2008.

“Praiseworthy is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked, and stood not in the path of sinners, and sat not in the sessions of scorners.” Psalms 1:1

Israel’s ruling elites suffer from a pathology clearly manifested in the pages of Exodus describing the behavior of the Egyptian Pharaoh.

Despite one devastating plague after another, the Egyptian despot stubbornly refused to let the Jews go. After the seventh plague, God hardened his obstinate heart to enable him to endure further attacks. Since he was responsible for so much evil, he was deprived of the freedom to repent and desist from his obviously ruinous policy. Clearly, the Pharaoh was driven by egomania, but this egomania was reinforced by God. I call this egomania the Pharoic syndrome.

The Pharoic syndrome afflicts Israel’s political elites. During the past 15 years, six successive Israeli prime ministers—Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert—mindless of the enormity of evil, have tried to make peace with the PLO, an organization whose record of terrorism and murder dates back to its formation in 1964. These politicians were so morally obtuse that they regarded the PLO’s genocidal objective, proclaimed in its Charter, as negotiable. (more…)

On September 17, Kadima, the ruling party of Ehud Olmert’s coalition government, held an election to determine who would replace him as Israel’s Prime Minister. The election was won by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, portrayed in the media as “Mrs. Clean.” The previous day, Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, wrote: “Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni may not be a crook, but she is a fraud … just one fraudulent election away from becoming our next prime minister.” [View article.]

As we shall see, however, Livni is not the mother of all frauds—merely one of its many children.

Glick sees that “unlike all the other party primaries that have been held over the years, the Kadima primary is designed not as a preparatory step ahead of general elections to the Knesset. Rather, it is intended to replace general elections.”

Having won that primary, Livni will have 42 days to put together a ruling coalition. Failure to do so would mean a new general election in early 2009, a year and a half ahead of schedule. Olmert, who is a crook as well as a fraud, will remain as a caretaker leader until a new coalition is approved by the Knesset. (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, September 15, 2008.

If Israel has a true friend, look not for him in Washington. Last week, it was reported that the Bush administration will not cooperate with Israel should it decide to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Taken at face value, this will hinder Israel in facing off alone against the much larger Islamic Republic which is equipped with some of the latest military technology from Russia.

True, the U.S. has agreed to sell Israel 1,000 “bunker-buster” bombs and to bolster Israel’s missile defense system. But this is hardly reassuring if Israel is not allowed to refuel its military planes in Iraq, or use Iraqi airspace for a flyover on the way to Iran. Even if Israeli jets were to reach Iran, they might not be able to carry enough bombs to do the job.

If the Bush administration has in effect vetoed an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, one may conclude that, from an objective point of view, it is not strategically concerned about Israel’s survival. Consistent with this unpleasant conclusion, not only is George W. Bush the first president that openly advocated a Palestinian state, but he has offered the Palestinian authority a U.S. guarantee of statehood without conditions—for starters, demilitarization. Surely Mr. Bush knows that a militarized Arab state occupying the Judean and Samarian highlands would make Israel indefensible. Surely he knows, as MK Yuval Steinitz knows and has warned, a Palestinian state would “immediately become an outpost for Iran.” (more…)

Two cheers for Nathan D. Wirtschafter, a member of the Likud, whose article in The Jerusalem Post (September 11, 2008), “Direct elections begin with the Likud primary” comes close to advocating some of the institutional reform proposals of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy and of the Yamin Israel Party.

Mr. Wirtschafter calls for “regional elections with single-member districts, a professional cabinet and a new judicial selection system … ”

To propose a professional cabinet is to propose, in effect, separation between the executive and legislative branches of government. The proposed cabinet would then no longer consist of the leaders of rival political parties (one of the root causes of Israel’s malaise). Mr. Wirtschafter could have clarified matters by simply and explicitly calling for a presidential system of government.

Unfortunately, his party leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, in an interview with the Russian Chanel-7, rejected district elections as well as a presidential system of government—and on the most frivolous grounds. As if he never heard of the U.S. House of Representatives and its 435 districts but only two political parties, Netanyahu said that district elections in Israeli would produce sixty political parties! (more…)

Overwhelmed by the treachery of the Olmert government, as well as by the impotence of the opposition parties, many Jews here and abroad despair of Israel’s future. They are dismayed by a prime minister allied with Israel’s enemies, a prime minister who lies about peace and plans to surrender Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish people, to the descendants of Ishmael.

In the midst of despair, Jews look for encouragement. Consider, first, the words of a Gentile written in the mid-nineteenth century, hence long before the Nazi Holocaust:

There is a mysterious power which rules the destiny of humanity. Once the hand of the Infinite Power has signed the decree of a nation to be banished forever from the face of the earth, the fate of that nation is irrevocable. But when we see a nation, torn from its cradle in its early childhood, and having tasted all the bitterness of exile is brought back to its land, only to be tossed again into the wide world; and that nation, during the eighteen centuries of its wandering has displayed such remarkable powers of endurance, suffer age-long martyrdom without extinguishing in its heart the fire of patriotism, then we must admit that we are standing before an infinite mystery, unparalleled in the history of humanity. (more…)

Three months from now, American citizens will be voting for the next President of the United States. They will be faced by the choice of voting for Senator John McCain or for Senator Barack Obama. This may well be the most momentous decision of their lives, for in the next few years Iran, if not prevented, will have nuclear weapons. With such weapons and the range of its current launching systems, Iran will dominate not only the Middle East and its enormous oil reserves, but also pacifist Europe on which the economy and therefore the way of life and even the survival of the United States ultimately depend.

So what should be going through the minds of Americans before they vote for Senator McCain or for Senator Obama?

To begin with, let us consider how one of America’s Founding fathers, James Wilson, thought about the general subject of voting.

James Wilson of Pennsylvania was one of six men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. His contribution to the deliberations of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 was second only to that of James Madison. He was also the principal draftsman of Pennsylvania’s own constitution of 1790. (more…)

For thirty years—ever since the September 1978 Camp David Accords—not a day passes that warnings are not issued or published by Zionist-oriented individuals in Israel and in America that a Palestinian state would doom Israel to oblivion.

The present writer personally warned Defense Minister Shimon Peres of this danger in September 1976, the month after making aliya. Indeed, I warned Prime Minister Menachem Begin the day before he left for Camp David of Anwar Sadat’s peace-and war-strategy. In vain.

Consider, therefore, the enormous time and energy, the millions of dollars, the countless demonstrations, the newspaper ads and articles, the policy papers, the books, the public lectures, the videos, that have been devoted to stopping the government’s policy of retreating from Jewish land, the policy of returning to Israel’s indefensible 1949 armistice lines or Auschwitz borders.

Thirty and more years of warnings issued by prominent individuals and organizations, and yet Israel is closer than ever to the abyss. The use of all these material and human resources by so many individuals and groups have had no discernible influence on Israeli governments regardless of which party of party leader has headed these governments.

I therefore ask: Suppose these individuals and groups had devoted a significant amount of the time and energy and resources mentioned above to an organized effort to change Israel’s system of governance. (more…)

“Diogenes in Israel” is the title of a report I made on Israel National Radio on September 8, 2008. In that report I set forth compelling evidence confirming the public’s assessment that 95 percent, hence 104 of the Knesset’s 120 members, are not honest. In fact, the evidence indicates that the public was being generous in its judgment!

If we consider the various parties which propped up the Sharon government and which are therefore complicit in the crime of disengagement, there is hardly a single honest MK, even if he or she subsequently voted against disengagement. (See “Diogenes in Israel” for further clarification.)

The day after “Diogenes in Israel” first appeared, The Jerusalem Post published an article entitled “Who’s in charge here?” (September 9, 2008.) The author is professor of law Amnon Rubenstein, a former minister of education. He asks:

Who are Israel’s leading personalities? The Marker, an economic supplement of Haaretz last Tuesday selected the 10 most influential. The list begins with the all-powerful attorney-general, continues with a number of officials—the state comptroller, the state attorney, two senior police officers, the president of the supreme court, the governor of the Bank of Israel—and ends with a number of bankers and tycoons. It can be summarized as a who’s who of “wealth and law-enforcement,” as distinct from the much-touted “wealth and government.” (more…)

Brigitte Gabriel, Because They Hate

Reviewed by Paul Eidelberg

Those who admired the courage and wisdom of Oriana Fallaci, will be enchanted by Brigitte Gabriel, who risks her life by exposing the hateful nature of Islam. One can only compare Gabriel’s candor with that of Robert Spencer in The Truth About Muhammad: The Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion (2006).

Brigitte Gabriel, who now lives and works as a writer in the United States, is a Lebanese-born Maronite Christian. As a child and as a teenager, she lived through the trauma of Lebanon’s civil war and the PLO’s brutal occupation of southern region from which the Palestinians launched terrorist attacks on Israel.

Like all Christians and Muslims in Lebanon, she had been immersed in a constant steam of Jew-hatred and anti-Israel propaganda. Then, in 1982, Brigitte Gabriel underwent a psychological metamorphosis as a result of Israel’s expulsion of the PLO from her country. What happened was this: Brigitte’s mother had been wounded. Unable to get help in a local hospital, Brigitte asked an Israeli for help. An Israeli ambulance was commandeered and took Brigitte and her mother to an Israeli hospital in Safed. It was her first trip to Israel.

When she arrived at the hospital, she was amazed: (more…)

Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It

Reviewed by Paul Eidelberg

Internationally renowned journalist Mark Steyn is famous for his abrasive yet delightful wit. One wonders, however, how a book subtitled The End of the World as We Know It   can make delightful reading. Perhaps because Steyn’s wit conveys “politically incorrect” truths obscured by timid and shallow pundits.

Like Oriana Fallaci, Steyn not only exposes Islamic imperialism, but also the moral confusion or cowardice of western elites—think of George bush and Barack Obama—who cuddle up to Islam or obscure its bellicose and hateful nature. Steyn quotes Bernard Lewis, the dean of Islamic scholars:

“In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues…. It is different today. We don’t know who we are. We don’t know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy.”

America Alone is an urgently needed wake up call. Steyn warns America about what is happening to its NATO allies:    (1) An aging and declining European population has necessitated the importation of foreign workers, primarily Muslim Arabs from North Africa.    (2) Since these Muslims refuse to integrate, they constitute a hostile and prolific population that threatens to inundate the Continent. (more…)

Diogenes, the Greek philosopher, was exiled from his native city of Sinope and moved to Athens, where he is said to have walked through the streets carrying a lantern in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man, but unable to find one. I wonder if he would find any in Israel’s Knesset?

According to The 2008 Israeli Democracy Index, 95 percent of the public in Israel deem members of the Knesset dishonest. If this assessment of the Knesset is correct, one may wonder why the remaining 5 percent stay in that den of iniquity.

If 95 percent of the Knesset’s 120 members are not honest, that leaves only six honest MKs! Let’s help Diogenes find an honest MK.

The Olmert coalition government is rightly deemed the most corrupt government in Israel’s history. That puts to shame 29 MKs from Kadima; 19 from Labor-Meimad; 12 from Shas; 7 from (the original) Gil Pensioners—a total of 67 MKs to which we may add another 5 from Meretz-Yachad, which said it will serve as a “safety net” for the Kadima government. We thus have 72 unsavory Knesset members. Pray, continue, says Diogenes. (more…)

Citing Jack Cashill, “The Mansourian Candidate,” Middle East analyst Emanuel A. Winston discusses various sponsors and mentors who seem to have been behind Barack Obama’s meteoric rise to public prominence and who may have influenced his political orientation.

Among those mentioned are the anti-American author Khalid al-Mansour, the principle adviser of Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal; the notorious Columbia University Professor Edward Said, once a member of the PLO; and Syrian-born Tony Rezko, a Chicago politician who became executive director of the Muhammad Ali Foundation to spread Islam.

To these one must add Bill Ayers, founder and theoretician of the Weatherman Underground terrorist organization (1969-1976), now a professor. Then there is the racist and revolutionary ideology/theology of Obama’s most publicized mentor the Rev. “God-damn-America” Jeremiah Wright. Obama attended Wright’s church for twenty years. This is the same Wright who unabashedly expressed his admiration for the Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan, a purveyor of Islam.

And so, as Winston rightly concludes, America is poised to elect a man to the presidency whose known mentors and sponsors put a lie to just about everything Obama has said on the campaign trail. (more…)

I never cease to be amazed and humbled by the number of pundits who, without any classified information, confidently prognosticate on global affairs, especially on the United States and Israel. So what is a political scientist like me to say when asked whether the U.S. or Israel is going to bomb Iran to prevent its development of nuclear weapons?

Almost any person who takes 9/11 seriously and has heard about Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s boast of a world without America and Israel, should be able to see that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a mortal threat to Western civilization. It requires no political scientist to see that a nuclear Iran would control the vast oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and cow an already cowed Europe. This, he would see, would be enough to devastate the American economy and bring the last bastion of freedom and human dignity to a miserable end. As for Israel, one nuclear strike would doom it to oblivion. Exit Judaism as well as Christianity.

Hence, I am asked: “Will Israel or the United States launch a preemptive attack on Iran, the epicenter of Islamic imperialism—horror of horrors that makes the imperialism of Nazi Germany appear as a minor affair in world history?” (more…)

On December 22, 1939, the French newspaper l’Epoque reported that Germany’s agents of influence in France were engaged in a plot to convince Marshal Petain to accept the leadership of a government of national unity that included the most notorious French defeatists and quislings.

The plotters wanted the aged Marshall to play unwittingly the role analogous to that of General Sivory in Czechoslovakia, opening the door to a Hitler in a moment of despondency. (Czechoslovakia, recall, was the victim of Chamberlain’s policy of “territory for peace.”)

It so happens that Georges Mandel, French Minister of Interior and director of counter-espionage, was fully cognizant of Hitler’s ambitions and of how his accomplices in France were plotting the country’s downfall. On the eve of the French Government’s enforced evacuation from Paris, and just prior to its conquest by the Germans on June 14, 1940, Mandel leveled a blistering indictment against France’s political and military leadership as well as its intelligence services: “Worst of all, you didn’t understand the one phenomenon you had to understand in order to save your country. You didn’t understand Hitler. You didn’t understand that he was planning total war. You never stopped to consider that total war is—total. That it really includes everything. You didn’t see what was coming closer and closer. And we who did see were called hysterical.” (more…)

Sarah Palin displays what is most lacking in many people in high office: character. Character is far more fundamental and important than “experience,” because without good character, experience will not enable office-holders to deal with the tough issues confronting our country.

A person of character has moral integrity and courage, personal dignity and humility, a strong sense of justice and devotion to the common good, respect for human life and, above all, a love of God. All this I discern in Governor Sarah Palin’s character—a strong, dynamic, yet humble person.

The Jewish sages regard humbleness as the highest virtue. Indeed, the Torah says Moses was the humblest person on the face of the earth. Humbleness is the only adjective the Torah uses to describe Moses. Why? Because humbleness is a precondition for achieving the highest wisdom. No wonder Gentile as well as Jewish philosophers and statesmen esteem Moses as the greatest law-giver of mankind.

I’m not suggesting that Governor Palin or any living person possesses the wisdom of Moses. (more…)

Hong Kong, or rather the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), has a total area of 422 square miles on which reside some seven million people—roughly the same as Israel’s in the year 2000, when I first published this report.

Hong Kong has a 60-member legislature. The legislature represents 5 Geographical Constituencies and 28 Functional Constituencies. The 5 Geographical Constituencies are represented by 24 members. The 28 Functional Constituencies (e.g., Education, Finance, Medicine, Labor, etc.) are represented by 30 members. (Labor has three representatives). The remaining 6 members of the legislature are the Election Committee.

Over three million registered voters had the right to vote in the Geographical Constituencies. The list voting system is used in the election. A voter can only choose one of the lists printed on the ballot paper (comparable to Israel’s system of list voting).

In contrast, Preferential voting is employed in four Functional Constituencies. (more…)