Recognize Us Pleeeaaase!

By Moshe Feiglin

At the beginning of the week the headlines announced that Israel's Prime Minister is willing to renew the building moratorium in Judea and Samaria in exchange for "Palestinian" recognition of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish nation. On the surface, this is another successful maneuver for Netanyahu. It was obvious from the start that the Arabs would reject the proposal and that Israel, in its great wisdom, would be able to roll the hot potato back to the opposite team, saving Judea and Samaria from a building moratorium in the process. If so, we should thank Netanyahu for his brilliant efforts and "strengthen him," as the loyal Likud MKs suggest.

But this is where the problem lies. On the plane on which Netanyahu, Lieberman and many other good people from the national camp work, it is impossible to initiate any position. All that we can say is: "When you finish dealing with the problems in Europe, we will talk." Or "When you recognize us as a Jewish state, we will halt the construction."

"Israel has no foreign policy - only internal policy," said a smart but disloyal Jew, Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State during the Yom Kippur War.

In truth, Israel cannot have a foreign policy predicated on a nationalism that has no content. The result is a "coincidental" foreign policy that can react but never initiate. "They will give and then they will get. If they don't give, they won't get," in the words of Netanyahu. This is not the product of the weakness of any particular leader. Instead, it is a fundamental weak point that we have carried on our backs since we returned to our Land. We returned to our nationalism - but we left G-d outside.

The surrender of our destiny has cast a long shadow over our existence. "Recognize us, pleeease! We will give you everything if you stop threatening us and let us live in peace without having to deal with our destiny." But the shadow is persistent. "If you are not you, then I am not your shadow. In fact, you are my shadow, and I will absolutely not recognize you."

It is difficult to think of a more humiliating proposal than our offer to the nobodies in Ramallah to take the Land of Israel off our hands if they will just be kind enough to recognize us. Somebody in Jerusalem has forgotten the first verse of this week's Torah portion. Our entire existence as a nation leads to the Land of Israel and is informed by it.

Proposals such as these necessarily lead to loss of our national honor and to the loss of the political gain that the proposed surrender was supposed to garner. International pressure to continue the building moratorium will not decrease. It will intensify, as it has after every retreat. For if you were willing to stop construction in exchange for the lip service of a murderer (Abu Mazen) then you have shown that his demands are just.

Our demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state will melt away, of course. Because between us, all that we really want is a safe place under the sun - the Singapore of the Middle East, in the words of Shimon Peres. Nobody will really stand up to the determination of the shadow and make a fuss over definitions that to us - are meaningless.

Once again, we come face to face with the facts: The problem is not a particular leader, but rather the frame of reference in which the parties play the game. Slowly but surely, the new arena is being built. Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg explains that the opening words of this week's Torah portion, Lech Lecha shares a root with the Hebrew word for "dirt." We are getting dirty on the political field. But from this dirt we are building the new consciousness for authentic Jewish leadership for Israel.