Posted on 08/28/2006 5:49:37 PM PDT by Alouette
We are already immersed in painful evaluations to identify the cause of the breakdowns in our decision-making processes and in rectifying the weaknesses in the IDF as a consequence of the recent war.
What went wrong?
The problem goes far beyond the failings of individual leaders. Nor, as is frequently alleged, is the primary source the pain and agony endured by successive generations of Israelis witnessing their children leaving for the battlefields to risk their lives in defense of the nation.
It is rather the logical outcome of a profound malaise which over the years has infiltrated the psyche of a significant proportion of what can vaguely be described as secular Israeli leadership elites.
One of Israel's most incisive and respected journalists, Ari Shavit, a secular, politically center-left Haaretz contributor, recently wrote exposing the core elements which he asserts paved the way for the current malaise.
Shavit maintains that the main lesson to be absorbed from the Lebanon imbroglio is that the shocking performance of our national leadership was a logical consequence of the erosion of the national spirit among Israeli elite circles. He writes that "we were drugged by political correctness," by a discourse dominated by the baseless assumption that "occupation" is the source of all evil.
According to Shavit, that resulted in the demonization of core values like heroism and fortitude. Military power became identified with fascism, and the army, the most hallowed icon of the state, was transformed into a dirty word. Those who warned that we were becoming weaker and our enemies stronger were mocked, as were those who dared question unilateral withdrawals.
Shavit notes that "The unending attacks, both direct and indirect, on nationalism, on militarism and on the Zionist narrative have eaten away, from the inside, at the tree trunk of Israel's existence and sucked away its life force."
THE DECONSTRUCTION of Zionist ideals led to the repudiation of practices considered sacrosanct by our founding fathers and undermined the spirit of volunteerism, one of the pillars of Israeli society. In these circles money was everything; they began to convince themselves that Tel Aviv was Manhattan.
Shavit failed to mention that in the reality of our lives civic-mindedness and an appreciation of the justice of the case for Israel will not in itself suffice to provide the ideological motivation for a youngster to be willing to risk his life in order to defend the state. After all, why should a Hebrew-speaking Canaanite, devoid of Jewish roots and steeped in universalism, opt to live in a country permanently undergoing terror attacks and facing successive wars initiated by barbarians committed to its destruction?
Surely a person whose overriding objective is a life of self-gratification and the accumulation of money will, provided with an option, desert the country for greener pastures.
This undermining of national idealism in the "elite" sector of Israeli society is already highly advanced. One need only observe the increasing numbers from our secular political and business elites, including the children of leaders, who have already emigrated to the fleshpots of the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe.
BUT THAT represents only one aspect of the rot. It is now a given that a disproportionate percentage of soldiers in combat units comprise religious Zionists, kibbutzniks, moshavniks, Russians, Ethiopians and new immigrants.
The reverse trend seemingly applies to many yuppie types in Tel Aviv, the metropolis and largest urban center in the country.
There, it would seem that an increasing percentage of youngsters from affluent families attending elite schools are being discouraged by their parents from entering combat units and, in extreme cases, even shamelessly evading military service altogether. Paradoxically, many parents of these draft dodgers were themselves leaders of combat units, at a time when failure to serve in the army was considered the ultimate social disgrace.
IDF Manpower Chief Maj.-Gen. Elazar Stern recently made the chilling observation that he paid proportionately fewer condolence calls to bereaved families in Tel Aviv than in the rest of the country.
If children of elite families become increasingly underrepresented in combat units, if a greater proportion than the norm evade national service, and if a higher percentage emigrate than from other sectors, warning bells require us to take drastic remedial action.
WHY DO religious Zionists and kibbutzniks proportionately represent the vanguard in combat units? Because the religious education of the former is motivated toward love of Eretz Yisrael and the emphasis of the latter is toward volunteerism and civic obligations rather than selfish consumerism.
Clearly the educational system is the only vehicle via which these negative attitudes can be reversed. Yet Education Minister Yuli Tamir is herself a classic embodiment of these elitist ideas. Not surprisingly, she has already announced that her objective would be to reinforce universal rather than national values in the school curriculum.
If she retains her ministry, Tamir would be well advised to reacquaint herself with the ideas of Ahad Ha'am, whose concept of a Zionist ideology was based on the utilization of traditional Jewish texts to create a secular Jewish national identity centered on Eretz Yisrael. She should revert to Ben-Gurion and the Zionist establishment of his era, who considered the Hebrew scriptures the cornerstone of the school curriculum, designed to generate love of the land and promote it as the core of a secular Jewish narrative and Jewish civilization.
She should also study the writings of her predecessor of the Sixties, Education Minister Ben-Zion Dinur, who launched the Jewish-identity curriculum in secular schools. Above all, she should urgently train teachers who are able to communicate these values, which constitute the core narrative of our people. Forget that narrative, and we are doomed!
The Lebanon war demonstrated that in contrast to the "elites," the vast majority of Israelis remain fully committed to the nation and willing to pay whatever sacrifices are demanded to ensure our future as a Jewish state. However, if we fail to inspire future generations of secular Israelis with positive national ideals and inculcate them with a love of their Jewish heritage, the corruption of our national values restricted until now to segments of our "elites" will inevitably become a more widespread phenomenon.
TEN YEARS ago it would have been inconceivable to hear a contender for the leadership of the people of Israel say: "We have become tired of fighting; tired of being arrogant; tired of winning; tired of defeating our enemies."
That statement by Ehud Olmert will forever haunt him. But it encapsulates the extent to which the new elitist philosophy of consumerism and capitulation, bordering on post-Zionism, has been internalized in his circles.
If we fail to reverse such attitudes we will experience more examples of the national crisis we have just undergone, and probably worse.
The writer chairs the Diaspora-Israel Relations Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and is a veteran international Jewish leader.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
Isreal could not stomach the massive amount of civilian casualities that would have been required to effectively prosecute the war. Isreal first lost the PR war then the ground war.
"The unending attacks, both direct and indirect, on nationalism, on militarism and on the American narrative have eaten away, from the inside, at the tree trunk of America's existence and sucked away its life force."
We are NO different, look at what our schools teach, look
at how our children are raised by the state. It's a wonder
we can even fight at all.
Liberals could wreck a wet dream.
Shulamit Aloni was the Education Minister who despised religious and Zionist education and purged it.
Did'nt the IDF just buy three more submarines from the Germans?...
They will not be happy, I'm tellin ya..
"We have become tired of fighting; tired of being arrogant; tired of winning; tired of defeating our enemies."
Let's all welcome the Jewish Jimmy Carter
And perhaps he heard a song in his deeper soul which lamented that Zion brooks no pretenders at education.
And that is NOT a concept a petti-man like Jimmy Carter could ever comprehend.
If you study the Jews, there can be no good reason for them to survive as a people for thousands of years, under the most horrible conditions and odds, without some Divine hand preserving them. This is what the Jews of Israel should think about. G-d is with them!
*Religious Jews do not believe in writing the word "G-o-d"; they consider writing His name down, when it can then be destroyed in some manner, blasphemous. I use the spelling, G-d, to show my respect to them.
In that case we better hope that he is like Jimmy Carter, whose depressing statements helped lead the way to Ronald Regan.
So he loses one, because, you know, winning is so boring...
Odd practice considering how many times God according to the Bible announced that his name should be praised, etc.
Can you imagine the Psalms, and the Bible w/out the name of God?
Whatever term, Elohim, Yahweh, sticking a hyphen in the middle of a name or title is a contrived PC sort of nonsense.
What sort of God can be blasphemed so easily?
It is absurd.
Writing the Name of God
Jews do not casually write any Name of God. This practice does not come from the commandment not to take the Lord's Name in vain, as many suppose. In Jewish thought, that commandment refers solely to oath-taking, and is a prohibition against swearing by God's Name falsely or frivolously (the word normally translated as "in vain" literally means "for falsehood").
Judaism does not prohibit writing the Name of God per se; it prohibits only erasing or defacing a Name of God. However, observant Jews avoid writing any Name of God casually because of the risk that the written Name might later be defaced, obliterated or destroyed accidentally or by one who does not know better.
The commandment not to erase or deface the name of God comes from Deut. 12:3. In that passage, the people are commanded that when they take over the promised land, they should destroy all things related to the idolatrous religions of that region, and should utterly destroy the names of the local deities. Immediately afterwards, we are commanded not to do the same to our God. From this, the rabbis inferred that we are commanded not to destroy any holy thing, and not to erase or deface a Name of God.
It is worth noting that this prohibition against erasing or defacing Names of God applies only to Names that are written in some kind of permanent form, and recent rabbinical decisions have held that writing on a computer is not a permanent form, thus it is not a violation to type God's Name into a computer and then backspace over it or cut and paste it, or copy and delete files with God's Name in them. However, once you print the document out, it becomes a permanent form. That is why observant Jews avoid writing a Name of God on web sites like this one or in newsgroup messages: because there is a risk that someone else will print it out and deface it.
Normally, we avoid writing the Name by substituting letters or syllables, for example, writing "G-d" instead of "God." In addition, the number 15, which would ordinarily be written in Hebrew as Yod-Heh (10-5), is normally written as Tet-Vav (9-6), because Yod-Heh is a Name. See Hebrew Alphabet for more information about using letters as numerals.
Oh my... boy the LEFT really has a STINKY SMELL doesn' it. The Left and its values, like a cancer growth, zaps the life of anything it puts its tentacles on. I am sorry for Israel... they are way more f*** up than I thought. I heard the IDF has homosexuals openly servicing in it... No a good sign either. Who can blame the arabas for being so bold and aggressive... they also dectect the same stinking smell of weackness, of nothing of value.
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