The Finger in the Gaza Dike

By Moshe Feiglin

Adar I, 5768
Feb., '08

Translated from Moshe Feiglin's article on the Ma'ariv NRG website.

The children of Sderot are the finger in the Gaza dike. They are there to save us all from the great flood. The difference between them and the Dutch Hans Brinker is that they did not volunteer for the job. We have forcibly stuck their fingers in the dike, and returned to our own affairs.

After one (Italian) bomb, the children of pre-State Haifa were evacuated to Hadera. Haifa's residents were no less patriotic than today's Israelis. Winston Churchill evacuated London's children during the Blitz. Chruchill was certainly no less a patriot than Olmert.

So after seven years of missile bombardment, why hasn't Israel evacuated the children of Sderot? Are we braver than the War of Independence generation?

The answer is simple. If we evacuate the children of Sderot, their parents will follow, and they won't come back. They won't come back because the State of Israel is not capable of winning a war that it does not understand - a war that it denies. Unlike the War of Independence or London in World War II, we know that we will not win. That is why the children of Sderot will not return and that is why their parents will follow suit. If we evacuate the children of Sderot, the same scenario will quickly take place in Ashkelon and Ashdod - until everything collapses. We have stuck the children of Sderot in the Gaza dike to maintain Peres' 'peace legacy' - and then we changed the channel.

At one point or another, Olmert's prime ministerial chair will begin to quake, and he will have to send the IDF into Gaza. Even if we momentarily ignore the outrageous lack of moral standing of those responsible for the Expulsion, it is still clear that it is absolute folly to send the IDF back into Gaza. A military incursion into Gaza that is not for the purpose of conquering it, solving its overpopulation problem in other places in the world, declaring full Israeli sovereignty there and making the entire area flourish with one hundred Gush Katifs - will achieve nothing but the pointless deaths of our soldiers.

Our sons will run through the alleys of Jebalyah, being sure not to harm 'innocent civilians.' And with maximum consideration and concern for our foes, our sons will be murdered as they fight from house to house, until they complete their mission with supreme heroism. (Assuming that the Four Mothers don't mix in too early.) And then the Prime Minister (no matter who he is) will ceremoniously give Gaza to the Fatah - the good terrorists. Simply put, we are about to sacrifice our sons so that we can transfer the Gaza Strip from arch-murderer A to arch-murderer B.

Since Oslo, Israel's political strategy has been compelled exclusively by the Oslo option. Rabin brought Arafat to Israel so that he would fight the Hamas. Now terrorist B is launching missiles at us. So we will conquer Gaza, this time for terrorist C. Or even worse and more absurd, we will send our sons to be killed to conquer Gaza and return it to terrorist A. After all, Yossi Beilin is sure to sternly warn that if we do not take advantage of the 'window of opportunity' and get killed for terrorist A, we will get terrorist D or who knows? Maybe even terrorist E. And we will continue to transfer Gaza from one terrorist to the next. And each and every one of them will continue to fire missiles at Sderot.

Do we really think that the world will allow us to rebuild Gush Katif? Of course not. So let's be serious. Maybe we should just cut off their electricity and water. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that the world will not allow us to do that either. And rightfully so! Because if Gaza is not part of our land, Sderot is not part of our land either. And of course, if we gave the Temple Mount to the Moslems, there is also no justification for the Jews to settle in Tel Aviv. The fact that the world claims that every potentially effective action that Israel takes in Gaza is illegitimate does not stem from a sudden outbreak of uncontrollable world-wide humanism. In the eyes of the world, it is illegitimate for Israel to defend Sderot because the world is convinced that the Hamas is right.

Just imagine if, in the beginning of World War II, Churchill would have announced that London actually does belong to Hitler. Or even worse, just imagine what would have happened if Churchill himself had destroyed the border towns of England and then ceremoniously bestowed them on the Nazi murderer. Would he have enjoyed world support after that for bombing Dresden?

But we have already left Gaza? Very true. And by fleeing Gaza, we have also proven that Sderot is not ours, either. The entire world has seen how Israel has driven the Jews who believe in the Jewish claim on the Land of Israel from their homes. Everyone saw how Israel destroyed their towns and abandoned their synagogues to the Arab hordes. In full view of the gleeful world media, the State of Israel performed the most amazing moral hara-kiri of all times - obliterating any measure of justification for Jewish sovereignty over even one grain of the Holy Land in the process.

The Hamas terrorists may not be nice, but in the eyes of the world, they are just. They bomb civilians? So what? The British and Americans also bombed civilians. The world is with them because they are convinced that they are right. Israel has already made that clear.

So now what do we do about Sderot? The solution is to re-build one hundred Gush Katifs. That is impossible to accomplish under our present circumstances? Then we must evacuate the children.

But the children of Sderot are the finger in the dike!

We have only two choices. Either we create leadership that will fight, liberate the Temple Mount and Gaza and restore the justice that we lost in Gush Katif, or we will continue to live in Oslodian denial - at the expense of the blood of Sderot's children.

Protest the Next War

By Moshe Feiglin

Since the meaningless Winograd Report ignored the main question -- why Israel went to war in Lebanon two summers ago -- it was a given that the Prime Minister would be able to hang on to his seat. That being the case, it is more important to plan for the next war instead of analyzing the past war.

Dr. Yair Weissman of the Bar Ilan University has published a simple analysis in which he reaches the conclusion that sooner or later, Israel will capture Gaza in order to remove it from the clutches of the Hamas and hand it over to the Fatah. This idea is so clear that nobody is shocked by it anymore. The Kassams will continue to explode and will become more and more sophisticated. They will have a longer range and slowly but surely, the residents of Ashkelon and eventually Beer Sheva and Ashdod will just have to get used to them. When the IDF will retaliate, even more Kassams will fall. When we cut their electricity they will pose for the international media with candles (in broad daylight) and then we will turn the electricity back on and once again the Kassams will start to fly. Eventually, Olmert will sense that his prime ministerial seat is becoming unsteady, and he will send the IDF into Gaza.

The only political strategy that exists today in Israel is based on Oslo consciousness. Nobody (except for this writer) will dare propose that Israel should encourage the Arabs of Gaza to complete the natural process of 'voluntary transfer' that they began last week as they marched into Egypt. Nobody will encourage them to leave and nobody will propose that we recapture Gaza with the intention of remaining there and building one hundred Gush Katifs. Olmert will conquer the moon before he will carry out the one action that is based on the justice of the Jewish cause while creating peace as a bonus. Those concepts simply do not exist in the current Israeli lexicon. The only concepts to be found there are Oslo concepts.

Eventually, Olmert will send the IDF into Gaza and one or two hundred Israeli soldiers will give their lives in order to capture Gaza from one arch terrorist and hand it over to the rule of another arch terrorist. (For those who have forgotten, Abu Mazen is the terrorist who planned the massacre of the Israeli athletes in Munich.). In order to quiet the protest, Olmert will pull out his media immunity wild card and destroy a number of settlements. Then Israel will join Egypt and supply weapons to the 'good' terrorists in Gaza so that they will be able to fight the 'bad' ones. Then the Kassams will fly once again -- even more of them . After that, Olmert will receive the Nobel Peace Prize and will go down in history as an illustrious leader. Eventually he will be elected to be president and he will give advice to the next Likud leader, who will attempt to actualize Yossi Beilin's peace hallucinations.

Yes, this scenario is redundant. We have already lived through it more than once. But the main question is not if there will be a war. The real question is how we will react when it happens. We would be wise to establish an inquiry committee now -- not after the next defeat.

Should we let Olmert get away with it? How should the reserve soldiers who will be sent to die for Abu Mazen respond? Not by protesting the previous war, but by preparing for the upcoming war.

The only real solution to Israel's problems is authentic Jewish leadership. And establishing authentic Jewish leadership for Israel is in your hands. All that you have to do is to vote for it.

No Price Tag for 'Responsibility'

How can Ehud Olmert get away with proclaiming that "the responsibility for what happened (in the Lebanon War fiasco) is all mine" and not resigning?

Something strange has happened to the concept of responsibility in Israel. In Israel, when a leader says he is accountable for a failure, he expects to be lauded as a 'responsible' leader without paying the price for his blunder.

The roots of the strange immunity enjoyed by some of Israel's leaders can be traced to the security ethos that has developed in Israel, starting from the pre-State Palmach days. The new, pre-State Israelis attempted to develop a culture based on the future -- while negating the past.

The Second Aliyah Jews who came to settle the Land of Israel expected their children -- the first generation of sabras -- to be free of any trace of the Jewishness that they associated with the European Diaspora. They practically worshipped the new generation. Every young kibbutznik who bravely attacked and defeated his enemy was proof that the experiment had worked. The Second Aliyah had successfully created a new strain of humanity -- formed on the ruins of the Jewish nation -- the New Israeli.

Israel's security culture has created a failing and atrophied security establishment. The main reason for its colossal failure is its ethos. Capability is not relevant. The only thing that really matters is that the person in question serves the ethos. If you happen to be a brigade commander with sunglasses who seems to be in control of the situation, then you add substance to the theory of the New Israeli and all your failures will be forgiven. It makes no difference what you have actually done in the army. What really counts is what rank you have achieved and in which elite unit you have served.

Being a kibbutznik has traditionally been a ticket into the elite Matkal commando unit. Fighters in the Matkal unit are card-carrying New Israelis who are revered by Israeli society. These are the people who naturally assume leadership of the country. It is o.k. if they fail time and again. It is fine for them to flee the battlefield and evade fire contact with the enemy, just like Yitzchak Rabin. And like Ehud Barak, they may disappear with an entire battalion during the Yom Kippur War, evade responsibility for the battle of Sultan Yaakob in the First Lebanon War, ignore the dying soldier Madhat Yousouf in Joseph's Tomb, abandon the soldiers of the Southern Lebanese Army, bring Hadera into range of the Hizbollah rockets and flee Tze'ilim -- and all will be forgiven. As long as they come from the right place, served in the right unit and perpetuate the right ethos. Even Winograd will not dare to ask who exactly it was that brought much of northern Israel into missile range or why it is that Israel had to (unsuccessfully) re-capture the Lebanese towns that it had fled.

What does all of this have to do with Olmert's responsibility?

The 'New Israeli" ethos is upheld by Israel's security ethos. The security ethos has created a distorted culture that measures people by the positions that they have achieved -- and not by their accomplishments. The person most responsible for bringing this warped culture from the defense establishment into the political field is Yitzchak Rabin. In an attempt to ram Oslo down the public's throat, Prime Minister ("I am responsible!") Rabin insisted on assuming the position of Defense Minister. From that position, he enlisted the security ethos to help him actualize the Oslo values collapse.

At first, the army high command refused to give Rabin the backing that he needed to perpetrate his hallucinatory scheme. But the officer from the right family, the right kibbutz and the right commando unit was finally found. When he joined Israel's Oslo negotiating team, he propelled Israel's betrayal of the Land of Israel and Zionist values straight into the warm embrace of the security ethos. His name was Uzi Dayan. (Dayan is just an archetype. We have not forgotten Amnon Lipkin Shahak, Oren Shachor and others).

Since then, Oslo has never stopped. It explodes in our faces time and again, but we don't understand how it is that nobody has taken responsibility. After all, we warned them! Even worse, those responsible for Oslo continually progress in the system. They become prime minister, president, media stars, respected academicians and fellows in all sorts of strange institutes for democracy and centers for peace.

Responsibility is an impossible concept in the Kafka-esque reality that has evolved here. Just imagine what would happen if Olmert would tell the real truth: "I wanted to assure my place in the pantheon of the New Israelis. To do that, I had to get rid of Biblical Israel and the settlers who insist on living their vibrant, connected-to-history Judaism at the expense of the New Israeli myth. So I went to war to create momentum for the Convergence plan. But it turns out that the entire New Israeli theory has exploded in our faces. So I am taking responsibility and resigning." A statement like that from Olmert would signal the complete collapse of the hundred-years-old house of cards that the New Israelis have built here. It is not an option. So the entire Left and the media join forces to preserve Olmert. And the Winograd Committee follows suit, asking only how the debacle occurred -- never why.

Now that everything is clear, Olmert can sink back into his padded chair -- and 'take responsibility.'

Time for a new and different Palestine Mandate

By Ted Belman

Things are not going well for the two-state solution.

Palestinian PM Fayed said that no agreement will be reached this year. The latest poll in the territories discloses that since the Annapolis meeting, Fatah is losing popularity. Hamas has taken centre stage with its breach of the Gaza border. Livni acknowledges that Hamas must be dealt with first before the peace process can succeed. Though some say the look of the final deal is known others say the parties are farther apart than ever.

An agreement looks so far away that David Landau, the Editor of Haaretz, told Sec’y Rice in December, that Israel wanted to be raped. The Left including Israel Policy Forum is lobbying the US government for an imposed solution.

Attempting to create two states on this small piece of land with the hatred and distrust that exists between the people is an impossible task, particularly when the Palestinians want to destroy Israel rather have their own state and Israel doesn’t want to accept the Saudi Plan.

The US and Europe want to find a solution to the conflict. Creating a 23rd Arab state isn’t the primary goal. Let us assume they abandon the idea of creating a Palestinian state. Instead they allow Israel to destroy Hamas, Fatah and the PA. Israel would collect all weapons and once again be in charge of the Rafah crossing. All UN agencies doing work in the territories including UNWRA, would be replaced by Israel. All check points would be removed and the fence taken down.

That’s the easy part.

The refugees living outside the territories should receive compensation and passports. They should be absorbed by other nations but not be allowed to return to the territories except in limited circumstances. This is key.

If resettling about 4 million refugees throughout the world is too problematic, the US should work with their allies, Jordan and Egypt to develop an alternative location. Both of them are threatened by a radical Palestine and have much to gain in cooperating. Perhaps Egypt can be induced to give the northeast corner of Sinai to Gaza, as a potential new state. The entire area should be under a UN Mandate, like the Palestine Mandate, only this time on different land and for the Arab refugees. The US could be the Mandatory Power.

The refugees still living in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere should be resettled in this new land and then be put to work building the necessary housing and infrastructure. This could be a ten or twenty year project.

Now Israel, the US and the EU should agree to the following in the Westbank.

1. Israel could abrogate Oslo and annex the Westbank.
2. Israel could remain a Jewish state
3. the Arabs living there could be offered generous compensation to leave and the EU and the US would accept them as refugees..
4. Perhaps they could be offered citizenship in Jordan or the the new Palestine Mandate.
5. Israel would re-educate the Arabs for peaceful coexistence.
6. At the end of a fifteen year period, Israel would enable the Arabs remaining to apply for Israeli citizenship subject to certain oaths, pledges and commitments.

At that time, Jews would outnumber Arabs in Israel by a margin of 3 to 1. It could remain Jewish and be democratic. With the removal of Palestinian Nationalism every thing would settle down in the new Israel and Israel could focus on removing any vestiges of discrimination.

This solution would be easy to implement. Furthermore removing 400,000 refugees from Lebanon would stabilize that country and she would be glad to cooperate. The same for any other country that got rid of its refugees. Egypt could be given a highway connection to Jordan from the Sinai and neither country would have to worry about a radical state on its borders.

Of course this would require the Arab League to give up the goal of destroying Israel. With or without their consent, the US and the EU could do it. And everybody would be better off.

Olmert's Fatal Flaw

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE---PRESS RELEASE---FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Moshe Feiglin Co-Founder & President Contact: Tova Abadi, Spokesperson (917) 301-0997 (cell phone) tova@jewishisrael.org Shmuel Sackett Co-Founder & International Director

Olmert's Fatal Flaws

February 5, 2008... According to a report last week on Israel National News, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that he has no regrets about the 2006 war against Hizballah. Olmert further stated that the northern section of Israel is better off than it was before the war, even though he admitted that the enemy has more missiles now than it had before the war. Manhigut Yehudit would like to remind PM Olmert of how much better off we were when we had our 162 murdered Jewish brothers and sisters with us. They were killed in a war that was ill-fought and ill conceived. Olmert tried to become the first leader in history to win a war without controlling territory. He reasoned that if he could do this then he would justify Israel implementing his “convergence” plan - which in English means that he would use the momentum from the “victory” in Lebanon to evict approximately 100,000 Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria. In the early stages of the war when it looked like Israel would win, Olmert stated this publicly. This is also why Olmert refused to let the IDF ground forces attack the Hizballah with full force until after the cease-fire was already agreed upon. He simply didn’t want Israel to win. This is the only way that it was possible for a rag-tag militia to defeat a modern, motivated army like the IDF. A few days ago, Olmert stated: "The Winograd report [on Israeli mistakes made during the war] is a difficult and complex report that attests to very problematic areas in Israeli society, our political leadership and the defense establishment.” He said the report – issued last week - was an "opportunity to fix flaws, rebuild where necessary and to lead Israel forward so that it will be properly prepared in all security, social and diplomatic areas to deal with the challenges that it must face." Ehud Olmert stated Monday that he accepts full responsibility for the mistakes made during the war. Incongruously, he continued that instead of resigning immediately he has to rectify the problems that the Winograd report has pointed out. Olmert can not fix the problems while he remains in office because HE AND ALL WHO THINK LIKE HIM ARE THE PROBLEM. Olmert, his friends in "Peace" Now, and all of the Oslo Conspirators and fellow Oslo Continuers - including Peres, Beilin, Sarid, Barak, Netanyahu, Ramon and others who still support slicing up the Land of Israel (to various extents) - are clearly not on the side of The Jewish Nation. Manhigut Yehudit salutes the Jewish soldiers who fought so valiantly and thought they were fighting for the Jewish people, when in reality they were only fighting to help Olmert’s political future and his plan to hand the biblical heartland of Israel to our enemies. Olmert didn't care and still doesn't care that Sharon's Expulsion of 10,000 Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria has only produced disastrous results for Israel. Olmert refuses to acknowledge the direct correlation between the amount of land Israel cedes and the amount of Jews who die. Olmert's Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated recently that Israel will not re-take Gaza as it must in order to solve Israel’s security problems because it doesn’t want to jeopardize the ongoing “peace” process. According to Israel National News, Olmert and Barak are also permitting a constant flow of arms into Gaza from Egypt right now instead of sealing Gaza. This policy will only make the inevitable war to take back Gaza that much bloodier for Israel and threatens the lives of Israelis who run daily from a barrage of rockets and missiles. As this article goes to press, a deadly suicide attack was just perpetrated in the Israeli city of Dimona. According to Israel National News, the terrorists likely came in from the Sinai. George Bush and Ehud Olmert’s favorite “palestinian” “man of peace” Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah brigade (US trained and financed) immediately took credit for the attack. Olmert and his ideological partners are incapable of resolving Israel’s myriad of problems. The only way to fix Israel's problems are to replace the entire leadership of Israel who has perpetuated the myths of Oslo, and to replace them with leadership that places its faith solely in the Jewish People, the Land of Israel in its entirety, and in the G-d of Israel. ### Tova Abadi Media Spokesperson 917-301-0997 (cell) tova@jewishisrael.org The Manhigut Yehudit website is www.jewishisrael.org Manhigut Yehudit is the largest faction inside the Likud party, and strives to Turn the State of the Jews into The Jewish State. Am Yisrael Chai.

The Justice-Security Connection

By Moshe Feiglin

The Herzliyah Conference has provided us with a glimpse of the rightist leaders' "alternatives" to the Ehud & Ehud government. If the ideas put forward at the Conference are any indication, both the classic Right and the religious Right are captive to the Oslo paradigm and the consciousness that produced it.

From Binyamin Netanyahu's speech, it seemed that he had memorized Shimon Peres' book, The New Middle East before ascending to the speaker's podium. The solution that the head of the Opposition proposed for the Gaza problem is "Economic Peace." Netanyahu spoke of joint industrial parks that will help the Gazans to become wealthy and extinguish their desire to fight. The catch is that this solution has already been tried. The abandoned industrial parks in Atarot and the Erez Crossing, both refurbished to fulfill Peres' dream, should be sufficient proof that joint economic ventures are not the solution.

Since Oslo's inception the Left has taunted the Right with the fact that it has no non-Oslo alternative. Foreign Minster Shimon Peres' pointed question to Opposition head Netanyahu during the Knesset Oslo debate "And what is your alternative?!" made it clear from the very start that the classic Right had no essential answer to Oslo. Bibi's speech at last week's Herzliyah Conference simply highlights that fact. Is it any wonder that when the Right rises to power in Israel it is still the Left that actually rules?

But why should we complain about Netanyahu? The religious Right is also captive to the Left's consciousness. "We must safeguard Nasrallah as the leader of the Hizbollah and not attempt to eliminate him," religious rightist General Yaakov Amidror said at the Herzliyah Conference. His remarks reminded me of the full page ad that a few friends and I had published in the Makor Rishon newspaper a number of years ago. The ad called for Israel's soldiers to eliminate Arafat. Israel's Attorney General investigated me because of that ad. He decided not to prosecute only so that the idea of eliminating Arafat would not get more media mileage. "That is exactly what Feiglin wants," the Attorney General said. In truth, he was right.

A short time later, when Arafat was on his deathbed, I published an article entitled, "Quick! Kill Him Before he Dies!" On the surface, the call to kill the admired arch terrorist when he was about to die anyway was patently illogical. Why should Israel set itself up for a violent Arab reaction when the contemptible scum was about to do the world a favor and make his exit on his own?

The answer is simple. There is an intrinsic bond between justice and security. True, a good army, modern weapons and sophisticated intelligence are all prerequisites for security. But nothing will help a country that is not armed with the ammunition of justice. When Israel signed the Oslo Accords, it signed away its most vital ammunition. Rabin's White House lawn handshake with the head of the Palestine (all of it) Liberation (from all the Jews) Organization was an Israeli announcement that it accepts the justice of the Arab claim on the entire Land of Israel. Oslo relegated Israel to the role of Jewish colonialists who wanted nothing more from the "native" Palestinians than to do a little business.

My call to eliminate Arafat did not stem from pragmatic considerations. It was a desperate attempt to restore Israel's sense of justice. I didn't think that we should kill him because it would effectively stop terror in the short term. I called to kill him because that was the just thing to do.

The Oslo pragmatism that surrenders the concept of justice from the outset has wreaked havoc on Israel's security. Today, it is in the worst state that it has been since the War of Independence. Israel's civilian population has become a legitimate target for daily shelling. Post-Oslo Israel has allowed the Arabs to arm themselves with tens of thousands of missiles, covering all of Israel with both a conventional and non-conventional ballistic threat. In just a short time, Iran will complete the development of the icing on the cake. But Oslo-consciousness Israel, disarmed of the faith in its own justice, is incapable of explaining to the parents of its soldiers why it must go to war to eliminate this existential threat. It will clearly not gain world support to attack Iran -- simply because Israel has already admitted that there is no real justification for its existence.

Maybe those Israeli leaders who are detached from their Jewish identity no longer view justice as an absolute value. Maybe they just view it as a primitive artifact of times past, irrelevant to the post-modern era. "We will give them honor and they will give us peace," Peres and his Oslo cohorts repeated time and again. Maybe we can expect no more of them. But when the religious Right repeats the Oslo mantras, all of our early-warning systems should be blinking. More than anything else, it points to the fact that Israel desperately needs authentic Jewish leadership that is confident in the justice of the Jewish Nation in the Land of Israel.

Another March Around Kfar Maimon

By Moshe Feiglin

■"Isn't it better to register for (Effie Eitam's new religious Zionist party) Achi?" asked the young voice on the other end of the phone line.
●"You can choose between one of two entry passes," I answered him. "One pass will get you into the royal palace. The other pass will get you into the servant's quarters. Which one will you choose?"
■ "But the Likud doesn't want you!" the voice answered. "They always fight against you!"
● "Of course they do," I answered. "You've probably read a bit about royal palaces. They are filled with intrigue, plots, counter-plots, betrayals and nasty power struggles. Even King David's palace had its share of intrigues and power struggles. So what do you expect of the Likud? It's not pleasant, but these struggles demonstrate that the Likud is Israel's authentic power base. You will always be welcomed with open arms in the servant's quarters. But if you strive to lead, you must fight it out in the royal palace."
■ "And perhaps Achi will develop and become the royal palace?"
● "Aren't you tired of deceiving yourself? Tell me something. Were you in Kfar Maimon?"
■ "Of course I was."
● "So was I, along with another 30,000 people who were told by the leaders of the demonstration that we were about to leave the servant's quarters and lead the nation. In other words, we were told that we were about to leave our comfortable servitude, face reality in Gush Katif and change it. Do you remember?"
■ "I sure do."
● "For three days we sat and sweated in Kfar Maimon, basking in the wonderful brotherhood of the Religious Zionist camp. At the end of the third day, we lined up in an endless row and began to march toward reality. We felt that even if the Red Sea was in front of us, it would part in the face of our unity and determination. Right?"
■ "Absolutely."
● "And then, when the marchers neared the gate, one rabbi and one politician stood there. The rabbi spoke and the politician stood on the roof of a car. They stopped the entire march. Nobody understood why we were stopping. Do you remember?"
■ "Yes I do."
● "And then the unbelievable happened. The politician began to re-direct the march around the fences of Kfar Maimon -- from the inside! We thought that maybe it was just a diversionary tactic, but soon we realized that we were marching around the fences of Kfar Maimon just to let off steam. It was a diversionary tactic -- but we were the ones being diverted from dealing with reality to dealing just with ourselves. Remember?"
■ "Oy vey, I remember."
● "Who is the rabbi? And who is the politician? You don't have to say their names. It's not important. What is important is that they are the very same people who are now taking you and many more people from the Religious Zionist camp for another march around Kfar Maimon. These are the very same people who are talking about 'national leadership' but are sending you directly to the servant's quarters, while the royal palace remains in the hands of Israel's current faithless and failed leadership."

Slavery or Leadership?

Among the first laws the Israelites in the desert were taught following their spectacular exit from Egypt and the breathtaking giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai were the laws of slavery. At first glance, it might seem more fitting to teach the newly liberated Jewish Nation more 'spiritual' laws. But slavery is an enticing alternative that must be discouraged. Liberty comes along with responsibility. Slavery is the escape route for those who shy away from responsibility and those who fear to lead. Today, the faith based public in Israel is afraid to lead. This fear points to a much deeper problem -- lack of faith in our own culture. Faith based people repeat time and again that the Torah is truth. So what are they afraid of? Why do they prefer the 'intuition' of Ehud Barak over the intuition of a G-d fearing, Torah observant Jew? Is there not a grain of desecration of G-d's Name in this behavior? Is the refusal to lead -- demonstrated by all sectors of the faith based public -- not actually an admission that the Torah is irrelevant, G-d forbid? Some people prefer to remain enslaved, similar to the Hebrew slave in this week's Torah portion. "I love my master," they apologize. "Even if he sometimes kicks me, 'love will triumph,'" they explain. "Even when my love for my master brings horrible destruction, even when my misery is no longer theoretical, even when the 'intuition' of all those who have no G-d is clearly destructive, even then -- I will not go free." A person who loves his master does not dare step outside the fences. Not the fences of Kfar Maimon, not sectoral fences and not political fences. True, he is willing to switch his leftist master with a rightist master. He is even willing to work hard to switch one master for a master who he imagines will be better. He worked hard to elect Netanyahu instead of Peres and Sharon instead of Barak. And then he worked hard again -- this time, to elect Netanyahu instead of Sharon and then once again to elect Netanyahu instead of Silvan. But to take responsibility? To be his own master? To be responsible for the nation? To lead? Support Manhigut Yehudit Today Now is the time! Your donation can turn the State of the Jews into the Jewish State. Joining Manhigut Yehudit is much more than just a donation. Now you're part of the team! You don't need to be living in Israel Support Manhigut Yehudit Today