Israel, Moshe Feiglin and the American political tempo

Moshe Feiglin is Featured in The Hill

February 16, 2010...

Moshe Feiglin, President of Manhigut Yehudit, the largest faction inside Israel's ruling Likud party, was highlighted in today's edition of "The Hill". Mr. Feiglin is featured in a section of "The Hill" entitled "Pundit's Blog", which is read daily by American Congressmen.

Israel, Moshe Feiglin and the American political tempo

By Bernie Quigley - 02/16/10 10:02 AM ET

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international-affairs/81153-israel-moshe-feiglin-and-the-american-political-tempo

As with Sarah Palin and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, writing about Israel brings strong responses. Possibly each brings something direct from the “collective unconscious” — a term Jung and Toynbee used — creating a “disturbance in the Force” — Obi-Wan’s term — which changes the way we see things. They portend real and fundamental change, not novelty or distraction. And in real life, change is always unwanted, as it renders our experience and conditioned reflexes in love and work to be suddenly irrelevant.

One writer, responding to last week’s article on Israel, convincingly made the point that Israel is about to undergo fundamental change with the rise of Moshe Feiglin and his Jewish Leadership faction within Likud, which he says are on the verge of taking control of Likud at the upcoming Central Committee election. This will be the next-to-last step in moving Israel toward a Jewish State and independence from America. Feiglin would become the first religious/Zionist prime minister of Israel.

Feiglin, an Israeli-born military officer who will speak in New York in two weeks, has a gritty, authentically Jewish appeal in a state where leadership has long shown greater natural affinity for New York’s West Side than the Holy Land. And he does have a way with words. “The only time I will ever remove my yarmulke,” he has said, “is when the state of Israel demands that it be worn.”

But what I want to know is about the “independence from America” part. Which America? The current, transient New York City zeitgeist of dark-wing late-night comics like David Letterman and Tina Fey, New York Times lifestyle columnists such as Frank Rich and Manhattan’s resident avatar, that great, aging emperor penguin, Bill Clinton? Or that of Auschwitz survivor, Elie Wiesel, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Pastor John Hagee of San Antonio?

Attitudes of support for Israel vary on a spectrum. Probably many are like Thomas Friedman, the Times columnist, who supported the invasion of Iraq and even suggested American boots on the ground in Israel and throwing France off the U.N. Security Council. Then he changed his mind and started talking about India.

Pastor Hagee’s America is a different place, and it is alienating and unacknowledged in the Clinton outlook. Hagee sees a biblical life-or-death conflict in Israel. Passing through the cable channels recently, I saw both Elie Wiesel and Rick Perry sitting on his couch.

As journalist Max Blumenthal writes (on 10/29/09): “On October 25, while an overflow crowd of 1,500 poured into the first convention of the progressive-leaning Israel-oriented lobbying organization J Street, Elie Wiesel, addressed a crowd of 6,000 Christian Zionists at Pastor John Hagee’s ‘Night To Honor Israel.’ According to the San Antonio Express News, while Wiesel sat by his side, Hagee trashed President Barack Obama, baselessly accusing him of ‘being tougher on Israel than on Russia, Iran, China and North Korea.’ ”

Classic regional antipathy here. Hagee believes non-Christians go to hell. Not unlike the Slayer, of Los Angeles’ Hellmouth neighborhood, who saw an archetypal Southern preacher as an agency of The First, the primal source of all evil.

Change coming to Israel parallels new politics in America. Possibly relating to the rise of the new initiatives and attitudes developing in the patriotic Tea Party Movement and to Scott Brown and Sarah Palin. A new Israel could find a new America by 2012.