America's Real Guidance

by Yocheved Seidman

US Program Director, Manhigut Yehudit

While in the airplane on the way home from the Manhigut Yehudit USA Summer Tour’s last stop in Detroit, I opened a copy of “The Economist” magazine. One of last week's lead editorials on Israel is entitled “Get Stuck in Mr. President” (p. 10 of the 8/1 - 8/7 issue). A more appropriate title would be, “You’re Israel’s Real Leader Mr. President - Act Like It!” The ever haughty Economist editors have high praise for President Obama’s Cairo speech calling it “masterly”. They were also pleased back in June with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s public statement that the Arabs must have a state in Judea and Samaria.

But now the Economist’s anonymous editors are getting impatient. They are despondent that rival Arab factions Fatah and Hamas cannot just get along or at least try to put on a show of brotherly cooperation for appearances. And although Bibi tries harder and harder to follow their script they are deeply dissatisfied with his efforts. So they have an action plan to solve the whole problem once and for all - put the US President in charge of the whole enchilada. According to the esteemed editors, President Obama should immediately “address the Israeli people directly, telling them why a Palestinian state is their only long-term guarantee of security.”

This is something akin to the announcement at the end of the old Rush song, “We have assumed control” or if you prefer the Borg motto from Star Trek, “Resistance is futile”. The Economist editors would like to see the US President bypass the annoying sovereignty of the Jewish state and dictate to Mr. and Mrs. Israeli that their eternal G-d given inheritance is being cancelled. They wish to see the US President talk to the average Israeli in the style of a mob boss, “Pay up with your Holy Land or we can’t promise you’ll live to see your grandchildren.”

The Economist editors view the elected prime minister of Israel as an irrelevant obstacle. The precious outcome of the ballet box, so highly guarded by Westerners at home, is tossed to the curb when they advise their “friends” overseas. In fact, in the editorial on US healthcare in the same issue, the editors comment that “In foreign policy an American president enjoys the most freedom of operation. At home the man in the Oval Office is mightily constrained by Congress.” (p. 9, Economist, 8/1 - 8/7 issue). Please note carefully the words “mightily constrained”. Who has the ability to constrain the influence of foreign powers wishing to impose their will on the Jewish state?

The Israeli voters hold the keys to their sovereignty in their own hands. Maybe they all need to get refrigerator magnets with quotes such as:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin (1759)

Israelis must take charge and use the power of the ballot box to elect a prime minister who is unapologetically dedicated to the principle that the Land of Israel is the eternal inheritance of the Jewish people. Ordinary citizens of the Jewish state must organize themselves and implement the techniques used by their American friends to bring about change that they can really believe in - in the form of a leader who will stand up and finally say proudly on their behalf ... Zo Artzeinu ... This is our land, it is not for sale, not one inch, not now and not ever. The Jewish people do not recognize the right of the Obama administration, or any other entity to dictate where Jews can or cannot live and build in the Holy Land.

Israelis will find such a leader in Moshe Feiglin. Now it is their job to use the sovereign democratic process of the Jewish state to elect him as the answer to their would-be overlords. As the people become active and rise to shake off the internal pressure to conform to the ideas being spread in the left-wing controlled Israeli media they would do well to have another refrigerator magnet that reminds them:

"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." -- Mark Twain (1904)

As an American Jew I hope that Israeli Jews will take from America the great gift of dedication to liberty and national sovereignty and use it to stand fast against external pressure aimed at eroding these critical principles.