By Moshe Feiglin
23 Tevet, 5771
Dec. 29, '10
Translated from the NRG website
When I turned on the internet last Saturday night, I was horrified - although not surprised - to see that two women hikers had been brutally stabbed by Arabs in the Jerusalem hills. Hundreds of talkbacks condemned the Arabs and all of Israel's "peacemakers." But Sunday morning, when I checked to see what became of the women (one was abducted and found later, murdered) something had changed.
The hundreds of angry talkbacks were replaced by tens of non-nationalist responses. Just like the simultaneous arson fires that sprang up throughout Israel's forests and went largely unreported while the Carmel blaze raged, there is also a "thought policeman" working behind the scenes with this story, trying to re-fashion reality by censoring it. This tyranny makes it necessary for us to analyze and explain the entire issue of Israel's foreign relations in general and particularly, our relations with our Arab neighbors.
Jewish national awakening and the return of the Nation of Israel to its Land were the culmination of 2,000 years in which the Jewish People in the Diaspora conducted itself on a community-by-community basis. Suddenly, we were faced with a new reality and had to quickly learn how to deal with the nations of the world. Foreign relations were not the only challenge. We also had to agree upon a mode of conduct toward the non-Jewish minority living in our midst. Suddenly we were the sovereign in our Land. No more British here to sort things out.
True, we have an ancient culture that equips us with all the tools that we need for a balanced position toward the non-Jews in our Land. But just as with every other issue, we preferred to ignore our own culture and adopt a foreign values system totally irrelevant to our reality. The result is complete imbalance that creates a dangerous gap between what the public feels and knows and what the thought police allow it to express. This produces a time bomb that will eventually explode in the faces of both sides.
Judaism presents us with two, seemingly contradictory approaches toward the non-Jews in our midst. On one hand, Judaism clearly takes a non-Jewish minority living in our Land into account. The entire Talmud is filled with legal discussions revolving around this reality, which seems to be normative and self-understood. On the other hand, the Torah explicitly directs us to conquer the Land and to expel the foreigners living here.
I do not pretend to explain this topic from a Jewish-law perspective. But it is quite obvious that Jewish law relates to two separate situations: The first - to non-Jews who live in Israel as individuals; the second - to non-Jews who live in Israel as a nation. We are obligated to respect those non-Jews living among us as individuals and to accord them their full human rights. However, when these foreigners no longer identify as individuals who accept our sovereignty, but rather demand national rights in our Land - our entire approach must change.
Human rights and political rights are two separate issues. We are committed to the human rights of all those created in G-d's image, but not to their political rights. This is already accepted practice in much of the democratic world. America, for example, regularly sends US soldiers who do not have voting rights to fight in Afghanistan. Even children of immigrants from three generations ago will not necessarily merit citizenship in Japan or Switzerland.
The desire to create an Israeli identity that, instead of building on the foundation of Jewish identity, would replace it - makes Israel completely dependent on the Arab public. We censor the war being waged against us internally because this war is the most definitive proof of the failure of the new Israeli nationality concept. The Arabs are not willing to be "Israelis." They even rebel against us. "We are not Israelis," they say to us. "We are Arabs and you are not even a nation." They have left us suspended in the air - bereft of our new identity and dispossessed of the identity from which we are trying to flee.
The solution, of course, is to ignore reality. We will not allow the facts to confuse us; we will break the mirror that reflects the truth. In other words, we will censor the talkbacks and eliminate all those who dare reveal the facts.
How then, should we relate to the Arabs who live among us?
First, we must understand that the Arabs are not the problem, but rather, its symptom. "If I am I because you are you," said the Rebbe of Kotzk, "and you are you because I am I - then I am not I and you are not you." The Arabs act the way they do because we have forgotten our own identity. And since it is we who are the sovereign here, this mess really is our fault - not theirs. By fleeing our identity, we have fanned the flames of the new "Palestinian" identity that is being drawn into the vacuum that we created.
Like all human beings, the Arabs are generally good people. Personally, I have met many wonderful Arabs who have cared for my son with dedication and I will always be grateful for their kindness. We are obligated to preserve the honor and human rights of every person in the world. It is forbidden to damage their property - and certainly forbidden to harm them. But if any of those foreigners living among us objects to our sovereignty or to the fact that we are a Jewish state and chooses instead to fight us on nationalist grounds, he is much more than a simple criminal. A person like that is a national enemy. When MKs Chanin Zuabi, Ahmad Tibi, Azmi Bashara and other Arab leaders take sides in the conflict between Israel and its neighbors on the basis of their Arab nationality, they push the entire Arab public directly into the arms of that definition.
When we lost the ability to differentiate between the two types of reality - the individual and the national - we lost the ability to truly respect non-Jews. Just as a person who does not respect himself cannot really respect another, so our approach to the nations of the world fluctuates between groveling and betrayal. We grovel before those stronger than us and betray those weaker than us.
When we surrendered our Land to Arafat and his murderous gangs, he wasted no time and hung all those who had cooperated with Israel on the electric poles in Kabatiya. Their sons were murdered, their daughters defiled and their homes burned while we looked on in silence - within spitting distance from where the horrors were being perpetrated. Suddenly, we were willing to sacrifice human rights on the altar of the "peace process," a.k.a. the process of melting our identity away.
This is also how we treated the soldiers of the South Lebanese Army who made a treaty with us. We abandoned them to the Hezbollah. A person who does not honor his identity, cannot honor his neighbor. No admired author or liberal thinker troubled himself to defend the lives and property of those South Lebanese who unwisely believed in the Israeli essence and entrusted it with their lives.
A Jew must protect human rights throughout the world. We are, after all, a treasured nation unto whom the eyes of humanity are raised. When I joined the demonstration outside the Chinese embassy, demanding of Israel to cancel its participation in the Olympics that were to be held in a country that imprisons its political opponents and harvests their organs, there were no liberals to be found. When human rights serve the process of dissolving our Jewish identity, their voices can be heard loud and clear. But when human rights dovetail with an autonomous Jewish identity, our "knights of human rights" fall resoundingly silent.
In the meantime, under the severe tyranny of the thought police, a big, censored fire is burning. The nationalist genie that we let out of the local Arab bottle darkens all that is beautiful and good in this public. Standing off against the flames are those who cannot afford to leave their homes for rock bottom prices and flee Israel's peripheral towns and mixed neighborhoods. The dead body of the elderly woman found bound and murdered over the weekend in her Jaffa home will tell no tales. But the statistics do not lie.
When we once again stand on our own two cultural and ethical feet, when we will rise and become a truly free and Jewish state, we will be able to truly respect our neighbors. When we truncate the Arab national aspirations on our Land and put the nationalist genie back into the bottle, they will be able to be themselves, express their human goodness - and depend upon us. And we will also be ourselves and fulfill our destiny to make the world a G-dly place.
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