Commentary… Law Forces an Objective Point of Reference
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בס״ד Had the legislation עש״ק פרשת כי תצא 13 Elul 5778 ISRAEL NEWS not been passed, August 21, 2018 Israel’s constitution Issue number 1208 A collection of the week’s news from Israel would have emerged as an inchoate From the Bet El Twinning / Israel Action Committee of listing of humanistic platitudes devoid Jerusalem 6:33 of distinguishable essence, ultimately Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation Toronto 7:50 endangering the country’s very raison d’être. Israel’s new Nation-State Basic Commentary… Law forces an objective point of reference. It declares that there is indeed a national identity that matters, The Nation-State Law, a Constitutional Showdown with that words matter, that history matters, that culture matters, that both faith Postmodernism By Yechiel M. Leiter and reason matter. Condemnations of Israel’s new Nation-State Basic Law are rolling in The law breathes new life into Israel advocacy because it defines and from the usual international chorus of Israel’s detractors, and Israel’s clarifies the fault lines of debate. The issues must no longer be seen as advocates are summarily rushing to the front lines in her defense. It’s a intermittent and localized but constant and enveloping of all Western painful ritual that we’ve experienced many times before. Or is this time civilization. different? Israel’s Nation-State Basic Law should serve as a source of By constitutionalizing Israel as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish encouragement to all those who have been struggling against the scourge people, a special majority of Israel’s elected representatives have of postmodernism’s deconstructionism to build the requisite social functionally and fundamentally changed the terms of engagement on the constructs that will create a new Enlightenment, one far better than the battlefield of Israel’s struggle against her ill-wishers. In doing so they have first. (Jerusalem Post Aug 16) potentially changed, much for the better, the future of Western civilization. Sound overly dramatic? Not really. Around the same time Israel was defending herself from annihilation in The President Won't Betray Us By Ariel Kahana 1967, a group of French academics, intellectual heirs to the unrepentant So U.S. President Donald Trump is making juicy headlines once Nazi advocate Martin Heidegger, created postmodernism, an idea that has again, and right away little experts pop up and explain that he's going to since engulfed in entirety the world of academia, the news media and much turn on Israel. of Western political life. Well, friends, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Although there are those The horrific events of the 20th century were interpreted by the among us who are secretly wishing a Trump disaster on Prime Minister postmodernists as the result of the failure of modernity. Radical Benjamin Netanyahu, the most supportive president of all time intends to Enlightenment had replaced faith exclusively with the capacity for human maintain his attitude. In his world, there are good people and bad people, reason. And after Auschwitz, the Gulag Archipelago and Mao’s killing and he sees Israel – like America – as on the right side. Unlike former fields, it appeared that reason alone was not the answer. President Barack Obama, Trump will never say something like "Iran is a So, while for many social movements the response was to put faith complicated country – just like we're a complicated country." And unlike back into the moral equation, the response of the postmodernists was to Obama, who dropped his friends and brought his rivals closer, Trump remove reason as well. sticks to his word and his values. So he'll keep supporting Israel because With faith and rationalism both gone, everything was now he supports America. deconstructed. Reality turned subjective, words rendered meaningless, fact For almost two years, we've been told that any second now Trump will and fiction morphed into one, law became literature and history became let Israel have it, but what can you do? The facts say the opposite. Trump poetry, the self was decentralized, the traditional family dismantled and has done unprecedented things for us – and by extension, as he sees it, for society fragmented into multicultural divisiveness. America. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital; withdrew from the 2015 For the postmodernist, Marcel Duchamp and Leonardo da Vinci are nuclear deal with Iran, and is giving Israel a nuclear umbrella in the U.N. both artists, Nicki Minage and Amadeus Mozart are both musicians, Nothing like this has ever happened. Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu are both national leaders, and A large sector of the voters who put Trump in the White House are Palestinian terror organizations and the Israel Defense Forces both bear evangelicals, who won't re-elect him if he does anything to harm Israel. arms. Trump knows that very well. He is surrounded by family and personal But that was only the first stage. It didn’t stop there because extreme advisers who are fervent supporters of Israel, from Vice President Mike relativism can’t just keep things on par. In the next phase, postmodernism Pence to National Security Adviser John Bolton to Secretary of State Mike elevated toilets above the Mona Lisa, twerking above The Magic Flute, Pompeo, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and close associated Jason Abbas above Netanyahu and Palestinian terrorism above the IDF. Greenblatt and David Friedman. They are his DNA. He won't betray them It is in this phase, too, when Palestinian spokesmen can perniciously and as a group, they won't betray Israel. label Israel a racist and apartheid state ad nauseam. Israel, where a sitting This is the background. Now, let's address the issues themselves. Is Arab judge on the Supreme Court can send a sitting Jewish president to jail this the first time that Trump has spoken about Israeli concessions as part for seven years for sexual misconduct, and Arab Knesset members can lead of a peace plan? It is not. Even during his campaign and immediately after a demonstration in Tel Aviv where Israeli Arab citizens chant “With blood he was elected, the president said there would be concessions. He has even and fire we will redeem Palestine.” Yet the media shamelessly and already used the phrase "a higher price because of the embassy move." continuously recycles the racism canard. Has anything happened? The Israel advocate goes to the front lines and speaks truth to lies If there was any rationale to the declaration, which was made as part without realizing that for his interlocutors truth is relative and facts are of a campaign speech in West Virginia, it was an attempt to calm down subjective. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Americans' main What’s more, he speaks in historical terms and doesn’t understand that problem is the Palestinians, who are boycotting them, so if Trump's words for the postmodernist, nothing is worse and nothing is to be rejected more had any purpose, it was to pacify the recalcitrant Abbas – not threaten his forcefully than grand historical narratives. “Simplifying to the extreme” friend Netanyahu. By the way, it won't happen. Abbas won't forgo his wrote postmodernist Jean-François Lyotard, “I define the postmodern as boycott. incredulity toward metanarratives.” In any case, the second part of that sentence was "if a peace deal is Now where is one to find a greater metanarrative than the story of ever signed." In other words, Trump might want the "deal of the century," Israel? And what forces incredulity (a function of reason?) toward but he understands very well that it is far off and almost unrealistic. So his postmodernism more than the people of Israel returning to the Land of remarks about a "higher price" are completely theoretical. But even after Israel, speaking the same language, celebrating the same holidays and the U.S. peace plan is rolled out, if it ever is, the U.S. won't "impose a honoring the same capital? peace" on Israel and the Palestinians, as Bolton said on Wednesday. If “Simplifying to the extreme,” nothing engenders incredulity more than that's the case, why is everyone so upset? the success of Zionism. It is an unparalleled metanarrative of three-and-a- So please, stop annoying us with empty scare tactics. We're sick of half millennia, now formally ensconced in Israel’s fledgling constitution. them. The real problem with the Trump administration isn't its pressure on Israel, but rather that Israel isn't pressuring it enough. This is, again, the Readers are requested to please mail contributions to: BAYT - re: Israel News, 613 Clark Avenue West, Thornhill, Ontario. L4J 5V3 Annual Rates: Friend - $36, Supporter - $50, Benefactor - $180. Dedications are welcome at $120/week. Call (905) 886-3810 for further info. See Israel News on the internet at www.bayt.ca and www.frumtoronto.com or email [email protected] to request to be added to the weekly email. Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of BAYT. most supportive U.S. administration in history. With a little more effort, to Israeli democracy. If I don’t scream, nobody will hear me.” determination and originality, we could make a lot more of this opportunity. Another reason American Jews are so breathless is that they feel (Israel Hayom Aug 23) powerless to affect the country they care about. They don’t vote in Israel, they don’t participate in the Hebrew-language policy debates, and no matter how much they feel Israeli decisions might affect them, they really A Dam Against the Demographic Flood By Reuven Berko don’t, at least not in the way they affect Israeli voters and taxpayers.