The Democratic People's Republic of Israel

This article was printed on page 11 of  The Jerusalem Observer on 16 December 2011, and can be found online here.  

Israel must continue its policy of international isolationism.  By closing our doors to foreign funding of NGOs we are preventing foreigners from corrupting Israeli domestic issues.  This will keep Israel Israeli and preserve the integrity of our democracy.  But these measures are not enough.  More steps must be taken by Israel to ensure that she will never be contaminated by the monies and ideas of outlanders.

She should bar herself from foreign companies who steal Israeli markets from Israeli companies, and instead set up national conglomerates and monopolies, and raise protective tariffs to protect our native industries.  Why should we leave Israel’s nascent commerce open to the ravaging effects of international capitalist piracy?

She should shut her gates to foreign workers who rob Israelis of honorable low-wage jobs.  They undermine our society, make it impure, and multiply within our borders.  Let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that, should war befall us, they ally with our enemies and fight against us.  Keep these foreigners out and protect Israel. 

She should keep tourists from countries that criticize her out.  They only come to this country to point out our flaws, so why let them in?  She should tell the American Jews to keep their no-strings-attached billions to themselves.  Their Jewish identities and practices are corrupted by American life and their political allegiance to Israel suspect.  And the private donors that build Israel’s schools and universities and hospitals should donate the money to Israeli government, who will allocate it, in its wisdom, as necessary.  Those independent institutions should not be trusted with funds from individuals abroad. 

She should tell the US government to keep its billions of dollars in annual military aid.  We are strong and can manage without their guns, missiles, and planes.  She should tell the Egyptians we don’t need their oil and gas, that they should keep it for themselves.  She should tell the meddling Turks to mind their own business, and keep the water we once wanted to buy by the billions of cubic feet—we’d rather parch.  She should tell the EU that we’ve had enough of their bleeding heart NGOs.  We need their trade no more if it comes with those strings attached.  We are better off without any of these. 

Israel should tell her citizens to stop traveling abroad, that there is nothing worth seeing in the outlands of chul.  Everything they need can be found in the land of their forefathers.  She should urge her forgotten sons and daughters to return to the motherland, lest they forget the promised land from whence they came or the holy tongue they once spoke.  Urging the diaspora homewards with expensive propaganda campaigns, she should precipitate the influx of hordes of Jews from abroad and build concrete metropolises to house them, and factories to employ them. 

There is no reason why we should rely on foreign countries or their seditious funds. Israel is strong and we can do it on our own.  We can grow our food, make our own goods, protect our own people, and revere our leaders as they are meant to be, and preserve democracy for the Israeli people.  To reassure everyone, however, of our democratic identity, we should also rename the state the Democratic Jewish People’s Republic of Israel. 

Social Justice Fail

This article was published on page 16 of The Jerusalem Observer on 2 December 2011 and can be found online here:

Inspired by scenes of uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Israelis cascaded into the streets this summer demanding “social justice”.  The figurehead of the movement—a woman whose sole accomplishment was pitching a tent when she became homeless—had started a Facebook group that sparked the inferno of discontent among Tel Avivians.  In no time flat, she and a small cadre (known as the “Rothschild Gang”) became the leaders of what was reported as the largest protest movement Israel had ever witnessed. 

The movement Daphni Leef initiated was nothing more than a decapitated millipede—a mass of legs with no head.  Holding placards and demanding “social justice”, the protesters this summer made a list of demands but proffered no practical solutions to their woes. Their greatest threat to the establishment was that they would continue to march to the street.  In many ways they reminded me of a South Park mob shouting “rabble, rabble, rabble” and “they took our jobs!” 

The unwitting leader of the social justice movement demonstrated her leadership acumen and diplomatic panache a few weeks ago when she told Bibi that “you are looking at a tired woman. But more than this, a determined and furious woman,” and that she would not talk to him directly again.  Sounds to me like Leef pulled one out of Bibi’s playbook and was met with similar success.  She followed these comments up with another ambiguous statement: “we and many others will be in this Knesset to prove that the public wants something else.”

Pray tell, Daphni Leef, what does the mob want?  As a leader she is as effective at moving people as the Jerusalem light rail during rush hour.  Thomas Friedman published an op-ed November 15^th, 2011 in The New York Times wherein he pointed out that Facebook and Twitter have convinced everyone that they are the tip of the spearhead in social movements.  Unfortunately, “…at the end of the day…someone needs to meld those ideas into a vision of how to move forward... Those are called leaders.” Neither Daphni Leef, nor the Rothschild Gang, nor the heads of the student unions,who claim it is their turn to lead the charge, can claim that title. None have put forth plausible, sensible solutions and a clear vision of what “the public wants”. 

The Facebook leadership syndrome has infected the minds of this generation’s Israelis.  We are convinced that by clicking “like” we have made a stand, or that starting a group or event makes one a leader.  And the many participants in Jewish leadership programs who strive to be the future of Israel, where are they? 

It therefore comes as no surprise that the ill-conceived plans of the mob crying for social justice have been washed away with the winter rains.  Netanyahu, who is made of sterner stuff than Leef reckoned, has negotiated this minor obstacle with finesse.  After all, if he can wile his way past Obama, Biden, and the rest of the international community for three years, he can handle a Tel Aviv yuppie living in a tent.  If the likes of Daphni Leef are the best Israeli youth can offer, then there is no hope for social justice in Israel anytime soon.