Chanukah is a festival of light, and light is the source of truth. Let’s have a little light, please, beginning with Pope Benedict XVI.
Recall Hezbollah’s unprovoked attack on Israel on July 12, 2006. On July 16, the Pope said: “At the origin of these devastating confrontations, there are, unfortunately, objective situations of the violation of law and justice. But neither terrorist acts nor retaliation can be justified, especially when these come with tragic consequences for the civilian population.”
This is more than “do not resist evil.” The Pope placed Hezbollah’s terrorist acts and the Israel’s retaliation on the same moral level: for him, neither can be justified. It seems that Pope Benedict XVI had succumbed to moral equivalence, which makes nonsense of the New Testament.
Moral equivalence ostensibly defines U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel and the PLO-Palestinian Authority—a conglomeration of terrorist groups which have wantonly murdered not only Jews but also Christians, including two American diplomats. Evident at the Annapolis Summit, however, was not only moral equivalence, but moral inversion. President George W. Bush clearly sided with Arab terrorists and despots against Israel.
But isn’t moral inversion the end result of the Pope’s criticism of Israel’s retaliation against Hezbollah? Doesn’t the learned Pope know that not to retaliate against evil is to guarantee the victory of the wicked?
President Bush seems to be following the teaching of the Church of Rome! Of course, the president lacks the philosophical and theological erudition of Benedict XVI. We have been told Mr. Bush is a born-again Christian. It seems, however, that his Christianity, like that of former President Jimmy Carter, lacks the depth of a billboard. Both novices have disparaged Israel—enough to incriminate themselves as unChristian. For this we must also blame Israel’s ruling elites. A little light, please.
Aren’t you tired of the countless articles describing these elites as “post-Zionists” or “anti-Zionists” or “left-wingers”—as well as innumerable articles exposing the folly of their 30-year policy of “territory for peace”? Admittedly, the present writer has contributed to this monotonous terminology, even while pursuing another mode of criticism. Let’s probe a little deeper.
Try this: Israel’s ruling elites are neo-pagans! That’s the unknown reason why Israel is being denounced by the nations. That’s right: Israel-bashing, or the worldwide eruption of Semitism, is very much the consequence of the neo-paganism of Israel’s ruling elites. But what is neo-paganism? How is it manifested among these elites? And how does it differ from old-fashioned paganism?
According to Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, “Even the most abject paganism reflects the truth of the soul’s deep yearnings for closeness to God. Even the most abased idolatry is profoundly aware that the Divine is more important than anything else in life.” This is not the case of neo-paganism, which involves the idolatry of man in the absence of any divinity.
One form of neo-paganism is Nazism, which is the idolatry of human power and glory, the pursuit of which required the subjugation of other human beings.
Another form of neo-paganism—rampant in liberal democracies—is the idolatry of the individual, the self, the ego. Unlike ancient paganism, which exalted military conquest and the nation, liberal neo-paganism exalts peace—meaning commodious self-preservation—and would replace nationalism with multiculturalism. Enter Israel’s ruling elites.
Although Israel, from an institutional perspective, is not a liberal democracy, the mentality of its ruling elites is thoroughly democratic, more precisely, egalitarian, which is why they want to transform the supposed-to-be Jewish State of Israel into “a state of its citizens,” i.e., a multicultural society.
This is on the agenda of Israel’s Supreme Court, cunningly and systematically pursued by its former president Aharon Barak—Israel’s Secular Pope. To appreciate Judge Barak’s liberal neo-paganism—so obvious in his permissive attitude toward homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and pornography—enough to recall his notorious dictum, “everything is justiciable.” This is the pinnacle of liberal neo-paganism or the deification of egoism. Its tacit denial of God and tradition makes everything permissible.
This is the secular road map of Israel’s ruling elites. It’s the unknown reason why a French diplomat called Israel a sh..ty country. It’s the reason why the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives at Annapolis from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs—in other words, were treated like “niggers.”
A little light, please—meaning, an appropriate vocabulary to describe Israel’s ruling elites.
