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Dear Knesset Members, amv"sh
Why YOU and Manhigut Yehudit should leave Likud. discussion cont......
My comments are in purple.
Shlomo Walfish of Manhigut Yehudit replied to my comments and said I was not realistic about starting a new party since "Other parties are NOT going to be mevatel themselves to join a new party not run by them and under their rabbis. And top Likud MKs are not leaving likud to join this fantasy party either" Shlomo, perhaps it is not practical or realistic but that is exactly that is necessary. "Ahava Sheino Teluya Badavar". What will differentiate the generation prior to the coming of Moshiach is the concept of loving our fellow Jew that is not dependent on getting something back in return. No wheeling and dealing since everyone is doing for the greater good. There should be no other reason MK's should join this party.
Everyone has leadership abilities especially each MK that has reached this level. Each MK member in this new party should be assigned a leadership role in that area that Hashem has blessed him/her. So if for example, MK Yaalon has a shining military career it should be utilized. If another MK is an expert on delegating responsibility in an objective responsible and unbiased way so that all MK's respect his judgement he should be called upon to do so, No wheeling and dealing. Each and every MK has their Rabbanim and population to rally, bringing them on board to be emissaries for the entire world. There is no point in competition with one another since there is plenty of work and leadership opportunities for everyone. There is enough to do in this world so that each and every individual is a true leader, a Kohen, and united we make a Kingdom of Priests and a holy Nation
You may be interested in this 2005 article of Prof. Paul Eidelberg which underlines how critical it is that we change the ruling party and with it expose and reform "institutionalized corruption". This past election, the primary between Netanyahu and Feglin, there was voter fraud and Feiglin chose not to make it into a real issue. I was very surprised. I thought it was a golden opportunity. What's the point of voting if the results are fixed. People would have been really incensed when they realized that the ballots were tampered with and the numbers fabricated. People vote because they believe their vote counts. He should have been yelling bloody murder. The following analysis seems to explain why Feiglin cannot speak openly and in vivid detail about Israel's inept and corrupt SYSTEM of government while wishing to stay in the LIkud. Is Feiglin interested in reforming the corrupt System? If not, then why not? Also, please read the latest article sent by Prof. Eidelberg entitled "Israel's Non-Existent Nationalist Camp and How to Create One: Part I"
Feiglin's Gambit: A Critical Analysis*
(September 12, 2005)
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
*Based on an interview with Avi Hyman's "The Activist Hour," Arutz-7, Israel National Radio, September 11, 2005.
1. To avoid misunderstanding, let me first point out that I wrote one of the first papers on Jewish Leadership for Manhigut Yehudit. I also supplied Manhigut Yehudit and Moshe Feiglin with several policy papers. In fact, Mr. Feiglin is reported as saying that he regards my book Jewish Statesmanship as his bible.
a. But when he said in a Jerusalem Post interview, "No other party in the country has the kind of intellectualism and breadth of thought that Manhigut Yehudit has," he seems to have forgotten that the author of Jewish Statesmanship is the president of the Yamin Israel party. Perhaps my curriculum vitae may prompt him to make a more modest assessment of Manhigut Yehudit.
b. In any event, if my book Jewish Statesmanship is Feiglin's bible, he has failed to emphasize the key principle of that book, namely this: The inherent defects of Israel's political and judicial institutions render Jewish leadership virtually impossible. Feiglin's emphasis is on "Jewish identity." But Jewish identity without a program for institutional reform is pious rhetoric. Surely the religious parties have Jewish identity, but they also lack a program for institutional reform that will produce Jewish leadership. If Feiglin has such a program, it is not in the forefront of his public pronouncements, and this places in question his party's understanding of what Jewish leadership requires in the dysfunctional State of Israel.
2. The truth is, Feiglin has joined a party whose leader, Ariel Sharon, is a ruthless enemy of Jewish leadership. By implanting Manhigut Yehudit as a faction of the Likud, and by urging people to register for the Likud, Feiglin aroused and magnified Likud consciousness among many voters in the 2003 election. He thereby contributed—how much no one knows—to the Likud's winning 38 Knesset seats. That total enabled Sharon to dominate the "nationalist" parties in his cabinet. Which means that the Jewish leadership movement contributed to anti-Jewish leadership!
3. If the Likud had won fewer seats, those seats would have gone to National Union and Mafdal and perhaps Herut—and this would have prevented Disengagement. Remember, the present Sharon-Peres government was confirmed by the Knesset by a vote of 58 to 56.
4. Recently, Feiglin admitted it would take 20 years for Manhigut Yehudit to gain the leadership of the Likud. Twenty years! Say ten. Long before that, Judea and Samaria and 250,000 Jews will suffer the same fate as Gush Katif—if the Likud remains in power. The Likud guidelines, endorsed by Netanyahu and Landau, affirm the Oslo Agreement. Indeed, the guidelines affirm the leftist projection of Israel as a state of all its citizens, which means the end of the Jewish state.
5. So, what good is having, say 3 Manhigut Yehudit people occupying the 38th, 39th, and 40th slots on the Likud list when that gives additional ministerial posts and power to the party bosses on the top of the Likud list: those lacking strong Jewish identity—those who adhere to the defeatist and suicidal policy of "land for peace"?
6. So long as Feiglin is in the Likud,
a, What can he say about the 23 Likud MKs who campaigned against Disengagement but voted for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gush Katif?—nothing!
b. What can he say about Sharon, his buying and selling political appointments to get the Knesset to pass that ethnic cleansing bill?—nothing.
c. What can he say about the need to change the parliamentary electoral system to prevent such corruption in the future?—nothing!
d. What can he say about the corruption from having MKs as cabinet ministers—nothing!
7. Do you know how cabinet ministers use their budgets to manipulate local governments? Suppose the Minister of Interior or the Finance minister is a secularist. Rest assured their allocations to these towns or cities for school construction or other concerns are going to depend on the political complexion of their mayors and their voters. This means corruption.
8. This follows from having MKs in the cabinet who are party leaders and have a partisan interest inn how funds, which they control, are divided among towns and cities.
9. Now, Feiglin must be aware of this. But Feiglin tells his followers he wants to gain control of the premiership. That's the aim of most party leaders. They know the prime minister is the primary source of power. In fact, Israel has what is called "prime ministerial government"—a euphemism for a democratically elected dictatorship, as I have often pointed out. We need to put an end to prime ministerial government.
a. Do you know Ben-Gurion launched the 1956 Sinai War without consulting his cabinet?
b. Do you know Begin did not consult his cabinet before going to the Camp David Summit?
c. Do you know that Rabin concluded the Oslo Agreement without consulting his cabinet?
d. Do you know Ehud Barak signed the 1999 Sharm e-Sheikh agreement with Arafat without consulting his cabinet?
e. And who does not know of Sharon's high-handed adoption of Labor's disengagement plan? He consulted President Bush and dismissed two ministers to impose that plan on the cabinet.
10. But why do we have this dictatorship of one man? Has Feiglin told you? Has he told you why the prime minister doesn't consult his cabinet, as is done by American presidents? Allow me: Israel's cabinet consists of rival parties. The cabinet ministers are not the PM's advisers but his competitors; and if it helps their own parties, they will leak cabinet information to the media. So what must we do?
a. We must exclude MKs from the cabinet. We need a system of checks and balances, which is what we have in the Torah.
b. We want responsible and accountable Jewish leadership—not just Jewish leadership— and when I read Feiglin's public statements, I see no program for obtaining a system of government conducive to Jewish leadership,
11. In fact, he hinders that goal by dividing the nationalist camp. By drawing good people into the Likud, a corrupt party, he prevents the formation of an Anti-Establishment Party that can unite all non-parliamentary nationalist groups. This alone can save Israel from its decadent political system.
a. This is not the dream of taking over the Likud in 10 or 20 years. Because of widespread disillusionment with the Likud, National Union, and Mafdal, there will be more than 750,000 floating votes or 30 Knesset seats that can be won next year by an Anti-Establishment Party, provided it campaigns—not just against corruption—but against Institutionalized Corruption.
b. My colleague Prof. Israel Hanukoglu, who was science adviser to the Netanyahu government—he and I are trying to organize such a party, a party that campaigns against the SYSTEM, a party distinguished from all other parties by its key objective: to transfer power from parties to the people.
c. How? First, by making MKs individually elected by the people in constituency elections; second, by excluding MKs from the cabinet, a major source of corruption; third, by democratizing the method of appointing Supreme Court judges, whose rulings so often violate the abiding beliefs and values of the Jewish people.
12. Feiglin refuses to discuss the option of developing such party. He has trapped himself and lured others into the Likud and therefore cannot speak openly and in vivid detail about Israel's inept and corrupt SYSTEM of government.
13. He says he doesn't want to be the leader of a small party, another Techiya which had 5 MKs back in the 80s. To repeat, there are 30 Knesset seats available to a dynamic reform party. Recall 1977, when the newly formed Democratic Movement for Change won 15 seats, and our situation today is far more critical. But give me an independent party with 5 Knesset mandates I will show you how it can change the SYSTEM that has produced a dictator like Sharon, has resulted in the murder of more than 1,000 Jews, has led to the expulsion 10,000 Jews from their homes, and has produced more corruption than any other government in the developed world, including Italy.
14. Had Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit formed a joint list with Herut in the 2003 election, this nationalist and religious combination have won at least two Knesset seats, and there would have been NO Disengagement! As mentioned, the present Sharon-Peres government was confirmed by a 58 to 56 vote of the Knesset. One may even doubt that this government would ever have been formed in the face of the vehement protests of the joint list I just mentioned.
15. It's amazing how educated people—including professors and lawyers—are so ignorant about the subtle workings of Israel's political system, how they have been sucked into Feiglin's disastrous gambit.
16. Just imagine what two MKs could do in one year. They could go to every campus and expose the pernicious consequences of Proportional Representation and the system of voting for party slates instead individual candidates:
a. They could show how wealthy persons abroad can buy a party by buying its party leader—thanks to voting for party slates—something that can't be done when citizens vote for individual candidates in geographic regions. This is the story behind Sharon's rise to power.
b. Our two MKs could show how 29 MKs hopped over to rival parties in the 1999 elections to gain safe seats—thanks to party slates.
c. They would show how Labor bought two MKs from Tzomet, a right-wing party, for a Mitzubishi and a deputy ministerial post in order to pass Oslo II—thanks to party slates.
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17. Why hasn't Moshe Feiglin publicized these disastrous consequences of Israel's parliamentary electoral system? Of course, plenty other eminent Israelis have failed to heed the warning of Ben-Gurion, which I have spoken of countess times: that Proportional Representation fragments the nation, that it produces cabinets consisting of rival parties competing for bigger slices of the public treasury. How can Feiglin engage in such criticism while he remains in the Likud?
18. But suppose two MKs, having openly campaigned against the SYSTEM, proceeded to expose Institutionalized Corruption. Suppose they did this on every public forum? Suppose they also placed ads on the subject in every newspaper? Suppose they organized a national conference on Institutionalized Corruption—a conference that would show how Israel's political and judicial elites, thanks to the SYSTEM, can ignore the people's will with impunity, as Sharon did after the 2003 elections, and as Chief Justice Aharon Barak did when he legalized Sharon's criminal policy.
19. Instead of exposing and fighting the SYSTEM, Feiglin joined it, dignified it, and increased its power to undermine the very thing he holds most dear, Jewish leadership. I urge him to get out of the Likud and help us form an Anti-Establishment Party that unites all non-parliamentary nationalist groups—a party that can capture the huge floating votes in the next election. This is far more doable and certainly more noble than his dream of taking over of the Likud, a decadent party, most of whose MKs voted Yes to expelling Jews from their homes in Gush Katif.
20. As for Yamin Israel, I'd rather not speak about my party, because this would sound like special pleading. But I will say this: we are Not a right-wing party. We have a most democratic and yet Jewish program. The Yamin stands for right or correct as opposed to wrong or incorrect; it is the right, the correct, party for Israel.
a. There is no right-wing party in the Knesset; hence the distinction between "right" and "left" is obsolete. Indeed, no party in the Knesset is worthy of the votes of Israel's citizens—not after the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria.
b. The division today is between those who do and those who not identify with the Jewish heritage. This real, existential issue in the 2003 election was whether Jews can be expelled from their homes.
c. Is there a "right" and a "left" on this issue? No, you are either right or wrong on this issue. And every member of the Likud—even the 13 that voted against disengagement—is culpable, because they should have denounced their party as well their prime minister on every public forum.
d. The expulsion of Jews from their homes was the greatest desecration of God's name; and since the Likud was primarily responsible, Manhigut Yehudit should leave that party, otherwise they are mere hypocrites.
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Israel's Non-Existent Nationalist Camp and How to Create One: Part I
Prof. Paul Eidelberg, President
Israel-America Renaissance Institute
The illustrious Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook understood that Israel is divided between four major groups: (1) the religious who are Zionists; (2) the religious who are not Zionists; (3) the secular who are Zionists; and (4) the secular who are not Zionists.
From this one may reasonably conclude that Israel's "nationalist camp" is and always has been a fiction. In fact, Israel's founding fathers were steeped in a contradiction. On the one hand, people like David Ben-Gurion were Zionists (hence "nationalists") on the one hand, but Marxists (hence "internationalists") on the other. Modern Israel was thus born in an oxymoron, and it has remained oxymoronic to this day.
One manifestation of this may be seen in the Likud, which campaigns on the "right" and shifts to the "left" when in power. Another manifestation of this Shas and/or United Torah Judaism, which campaign on a Torah line but will then ally itself with a secular government committed to the Oslo policy of yielding Jewish land to Arabs in the of "peace," a fiction.
The oxymoronic nature of modern Israel was manifested by Likud leader PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who endorsed the creation of an Arab Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. But this was also the sub rosa policy of Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin in the infamous Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of September 1993, which has been the cornerstone of every succeeding Israeli government regardless of which party or party leader or coalition has been at the helm. So all talk today of a nationalist camp must be taken with a grain of salt.
Nevertheless, the non-existence of a nationalist camp does not mean that a nationalist camp cannot be created. Unlike the universe, however, it cannot be created from nothing—we are mere mortals. So we have to employ existing stuff to create a nationalist camp. What stuff? Is there anything that exists which the four major groups defined by Rav Kook have in common that is more important than their differences? The only thing I can think of is LIFE. Thus, if Israel (God forbid) were invaded by Arabs, I think it's safe to say all Jews, regardless of their religious and other differences, would unite to repel the invaders.
But our problem is how to form a consensus of Jews when the threat mentioned above is not uppermost in mind? In other words, is it possible to form a "nationalist camp" despite Rav Kook's four-fold division of the people living in Israel. I think so.
There are two values or concepts that compete for people's loyalties in Israel. One is democracy; the other is Torah—and here let us not succumb to the facile notion of commentators such as former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak that the two complement each other. Not because this is false, but because its truth comes from either ignorant or disingenuous minds.
I am therefore going regard Barak's notion as a "proposition, " hence as something that may be proven true or false, and I am going to take the positive position in order to promote the idea of a "nationalist camp." In fact, this idea has been elaborated in various books of mine, most recently in "The Theo-Political Foundations of American Exceptionalism: Today's Choice for the 'Almost Chosen' People." What makes America the "almost Chosen People" is this: America's basic ideas are rooted in the Bible of Israel, for as others have been more or less aware, America's foundational documents, the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Federal Constitution of 1787 manifest ideas traceable to the Hebraic Republic of antiquity—ideas praised by Samuel Langdon and Ezra Stiles, the presidents, respectively, of Harvard and Yale Universities in America's constitution-forming period.
Here I have only space to set forth a formula distilled from those two foundational documents. These two documents may rightly be understood as capable of teaching us how to make Israel more democratic by means of Torah principles, and how to make Israel more Torah oriented by means of democratic principles.
Strange as it may seem, this is the only way to create a nationalist camp in Israel.
(To be continued)
Sincerely,
Robin Ticker
Activist emails sent to my list are L'Ilui Nishmat Yisrael ben David Aryeh ob"m (Izzy - Kaplan) a great activist and lover of Eretz Yisroel, Am Yisroel and the Torah. Yehi Zichrono Baruch.
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