Government Responsibility and Irresponsibility

Last week, Israel's government announced to the Supreme Court that there is no law that obligates it to shield the homes of Sderot from rocket attacks. Just like that -- in deceptively evasive legalese, the State of Israel abandoned the residents of Sderot to their fate. But this phenomenon is not unique to Israel alone. A gradual change in the status of the modern Western sovereign state has been taking place since World War II.

The most basic factor that affords a sovereign state validity is its responsibility for the security of its citizens. After World War II and the upsurge in the West's liberal values, democratic regimes were forced to find creative solutions for guarding their national security without paying the price. And so, Western nations began to sub-contract their wars to other arenas; to nations and cultures that were not democratic. Korea, Vietnam, Africa and Lebanon all provided the backdrop for the continued wars of the West. Israel and the genius attempt to create a Palestinian state ex nihilo -- without democratic constraints -- also provides the West with a theatre for its fights. Slowly but surely, though, this has created a gap between the Western nations' liberal-democratic values and their ability to preserve national security. When the state can no longer triumph in war, its sovereign status is severely undermined.

The most explicit symbol of this process was the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. Although it was as devastating as Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, it left the Americans with no return address for a counter-attack. America found itself at war against an enemy that is not a state. It is an enemy in another dimension -- an enemy that cannot be defeated with modern democratic consciousness. Liberal, democratic nations (Israel included) are helpless against such an enemy.

The Western nations no longer afford their citizens a sense of security or the experience of victory. That is why they are losing their sovereign status. The sovereign that no longer provides security is not much of a sovereign. Everybody begins to pull in his own direction until the seams fray and burst.

In Israel, as always, this process is much quicker and more extreme. Although the state shirks its sovereign responsibility to provide its citizens with security, it insists on "educating" our children, "preserving" our health and "caring" for our elderly and needy. "Big Brother" pays for our needs with our taxes. He sinks his hand deep into our pockets and rewards us with a few crumbs of service. Has anybody thought of demanding a tax refund for the two months that our high school children have been out of school while their teachers strike? And how much of a tax rebate should Sderot's residents get for the security taxes that they pay?

"In my opinion, the residents of Sderot should stop paying taxes," fumed an angry citizen this week. "If the state shirks its responsibility, Sderot residents owe the state nothing -- not income tax, not social security, not V.A.T. and not health tax."

The old concepts and the accepted way of thinking are deep in the process of collapse and change. It is our job to lead the process in which the state once again takes responsibility for what it should -- the security of its citizens -- while allowing its citizens the freedom to control the rest of their lives.

For more on this topic see Moshe Feiglin's article, "Districts for a Democratic Israel