One of the critical skills we teach our adolescents is accountability. As children mature into young adulthood and moral agency, we impress upon them that their choices have consequences, and that they - and they alone - bear the burden of those consequences.
Let’s call that micro-accountability.
But what about macro-accountability? Why do national leaders not have to bear the consequences of their flawed domestic and policy initiatives; policies that were (and are) self-serving but have brought unspeakable misery to millions of innocent people?
- The Allied Powers were the victors of World War II. Yet why is there no accountability for the callous refusal to do ANYTHING to prevent the destruction of European Jewry, either before or during the war?
- Why is there no accountability on the part of the British royal family for KNOWINGLY permitting Soviet moles to continue to operate with impunity in England’s security establishment for four decades, burying that obscene family’s dirty little secrets? The US shared all their intelligence with the Brits freely, and unbeknownst to the Americans, it all wound up on the desks of Moscow Central. How many thousands of anti-communist activists and American agents were exposed, jailed or murdered because of their malfeasance? By how many years did the Windsors prolong the collapse of the Soviet Union? And all to protect their precious honor.
- Why is there no accountability for Kissinger and Nixon creating the Communist Chinese monster that now threatens its creator? With dollar signs in their eyes, they opened China as a massive new market for American goods. What’s good for Big Business is good for America, right? What we got is an aggressive, bellicose and expansionist CCP that seeks to destabilize the current world order and forge a new one in which the United States in particular and the liberal, Western democratic tradition in general plays no role. Thanks Henry, good going. At the least, maybe a public Mea Culpa would be in order? And yet (amazingly) the media treat him like he’s some great & wise elder statesman. Bah.
- Why is there no accountability for Jimmy Carter’s support of the Ayatollahs in 1979, even going so far as to spin Khomeni as a liberty-loving freedom fighter? Because there is no accountability for that colossal foreign policy debacle, the world today is facing the specter of a nuclearized Iran. Further, the blood of every young Iranian women who is shot in the genitals and in the face protesting the Iranian regime – mutilated for life as a warning to others - is on that despicable man’s hands.
- Why is there no accountability for the failed Oslo Accords that have brought us, in the words of the prophet Hoshea, a “Lo Ami”, a non-people, the PLO kleptocracy in our heartland that is supposed to be our partner in peace, but instead rewards and incentivizes Jew killing??
- Why is there no accountability for high-powered weaponry that was supplied to the PLO for the purpose of providing security and cracking down on terror cells so we Israelis wouldn’t have to? Whose genius idea was that? “Hey sheep: why don’t you give guns to the wolves; they’ll protect you!” You’ll find those bullets in the heads of our most recent terror victims, May God Avenge their murders.
- Why is there no accountability for the Hitnatkut, euphemistically called the "disengagement", but actually the forcible expulsion of 8,000 Jews from Gaza, creating the power vacuum that was filled by Hamas? Every rocket that falls from Hamastan has Ariel Sharon’s fingerprints on it. Where is the accountability from his coalition partners that pushed it through Knesset? When will someone in the Likud have the integrity to say: “In retrospect, we were wrong and we are going to repopulate Gaza with Jews and dismantle Hamas.”?
- Why is there no accountability for Mr. Lapid caving to American pressure (which he’s very good at, by the way), ceding billions of dollars in natural gas revenues and turning them over to Hezbollah? I’m sure they’re going to use the money to plant flower gardens…Lapid’s tongue is no doubt black from all that bootlicking, but why has the new government not renegotiated that flawed deal? (After the fact, of course, doing so will spark a certain war)
- Why is there no accountability for the $30+ TRILLION sovereign American debt, run up by both political parties over the last 30 years? And both parties keep spending! A pox on both their houses. That debt is creating a crushing drag on the American economy. The working poor are hit hardest by inflation, astronomical taxes and high interest rates but no one cares – they can’t afford lobbyists.
The answers to these questions, of course, is that there are no answers. Politicians dance their well-rehearsed two-step, shrugging their shoulders and pointing at everyone but themselves as they feather their nests at the public’s expense. They leave it to the rest of us to clean up the toxic messes they leave in their wake.
In each case above (and there are many, many more) the blood on their hands is heavy burden for which they will have to - at some point - give an accounting.
So perhaps before we gaily proceed to the town square to cheer on the political lynchings of the likes of Trump and Netanyahu, perhaps we should be cleaning our own houses first.
A final pensée - Maybe the riotous, anarchic mob opposed to Judicial Reform has a point: no one else in public life is accountable for their actions; why should we expect accountability from those self-serving justices?
Rabbi Mizrachi is the author of a recent book: Holistic Judaism: A Radical Rethinking of Our Service to Gcd and our Fellow Man in the Messianic Age. Available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle as an e-Book. He can be reached at [email protected] Twitter: @HolisticJudaism