Search our Archives:

Dangerous Enemies

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Israel’s political and judicial elites may well be the country’s most dangerous enemies, but one would never know this from Israel's free press.

Recall MK Yael Dayan's gathering of gays and lesbians in the Knesset back in 1993. Instead of arousing public attention regarding the significance of homosexuality and whether it should be legalized, the press was titillated by Miss Dayan's mindless if not malicious attempt to defend that gathering of homosexuals in terms of the friendship between David and Jonathan portrayed in the Bible of Israel!

Instead of informed public debate and serious deliberation in the Knesset on this important issue, Israel eventually succumbed to judicial fiat. The Supreme Court, dominated by its high priest of moral equivalence, judge Aharon Barak, decreed that homosexuality is legal. The morally free press didn’t even blink.

Steeped in transience and trivia, the press will not publish serious arguments against homosexuality. The Fourth Estate is quite willing to remain silent while moral egalitarians like Yael Dayan and Aharon Barak prescribe the amoral lifestyle of the Jewish state. Well, though it’s a bit late in the day, let’s probe the issue.

Beginning on the surface, even gays and lesbians must admit that no nation can survive on the basis of strict homosexuality. Since homosexual behavior, by definition, precludes procreation, the existence of gays and lesbians ultimately depends on heterosexuals. Thus, if national survival is a moral imperative, homosexuality and heterosexuality are not morally equal.

Moreover, since homosexuality is not conducive to parenthood and the self-sacrifice involved in the raising of children, it tends to foster self-indulgence. This is not to say that self-indulgence will not be found among heterosexuals, or that all homosexuals are devoid of public spiritedness. I am speaking only of tendencies, but tendencies that wise statesmen and wise judges dare not disregard.

Self-indulgence or egoism is of course a natural and most powerful inclination of human nature, an inclination which the laws of any decent nation will place under due restraint. To the extent that homosexuality conduces to self-indulgence, it undermines civic virtue, without which no nation can long endure. Hence the egalitarianism that places homosexuals and heterosexuals on the same moral and legal level is fallacious and pernicious, especially in a minuscule state like Israel.

Nevertheless, Israel's late prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, once said he "sees no reason" why gays should not serve in the Israel Defense Forces. The same Rabin appointed Shulamit Aloni minister of education, even though she not only advocated the legalization of sodomy, but scorned Jewish patriotism as "chauvinism"!

It seems never to have occurred to Ms. Aloni that patriotism involves love of one's people and a willingness to fight and sacrifice in defense of its heritage. To mock patriotism is to foster self-indulgence or egoism and even contempt for one’s people. It was such contempt that prompted Shulamit Aloni to embrace that enemy of the Jewish people, PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi. But who is the more dangerous enemy, the obvious or the unobvious?

It was Israel’s unobvious enemies that assembled in the Knesset and legalized, on the very same day, both prostitution and meetings with PLO terrorists (January 15, 1993). On that fateful day Yael Dayan hastened to Tunis to embrace the greatest enemy of the Jewish people since Hitler, PLO chief Yasser Arafat! The legalized degradation of women was thus followed by the legalized degradation of a nation. Or to put it another way: by placing whores on the same level as decent women, the law also placed Arab thugs on the same level as Jews.

Yet Israeli spokesmen complain of the moral equivalence to which Israel is subjected by foreign journalists and politicians! Apparently, these spokesmen are unaware of the moral equivalence that permeates Israel own ruling elites, be they politicians or judges.

Moral equivalence is a sign of moral indifference, hence of nihilism. Too many Israeli politicians and judges have no clear understanding of what distinguishes the human from the sub-human, even though the term “human dignity” is so often on their lips. Perhaps this is one reason why Israeli governments have allowed Arab terrorists to murder so many Jews. Israel’s ruling elites may well be the country’s most dangerous enemies.