The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

If you are Jewish and have a stitch of Jewish pride, are you sick and tired of hearing how this or that president, or how this or that presidential candidate, is “good for Israel”?

Has there ever been an American Secretary of State—with the possible exception of Alexander Haig, who was promptly eased out of office—that has been “good for Israel”?

Do you know of a single American politician that emphatically opposes or campaigns against the establishment of a Palestinian state? Does Senator Joseph Lieberman?

Do you realize that all this talk about how this or that American president or politician is “good for Israel” renders Israel all the more pathetic and degrades the Jewish people?

Do you realize that American Zionist organizations that lobby for Israel have had no discernible, positive impact on Israel’s government, that is, have not affected Israel’s suicidal policy of territorial retreat, hence, have not made Israel’s government more sane or more Zionist? (more…)

What justifies the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel?

The Balfour Declaration?

The Mandate of the League of Nations (or San Remo Conference) that affirmed Balfour?

The Holocaust?

The United Nations Resolution of November 1947?

Historical rights? Natural rights? Human rights?

The Arabs say “No” to all of the above, and any good international lawyer or political scientist could make a case for them—which is not to say the Arabs have a better claim than the Jews. (more…)

The terms “Right” and “Left” have been bandied about ever since the French Revolution. Use of these shibboleths to damn individuals or groups or to avoid dealing with the merits of an issue is deeply engrained in the mentality of the modern world. Their use in Israel is especially pernicious, Because Israel is the only country in the world whose very survival is at stake, such labels as “Right” and Left” obscure life and death issues.

For generations “Right” and “Left” have taken the place of the traditional distinction between good and bad. To probe beneath this moral obscurantism in Israel, we must see how the terms “Right” and “Left” relate to Israel’s raison d’être­­ or paramount principle as a Jewish state. Thus, while labeling a party’s position on a basic issue “Right” or “Left,” one must determine whether its position is consistent with Israel’s raison d’être. (more…)

Extracted (apart from the conclusion) from Paul Eidelberg, Demophrenia: Israel and the Malaise of Democracy, 1994.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, post-Zionism did not begin with the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of September 13, 1993. Zionism ceased to activate Israel’s political elites immediately after the 1948-49 War of Independence.

To understand this phenomenon, we must go back even before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and examine the mentality of its ruling elites.

European education profoundly influenced the founders and faculties of Israel’s academic institutions. Historical or cultural relativism has ever flourished in Israel’s secular universities. Martin Buber wrote: “There is no scale of values for the [world-historical] function of peoples. One cannot be ranked above another.” It is in this light that we are to understand why this Hebrew University professor and his colleague, Dr. Judah Magnes (the university’s first president), favored a bi-national Arab-Jewish state in the land of Israel. In 1947, they declared in a joint statement:

We do not favour Palestine as a Jewish country or Palestine as an Arab country, but a bi-national Palestine as the common country of two peoples…. (more…)

An Urgent Message To All Lovers Of Israel

“By the end of 2005, not one Jew will remain in Gaza.”

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

A dreadful feeling is sweeping through Israel—the country is heading toward catastrophe. A Bar-Ilan University study of 6,196 Israelis between the ages of 11 and 15 from a variety of religious and ethnic groups indicates that 40% worry that Israel faces the threat of destruction.

Israel’s ruling elites have committed one deadly blunder after another. Afraid to acknowledge their bungling, they persist in the disastrous policy of “land for peace.” To persist in this policy they resort to deceit, coercion, and even despotic rule. The Sharon Government forcefully expelled 8,000 Jews from Gaza—now a center of world terrorism…. If this were not enough, Kadima, a party that had never competed in an election, gained control of the Government in 2005—something unheard of in any real democracy. Now this party is committed to the expulsion of perhaps as many as 200,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria in order to create a Palestinian state! Only an outright dictatorship can implement this ethnic cleansing of Jews from their heartland. The forced exodus of these Jews, and the resulting missile attacks to which all of Israel will thereafter be exposed, cannot but demoralize the country and lead to its demise. (more…)

Some pundits would have us believe that the three “monotheistic” faiths have an equal claim to the Temple Mount. No impartial observer can deny, however, that the Temple Mount, indeed, of Jerusalem as a whole, is far more central to Judaism than to Christianity and Islam. Besides, the sanctity of the Temple Mount derives from Judaism, not from the two later and derivative religions.

Thus, in I Kings 9:3, Hashem says to Solomon: “I have sanctified this Temple that you have built, to place My Name there forever …” Similarly in II Kings 21:7: “In this Temple and in Jerusalem … I shall place My Name forever.” Finally, in Isaiah 2:3 we read: “Many peoples will go and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the Mountain of Hashem, to the Temple of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways and we will walk in His paths.’ For from Zion will the Torah go forth, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem.”

Appealing to Scripture, however, will not resolve the issue of the Temple Mount. (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, January 21, 2008.

In his visit to Israel, President Bush had the audacity to say, “end the occupation.” He had in mind Judea and Samaria including the Old City of Jerusalem. Unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Olmert, like other Israelis who are “tired of being courageous,” was silent.

Of course, Israel requires more than courage. Leaving aside the self-serving motives of Israel’s secular elites, they are abysmally ignorant. They have no understanding of the grandeur of the Jewish heritage, hence of what should be the character of the so-called Jewish state. They know not how to deal with the Arab Palestinian problem. Many would sacrifice much of the Land of Israel in the belief that this would solve that lethal problem. Mr. Bush is also drowning in ignorance, to say nothing of Saudi oil.

Except for the benighted, including journalists or academics, it should be obvious that neither democratic politics nor political science can deal adequately with these issues. The time has come for an unconventional approach. Let’s begin with a Torah perspective. (more…)

The announcement of the New Jewish Congress, which convened in Jerusalem on November 27, 2007, contained one very meaningful and potentially powerful statement: “The Sovereignty of the Jewish Nation over the Jewish State of Eretz-Israel.”

This statement recalls a policy paper I wrote several years ago entitled: “Must the State of Israel Perish for Israel to Survive?” By the “State” I mean, primarily, its political and judicial institutions: the Knesset, the Cabinet, and, above all the Supreme Court. These institutions must “perish,” meaning, they must be replaced by radically different ones. They must be replaced by institutions that do not fragment the nation into an absurd multiplicity of rival parties, that render the people powerless between elections, and that undermine Jewish national identity. The so-called Jewish State of Israel is an institutional catastrophe, as was known to eminent people in Israel in 1951 after the first two elections.

What was not known, and what is not understood to this day, is that very concept of a “Jewish State” is an oxymoron. (more…)

Here is that famous letter written in 1969!

This “letter” (written by Eliezer Whartman) first appeared as an editorial in the summer of ‘69 in the Times of Israel (long defunct).

Some of the sentences do not fit today’s situation perfectly, but the point of the letter, and its passion is as on the mark as it was over 38 years ago.

Who should read this letter? People—nonJews or Jews—who think that Jerusalem does not belong to the Jewish People, and only to the Jewish People.

And what about Jews who love Jerusalem and want to see it and all of Israel in Jewish hands? This letter is wonderful chizuk. Enjoy it! (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, October 8, 2007.

A Primer on Diplomacy

Back in 1978, while negotiations were going on between Israel and Egypt, I published a “Primer on Diplomacy” in the hope it would somehow influence Israel’s ruling elites. Of course it did not—otherwise Israel would not be going to Annapolis. Nevertheless, just as Bogart said, “Sing it again, Sam,” I’m obliged to voice the same message to Israeli diplomats today:

A study of autocratic regimes reveals that their methods of negotiating with democracies differ significantly with those they employ with other autocracies. Contrary to appearances, authoritarian politicians are not necessarily less politicians. Of course, they are less amenable to compromise with democratic politicians, but only because they usually don’t have to! Their “stall and threaten” technique when dealing with democracies works well for them; it does not work well when dealing with fellow dictators, and is seldom used for that reason.

Hence it is not only the character of dictatorships, but the cunning of dictators that produces the kind of negotiating tactics we always seem to experience; his tactics depend not only on his system of government, but on the tendencies of our own. (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, October 1, 2007.

Even before Anwar Sadat arrived in Jerusalem on November 19, 1977, I warned the government that it was letting the fox into the chicken coop. The day before Prime Minister Begin left for the September 1978 Camp David Summit with Sadat and President Jimmy Carter, I warned him face-to-face that Sadat was pursuing a peace-and-war strategy.

In December 1978, three months before Begin signed the March 1979 Israel-Egyptian peace treaty in Washington, the Hebrew version of my book Sadat’s Strategy appeared. The book contained an essay on the almost unknown subject of “martial versus democratic diplomacy.” Two weeks before the treaty was signed, I was in the US lecturing around the country warning people about Sadat’s strategy. A few months ago, Daniel Pipes, who supported that treaty, admitted it was a failure: Egypt was not really committed to peace. (more…)

Friends:

Extreme situations, such as that now confronting Israel, require extreme measures. This is why I wrote “The IDF: A Politician’s Army.” Israel faces the threat of Total Annihilation from Iran, or piecemeal destruction from Hamas and Fatah, either one of which may obtain more lethal weapons.

Israel’s present government is utterly incapable of dealing with this threat. (more…)

Why has Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “suddenly” opened up backdoor channels to Syria offering to surrender the Golan Heights to that terrorist state?

The Bush administration let it be known, however, that it does not want Israel to negotiate with Syria. This is a cover-up. (more…)

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s willingness to surrender the strategically important Golan Heights to Syria is the most recent example of the Left’s contempt for Jewish public opinion. The present writer recalls various polls taken before the June 1992 election, when overwhelming public majorities of 80 to 90 percent opposed any withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

In that election, the Labor Party’s official platform proclaimed: “Israel sees in the Golan Heights an area of great importance for its security, its safety and the ensuring of its water resources, even in times of peace. (more…)

Whereas Prime Minister Olmert is willing to yield the Golan Heights to Syria, a despotic regime;

Whereas the Golan Height belongs as a matter of right to the Jewish People;

Whereas surrendering the Golan Heights would violate the inalienable right of its Jewish inhabitants; (more…)

Dear Friends:

We’d like you to know that various “copy-cat” organizations have sprung up since the Foundation received tax-exempt status from the IRS in 1996. These other organizations, however, have back-tracked on the decisive issue of making members of the Knesset individually elected by and accountable to the voters in constituency or regional elections.

One of these organizations, which has met with Israel’s president as well as with MKs, seems to have succumbed to the Establishment. (more…)

Tom Carew of Dublin, Ireland replies to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) which calls upon Israel to let Palestinians return to “their” land. He writes:

I await the call for the “return” of 7.5 million Muslims who left India in 1947 [10 times the number of Arabs who left Israel in 1947-1949]. They would include the Pakistan President—born in Delhi. (more…)

Countless Jews complain about the ineptitude of Israeli governments, whether headed by the Likud, its rubbish, Kadima, or by the Labor Party. Hence the present writer, having made an exhaustive study of Israel and its Jewish politicians, and having examined the agendas of America’s leading Zionist organizations, hereby confidently offers the only possible solution to Israel’s decrepit and perilous state of affairs. I propose that the people of Israel hire Gentiles to run their Government!

Preposterous you say? But what can be more preposterous than the Jews who have been in charge of Israel’s Government, especially during the last thirty years? (more…)

The Law vs. Aharon Barak: A full-page advertisement with this title was published on October 22, 2004 in The Jerusalem Post, in Makor Rishon and in the International Edition of The Jerusalem Post.

According to international law Judea and Samaria are not “occupied territories”, as evidenced by several international agreements that have recognized the Jewish People’s right to possess and settle the land.

The primary international legal documents that assumed, either expressly or implicitly, that Judea and Samaria are Jewish territories, being an indivisible part of the Jewish National Home, are: (more…)

by Dr. Steve Carol ©

The Golan Heights is a semi-mountainous escarpment of some 451 square miles, ranging in height from 400 to 3,000 feet. It rises steeply from the eastern and northern shores of the Sea of Galilee, runs the length of the Huleh Valley, and overlooks the coastal plains of the Galilee and northern Israel. There is a Jewish connection to the Golan as it is dotted with ancient Jewish villages and synagogues.

In 1948, Syria joined with other Arab states in an aggressive attack against the newly re-established State of Israel. (more…)