After reading about Leftists chaining themselves to walls to keep the IDF from demolishing the home of the Petakh Tikva suicide bomber, and sending letters to IDF officers warning them that they may be charged with war crimes, I shook my head in perplexity. I identified. I used to be one of them.
Now--and especially in the situation they're facing in Israel--I keep asking myself: What are they seeing and thinking that is so different from what I see and think?
And another question came to mind: Why is the American Christian community so clearly aligned WITH the nationalist point of view in Israel, and so fervently? And why are all the 'warbloggers' of one accord in this matter? What do all these people really have in common? They are certainly a diverse group in terms of age, religion, race, and sex.
And then it came to me: You are either for G-d or against Him. Jew, Christian, or "uncertain," you are really choosing every moment: Your will, or His. (By the way, when I say "G-d," I do not mean "Allah.") And your words and deeds will reflect that.
America, which has been feeding, clothing, and inspiring the world, became "America" on the strength of people who aligned with G-d. Other countries want to conquer America, thinking if they capture the US, they will own its greatness.
Wrong.
Any country can have America's greatness. The price: To see the individual as someone created in G-d's image, and to structure society and government accordingly. All it takes is to acknowledge those famous "unalienable rights"--meaning rights which, if taken away, render a person less than human.
Where did I get all that? Take a moment to read it again: "WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, 1. that all Men are created equal [equally of value to God and in their right to respect] 2. that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights [rights that come from their Creator, not from governments or bureaucrats] 3. that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness [that last is often termed "property"] 4. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men [and securing these rights is the ONLY LEGITIMATE reason for the existence of governments] 5. deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed [we, the people, decided what powers they have and enumerated them in the Constitution of the United States] 6. [and it is also self-evident] that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government--laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Everything follows from that.
I was at a high-tech meeting (of the Israel CAD/CAM Society) in Herzliya in the early eighties. Venture capital was just getting going in Israel. Dan Tolkowsky, former commander of the Israeli Air Force, and head of the VC unit of Bank Discount, spoke to us.
Angrily addressing a room full of a couple hundred influential engineering and software professionals, he said, "Israel will never have a high-tech industry until we are willing for some people to make a lot more money than others!"
The "ruling class" of Israel, to that point, had been solidly Socialist. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Following this dictum, Socialism brings about a society in which the dominant dynamic is envy, the dominant emotion is hatred, and the dominant attitude is cynicism. Tolkowsky rightly pointed out that that would have to change.
But envy is based on the idea of a "zero-sum game": For you to have a bigger piece, my piece must be made smaller. And that's what Socialism offers. But Socialism wasn't the only way to look at things. Just not in Israel.
But even then a fresh wind had already begun to blow.
Efy Arazi had come back to Israel from years at MIT and Itek, and had founded Sci-Tex, which was a great success--not only in terms of business, but in terms of changing the way a business treats its employees. Sci-Tex was one of the first companies in Israel to use paint on its walls, instead of whitewash that comes off on your hands and your clothes. Comfortable, modern furniture. Working hours to accommodate parents. Intercoms.
Courtesy!
The company's every policy and action spoke louder than any published mission statement could: We care about our people--and about our customers. People are important, and should be respected. That was new for Israel, and alien to Socialism.
In the eighties and nineties, more and more Israelis went to school in the States, and after living here a while returned to Israel with new expectations: To be treated decently; to live and let live; and to PROSPER.
Prosper? Why "prosper"? Because when you honor a person because you see him--or your political system sees him--as created in G-d's image, you liberate the G-d-given creativity within them--the only truly renewable, even inexhaustible, source of wealth on the planet.
To be sure, the Left tried some of the attitudes. But because their religion teaches that Man is an accident--one of the animals evolved from the Primordial ooze--Leftists have no basis for thinking humans are endowed with anything unalienable.
But you can't have a right attitude based on wrong beliefs. Your behavior will eventually break down and reveal the true attitudes generated by what you think. So Leftists try to fill that void with things to feel good about--compassion for the downtrodden, for example. But since it is not founded in reality, but only in a quest for good feeling, it is blind and stupid.
So Israel, with all the troubles from the Arabs, must now also face this polarization of its own society--between Left and Right; between a self-generated zero-sum-game and a self-generated creativity-induced prosperity.
Between hate and love.
Between hope (a passive desire for things to be better) and faith (which is acting as if G-d is real, and means what He says).
In the end, of course, Love wins. I just wish the other guys would stop fighting, and accept that.
