Lieberman's "Realism"

Submitted by Prof. Paul Eidelberg (Israel), Apr 2, 2009 at 13:06

The candor Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's "maiden speech" was indeed refreshing. That he will insist that the Palestinian Authority fulfill all the requires of the "Road Map" to a Palestinian state means there will be no Palestinian state. This is "realism." It means no end to the conflict—not if one takes Islam or Arab-Islamic culture seriously.

But there is an insidious or pernicious aspect to Lieberman's "realism"—which is but a candid elaboration of what PM Netanyahu calls "reciprocity," a term foreign to Islamic lexicon.

The mere affirmation of a Palestinian state, even if only a gimmick, cannot but further demoralize the Jewish people. Affirming an Arab-Islamic state means that Judea and Samaria—the heartland of the Jewish [people—constitutes a public teaching. It TEACHES that Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) does not belong exclusively to the Jewish people. This makes a mockery of the Torah and the teachings of the Prophets and Sages of Israel.

This teaching cannot but erode or erase the historical memory of the Jewish people, if only because the teachings of their Prophets and Sages are intimately bound up with Judea and Samaria.

Consider what has been happening in the United States. Thanks to its ruling elites—politicians and judges and academics—the American people have forgotten the great truths of the American Declaration of Independence, which, as Lincoln so well understood, embodies the political philosophy of the American Constitution. The result is evident in the title of Samuel Huntington's book Who are We?

One does not have to be a religious Jew—indeed, one does not even have to be Jewish—to discern, what many Christians discern, that yielding any part of Judea and Samaria is a betrayal of the Jewish heritage. This will NOT lead to peace.

Nothing encourages the Arabs to persist in their genocidal objectives than Israel's diminished sense of Jewish identity, hence, in the Jewish people's confidence in their God-given and exclusive right to the Land of Israel.

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