Security: The Mantra of Israeli Prime Ministers

T. Belman. As far back as Nov 2003, I wrote Israel must shift the battlefield from its security to its rights

“It is very clear to students of the Middle East, that the Quartet has decided that the Saudi Peace Plan is the object of all processes put forward. This plan provides for ’49 lines with negotiated trades of some land and a shared Jerusalem. The Plan itself doesn’t require the Right of Return but the endorsement of it by the Arab League does. The West wasn’t ready to kill the Right of Return, so Bush resisted Israel’s demand (request) that it be removed.

Rather than to focus everyone’s attention on this end result, we are given (forced to accept) a Roadmap, which focuses on process, i.e. the steps toward “peace”. These include namely that the Palestinians dismantle their terror infrastructure and Israel cease settlement activity. When the US says they are committed to the Roadmap, they mean the Saudi Peace Plan.“

The fact remains, that the process or Roadmap is of no concern to anyone. What matters is that Israel be forced, by hook or by crook, by obfuscation or relentless pressure, to return to the ’49 lines. The rest is smoke and mirrors.

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Security has ever been the mantra (and exalted goal) of Israeli prime ministers. Why did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently say, in effect, that his fondest wish is to go down in history as having brought security to the people of Israel? Of course, this wish is not unreasonable in the Islamic Middle East.

Besides, no sound person would deny the importance of security to the life and happiness of any nation. What great good could we accomplish in the arts and sciences in the absence of security?

But let us not be deceived by Israeli Prime Ministers who exalt security. Sane people will not dispute the importance of security. But it is precisely because security, as a human value, is not a politically controversial issue, that it has preoccupied the intellects of Israel’s pedestrian prime ministers to the exclusion of other values such as victory, virtue, and wisdom.

Of course, danger aside, the pursuit of victory or of fame, unlike the pursuit of security, would be very controversial. So would the pursuit of virtue and wisdom. Indeed, to prize virtue and wisdom is beyond the mental horizon of any secular democratic state. To advance the security of a nation does not require the depth and breadth of intellect a statesman would need to advance his nation’s virtue and wisdom.

Virtue and wisdom receive no attention by democratic politicians. Democrats are more concerned about their people’s bellies than about their minds. This is precisely why the speeches of politicians are so boring; and that’s why their words are not remembered and studied, as are the essays of Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, or the speeches of Lincoln and Churchill. These statesmen aspired to fame and national greatness, not security.

Also, security is not the value that distinguishes the heritage of Jewish people. Ponder the words of John Adams, the second president of the United States: “The Jews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. They are the most glorious Nation that ever inhabited the earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a bauble in comparison to the Jews.” Would Adams have said this if security was the exalted goal of the Jewish people?

If security was their exalted goal, would Nietzsche have said this: “In the Jewish Old Testament, the book of divine justice, there are human beings, things, and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it.”

Israel’s pedestrian prime ministers can only speak about “security” (and mendaciously about “peace”). Is it any wonder that these little politicians have pursued a territorial policy that would shrink Jews down to the size of Lilliputians??