During the January 2003 national election campaign, I warned, as head of the Yamin Israel party, that the paramount issue confronting Israel was not a Palestinian state, but the diminishing Jewish character of the Jewish state. I warned that Israel?s Jewish character was being eroded by the deliberate efforts of the Likud party, for example, by its supporting the ?grandfather clause? of the Law of Return, which has brought an influx of some 400,000 gentiles into this country.
The January 2003 election prepared the groundwork for accelerating the process of de-Judaizing Israel. It produced a Likud-Shinui government committed to a secular revolution that would put an end to Israel as a Jewish state. Prime Minister Sharon?s placing the Justice Ministry under Tommy Lapid and the Interior Ministry under Avraham Poraz ? two ultra-secularists who have no other qualification for their respective offices ? should be understood as nothing less than a declaration of war against Judaism in the Land of Israel.
That the National Union coalition (with Benny Elon and Zvi Hendel) and the National Religious Party (headed by Effie Eitam) joined this Likud-Shinui junta only serves to disarm religious Jews and thus facilitate Israel?s conversion into a ?state of its citizens.? This is exactly the goal of Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, the High Priest of Israel and its most powerful public official. As I have elsewhere shown, Justice Barak?s judicial decisions typically violate the abiding beliefs and values of the Jewish people; and his political intrusion and machinations in the Knesset Law Committee clearly violate the canons of democracy ? which in Israel exists only on election days.
The mere fact that the Likud could co-sponsor with Labor a bill that would invest the Supreme Court with the power to veto Knesset legislation ? something unparalleled in the democratic world ? reveals that the Likud is the more dangerous, because less obvious, enemy of the Jewish people. That the Manhigut Yehudit faction remains in the Likud makes that religious faction all the more culpable, for it misleads people into thinking it can make the party of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu into a faithful servant of Judaism and the Jewish people.
To confuse and deceive the people, demagogues clamor about ?religious coercion? while they design the next stage of secular coercion. And while these same demagogues, without a scintilla of knowledge regarding authentic Jewish governance, blabber about ?theocracy,? they have already imposed on Israel an ultra-secular courtocracy.
Therefore, the more religious and nationalist groups in Israel (and abroad) focus public attention on the issue of a Palestinian state, the easier it will be for the Likud-Shinui junta to accelerate Israel?s transformation into a non-Jewish state. I dare say that a Palestinian state is more distant in time than the ?regime change? planned ? nay, now going on ? in Eretz Israel.
I see no way of avoiding this catastrophe unless the religious people in Israel unite in a mass movement to galvanize the many Jews in this country who, though they identify with the Jewish heritage, are mired in apathy or in ignorance regarding the war being waged by the Sharon-Shinui government against Judaism.
The issue is not merely about Mr. Poraz failing to enforce Shabbat and kashrut regulations, or relaxing criteria for the citizenship or conversion of non-Jews. Nor is it Mr. Sharon?s decision to transfer the rabbinical courts from the Chief Rabbinate to St. Tomas Lapid?s Ministry of Justice. Without minimizing the importance of these specific issues, the religious community needs to know that at stake is the survival of the Third Commonwealth. And if the religious community is to prevent a mass exodus ? not only of Jews from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, but from the remainder of Eretz Israel ? they had better unite and organize with one overriding object in mind: to gain control of and eventually transform the political and judicial institutions of this country.
The January 2003 election prepared the groundwork for accelerating the process of de-Judaizing Israel. It produced a Likud-Shinui government committed to a secular revolution that would put an end to Israel as a Jewish state. Prime Minister Sharon?s placing the Justice Ministry under Tommy Lapid and the Interior Ministry under Avraham Poraz ? two ultra-secularists who have no other qualification for their respective offices ? should be understood as nothing less than a declaration of war against Judaism in the Land of Israel.
That the National Union coalition (with Benny Elon and Zvi Hendel) and the National Religious Party (headed by Effie Eitam) joined this Likud-Shinui junta only serves to disarm religious Jews and thus facilitate Israel?s conversion into a ?state of its citizens.? This is exactly the goal of Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, the High Priest of Israel and its most powerful public official. As I have elsewhere shown, Justice Barak?s judicial decisions typically violate the abiding beliefs and values of the Jewish people; and his political intrusion and machinations in the Knesset Law Committee clearly violate the canons of democracy ? which in Israel exists only on election days.
The mere fact that the Likud could co-sponsor with Labor a bill that would invest the Supreme Court with the power to veto Knesset legislation ? something unparalleled in the democratic world ? reveals that the Likud is the more dangerous, because less obvious, enemy of the Jewish people. That the Manhigut Yehudit faction remains in the Likud makes that religious faction all the more culpable, for it misleads people into thinking it can make the party of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu into a faithful servant of Judaism and the Jewish people.
To confuse and deceive the people, demagogues clamor about ?religious coercion? while they design the next stage of secular coercion. And while these same demagogues, without a scintilla of knowledge regarding authentic Jewish governance, blabber about ?theocracy,? they have already imposed on Israel an ultra-secular courtocracy.
Therefore, the more religious and nationalist groups in Israel (and abroad) focus public attention on the issue of a Palestinian state, the easier it will be for the Likud-Shinui junta to accelerate Israel?s transformation into a non-Jewish state. I dare say that a Palestinian state is more distant in time than the ?regime change? planned ? nay, now going on ? in Eretz Israel.
I see no way of avoiding this catastrophe unless the religious people in Israel unite in a mass movement to galvanize the many Jews in this country who, though they identify with the Jewish heritage, are mired in apathy or in ignorance regarding the war being waged by the Sharon-Shinui government against Judaism.
The issue is not merely about Mr. Poraz failing to enforce Shabbat and kashrut regulations, or relaxing criteria for the citizenship or conversion of non-Jews. Nor is it Mr. Sharon?s decision to transfer the rabbinical courts from the Chief Rabbinate to St. Tomas Lapid?s Ministry of Justice. Without minimizing the importance of these specific issues, the religious community needs to know that at stake is the survival of the Third Commonwealth. And if the religious community is to prevent a mass exodus ? not only of Jews from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, but from the remainder of Eretz Israel ? they had better unite and organize with one overriding object in mind: to gain control of and eventually transform the political and judicial institutions of this country.