Israel, Olmert and Rabbi Wolpe: Questions of Justice and Madness
In Israel Rabbi Wolpe at a rally stated that if the government was properly run, Olmert and his gang would be hung for aiding the terrorists. The tabloid press immediately seized on this accusing Rabbi Wolpe of calling for vigilante justice and setting up the usual cry of "Right Wing Extremist" and "Yigal Amir". But what Rabbi Wolpe had called for was something much more 'disturbing' than mob violence, he had called for the country to be run according to its principles and its interests, rather than the corrupt whims of its politicians.
For the last decade and a half, the political and media elite of Israel have been propounding that peace is better than war and warning Jews outside Israel to respect Israel's democracy. Today Israel has neither peace nor democracy, it has an illegitimate political class bargaining away the nation's dearest treasures to terrorists.
The peace process has been an auction in which Israel has been constantly raising its bids while the Palestinian Arabs have been taking more and more items off the table. No one in Israel seriously believes there will be peace anymore but the negotiations and the settlement talks continue. Where Israel started out by offering an autonomous area inside Israel in exchange for middle eastern peace, today Israel is offering a country complete with Jerusalem itself up on the altar in exchange for the faint possibility of an end to the constant violence.
Israel has no democracy anymore. It is ruled by a man supported by less than ten percent of the country and by a party illegitimately put into power by a dead man. This same government ruthlessly suppresses dissent and bribes its coalition partners. Non-violent protesters are kept detained for months. Ruthless brutality is practiced along with ethnic cleansing of Jews by the will of this government.
Without democracy, the Olmert government has no right to exist. Without peace, every single politician that has made peace his policy has failed and must acknowledge that and resign. Without peace and democracy, this government has no right to exist.
The political class insists that their whims should override the principles and the interests of the state. They are wrong. Not only have they betrayed the principles on which the State of Israel was founded, they have betrayed the interests of the state and finally they have abandoned democracy and the rule of law. Their occupation of the government is a crime against the state and the nation. That is why Rabbi Wolpe is correct and his critics at the OU, which made nothing more than a feeble whimper in response to Amona and Gush Katif, are wrong.
A state must punish treason. If Ehud the man gives a terrorist a gun, he is a criminal and a traitor. If Ehud the Prime Minister gives the terrorists 10,000 guns, can there be any doubt that he is a criminal and a traitor? If anything as Prime Minister he is more subject to being held to account than as a private citizen. A citizen's treason is only a treason against his citizenship. A Prime Minister's treason is a treason against his duty in public office.
The same government which has no problem locking up 14 year old girls indefinitely for standing silently at an intersection has a problem with being held to account for its own crimes-- but most tyrannies do. Political corruption and military failure mark this government for removal. Treason and usurpation of public office mark it for trial.
Those who have a problem with Rabbi Wolpe's statements should ask themselves, what is the greater outrage to arm the enemy or to call for the trial and execution of those who arm the enemy. Those who find his statements impolitic, should ask themselves how far moderation has gotten them. For a decade and a half five corrupt Prime Ministers have labeled anyone who opposed them as extremists. But it is their policies that are an extremist betrayal of the founding and defense of the state. Their extremism has cost thousands of lives on both sides and betrayed the sanctity and security of its borders and citizens. They have piled treason on treason and deception on deception. Their crimes call for justice, not random violence but the organized mechanism of a restored state punishing those who betrayed it.
The best way to confront extremism is not with moderation but with opposing extremism. Not in random rhetoric or unfocused violence but in drawing the rhetorical and political lines further and further, rather than pulling them back. Moderating your positions is a form of surrender. The way to deal with extremism is to confront it by pushing it to the limit. If politicians choose treason, then you must not only condemn it as treason but speak of punishing it as treason. Ideological victory can never occur based on half-hearted positions, but only occur in the full clash of ideologies.
Why does treason prosper? Because when treason is successful none dare call it treason.