The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, December 8, 2008.

Virtually everyone knows by now that something is terribly wrong with Israel’s prime minister. Even President George W. Bush suspects that Ehud Olmert’s eagerness to yield the strategically vital Golan Heights to Syria is not rational. Many people say that Olmert’s failure to resign after the Winograd Commission Report of his incompetence during the Second Lebanon War marks him as shameless—more so after repeated police investigations of his unethical and perhaps illegal financial transactions.

The truth is, and as I shall soon illustrate, Ehud Olmert is suffering from a mental disorder. If the Knesset, as a whole, was not itself infected by the same mental disorder, Olmert would have been forced out office two years ago. I call this mental disorder “demophrenia,” and I see its symptoms across Israel’s political spectrum.

Demophrenia is a form of schizophrenia manifested especially in democratic societies where moral relativism permeates academia and therefore the behavior of politicians who, after all, are college and university graduates. However, as the World Health Organization points out, schizophrenics, despite their vulnerabilities, are in the full sense responsive social beings like the rest of us. Put simply, schizophrenics or demophrenics are subject to one or another delusion, by which I mean a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.

Various researchers distinguish between positive- and negative-symptom schizophrenia. (more…)

Religious pluralism has become the banner of Reform and Conservative Jews. These Jews have joined forces with secularists in Israel who are trying to diminish if not nullify the political power of the Orthodox.

This is not simply a sectarian or partisan conflict. For pluralism, properly understood, is a philosophical doctrine that denies objective truth or standards by which to determine whether the values or way of life of one individual, group, or nation is intrinsically preferable to that of another.

Religious pluralism therefore undermines belief in the Sinai Covenant, and this has profound consequences for Israel’s ability to persevere in the Islamic Middle East.

Pluralism, as defined above, conforms to multiculturalism, the secular religion of post-Christian Europe. In fact, multiculturalism is eroding the ethnic heritage of various European countries, in danger of succumbing to Arab culture or Islamic imperialism. (more…)

What territory should we be thinking about? Answer, the Land of Israel in which Jews have lived since the time of Abraham, the teacher of ethical monotheism, hence the true founder of Western civilization.

However, let us only consider the territory west of the River Jordan excluding Gaza, now controlled by the enemies of Western civilization.

What is meant by “occupied” territory? Answer, territory controlled by a foreign force.

What is meant by a “foreign force”? Answer, an illegitimate government, in this case the government of Israel.

What is an “illegitimate government”? Answer, a government committed to the surrender of Jewish land—land for which myriads of Jews have yearned for, fought for, and died for.

To whom is this land being surrendered? Answer, to the implacable enemies of the Jewish people and of Western civilization—people animated by the Ethos of Jihad articulated in the Quran and the Hadith, i.e., the oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of Muhammad. (more…)

by Paul Eidelberg and Eleonora Shifrin

I. A Pogrom in Hebron

According to a report by Dr. Aryeh Itzhaki, Woman-in-Green chairlady Nadia Matar has been seriously wounded in the clashes between border police special forces and defenders of “Shalom House” in Hebron.

Since the moment the soldiers broke into the building, it became apparent that they had received orders to “neutralize” Nadia Matar and Daniela Weiss, the two heroic female leaders of the resistance movement, who were sitting together at the moment. Nadia, who is younger, tried to shield Daniela with her own body and thus received the first and most severe blow.

Witnesses testify that Nadia, mother of six, was severely beaten with clubs all over her body by a group of border police.

She has been evacuated to Shaarei Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem where she is undergoing examinations for a suspected spinal trauma.

It has also been reported that the operation against the “Shalom House” in Hebron—a house of which Jews have verified legal title—was executed by mercenaries, i.e., policemen who were specially recruited into police force and trained to act against the Jewish population. (more…)

U.S. Admiral Bull Halsey, a rational and responsible man, said, “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.” Rationality and responsibility are qualities quite foreign to those who shape Israel’s policy toward its enemy, the Palestinian Authority. Their policy is “Hit softly, hit slowly, and hit seldom.”

In Hebrew this policy is called “havlaga”—self-restraint. This policy is motivated by fear of world opinion, perhaps also by the desire to display Israel’s moral superiority vis-à-vis the cruelty of her Arab enemies. It is an utterly inane and immoral policy.

Havlaga prolongs the war. It therefore increases the number of Jewish as well as Arab casualties. But let me focus on the character of the government that pursues this policy of havlaga—so sickeningly obvious in its failure to retaliate against the constant bombing of Sderot by the Arabs in Gaza,

This craven policy reveals the government’s lack of heartfelt concern for the lives of Jews. Paradoxical as it may seem, this government policy of havlaga undermines the sanctity of human life. It encourages the enemy and increases Arab—indeed, the world’s—contempt for Israel. Havlaga is a vile policy, and its proponents must be deemed bungled or base human beings. (more…)

Part I. Analysis

The best analysis I have read of America’s foreign policy failings since the unfinished Persian Gulf War of 1991 will be found in the writings of Ralph Peters, a retired American army Intelligence officer who worked and studied in dozens of countries as well as in the U.S. Executive office.

If there is a single power the U.S. underestimates it is the power of collective hatred, meaning the hatred that animates the Arab-Islamic world. This failing applies to Israel.

Like their American counterparts, Israel’s ruling elites do not “understand the delicious appeal of hatred.” They will not face the fact that man is a killer. They have learned nothing from the genocidal wars and wholesale massacres of the twentieth century, not merely in Nazi Germany, but also in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Iraq, Sudan—to name only a few.

There is at least a minority of human beings who enjoy killing. That minority may be small, says Peters, but it does not take many enthusiastic killers to trigger a genocidal war. The Arab Palestinian Authority consists of such killers. Indeed, they have educated a generation of Arab children to become killers. (more…)

In 1917, the British government promulgated the Balfour Declaration, which recognized that “Palestine,” on both sides of the Jordan River, belongs exclusively to the Jewish people. The members of that government must have been far out “rightists.” Indeed, they make today’s Israeli rightists appear as “leftists,” if only because these Israelis would be satisfied if Jews controlled only the territory west of the River Jordan.

The Balfour Declaration was approved by America’s religious President Woodrow Wilson, another rightist. And if this were not enough to sanctify Jewish possession of the Land of Israel, the 52 nations comprising the League of Nations unanimously acknowledged the rightness of the Balfour Declaration. Right was right; left was wrong.

Incidentally, the Balfour Declaration makes no explicit reference to Arabs. It does affirm, however, “that nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights existing in the non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” and therefore denies, by implication, that those non-Jewish communities have any political let alone national rights (my emphasis). The reason is simple enough. It was universally acknowledged that only the Jews had a just and legitimate claim to this land. This was the position of right honorable men.

Times have changed. Today, if a Jew affirms that only the Jews have a just claim to the land called Palestine, he is a right-winger. (more…)

Judea and Samaria activist Yechiel Leiter, a possible candidate on the Likud Party list in the February elections, is promoting a plan that calls for immediate steps that will lead to the annexation of 50% of Judea and Samaria.

Since Leiter has served as an adviser to Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s reasonable to assume that his proposed plan expresses Netanyahu’s position. If so, this plan corresponds to Netanyahu’s policy of “reciprocity” in dealing with the Palestinian Authority.

What is more significant, however, is that Leiter’s plan—he’s religious—may be a political consequence of Netanyahu’s secular mentality, manifested in a statement he made before a joint session of the United States Congress shortly after becoming Israel’s Prime Minister in May 1996. There he baldly denied any “clash of civilizations” between Israel and her Arab-Islamic neighbors.

This denial reflects a widespread inability in the secular democratic world to acknowledge the true nature of Islam. By the “true nature of Islam” I mean the demonstrable fact that Islam is, in the words of Bat Ye’or, a “culture of hate”— (more…)

Edited transcript of he Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, December 1, 2008.

(Dedicated to the Courageous Rabbis to which this Essay does not Apply).

Why is Israel retreating toward its 1949 armistice lines? Why is it undoing the miracle of the Six-Day War of June 1967?

One reason is the non-Torah orientation of Israeli prime ministers. The trouble with this answer is that in June 1967, a national unity government, which included the National Religious Party, unanimously agreed to relinquish the Temple Mount to the Muslim authority. This is not all.

The ultra-orthodox Shas party, by joining the Rabin-led coalition government after the 1992 elections, enabled that government to initiate the catastrophic Oslo Agreement of 1993. This agreement has undermined Israel’s retention of Judea and Samaria. Similarly, the ultra-orthodox United Torah Judaism party, by joining the Sharon-led coalition government in 2004, enabled that government in 2005 to implement Israel’s “disengagement” or retreat from Gaza, hence to expel 8,000 Jews from their homes, a crime that has no name.

These are wrenching facts. They make us wonder about religious parties and their rabbinical leaders. Is there something inherently wrong with religious parties participating in the formation of secular-led governments? (more…)

1.  America is threatened by two enemies: one internal, the other external. America needs a non-governmental organization consisting of the finest minds to formulate and implement a comprehensive strategy to overcome these two enemies.

2.  The internal enemy is the university-bred doctrine of moral relativism also known as multiculturalism. Relativism is demoralizing the American people; it is eroding their heritage, their sense of national pride and purpose. Relativism permeates every level of American education. It infects the news and entertainment media. It influences all three branches of American Government. It therefore corrupts the opinion-makers and policy-makers of the United States. (This same doctrine has emasculated England and Europe.)

3.  America’s external enemy is Islamic imperialism. This enemy has two power centers: Iran and Saudi Arabia, the former involves Shi’ite Islam, the latter Sunni Islam. These two countries control most of the oil flowing through the Persian Gulf—the energy sources on which the American and the world economy largely depends. Petrodollars have built thousands of mosques in the United States and Europe. These mosques propagate ideas and values subversive of civilization: respect for human life and individual freedom as well as humane desire to resolve differences through speech and moral suasion as opposed to force and violence.

4.  We cannot expect the Government of the United States to initiate and pursue the policies required to overcome its internal and external enemies, if only because the Government has been corrupted by moral relativism. (more…)