How Can we Fix our Country?

Our basic and well-founded assumption is that our nation is fundamentally healthy in spirit. Despite the round the clock barrage of anti-Jewish messages to which the average Israeli is daily exposed, he remains connected to his Jewish identity. In fact, Jewish identity in Israel is growing and developing, expressing itself in the most unlikely places. Since we firmly believe that the nation is healthy, we are confident that the state will enter a process of rectification the moment that the 'enlightened' dictatorship from which we suffer today will be replaced by the Jewish majority in Israel.

A perfect example of how the enlightened dictatorship works is the case of Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon. Ramon is a hooligan who has made a career out of politics. He has done his share of damage to the Land of Israel and to our People, and we have no personal sentiments for the scoundrel. His case, though, highlights the urgent necessity to remove power from the enlightened elite and to restore it to the Jewish majority.

Having risen to political acclaim by bewailing the shortcomings of Israel's socialist bureaucracy, Haim Ramon, in his capacity as Justice Minister, went head to head with the extremely undemocratic conduct of the Supreme Court. In other words, he took on the enlightened elite. The enlightened elite did not like that, and found it necessary to dispose of Ramon in the way that it knows best: investigations into his (in this case, moral) conduct. The fact that Ramon was elected by the people concerned no one. Ramon's case was splashed across all of Israel's newspapers and he was forced to resign.

There is no question that Ramon is unworthy of public office. But Ramon is not the issue here. The question is who decides which elected officials serve in the government? The public who elects them, or an anonymous alliance of justice officials with its own, personal agenda?

In Ramon's case, the 'rule of law' gang had so much self confidence that it acted with no qualms about minor details like the legality of its investigative methods. Justice Minister Friedman demanded an official inquiry into the investigation against Ramon - clearly a step in the right direction. But as expected, all the systems that live in symbiosis with the elites - particularly the media - bared their fangs and saw to it that the commission of inquiry into the crimes of the justice system would never see the light of day.

So how can we fix the state? The nation is healthy, but the state stifles it. Not only by mixing into the public's choices, as with the case of Ramon. The state denies the public its freedom of choice in other areas, as well.

A prime example is the Free Education Law. According to this law, the state is responsible for the education of our children. Not only is it responsible, but it prevents the parents from educating their children as they see fit. According to Israeli law, the education of our children is exclusively in the hands of the women who used extremely inappropriate language in a Knesset debate last week. Parents who would like to educate their children outside the framework of the education system must attain special authorization to do so.

The result is clear for all to see. Education has traditionally been the pride of the Jewish People. But with state education, our children's' educational achievements limp along somewhere after those of Iranian children.

Clearly, we cannot undo all the mistakes at once. As a healing measure, we propose encouraging parents to once again take responsibility for the education of their children. Parents would receive education coupons from the government to hire the teachers that they choose. This would create incentive for excellence among the teachers and would eventually create new types of educational frameworks - many of them community based.

The way to fix the state is to gradually restore responsibility to the citizens. We believe in them - remember? The Jewish majority in Israel must shoulder responsibility for its communities and for its country. The state should be responsible for as little as possible, concentrating its resources on security, justice and infrastructure. Everything else should be taken care of by the local community or family.

Currently, the complete opposite is the case. The state interferes in every area of its citizens' lives except for the areas in which it really should shoulder responsibility. True security and justice are the last things on the state agenda. Instead, the state provides us with exactly what we don't need.