Israel today is in a state of political disarray. Established political parties like the National Religious Party are dissolving. Other parties like Labor have become politically comatose. The ruling Kadima Party, formed by political opportunists from other parties, has no ideology apart from multiculturalism. This essentially anti-Jewish party wants to dissolve the State of Israel into “a state of its citizens.”
So does a new left-wing coalition emerging from the ruins of Labor and Meretz. Also emerging is a hodgepodge of reputedly right-wing groups opposed to any further territorial withdrawal, but like others, it lacks a national strategy.
Meanwhile, the Likud, which spawned Kadima, has opened its doors to various national figures to secure its chances of winning the February election. Lacking, however, is confidence that the Likud, under Benjamin Netanyahu, will withstand U.S. pressure to withdraw from Judea and Samaria. After all, the Likud voted against abrogation of the Oslo Accords, and Netanyahu, in addition to surrendering part of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Authority at the Wye Summit, also voted for “disengagement” when he was a minister in the Sharon government. So, while he is preferable to Tzipi Livni, serious people wonder whether he has the spine or the stamina to stand up to the United States and its bipartisan support for a Palestinian state?
The preceding is a small fraction of the political chaos now reigning in Israel. This country has an utterly divisive and dysfunctional system of government. As in the past, and in the forthcoming February elections, an insane multiplicity of parties will compete for seats in Israel’s Knesset—whose members are not accountable to the voters in constituency elections, indeed, whose members are despised by ninety percent of the public!
Yet we look in vain for a single personality with courage and wisdom enough to say: “Folks, our parliamentary form of government with proportional representation and its ridiculous assortment of rival parties in the cabinet is destroying us. This inept system led to our defeat in the Second Lebanon War. You need to know that by failing to defeat Iran’s proxy Hezbollah, Israel undermined the confidence of our great ally the United States? Folks, we’ve got to change this inept system of government now!”
Let us bear in mind, however, that this system is the bitter fruit of a betrayal that goes back to the founding of the state, as I shall now explain.
● The Proclamation of the State of Israel of 14 May 1948 called for an “Elected Constituent Assembly” to adopt a Constitution. Instead, that Assembly constituted itself as the Knesset, assumed absolute power, and no Constitution was submitted to the people. The people had no role in the design of Israel’s present form of government.
● The Proclamation of the State called for the establishment of a “Jewish State.” On 16 February 1949, however, Israel’s Provisional Government established a secular democratic state. That the people of Israel have since acquiesced in this fraud does not make the present state legitimate, let alone just.
● This fraud is compounded by the absurd or intellectually dishonest claim that a secular democratic state is compatible with Judaism.
● No government of modern Israel has ever been justly representative of the religious convictions of the Jewish people. Studies have shown that close to 50 percent of Israel’s Jewish population believe in the Torah’s divine origin, and that a far larger percentage, if asked whether they had to choose between Judaism and a multicultural democracy, would prefer Judaism. Yet religious parties have never had more than 15 percent of the seats in the Knesset.
● This gross under-representation of religious voters stems primarily from the fact that left-wing secularists have ever dominated Israel’s economy, the media, and the country’s educational institutions.
● The late editor of The Jerusalem Post, David Bar-Ilan said, “… the domination of Israel’s airwaves by leftists is as close to complete as anything can be in a non-dictatorial [sic] society. In numerous talk shows on both television channels and on Israel Radio and Army Radio, there is not a single anchor, interviewer, commentator, editor or news reporter whose views are right of center.”
● Bar-Ilan’s description of Israel’s government as “non-dictatorial” is surely a euphemism. Such has been the de facto distribution of power in Israel since 1948 that its political system has always exemplified an oligarchy. This government, which parades as a democracy, has no legitimate—certainly no just—foundation. The expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria is more than enough evidence to condemn this government as well as the system that entrenches its ruling elites in power. Yet there is not a single national figure that has the courage to tell the truth about the colossal fraud that parties across the political spectrum have perpetrated on the people of this country.
Is it any wonder that Israel finds itself today in utter disarray? Is it any wonder that Israel’s government does not know how to resist, or is incapable of resisting, the “two state” solution to Israel’s demise?