Hamas Out? PA In

Submitted by Prof. Paul Eidelberg (Israel), Jan 5, 2009 at 03:11

I may be mistaken, but I think the primary motive of the Olmert-Livni-Barak government for waging war against Hamas in Gaza is to restore control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority as a preliminary to the establishing a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. These dismal—if not pathological—politicians have not really abandoned Oslo. The "territory-for-peace" syndrome is ingrained in their mentality perhaps as much as murderous hatred of Israel is ingrained in the mentality of the Palestinians.

There is another factor that may be motivating these politicians. They see that the birthrate of religious Jews in Israel will soon relegate them and their co-secularists to the political wilderness. To postpone this day, they are attempting to eviscerate the national identity or historical consciousness of the Jewish people, which is intimately linked to Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, the tangible place names of the teachings of the prophets of Israel.

It is in this light that we are to understand why such words as "Judaism," Zionism," and "Eretz Israel" were deleted from the Soldiers Code of Ethics under the Rabin government—when Ehud Barak was Chief of General Staff. That government emasculated the Jewish content of the public school curriculum.

Notice, moreover, that Israel's ruling elites are multiculturalists: President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Education Minister Yuli Tamir, Defense Minister Ehud Barak—and let us not forget the ubiquitous influence of former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. These elites have been tainted by the cultural relativism prevalent in Israel's "liberal" universities.

Underlying Israel's leftwing's policy of territory for peace, therefore, is an "undeclared" cultural war. The same sort of war is occurring in the United States, where the university-bred doctrine of moral relativism modulates the news media, the courts, and the leadership of the Democratic Party.

The ultimate issue is as large as the survival of Western civilization, the primary source of which, along with classical Greek philosophy, is the Bible of Israel.

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