The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

Senator Barack Obama personifies an American identity crisis, a crisis also evident among the nations of Europe (to say nothing of Israel).

In Obama we behold a man whose origin and religious faith are mysterious, a man whose patriotism has been placed in question. I do not mention this to disparage Senator Obama, but rather to indicate that America itself and its future have become fearfully problematic.

Professor Samuel Huntington, an eminent political scientist, recently wrote a book entitled Who Are We? The title is both fitting and ironic. Huntington sees in America the ascendancy of multiculturalism, which cannot but erode any clear sense of national identity among American citizens. But Huntington himself is steeped in multiculturalism, since he is a cultural relativist—a far throw from his ancestor, the Samuel Huntington who signed America’s Declaration of Independence.

As a cultural relativist, Huntington cannot affirm “the self-evident truths” affirmed in that Declaration, the truths which America’s Founding Fathers derived from “laws of nature and nature’s God.” Such truths transcend space and time. They transcend “culture” and reject cultural relativism. (more…)

When opinion rules, as it does in democracies, it is only necessary to examine, not its truth, but the number of those who express this opinion. It is not even necessary to examine whether any individual who expresses this opinion is serious or frivolous, whether his opinion is the result of reflection or of impulse, whether it is an abiding conviction or a passing fancy. Consequently, wherever opinions rule, people are less apt to take opinions seriously. Hence they will be less likely to develop the habit of critical thinking or of making logical and moral distinctions. Feelings or the emotions will thus tend to supplant logic. People will then become more susceptible to propaganda, whose target is the emotions.

It is in this light that we are to understand Senator Barack Obama’s use of such slogans as “Change!” and “Yes, we can.”

Since democracies, more than other regimes, are ruled by opinion, and since politicians modulate opinions with emotion, democracies are inherently prone to semantic subversion.. The adepts of semantic subversion use the media of democracy to concentrate public attention on emotionally appealing and simplistic solutions to complex problems. For example, the Arab-Israel conflict is commonly viewed as a territorial one. This is precisely how Senator Obama referred to the conflict when he visited Israel. Lacking a background of serious knowledge, he readily succumbs to the formula “territory for peace” as if it were the key to solving what in essence is a a religious conflict, or what Samuel Huntington calls a “clash of civilizations.” (more…)

Revisionist historians aside, or those who do not understand Lincoln’s statesmanship, the Civil War that broke out in America after the 1860 election was over the slavery issue. Stated more precisely, the issue was whether slavery was to be extended to the territories of the United States. At issue, along with slavery, was the Declaration of Independence and its fundamental principle of moral equality.

Lincoln understood that if slavery were extended to the territories, slave states would eventually outnumber free states, in consequence of which, the slave states could readily amend the Constitution and extend slavery to the free states. Of course, the exact opposite would happen if the territories became free states. Lincoln steadfastly opposed the extension of slavery, and this meant civil war. So it was yesterday.

Today, however, the government of the United States, with the servile compliance of the government of Israel, wants to extend slavery via a Palestinian state into the territory called the “West Bank.” I say “slavery” because a Palestinian state would be nothing less than a tyranny, and that means human servitude.

Out of ignorance or interest, the candidates in the U.S. presidential campaign have endorsed a Palestinian state even though reason and experience demonstrate that such a state would be ruled by Arab despots and thereby lead to Israel’s demise. Forgotten are the basic principles of the American Declaration of Independence. (more…)

Israel desperately needs professionalism. Needed is a presidential system that relegates to the dust heap the system of multiparty cabinet government that enabled the Kadima-led coalition to achieve power and degrade as well as endanger this country.

One thing lacking in Israeli government is professionalism. What is a profession? What makes medicine, physics, mathematics, political science, architecture, astronomy, law, “professions”? They are also called “disciplines” because they require sustained and systematic learning. Professions, however, involve the transmission, from generation to generation, of organized knowledge and methods of inquiry that enable us to comprehend and perhaps control various domains of reality. Such knowledge is not necessarily progressive. Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher-mathematician and historian of science, notes that “In the year 1500 Europe knew less than Archimedes who died in the year 212 BC.”

One finds in all professions outstanding minds. The history of philosophy, Whitehead remarked, is little more than a series of footnotes to Plato. Plato’s greatest student was Aristotle, the founder of political science who wrote treatises on 150 different regimes, in addition to original works on ethics, rhetoric, logic, poetics, physics, metaphysics, etc. The unequaled vastness of Aristotle’s knowledge dominated the curriculum of Western universities for two thousand years, and much of his knowledge is still relevant, especially Books III to VIII of his Politics. Indeed, what Machiavelli, the father of modern political science, knows compared to Aristotle can be put on a postage stamp! (more…)

Accountability is a basic Jewish concept, awesome during Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. Whereas the Torah Jew knows he is accountable to G-d, the Government of Israel is accountable to no one.

The leaders of this Government boast that Israel is a democracy. One should then expect them to be accountable to the people. But Israeli politicians are accountable to the people only on election day. Once elected they ignore the convictions of those who elected them. In the January 2003 elections, a large majority voted for parties that opposed Labor’s “unilateral disengagement” policy by giving those parties 84 (or 70% of the) seats in the Knesset. Yet, the following year, the same Knesset enacted Disengagement by a vote of 67 to 45!

To whom is a Prime Minister accountable? No one. It was Ariel Sharon that adopted Labor’s policy of disengagement law, thereby nullifying the 2003 election!

To whom is Supreme Court accountable? No one. The Court is also above the law. It makes its own laws in utter disregard of the ethics and legal heritage of the Jewish people. (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…)

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…)

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…)

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…)

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…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, September 1, 2008.

Carl Boggs, in his book The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere (2000), writes: “Politics has become the most denigrated and devalued of all enterprises, robbed of the visionary, ennobling, and transformative qualities that not so long ago were associated with the great popular movements of the 1960s …”

Politics has increasingly become a dirty word, a form of self-aggrandizement at the public’s expense. The 2008 Israeli Democracy Index indicates that only 5 percent of the public regards Israeli politicians as honest. Unsurprisingly, “Israel today displays clear signs of anti-politics … The prevalent sense in the public is that the political system is impervious to the citizen’s voice and needs.’’ 81 percent assess their ability to influence government decisions as small or nonexistent. How can it be otherwise when citizens are compelled to vote for a party slate instead of individual candidates? Since members of the Knesset are not individually elected by and accountable to the voters in constituency elections, they can ignore public opinion with impunity between elections. They never have to worry about being called to account by a rival candidate.

To speak of the end of politics, however, is to imply the demise of democracy. The causal connection between politics and democracy can be formulated as follows. Politics is about the controversial, and only healthy democracies provide a platform for rational discussion about controversial issues. This requires at least two contestants for public office facing each other before the voters and debating basic issues. (more…)

Democracy literally means the rule of the people, which translates into the rule of the majority. Show me a nation in which the people, or a majority of the people, rule.

Consider the world’s leading democracy, the United States. There are about 200,000 million eligible voters in the United States, but as few as 35 percent vote in midterm elections, and little more than a majority vote in presidential elections—and even this is misleading.

A mere 15 percent of Americans polled by the PEW Research Center in July 1999 said they were paying very close attention to the Gore-Bush campaign, and the percentage was lower for those under 30 years of age.

The truth is that few Americans display any serious interest in politics. Carl Boggs reports that a 1997 UCLA poll of 252,000 freshmen at 464 colleges and universities around the country indicated that only 26.7 percent of the respondents said that it was important to keep up with public affairs. (more…)

The goal of the Torah is to eliminate all forms of idolatry on the one hand, and to promote the universal recognition of ethical monotheism on the other.

According to Judaism, idolatry is the beginning and cause of every evil, be it the slaughtering of children, as in worship of Moloch, or the slaughtering of “infidels” in the worship of Allah.

The First Commandment of the Torah logically entails the Second, the elimination of all forms of idolatry. Idolatry is the worship of any created thing, including the products of the human intellect, be it a philosophic or scientific theory, a political or religious ideology, or a particular form of government.

Let us equate idolatry with “reification,” which may be defined as the postulation of any physical or mental existent, process, or law as autonomous or self-sustaining. Reification thus applies to any philosophic or scientific monism, dualism, or pluralism that attempts to explain the totality or any part of existence in terms of one or more independent or self-subsisting entities. The Torah thus rejects the exaltation of any humanly constructed system of governance. (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, first delivered on June 26, 2004 and updated August 24, 2008.

Back in June 2004, more than a year before the government expelled 10,000 Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria, I reported that the Right, the so-called national camp, has failed to galvanize the people against the Left. The Right, representing at least 75% of the people, has allowed the Left to undermine Israel’s territorial integrity and thereby undermine the heritage of the Jewish people. This was done in the name of democracy.

I pointed out that analysis of Israel’s legislative, executive, and judicial institutions reveals that Israel is not an authentic democracy, despite its periodic, multiparty elections, Political theorist Henry Mayo correctly states that “A political system is democratic to the extent that decisions-makers are under effective popular control.”

But decisions-makers in Israel are not and cannot be under effective popular control so long as members of the Knesset are not individually elected by and accountable to the voters in regional elections. The Right—politicians, professors, and journalists—have not told the people the truth about Israel’s oligarchic system of governance. (more…)

Year after year I send this kind of message out.
Now, with catastrophe approaching ever nearer, I urge all forthright Jewish organizations to to reiterate these words:

Without God Israel is lost.

For 60 years, Israeli prime ministers have banished God from the domain of statecraft, and with the compliance of the religious parties. May there not be a connection between the absence of God in Israeli statecraft and the absence of wisdom, courage, and Jewish national pride in Israel’s government?

How is it that Israel, despite its awesome military power, appeases and retreats before a gang of terrorists, be it Hamas or Fatah? Can it be because Israel’s ruling elites are godless in contrast to Israel’s enemies, who never fail to invoke the name of Allah?

Juxtapose these Arabs and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (or his predecessors Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak). (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, 18 August 2008.

Fools aside, everyone knows that Israel is at war with the Palestinian Authority. Whatever the machinations of Fatah-leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas-leader Ismail Haniyah, both villains are committed to Israel’s annihilation.

That many of Israel’s own Arab citizens have long been participating in this war against the Jews has been ignored by various Israeli governments, Left and Right—if I may use these obsolete terms. Arabs freely traverse the roads assaulting Jewish vehicles; they brazenly fly the flag of PLO; and the Olmert-Livni-Mofaz government blinks.

Sderot has been depopulated, Iranian weapons flow into Gaza and are smuggled thence to Judea and Samaria. Soon every city in Israel may become another Sderot, and the Olmert-Livni-Mofaz government blinks.

This cockamamie government is just a collection of political liars and crooks—Likud turncoats and other hacks paid by the overtaxed citizens of Israel. (more…)

All of us are disgusted with the Kadima government headed by that “tired-of-being-courageous” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

We shudder at the prospect of his most prominent successors:  (1)  Kadima’s scatter-brained, pro-Palestinian-state Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and  (2)  Kadima’s Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who, as IDF Chief of Staff, supervised the disastrous withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and who, as Minister of Defense, supervised the equally disastrous withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

Knowing, moreover, that Kadima is a haven for political hacks devoid of any ideology, we want new elections.

We know that Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, who alone can be counted upon to relegate Kadima to the political wilderness, is now favored to become Israel’s next prime minister. His record, however, is not admirable: he signed the Wye Memorandum; he voted for “unilateral disengagement” as a minister in the Sharon government; and his spin about “reciprocity” in dealing with the Palestinian (terrorist) Authority suggests readiness to withdraw further from Judea and Samaria. (more…)