The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

Let us recall certain lessons on war by one of the greatest military scientists, General Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831).

Clausewitz’s magnum opus, On War, is studied in military schools to this day. He defines war as “an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will. Violence is the means; submission of the enemy to our will the ultimate object.” For as long as the enemy remains armed, he will wait for a more favorable moment for action.

The ultimate object of war is political. To attain this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed. Disarming the enemy “becomes therefore the immediate object of hostilities. It takes the place of the final object and puts it aside as something we can eliminate from our calculations.”

Clausewitz warns: “Philanthropists may readily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the worst.”

Not that Clausewitz advocates indiscriminate slaughter. (more…)

The Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, December 29, 2008.
Dedicated to Tsafir Ronen (z”l).

Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan to elevate the economic well-being of the Palestinians to facilitate the “peace process” coincides with a policy paper written by former Chief of General Staff Moshe Yaalon, now with the Likud Party. The paper is entitled “Israel and the Palestinians: A New Strategy.”

Yaalon’s paper begins by analyzing the reasons why the Oslo accords failed to bring peace. “Fifteen years ago,” he says, “the signing of the Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) raised hopes that Israel had boarded the ‘peace train.’ Over the years, however, it became clear that the train was not headed for the promised destination.” Nevertheless, Israel’s leadership has foolishly remained on the same train.

However, Yaalon obscures the covert objective of Oslo’s architects, which was the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (Yesha) as the only means of achieving peace. He fails to see or say that only the “two-state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could induce Yasser Arafat to sign a deal with Israel—as Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin surely knew and concealed. Only a sovereign Palestinian state could be legally bound by any peace agreement.

Yaalon does not really oppose a Palestinian state. He simply criticizes the decision of Israel’s leaders to withdraw from Yesha before the Palestinians had achieved the economic, political, and judicial infrastructure required to become a responsible state.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is a kleptocracy. (more…)

Americans were prompted to start a revolution against England because of an increase in the price of tea. Israelis do nothing while their government makes Jewish blood cheap.

Only From Yamin Israel.

To stay in power, dictatorships make their subjects feel dependent on their rulers. To this end they must (1) concentrate decision-making in their own hands;   (2) dominate the economy;   (3) control the mass media;   (4) breed mutual distrust among their subjects to make them incapable of joint action;   (5) break their spirit by arousing fear of war.

Contrast the preceding with the situation in Israel, reputedly a democracy.

(1)  Decision-making in Israel is concentrated ostensibly in the Cabinet but actually in the Prime Minister. The PM can take unilateral actions the Cabinet dares not veto lest new elections result and terminate the posts and powers of cabinet ministers. This is why no Labor-led, no Likud-led, and no Kadima-led government has ever been toppled by a vote of no confidence. This means that the Cabinet pretty much controls how their colleagues vote in the Knesset. Furthermore, since members of the Knesset, hence MKs appointed to the Cabinet, are not accountable to the voters in constituency elections, they can ignore public opinion with impunity.

(2)  The government owns or controls most of the nation’s assets. (more…)

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Israel is in the grips of a democratically elected dictatorship at war with Jewish nationhood. Driven by the remorseless logic of the Oslo Agreement or “land for peace,” this dictatorship is collaborating with Israel’s enemies.

Oslo has produced a Palestinian Authority consisting of well-armed terrorist organizations. PA leaders wax fat with money from the U.S. and the European Union. Their strategy of stages is designed to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria. Israel’s ruling elites are prepared, if not eager, to sacrifice these Jews on the altar of “peace.” These elites use the illusion of peace to retain power.

Meanwhile, Arab leaders baldly declare that “peace” means the destruction of Israel. The policy of land-for-peace arouses Arab contempt for Jews and incites Arab violence. The “peace process” will explode in a catastrophic war in the very near future.

Can such a war be averted? Not by a Likud-led government, most emphatically not by a Kadima-led government, and not by a government of national unity headed by Binyamin Netanyahu who has yet to overcome the Oslo syndrome.

If catastrophic war is to be averted—or if Israel is to emerge victorious—three basic conditions are in order. (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…)

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…)

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…)

A day after 9/11, the present writer pondered the problem of how to deal with Islamic Jihad. Here is a brief scenario.

The President calls in the ambassadors of every Islamic country. He hands them the draft of a message and instructs them to send to it the heads of their respective states. The message reads something like this:

The President of the United States requests that you assemble your religious leaders and inform them that, unless they publicly renounce the ethos of Jihad and abrogate Islamic verses referring to non-Muslims as subhuman, the United States will take the following actions:

1. The American ambassador to your country will be recalled. (more…)

I have been saying this since 9/11, but will say it once more in view of the Mumbai massacre. We need an awesome victory over Islam, lest there be no end of Mumbais.

Islam has cowed Europe. It will cow America, the last hope of civilization.

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, November 24, 2008.

Shortly after his election as Prime Minister in May 1996, Binyamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. There he denied any clash of civilizations between Israel and its Arab-Islamic neighbors. This denial—disingenuous or not—underlies Netanyahu’s current economic plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By building up the Palestinian economy, which of course will be partly dependent on Israel, peace between Jews and Arabs will eventually follow. Netanyahu has joined Shimon Peres, author of The New Middle East.

Before examining the mode thought of these odd bedfellows, note that Netanyahu and Peres are secularists. I mention this because Abdallah al-Tall, an Egyptian spokesman, has said that “The propagandists of secularism, who leave out of account the religious factor in the Palestine problem, ignore the fact that this is the only bone of contention in the world which has persisted for thirty centuries and is still based on religious and spiritual foundations.”

According to the “propagandists of secularism,” economics trumps religion. This, of course, is indicative of a Marxist mode of thought. This mode thought, we shall see, also underlies capitalism, and that’s what links Bibi to Shimon, the author of the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement which Bibi refused to abrogate. Both are wedded to Oslo. (more…)

An updated version of an article published in 1995.

Countless Jews are appalled or dumbfounded. They cannot understand how a Jewish government, backed the Israel Defense Forces, could give away Judea and Samaria, the sacred heartland of the Jewish people to terrorist thugs.

The Prophets and Sages of Israel predicted that, in the end of days, the Jews would have such a government. They foresaw that Israel would be ruled by “scorners” of the Torah. These scorners, said the Prophet Hosea (12:1-3), will fill Israel with lies and deception. They will strive after wind (“peace”) and make alliances with Israel’s enemies.

The Prophet Isaiah (28:14-18) chastises these insolent Jews. He foretells that they will make a “covenant with death,” but that this pact will not protect them, indeed, that they will be swept away like refuse. Remarkably, the Targum translates this pact with death as a contract with “terrorists” (mechablim)!

Similarly, the Zohar (Exodus 7b) predicts that in the end of days certain Jews in Israel will make an alliance with the enemies of the Jewish people. The Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles fits this dire prediction. (more…)

Alexander Hamilton was regarded by no less than Talleyrand as the greatest statesman of his age, greater than Pitt, Fox, and Napoleon. Hamilton was not only George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, he was, in effect, Washington’s “prime minister.” He wrote most of Washington’s “Farewell Address,” widely regarded as America’s greatest state paper.

Hamilton’s state papers on Manufactures and on a National Bank contributed greatly to America’s ascendancy as the most powerful nation on earth. No less significant are his contributions to The Federalist Papers, whose essays on presidential government are unsurpassed in depth and clarity. Would that Israel had statesmen to assimilate Hamilton’s wisdom and apply it to the reconstruction of Israel’s decrepit system of multiparty cabinet government.

But I have another reason for speaking of Hamilton, especially now in the context of a secret war that has been going on between the United States and Iran since 1979.

Let’s first go back to 1793, when France was under the Directory, which in fact was a military dictatorship. The issue arose as to whether the United States should accord the French government diplomatic recognition. (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, November 17, 2008.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a man of superlative intellect, political integrity and moral clarity. Germany’s President Angela Merkel told President George W. Bush, “I like your ambassador to the UN more than I like mine…. I understand [him] much better than my own. I’ve been thinking about having your ambassador represent Germany.”

What follows is based very much on Chapter 12 of Bolton’s book Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad (2007). The chapter is entitled “Iran in the Security Council: The EU-3 Finds New Ways to Give In.” EU-3 stands for Britain, France, and Germany—three members of the European Union. Despite Bolton’s heroic efforts, the EU-3 failed to obtain Security Council resolutions calling for serious sanctions against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a program that violated the International Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Unfortunately, Bolton was encumbered by Colin Powell, secretary of state during George W. Bush’s first term, and Condoleezza Rice, who succeeded Powell during Bush’s second term. Neither of these secretaries of state possessed an adequate understanding of Iran. Iran is the key player of the “axis of evil.” Iranian control of the oil flowing through the Persian Gulf would make it a superpower if this nation of 70 million people produced nuclear weapons. Imagine how Islamism would skyrocket throughout the world if Iran obtained, through its proxies, control of Jerusalem. (more…)

In II Samuel 12:1-4, the prophet Nathan teaches the following parable:

There were two men in one city: the one rich, and the other poor. The Rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and reared; and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own morsel, and drink of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and it was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveler unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him, but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come unto him.

The emotions normally evoked by this parable are anger and compassion: anger toward the rich man, compassion for the poor man.

Suppose, however, that upon hearing Nathan’s parable, a person were to evince anger toward the poor man and compassion for the rich man. (more…)

Iran has been at war with the United States and Israel for thirty years—ever since the Iranian Revolution initiated by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. I dare say this is the most far-reaching revolution in human history. Iran is the epicenter of international terrorism. Its ultimate goal, however, is to restore the Persian Empire and spread Shia Islam throughout the world. This is not a mere fantasy.

Iran now controls southern Iraq, including Basra from which Iraq ships its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. All of Iraq will fall to Iran once the Americans leave. Meanwhile, Iran is gaining decisive influence on Syria. Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, virtually rules Lebanon. Hamas is another Iranian proxy, and Tehran has its sights on the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority.

Of global significance, Iran controls the world’s spigot of oil flowing through the Persian Gulf, This nation of 70 million people can wreck the world’s economy. If Iran’s economic power is backed by nuclear weapons—in process of development—Iran will control the Middle East, and much more. (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, November 10, 2008.

Contrary to the governments of the United States and Israel, various experts in both countries reject the “two-state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I shall mention their views while developing five decisive arguments against a Palestinian state: Economic, Demographic, Political, Strategic, and Democratic. Let’s begin with the—

1.  Economic Arguments

a.  A RAND study indicates that a Palestinian state would not be economically viable. It would require $33 billion for the first ten years of its existence—and this study was made before the economic crisis now confronting the United States and entire world.

b.  Besides, to confine more than two million Arabs to the 2,323 square miles of the so-called West Bank, and to squeeze another million into the 141 square miles of Gaza, is to doom these Arabs to economic stagnation and discontent. The projected state would be a cauldron of envious hatred of Israel fueled by the leaders of one or another group of Arab clans or thugs parading under the banner of Allah.

c.  Moreover, to compensate perhaps 200,000 Jews expelled from the “West Bank”—or even half that number—would bankrupt Israel’s government, to say nothing of the resulting trauma and civil discord. (more…)