On the Moral Restoration of Israel
Netanyahu’s biggest challenge ahead.
As I wrote in my prescient article a few months ago: A Moral Philosopher’s Letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Netanyahu’s victory was inevitable. A moral and political mandate has indeed been issued to the great patriarch of Israel and, at least for now, Israel’s implosion has been forestalled. As the looming October deadline bears down on him to form a coalition government, Israeli’s and all who regard themselves as defenders of Israel and allies of Netanyahu must face tough fundamental challenges and ask the question: What ultimately must he do to convince the Israeli people that he is indeed their moral and political leader?
First, he must continue to use the moral force of his convictions to form a coalition by communicating directly to the Israeli people that failure to do so will result in the country’s implosion. Netanyahu is a born leader, a man of moral convictions and, like all moral leaders, one possessed of a formidable and charismatic character. It would be in his rational self-interest to point out to his petulant and soulless rivals who have implacably stated that they will not form a coalition union with him what Israel will rightfully become and be seen as in the eyes of the world if they fail to partner with him: a politically failed state and an incompetent democracy. The only beacon of light in a dark and politically primitive and regressive Middle East would have been extinguished. With the ugly presence of the Joint List, the Arab backed third largest party in the 20thKnesset, the country is ripe for a Third Intifada, and a large-scale strike from Gaza.
Netanyahu must explain in plain terms the pernicious and nefarious nature of the Joint List—a phalanx of socialists, communists, feminists, Arab nationalists and separatists who have openly advocated Arab separatism over Israeli-Arab solidarity as exactly what they are: a national security threat to Israel. This group of Hamas sympathizers, pay-for-slay supporters are united in their hatred of Jews, and of Israel. They hate the application of Israeli law. He must explain to the people how they have and will continue to demand Israel’s withdrawal to the pre 1967 war borders; the right of return for so-called Palestinian refugees; and the recognition of the Israeli Arab population as a national minority with cultural, religious and educational autonomy. He must explain that such groups already have such autonomy; that the Palestinian Authority and its educational curriculum indoctrinate those who identity as Palestinians into a thuggish hatred of Israel. They are schooled to see Israel as illegitimate, and Jews as debased subhuman specimens—to say the least. He must remind Israelis that the charters of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority still call for the obliteration of Israel and Jewry from the region, and that that, in and of itself, is a permanent declaration of war against all Israeli citizens. The existence of the charters is an act of war by the Palestinian architects and of all those who fail to renounce them.
How did such a group (the Joint List), determined to lead the opposition, become entitled to receive the same intelligence briefing materials on Military, Foreign, Defense, Affairs and Intelligence and Security Details as the Prime Minister himself? What other rational country in the world allows proclaimed enemies of the state this sort of the privilege? But it is up to Netanyahu to proclaim the suicidal mission his country has been on ever since it fought that altruistic Seven Day War in 1967 and failed to immediately annex Judea and Samaria when it defeated Jordan in that war. Aside from carrying through on his promise to morally annex Judea and Samaria (The West Bank), permanently securing the Golan Heights and making sure that that Israeli Law is unilaterally applied there forever, he should explain how the Second Intifada neutralized the Oslo Accords and why, therefore, Israel ought to retake Bethlehem. Under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority the Christian population there has been decimated by about 94%. What was once a world-wide and certainly, a national holy treasure trove, has been reduced to a moral hell hole. The Palestinian Authority has no right to govern anywhere in moral Israel.
Netanyahu’s biggest challenge will lie in convincing his compatriots how the third largest party in the Knesset constituted by enemies of the state could ever have become a possibility. This will require going back to fundamentals. It is a reality , I have argued, because a significant number of the Arab population (excluding Christians) vote terrorist organizations into power. As a voting bloc they are a national security threat—hence the existence of the Joint List; another national security threat now an internal part of the government entrusted with the highest levels of security and intelligence details.
The Prime Minister would be well within his right to explain why as pre-conditions for voting and even conferral of citizenship, a thorough vetting process which would include loyalty oaths, renouncing and repudiating all terror groups including the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and exclusive loyalty to the state of Israel would be required of all those deemed as national security threats by rational and objective evaluative metrics that evaluate voting practices.
But Netanyahu’s dilemma is a dilemma of the west in general. Western civilization is imploding. The jungle is not approaching our civilized cities; and the barbarians are not at the gates. The jungles have become our cities, and the barbarians, slick, articulate and dressed in suits and ties, and heels and skirts and blouses, and well-heeled are among us destroying our civilization. The west is not dying apocalyptically, but is, instead, bleeding to death by thousands of unnoticed tiny scratches. Netanyahu’s opponents are part of the barbaric cabal. Their hatred of him supersedes their love of Israel and of western civilization. Morally and intellectually they are so out of focus that they would rather conjoin with enemies of the state than with the only man in Israel whose range of a moral vision for a greater Israel extends beyond some village idiot’s preoccupation with his in-grown toenail. But his adversaries have no vision—just a visceral hatred for him, and a maniacal drive to punish him.
Those Americans who care for freedom and for moral civilization and who cannot bear to see crass vulgarity and violence masquerading as justified response to imagined oppression must export their moral voices in any way to support the Israeli Prime Minister. It is time for the civilized few to demand a restoration of order and law and usher in a new moral tomorrow.
Jason D. Hill is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy and American politics. He is the author of several books, including “We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People” (Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press). Follow him on Twitter @JasonDhill6.
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