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Jason Orenstein is currently studying for a Masters in Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
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By Jason Orenstein
January 21, 2004
Ironic. There is no better word to describe the events unfolding today in the Land of Israel. "This is very sad, very grave, but this is the reality of Israel in 2004. There's Sopranos on television, and there's Sopranos in Israel." So spoke Senior Labor party legislator and Member of Israel's Knesset, Ofer Pines-Paz, who, in a single sentence, aptly summed up the success and ultimate failure of secular Zionism.
Pines-Paz was referring to what he termed as a "political earthquake" resulting from the alleged bribery scandal involving Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Sharon's son, Gilad, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and potentially many more high-ranking government officials.
Sadly, this is not the first time that the names of Sharon and Olmert have arisen in political corruption scandals. In fact, political corruption among Israel's leadership dates back to the period of the pre-state Yishuv, and is perhaps the one area where Israel's political leaders, of both the left and the right, are able to walk side by side.
At the very same moment, a political earthquake of another sort is raging in the Land of Israel. The Likud, headed by the likes of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, has undergone a transfiguration to the point where its policies now resemble those of their long time political opponents, the Labor party.
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism, of which the Likud party is a direct descendant, must be turning in his grave. Revisionist Zionism, as well as the Likud's party platform, rejects the notion of the creation of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. To hear Sharon and Olmert speak not only of favoring the creation of a Palestinian state, but that if it can not be achieved through negotiations, they will bring it about through unilateral concessions, is truly mind-blowing.
MK Amram Mitzna, if he weren't too busy trying to foist non-government sanctioned peace deals such as the Geneva Accords down our throats, would be charging Ariel Sharon with highway robbery. After all, it was Mitzna, then head of the Labor party who was routed by Sharon in Israel's last election, who ran on the platform of making unilateral concessions to the Palestinians and of the need to create some type of physical separation between us and them. Lo and behold, the very platform that forced Mitzna to resign
his leadership of the Labor party, as he and the party became the laughingstocks of the country, is now the platform of Ariel Sharon and the Likud.
Sharon has stated time and again that he is willing to make painful concessions. Included in those concessions will no doubt be the uprooting and transfer of Jews from their homes. Should this come to pass, it will not represent the first time in the long history of the Jewish people that Jews have been expelled from their homes simply because they are Jews, but it will represent the first time this will be done to Jews living in the Land of Israel, our ancestral Homeland, by fellow Jews. (In 1982, Ariel Sharon oversaw the destruction of Yamit, a Jewish town in the Sinai, not Israel).
The defining goal of secular Zionism was for Israel to become a nation like all other nations, as well as to create a new Jew, one who would bear little resemblance to the traditional Diaspora Jew who because of his numerous Jewish practices and beliefs was shunned by the non-Jews. In this regard, secular Zionism has been an almost complete success.
In Israel, one can find on TV "The Sopranos," "Sex in the City" and "Friends." Israeli secular culture -- on TV, in the movies, literature, education, clothing or music, is based almost entirely on western societal norms and values, predominantly found in Europe and the United States, as opposed to representing Jewish values and beliefs. This ideology, of striving to be a nation like all other nations can
also be found in our leaders of today.
Can one really look at our leadership today, or even over the past decade, and say that the prime motivation behind their
actions was in accordance with Jewish values or rather with trying to win favor and acceptance in the eyes of the nations of the world? Sadly, the same values that allow our leaders to become involved in all manners of political corruption are the very same ones that allow them to call for the transfer of Jews from their homes in the Land of Israel.
In the Tanach (the Jewish Bible), one can find what is expected of the leadership of the Jewish people. He is to be one of the highest moral character, as well as being of great spiritual stature. One who can lead the Jewish people in both war and prayer. He is not expected to be perfect, rather one who when confronted with wrongdoing can lead the nation in sincere repentance. He is to be the embodiment of a Jewish nationalist, with a love for the Land of Israel and the people of Israel coursing through his veins.
These are the values -- Jewish values -- that are so sorely lacking in our leaders of today. The Jewish people and the Jewish state are deserving of and crying out for a leader with the Jewish values necessary to lead the Jewish nation. Only Jews, proud Jews, in heart, mind, body, spirit and soul need apply.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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