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By Obadiah Shoher
March 2, 2007
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The biblical system of judges is fully relevant now. Israel has become a deathbed for Jewishness, a melting pot, an instrument of assimilation. The Israeli government scorches every viable definition of Jewishness, from religious to nationalist (abrogation of Eretz Israel notion) to cultural (with garbled tongue instead of the biblical Hebrew).
The Israeli state will continue as a secular, assimilationist, gentilized institution serving foreign masters and media rather than the Jews. As any large multi-strata democracy, it will roll down the path of corruption, bribing the voters, serving oligarchs and special interest groups.
Administrative autonomy for communities is the only option to preserve Jews in the state of Israel. The state would provide the communities with defense against regular Arab armies and general anti-terrorist services. The communities will be free to close themselves to Arabs to solve the immediate problems of rampant crime and terrorism. The communities will effect their own legal systems, whether secular or various types of Judaic legislation.
The state will limit the judicial power of communities by interpreting caret as banishment rather than execution, ensuring that no one is executed for religious transgressions. The state will prosecute criminals who escaped from the communities if secular law recognizes their offenses.
Communities will conduct their own policies in language (modern or biblical), religion, education, taxation, welfare, and other issues. The state will finance itself from customs duties and perhaps a small tax payable by all communities.
Some communities will continue to be socialist and secular, like kibbutzim, some -- religious of various orientations, other -- nationalist. Some might promote welfare and high taxes, while others attract investors with low taxes while discouraging workers with low benefits. They will compete and develop the most efficient policies. Communities will preserve vibrant Judaism and Jewish nationalism; various ideas will compete for settlers.
The transition from a unitarian state to a federation of communities might be slow. Israel needs to dismantle centralized rabbinical hierarchy which only promotes corruption, to allow the communities to have their own education programs, to permit them to restrict certain rights such as of homosexuality and Sabbath work, to decentralize the tax system.
No other option is viable. In democracy, interest groups will continue to pressure for concessions, and the welfare state will drive entrepreneurial Jews into emigration.
Israel will continue imposing assimilationist policies on religious and nationalist Jews if only to annihilate their determined opposition to Israel's emasculation of the Jewish idea.
Dictatorship will not help. It would only bring another leftist to power.
A constitution will equalize Arabs, and destroy even the lip service paid to the Jewish character of Israel.
Jews should be able to buy land anywhere in Eretz Israel, establish jurisdiction in their communities, and enjoy the nuclear protection of Israel.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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