Is Israeli Governance Really so Far Right?

 

We hear from articles and network news commentators how the Israeli government is the most right wing government in Israeli history. This interpretation may be quite wrong for all too many reasons. The government initially was presented with sixty-one seat majority with fifty-nine in the opposition. The initial parties were Likud (30 seats), Kulanu (10 seats), HaBayit HaYehudi (8 seats), Shas (7 seats) and Agudat Israel (6 seats) and this coalition was further strengthened ever so slightly with the addition of Yisrael Beiteinu (5 seats) to the coalition. The discussions about this being a far right government often lists HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home) as being far right as they represent religious Zionists and Zionism has been placed as part of the far right despite its origins having been closely tied to socialism and the Kibbutz model. In Israeli recent history the Labor Party attempted to reinvigorate its Zionist roots, from which they had drifted quite far, but still named their coalition with Tzipi Livni as the Zionist Union. Nobody presenting news in Israel would ever refer to Zionist Union as being far right, but HaBayit HaYehudi is often criticized for their staunch Zionist principles and then further critiqued for being religious. What is really interesting is when election time comes around, the media then refers to HaBayit HaYehudi as being well to the left of Likud as a means of hindering their position as a presentable choice for religious Zionists hoping to have the religious Zionist vote for the more minor parties who have very similar positions as HaBayit HaYehudi. This is done in the hope that some, or many or all, of the minor parties do not cross the threshold and those votes are not represented in the government and HaBayit HaYehudi will have garnered fewer seats. This might permit a left wing government to take control in Israel, something which came close to being reality in the last elections where had HaBayit HaYehudi not thrown support to Likud sacrificing seats so Likud would have the mandate to form the government, which worked with great efficiency, Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid Party might have had the mandate. Yair Lapid is often described as being a right-centrist to the right of Bibi Netanyahu, more Zionist than Bibi Netanyahu, more humanistic than Bibi Netanyahu, stronger support of military than Bibi Netanyahu and simply more popular than Bibi Netanyahu so additionally if only the Israeli people were more intelligent and informed, Bibi Netanyahu would lose to Yair Lapid and the world would find Shangri-La entering the Age of Aquarius and be perfected. This perfect world includes the formation of the Arab entity of Palestine left to its own devices under the rule of Mahmoud Abbas for as long as he can remain breathing. Shortly after the IDF and the Israeli towns and cities have been evacuated there will be a coup just like in Gaza with one major difference, Mahmoud Abbas and everyone else who Hamas has no need of in their idea of Palestine will be hanged or put before a wall and shot. This will lead to Iran arming Hamas with thousands of rockets and artillery with which to destroy central Israel including Tel Aviv and its surrounding cities and suburbs. This will leave three-quarters of Israeli economic structures, residential housing, energy production and everything else including Israel’s main international airport, Ben Gurion International Airport, and also striking Jerusalem and cutting it off from the remainder of Israel. Leftists claim that this time it will work as they predict and be nothing like Gaza. Unfortunately, they have not explained how this miracle will come to fruition. Israelis are supposed to take this reality on faith and faith alone. Still, let us look at this presumed overtly right wing government and the arguments as to why this is far from reality.

 

Shangri-La and the World in the Age of Aquarius

 

Let us define what would have occurred if the current government in Israel really were a radical, far right wing government. When President Trump took office there would have been some events which would have occurred already. First is that Area C of Judea and Samaria would have been annexed and any Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership residing within these areas would have been removed as would any families who have any connection with terrorism. Mahmoud Abbas would have been called to Jerusalem for a meeting with the Prime Minister, in the current government that is Bibi Netanyahu, where he would be instructed to present what he would consider an acceptable peace which he believes is acceptable to both his people and to the Israeli government. Abbas would have been given two weeks to present his plan. If his plan was in any means acceptable, then Israel would work with him with a set number of weeks to reach an agreement or the entire leadership of the PA, PLO and Fatah would be deported once and for all. The remainder of the Arabs who have links to terrorism would join the rest of the leadership in being expelled. After this the remainder of the Arabs would be permitted to choose whether they wish to remain or have their properties bought at high value and a relocation bonus while being banned from ever returning even for a visit. Those who choose to remain would take on the identity of alien resident who might be permitted to vote in local elections depending on numerous conditions but would not have the right to vote in national elections. As far as requirements placed upon these Arabs would be if they showed any sign of participating or aiding terrorism, they will be expelled receiving no financial aid or remuneration for their properties. As far as being permitted a path to citizenship, this would be denied for the foreseeable future. The inference would be that such was not something that Israel was about to consider granting such a privilege. This would be followed by the annexation of all the lands west of the Jordan River, the exact lands which the San Remo Conference had denoted to make up the Jewish State in its final rendition. Contrary to European, United Nations, Arab League and much of the world’s opinions, International Law depicts the Jordan River as the eastern border for the Jewish State of Israel.

 

We should expect the United Nations General Assembly along with the European Union and many others jumping onboard to take these actions before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), much as has happened before and should serve as a warning. If one does not need believe us, but one might feel inclined to take the wording of a decision made by the Third Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Versailles in a case brought by the PA against the French companies Alstom and Veolia for building Jerusalem’s light rail system. Their final decision was also a warning to the PA that Israel has the sole claim to all of Judea and Samaria and that they would do best not to take this into any court of law. The fact this came from the friendliest court system the PA was able to find makes this all the more impressively important. Please take our kind invitation to read for yourself a copy of the Court Ruling. Furthermore, in an earlier case brought before Egyptian Judge, Justice El Araby, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), who sat in judgement as part of the panel which heard the case where the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) sought an advisory opinion in 2003 from the ICJ on the legality of the security barrier erected by Israel; the Honorable Justice El Araby warned the UNGA and others, including Mahmoud Abbas and the whole of the PA, that filing further ran some risks, as he stated,

“The international legal status of the Palestinian Territory (paras. 70-71 of the Advisory Opinion), in my view, merits more comprehensive treatment. A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently side-stepped. The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain.”

The warning given by the Egyptian Judge has been the well-known dirty-little secret that everybody has known and done everything in their collective power to ignore or even contravene in order to do whatever is required to destroy the Jewish State. This is the largest part of the new anti-Semitism which has spawned the BDS movement and the entire Palestinian movement. The aim is to force the Jewish State’s destruction and a new Shoah with approaching seven-million Jews being murdered and the remainder placed back in the diaspora. A major part of the world resents the founding of Israel as the Jewish State as the reappearance of the Jewish nation fulfills prophesy. But it is actually worse than that for Catholicism, Islam and most of Christianity who believe in replacement theology. The founding of Christianity during the rule of the Roman Empire and with the Jews being spread to the far corners of their empire and beyond, to all viewers it appeared that the Jewish people were about to disappear from the face of the earth as others facing this same treatment by the Romans had disappeared. Another such people were the Carthaginians, the original Phoenicians, who were dispersed after the three Punic Wars. A simple question, has anybody run into a Carthaginian or a Phoenician of late? We did not think so as they were wiped from history by the Roman Empire. How the Jewish people did not meet a similar fate was due to the central pillar of the Jewish people being different than other civilizations. Most people are identified by their lands and central locations and losing this ends their identity but the Jewish people are centered around the Torah. This is what held the Jews as a people despite the challenges and allowed them to remain separated from other people, something for which the Jews paid a high price. The benefit is it allowed the Jewish people to reestablish their homelands and defined exactly where that homeland was and is to be located. What the Jewish people are soon to be required to accomplish will be the reconstituting of their homelands by bringing the remainder of world Jewry home and making Israel the actual home of the entirety of the Jewish people. This will result in some sad realities when, just as when the Jewish people returned from Egypt or returned from their exile in Babylon, a mere twenty-percent of the Jews returned to Israel and those who made their future outside of Israel were eventually assimilated and lost to their families and from the body of the Jewish people. There was another loss of a great number of Jews, likely a lower percentage than Egypt and Babylon, were lost to the tribes as they found themselves completely detached. The sadness will be those families who will be torn asunder with those who remain in Canada, the United States, Europe and elsewhere around the globe soon becoming assimilated and lost to the Jewish people and to their families who will feel the pain for a number of generations living in the truly Promised Land.

 

Jewish People Returning from Exile

 

Somehow, we doubt that the largest Jewish element in the Diaspora are in the United States, we seriously doubt they will resemble this picture in any way. Those who return from the United States will be flying El Al Airlines while much of their possessions will be traveling DHL or other first-class and efficiently fast delivery as they will not desire being without their personal items. The unfortunate truth is that the vast majority of the Jewish population in the United States who are outside the Traditional Orthodox Community are not going to be returning to Israel unless forced to do so. Far too many will deny their Jewishness in order to avoid having to leave the United States as they perceive the United States as their Promised Lands. What it would take for the majority of the assimilated Jews to return to Israel, the home of their forefathers, would be deportation from the United States where they would be placed on wide-body aircraft with as many seats as possible installed, they would be divorced from their homes, money, furniture, vehicles and other wealth and be deported being driven out, dispossessed and exiled with their passport and citizenship invalidated. They would not be permitted to return even to vacation at Disney World. Eventually, the Jews will be forced to return to their homeland by the very nations who have at times attempted to destroy that very homeland. The one nation we always hear will never expulse their Jews is the United States. Believe it or not, anti-Semitism is growing in the United States and much of the new anti-Semitism emanates from the far left. There are many Jews in these groups and they are in denial that such can be a possibility. The problem is they have blinders on and are refusing to view things even should they happen right before their eyes. These are the Jews who will remain far longer than they are welcome but will be suffered for as long as they serve their purpose. What is that purpose? It is to allow the anti-Semites to claim they love Jews as they have Jews within their group. Talk about useful idiots, but every revolution has them. These unfortunates will learn what happens to useful idiots once they are no longer useful, and if they are fortunate, that future will not include a wall and a line of people with machine-guns but an old steamship which they will be overcrowded and miserable for the six-month cruise to Israel.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Arrow of History or Circle of Reality or Neither

 

There are presumably two versions of the path of human history; one is based on the Arrow of History and the other is Circular Path of History. The former is the idealist who believes that history can be corrected and placed on a path to a more perfect reality where governance is taken from its Hobbesian State on to the targeted perfected society. The latter is the realist camp where history has been and will continue to revolve through the same errors, fixes and other acts and reactions repeated adinfinitum. One can read how this was applied by President Obama as he went from his initial idealist views and eventually matured into a realist view according to Charles Krauthammer.

 

The liberal or idealist versions of history and governance, in theory, result in targeting treaties, trade agreements, interconnectivity, United Nations governance overview and other Universalist actions by which undesirable actions such as aggressive conquests of territories is mediated or prevented by a form of semi-formed morass of soft glue. This version spends little if any capital to adjust individual governance and instead seeks to restrain all governance limiting them to affecting solely within their borders and prevented from any external interaction to channels approved and writ large in treaties and trade pacts. These are the dreamers who view an eventual world governance forming some utopian eventuality without repeating the same mistakes repeatedly.

 

The Conservative or realist versions of history and governance, in theory, aims at improving individual governance in order to prevent the aggressions and other disruptive effects of the cycle of history. Their view has used the observation that democracies seldom go to war with their adversaries and are more likely to mitigate differences through peaceful means. They believe that the path to nirvana must pass through democratization of governances worldwide using nation-building as their main tool. This method has the drawback that it requires a long and possible indefinite involvement of troops, advisors and security personnel who will be required to prevent any challenge outside of elections. Even changes affected through elections may still require intervention by this realist view in order to prevent any drifting into a position where the governance becomes established and uncontested such as would have occurred in Egypt had the Muslim Brotherhood remained the elected power in Egypt as this would have resulted in their taking the position of approving access to the ballot. This was prevented by an almost as dangerous event where the military removed the Muslim Brotherhood governance and the Commander of the Army, General Sisi, came to power as the newly elected President. This government will also require watching to assure that the Presidency does not simply become the highest position of the military always filled by the former Commanding General. When and if President Sisi either is not a candidate or is defeated, the next President and their history will tell us much about if Egypt has become a true democracy and whether it will long remain one, free of either straight and enforced through arms dictatorship or a Muslim Brotherhood theocracy where the democratic voting is but a fig leaf covering the reality beneath.

 

Time’s Strings Eternally Slipping Away
Time’s Springs Clocking Gears Forward
Time Passing Second by Second Forever
Minute by Minute and Hour by Hour
Days Moving Always Onward

 

One unique democracy which was enforced by the military which was quite unique was the governance of Turkey as designed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. This democratic governance was assured by the military where they were to guard against a religious takeover of the government. There were a number of military interventions and each resulted in a special election held within a relatively short period and Turkey returned to its democratic constitution, the same constitution which charged the military with the power of preserving the democratic nature of Turkey. Around 2005 the military in Turkey had planned to replace the government as they had decided that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had established himself as a permanent religious ruler over Turkey and that he had rigged future elections to preserve his rule. As Turkey was also seeking entry into the European Union, something which would never come to be no matter what Turkey would do to please the Europeans, and the leadership of the European Union, numerous European governments all advised the Turkish military to stand down and President Bush threatened an end of American aid to Turkey and questioned their continued membership in NATO should the military replace the government even with their holding new special elections within ninety days thus Recep Tayyip Erdoğan remained in power, the military went through a shake-up replacing every general who might stand against Erdogan with a cherry picked general and the courts were restructured and Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have held power even to the point of forcing new elections when after a regular election the AKP did not hold a majority of the Ministerships and between the two elections there were many incidents which were suspicious. Thus dies a democracy.

 

We have a slightly different view of the paths of history and it combines the two varieties, it takes the circular path of the realists and we will add to it the arrow of history of the idealists and makes a spiral of history. Let us try and sort this out and explain. Let us go back in ye old way-back machine to the time of the biblical character of Abraham. Before Abraham there was human sacrifice where the lame, the weak, the unproductive, the young and the old were routinely removed through human sacrifice. Enemies taken prisoner were either worked to death, abused in all manners of degradations including physical, sexual and demeaned eventually being used in human sacrifice. Some societies’ members of the society would compete to become such a sacrifice as it was viewed as an honor to be sacrificed for the good of the rest. With the intervention of the sacrificing of Isaak, humanity took a step away from its violent and abhorrent past towards what is today viewed as civilized behavior. This was the arrow of history moving the circle such that it would continue to spiral until almost no society used human sacrifice as a set practice.

 

Later there was another firing of the arrow and pushing the spiral along with the handing down of the Law at Mount Sinai. What is not often thought about was that the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, came along with the Ten Commandments and the guide to good governance and the first set of laws defining human rights. The concept that any ruler is not to gather great wealth in horses, cattle, gold, currency or possessions as well as tasked to write their own Torah, book for book, chapter by chapter, paragraph for paragraph, sentence for sentence, word for word and letter for letter perfect, free of any mistake even in the form of the individual letter and their formation is written in Torah. Every letter started with the top which was always the letter Yudh and from that the rest of the letter is formed. There were laws of property and ownership, recompense for loss of property. The guidance for judgeship and the application of the law free from influence of wealth or poverty, high position or beggar or any other difference making reference for the application of the law to be blind to all but the law. Further, the society was instructed to treat the stranger with respect, those taken in war were to be granted decent respect and slaves had rights to decent treatment and being well cared for. These and many other laws which we retain today in many Western lands were all found within Torah with many in Deuteronomy.

 

Life continued and governments came to try new forms with the noted advancing by the Greeks with a Republic. This form of government almost died before the Persian Empire but was quite possibly preserved by the Spartans at Thermopylae in a land and sea battle which is still studied by modern armies in their military colleges. The arrow widened the spiral for a period and the spiral turns anew. Religious tyranny would threaten the spiral again with the fall of the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire and the threat of Islamic religious tyranny rolling through Europe destroying Christianity and rule of the people. Charles the Hammer Martel prevented further invasion of Europe from out of the west at the Battle of Tours in 732AD. On the eastern front in Europe the advance of the Ottoman Empire was turned back twice at Vienna. The initial battle was the Siege of Vienna of 1529 where the Ottomans captured Vienna and after rested only to retreat subsequently as this was the Ottoman Empire’s high water mark. This assault was led by Suleiman the Magnificent. The second Siege of Vienna was in 1683 beginning on September 12 by Kara Mustafa leading a force of 150,000. King John III Sobieski of Poland broke the siege after about two months and this marked the end of threats from the Ottoman Empire which collapsed after World War I.

 

Scientific discoveries and philosophical and political progress has slowly over time made for what we consider to be a more civil and peaceful society though the deaths due to war increased century to century or even often decade to decade until the dropping of two bombs, one on Hiroshima and the next on Nagasaki and warfare has become a far more dangerous endeavor and thus became something fought solely in far more limited manner. This will remain a great push forward by the arrow by necessity and fears of complete annihilation. This fear might continue indefinitely or some nation may decide to use nuclear weapons, perhaps even the most damaging and effective city killing thermonuclear device leading to an ever widening nuclear meltdown of societies possibly leading to a new dark age where the spiral of history could go through a devastating recoil very much like the loosing of a stretched coiled spring. Whether such has happened before in history is a question for which we have no definitive answer.

 

The hope is that the spiral will continue to move mankind into a more perfect society where individual liberties and freedoms are protected and even advanced. The threat of an unwinding of the coil taking mankind back to a tribal uncivil set of brutal societies where tribe fights tribe for limited wealth and resources is ever present. The greater the coils spread and stretch separating one modern society compared to another modern society, there is a tension which will always threaten to recompress the spiral forcing the coils to spring backwards undoing much of what has been invested in stretching the spiral straining it as if a coiled spring. This is why we need to employ both versions of changing history for the better, invest in a tangle of treaties, trade deals, international agreements and other entanglements while also seeking to perfect society by aiming to expand democratic rule and human rights. These two forces must be combined with the third force which defines the separation of the individual coils of the spiral, the advancement of the human individual. That is the necessary change, the only true and real advancement, the improvement of the individual and their rights and standing as equals. Making merit, action and accomplishment, resulting from education, intelligence and ability, as the determining of one’s standing and wealth within the society and allowing for every individual to possess the power and ability to advance and achieve position to the best of their abilities and efforts is the basis of modern society and need be spread throughout the world if it is to remain so.

 

The improvement of the individual is the only guarantor of advancement thus one of the most important items which must be achieved is the enlightenment of the individual and the freeing of all people as individuals and given the potential for advancement through actions and abilities. That is where the challenge is situated in the world today. In too many places the people are oppressed and kept all but enslaved by a small number of elitists. Elitism is the enemy of actual progress and must be avoided and defeated and replaced with a society structure which values the individual and desires of the individual to be the engine for advancement of the society and for the greater good of the entirety of society instead of enriching only the few. Humankind since the earliest days of human sacrifice has progressed and if one were to make a comparison then humankind has advanced from the tribal stage similar to baboons who attack other tribes fiercely without mercy to a stage of chimpanzees who stake an area and do not impinge on their neighbor unless in a form of actual warfare and are hopefully to be able to reach the point where our society is more similar to the Bonobo communities which are peace-loving and generally egalitarian. That is a crude comparison but it is also a fairly symbolic view of the potentials of our simian predecessors whose societies resided with very different resources and competition for these resources where they either competed for every morsel, competed to protect their area, their zone or they shared and lived with peace and where any differences are settled without undue violence. The problem is we are at a cringe-worthy point in human history where either great strides are right before us or a great decompression forcing a recoiling of the spiral and a loss of advancements to a more primitive place where the individual has no real rights and the few stand over their perceived lessors. The fall of the society which had progressed from Abraham through Moses, the Greeks, Romans, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Information Age and should we be fortunate, the Biologic Advancement and virtual immortality bringing the “Age of Aquarius,” at any point could destroy almost all progress and reset the entire string.

 

Beyond the Cusp