An American-Israeli Alliance Against Islam

The eminent Israeli novelist and former Knesset Member Moshe Shamir [of blessed memory] warns: “the Arab-Islamic world sees itself as the only legitimate part of humanity and has placed Islamization of the world as its highest aim.”[i] He fears that, despite September 11, America lacks the moral resources to honestly define and face mankind’s greatest enemy, Arab-Islamic civilization, which strikingly resembles Nazism. Above all he fears that because of its economic interests in the Middle East, America may sacrifice Israel on the altar of Islam. Hence this essay.

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America’s war against international terrorism is not merely a war against “Islamic fundamentalism.” Few want to admit the fearful truth that Islamic fundamentalism, by whatever other name, is authentic Islam, the Islam of Muhammad. Apologists select passages from the Qur’an that prescribe Islam’s “pleasant and peaceful ways,” while ignoring those that inspire Islam’s hate-filled and murderous fanaticism (Sura 22:39-41; Sura 2:190). In a mosque sermon in Qatar on June 7, 2002, the imam prayed to Allah “to humiliate the infidels… destroy the Jews, the Christians, and their supporters…make their wives widows, make their children orphans, and make them a prey for Muslims.” Islam is anything but a religion of love.

One simple fact dispels the academic obscurantism: Islam’s most distinguishing and historically dynamic principle is jihad (holy war), and all four schools of Islamic law (Hanafi, Hanbali, Shafi’i, Maliki) refer to jihad as a commandment to wage offensive war against infidels for the sake of Allah. Consistent therewith, Muslims have plundered, butchered, subjugated, and degraded countless Christian and Jewish communities from the time of Muhammad to the present day.[ii] That they exult in this history of savagery in the name of Allah — we saw them rejoice throughout Islamdom in the destruction of the Twin Towers — is all the more reason why Islam must be conquered, just as Nazi Germany had to be conquered before it was democratized.

America’s war against international terrorism is indeed a war against Arab-Islamic civilization. This war dwarfs all others. Muslim-Arabs, who have no regard for the sanctity of human life, are accumulating weapons of mass murder. Throughout its vast domain Islam nurtures and provides havens for thousands of highly skilled terrorists committed to the destruction of Western civilization in general and of Israel in particular. Many of their leaders have been educated in the West and are familiar with biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. They are motivated not by a righteous desire to alleviate the poverty of the Muslim world, but by a satanic hatred of the non-Muslim world. Never has mankind been so threatened.[iii]

Islam is invading Europe. Its goal is nothing less than conquest. And Europe, rotting in nihilism, hedonism, and anti-Semitism, is allied with its grave-diggers.

The one country that stands in the way of Islam is the United States. Needless to say, the U.S. cannot wage war simultaneously against 50 and more Islamic regimes. Accordingly, intrepid commentators like Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute would have America proceed incrementally, beginning with the elimination of Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein. Baghdad would be first, followed by Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.[iv] A chain reaction will supposedly follow and transform Islamdom. These commentators urge an American crusade to democratize the Islamic world. Predictably, they conceive of this crusade in purely secular terms. They ignore not only the fanatical devotion of the Muslim masses to Islam, but the unappealing aspects of the secular democratic world which, as eminent western scholars admit, is steeped in moral decay. Democratizing dozens of Islamic states might not be an unmixed blessing for the 1.2 billion Muslims that inhabit this planet.

If the war against Islam is to be won, the partisans of contemporary democracy will require a deeper understanding of what makes democracies preferable to Islamic (and other) tyrannies. These partisans invariably emphasize the freedom and equality enjoyed in democracies but absent in Islam. They overlook the fact that, unlike in former times, democratic freedom and equality lack ethical and rational constraints. Moral relativism infects the democratic mind and saps the will to overcome the absolutism of the Islamic mind. Lovers of democracy need to ask: What is there about democratic freedom that would prompt a person to restrain his passions, to be kind, honest, just? What is there about democratic equality that would prompt him to defer to wisdom or to show respect for teachers or parents? Are such qualities conspicuous in the secular democratic state?

The partisans of the secular democratic state need to recognize that the freedom and equality they exalt are pure potentialities — neither good nor evil — hence morally neutral. In the war against Islamic barbarism democrats need to see that the sanctity of human life and the decency and civility still visible in contemporary democracy have nothing to do with democracy itself. They are rooted in the Bible of Israel and in Greek political philosophy. Waving the flag of freedom and equality American style will not purge Islam whose believers are willing to die for Allah. If, however, freedom and equality are derived from the Jewish conception of man’s creation in the image of God — which alone can provide democracy with an ethical and rational foundation — and if democracy, so conceived and so proclaimed, rallies a hundred million Christians in America, so many of whom look to Israel for light, then it may be possible to illuminate and transform the Islamic world. But this means that America needs Israel in the war against Islam.

Unfortunately, the Government of Israel is not equal to the task. Its ruling elites have embraced contemporary democracy as their religion, despite its moral failings. The egotistical pluralism of democratic politics has fragmented the nation and made Israel another secular democratic state. Such a state, devoid of Jewish wisdom and vision, cannot possibly inspire America in the war against Islam. Israel’s pedestrian leaders can speak of nothing more than “peace and security,” for which for they are willing to sacrifice Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish people. This not only diminishes American respect for Israel. It also arouses the contempt of Muslims, a contempt magnified by their awareness that Israel has the military power to conquer the land occupied by Arabs but refrains from doing so.

Unlike Muslims, whose sense of cultural superiority is unequaled, Israel’s political leaders are devoid of Jewish cultural pride. Consider their foreign policy, their pronouncements about the Arab-Israel conflict. Not a sign of joyful confidence in the justice of Israel’s cause. In the midst of war with Arab terrorists and suicide bombers, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon obtusely informed his countrymen that he had learned not to think in “black and white” terms![v] September 11 was not enough to dispel the moral flabbiness of Israel’s foreign policy and prompt the Sharon government to eradicate the terrorist network in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

But even if headed by a wiser and more dauntless leader, how can a government or cabinet composed of ten rival and ridiculous parties pursue a consistent and resolute national strategy — I mean a strategy whose initial objective is to eradicate the existential threat facing the Jewish state? On the other hand, what positive, what noble, what distinctively Jewish goal can inspire this state when egalitarianism takes precedence over Judaism in the mentality of Israel’s political and judicial elites?

Thus, to say that America needs Israel in the war against Islam can only mean an Israel very different from the present one. I have in mind a truly Jewish Israel, one that possesses a structure of government that inspires respect and whose immediate goal vis-à-vis Israel’s enemies is not (an impossible) peace but conquest. Only such an Israel, working with the United States, can bring about a structural transformation of Islam. In this paper I shall articulate a foreign policy for a Jewish Israel, but with the understanding that this foreign policy presupposes Israel’s own structural transformation which I have elsewhere discussed at great length.[vi]

Part I deals directly with the enormous problem of democratizing Islamic regimes. Part II sets forth a distinctively Jewish foreign policy, one that can restore Jewish national pride and inspire mankind.

Part I. Democratizing Islam

The year before he wrote his celebrated essay “The Clash of Civilizations?” in 1993, Samuel P. Huntington published an article on “How Countries Democratize.” Between 1974 and 1990 more than thirty countries in Europe, Latin America, and East Asia shifted from authoritarian to democratic systems of government. The regimes that moved to or toward democracy, says Huntington, fall into three groups: “one party systems, military regimes, and personal dictatorships.”[vii] Conspicuously absent from his study is any reference to the Arab-Islamic world, whose twenty-two regimes, unlike those mentioned by Huntington, may be classified as “theopolitical” despotisms.

Clearly, Islamdom is less susceptible to democratization than those studied by Huntington, which included the former Soviet Union. Unlike Soviet Communism, Islam is not a political ideology but a civilization animated by a religion that has imbued countless Muslims with overweening pride. In little more than a hundred years, Muhammad and his successors established the most extensive empire in history, stretching across southern Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe. Islam’s past greatness is more real in the consciousness of the Muslim masses than Islam’s present backwardness.

Western educated terrorists, who typically come from the middle class, disdain the blandishments of democracy. Beneath the veneer of Westernization these Muslims have preserved their cultural identity in which they have been weaned. Not only do they dream of Islam’s past glory, but their reveries inspire their hatred and contempt for Islam’s usurpers and drive them to suicidal murder. Only if Muslims are conquered, and only if an entire generation of Muslim children is re-educated, can one speak sensibly of democratizing Islam. Merely to eliminate Muslim despots and institute democratic elections will accomplish very little, to put it mildly.

Recall Algeria’s experiment with multiparty national elections in December 1991. In the first round of voting the Islamic Salvation Front did well enough to prompt the military junta in power to cancel the second round and outlaw this populist party of unadulterated Muslims. The capitals of the democratic world breathed a sigh of relief at this failure of “democracy.” That failure suggests that, given the religiosity of the Muslim masses, successful democratization of any Muslim regime will have to be non-secular and moderately hierarchical. Consistent therewith, Islamic law embodies certain concepts which, if newly interpreted, taught in schools, and used to restructure the governments of Islamic countries, may serve the cause of democratization. I have in mind four concepts which Muslim apologists refer to as having democratic significance, but which skeptics reject as illusionary. Here is how political scientist David Bukay of Haifa University defines and dismisses these concepts:

An immense literature has been published under the rubric, “Democracy in Islam”. It has several aspects: first, shurah consultation, as if it functioned as in the Western system of parliamentary power; second, ijma’, the consensus of the community, as if there were social and political pluralism with decisions based on a majority; third, ijtihad, innovative interpretation, as if there were readiness to absorb opposing values and positions into the functioning of the Muslim political system; and fourth, hakmiyah [as if it means popular] sovereignty…

 Even in the conceptions of Islamic thinkers, shurah does not mean participation in political processes or politcal bargaining, including representation of pressure and interest groups … What they were referring to was an advisory council of experts in the moral field. Further, ijma’ does not express consensus of the community. Rather it is an accepted tribal framework made of the tribal leaders or the heads of the community, or a “council of wise men”. Consensus was never a basis for general public expression. The same applies to ijtihad .… there is no readiness to absorb the basic values of democracy, such as freedom of assembly and participation or individual rights. These were the prerogatives of the ruling elites alone. The people were never sovereign and were never asked its opinion on political issues. Sovereignty [of the people] … cannot exist in an all-embracing religion like Islam.[viii]

Dr. Bukay’s skepticism regarding these concepts loses validity if Islam and its ruling elites are conquered (something he does not contemplate, perhaps because he does not identify “Islamic fundamentalism” with Islam). Moreover, the characteristics he attributes to democracy apply primarily to contemporary democracy, which is secular and devoid of substantive ethical norms.

The present author rejects contemporary or normless democracy, and proposes, for Islam — indeed, for the West as a whole — a normative or classical conception of democracy, which can be assimilated to Judaism and Christianity. Bukay errs when he says that “any religion is opposed to democratic values in its conceptions and basic principles.”[ix] As I have elsewhere shown,[x] Judaism provides a solid rational foundation as well as ethical content for freedom and equality. Muslims may be directed toward these principles if they are derived from man’s creation in the image of God, and not from secular humanism, which, let us never forget, did not prevent Europe from collaborating in the Nazi Holocaust. Even now, Europe, the home of humanism, has succmbed to anti-Semitic support for Arab barbarism.

Returning to the four Islamic concepts in question, their meaning may be broadened to restructure Islamic regimes along democratic lines — the goal of a Judeo-Christian or Israel-American alliance. Abstracted from the oligarchic power structure that dominated Islam in the past, “consultation,” “consensus,” “innovative interpreation,” and “sovereignty” may be construed to justify a classical, democratic system of institutional checks and balances. “Consultation” and “consensus” can prescribe and describe the functional relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches of government. The Executive obviously consults the Legislature when submitting bills to that body. The Legislature, which typically represents diverse interests and opinions, deliberates and reaches an agreement (or consensus) to approve or reject or propose amendments to the bills in question. The concept “innovative interpretation” may be assimilated to the function of a Supreme Court that can narrow or broaden the application of a law which citizens may challenge as violating a higher law, a constitution whose principles do not clash with Islamic law as qualified by these and other concepts (and other to be mentioned further on). As for the concept of “sovereignty,” it must be limited to the majority of the people as represented in the Legislature. (I shall deal with minorities later.)

Suggested here is a constitutional and somewhat hierarchic system of government based on religious principles. The constitution would prescribe, in addition to Islamic courts, an independent, unitary executive having the power to propose legislation, but which legislation would require the approval of a popularly elected assembly. This assembly need not have the power to initiate legislation. In fact, it was not until the 17^th and 18^th centuries that representative assemblies acquired that function. One can even go back to classical antiquity and find examples of popular assemblies whose function was not to make laws but to approve or reject proposed legislation submitted by magistrates. (John Stuart Mill has said, a “numerous assembly is as little fitted for the direct business of legislation as for that of administration.” The primary work of legislation must be done, and increasingly is being done, by the executive departments and administrative agencies.) We want to interpenetrate democratic and Islamic values.

There are groups in Muslim states that would welcome such reform.[xi] Israel could indirectly encourage them by adopting for itself a constitution based on Jewish principles, such as that proposed by the present writer in Jewish Statesmanship: Lest Israel Fall.[xii]  Not only Islam but modern Israel lacks a system of institutional checks and balances, such as that prescribed in the Torah. Suffice to mention the division of powers between the King and the Great Sanhedrin or Supreme Court, whose laws were not valid unless acceptable to the majority of the public. (See Babylonian Talmud, Avoda Zara, 36a.)

Also necessary in Arab states (as well as in Israel) is decentralization of political power. Again the Torah provides a model: each of Israel’s ancient tribal or territorial regions had its own autonomous Sanhedrin, whose members were drawn from the region in which they resided. (This is far more democratic than Israel’s existing system in which the Knesset, though popularly elected, is subservient to the Government, whose ministers, as a result of fixed party lists and the absence of regional elections, can ignore public opinion with impunity.)

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Here a brief digression is in order. It needs to be emphasized that the democratic transformation of Islam will not come about by economic and technological progress in the Middle East, the crypto-Marxist panacea of Shimon Peres. Islamic despots are not interested in alleviating the poverty of their people but in maintaining Islam’s political-religious power structure. Meanwhile, Internet, far from liberating the Muslim masses, has facilitated the transmission of anti-Semitism and the global communications of terrorists. It was not only economic motives but imperialistic ambitions that prompted Nazi Germany and Japan to launch World War II, and it is only because those dictatorships were conquered and then democratized that peace now prevails between them and the United States. Israel’s political and intellectual elites should emphasize these facts at home and abroad.

It so happens, however, that the Jewish state, craving recognition, exaggerates the importance of establishing diplomatic relations with Islamic regimes, which cannot but dignify these tyrannies. Contrast the U.S., which did not recognize the Soviet Union until the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt — sixteen years after the Bolshevik Revolution. Four American presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, refused to recognize Communist Russia on the grounds that it was animated by a militant ideology and ruled by men whose signatures to international agreements were worthless.[xiii] Nor did recognition of the Soviet Union diminish its hostile designs on democratic America. We see the same hostile attitude in Egypt toward Israel despite their 1979 peace treaty.

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No peace agreement but only the tangible democratization of Islam rooted in religious principles can provide a basis for peace in the religious Middle East. Such principles will be found not only in the Torah, but, strange as it may seem, in a joint Resolution of the United States Congress. For in 1991, Congress explicitly incorporated the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality in Public Law 102-14, which established March 26 as “Education Day”! The Seven Noahide Laws were recognized by Hugo Grotius, the 17^th century jurisprudent, as the basis of peaceful international relations. They can provide the moral content for America’s “Operation: Enduring Tradition” against international terrorism. President George W. Bush, a devout Christian, is qualified to make the Seven Noahide Laws the ultimate justification of America’s war against Islam.

The Noahide Laws, though violated by all Arab regimes that breed or harbor terrorists, are nonetheless laws which Muslim countries profess and should be required to abide by. The Noahide Laws prohibit idolatry, cursing God, murder, robbery, immorality, and cruelty to animals on the one hand, and require the establishments of courts of justice on the other. If all nations complied with these laws, then war, instead of being the norm of international relations, would be a thing of the past.

Muslim youth need to be taught that the Noahide Laws come from the Torah, that they unite Jews and Christians, that Islam would never have come into existence had not Muhammad learned from Jewish and Christian teachers. Quranic verses that degrade Jews and Christians must be neutralized by juxtaposing contradictory verses and by commentaries that render such degradation obsolete. Youth should be taught that it is sinful for Muslims to wage jihad against Jews and Christians (as well as Hindus). They must be taught that Muslims who murder women, men, and children in the name of Allah desecrate God’s name. They should also learn that the concept of jihad contradicts the United Nations Charter as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which prescribes “tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial, or religious groups.” The word jihad should be stricken from Islamic law. Public renunciation of jihad should be the litmus test of whether a Muslim regime, consistent with the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality, is sincerely committed to peace. Jihad should mean nothing more than striving for self-perfection.

President’s Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech following 9/11brands as wicked any Muslim state that provides a haven for terrorists. This definition applies to almost all Islamic regimes and thus calls for their transformation or conquest. The non-secular democratization of Islam should be a declaratory principle of American and Israeli foreign policy.

A crucial aspect of Islam’s democratization is the introduction of a market economy. Such an economy would decentralize the corporate power of Arab states and raise the living standards of their poverty-stricken people.  Israel can hasten Islam’s democratization not only by adopting the Jewish democratic constitution mentioned above, but also by privatizing its own economy. A more direct approach follows.

By its own example, the government of Israel should promote “bicameralism” in Middle East countries that contain large ethnic and religious minorities. Given a bicameral legislature, the lower branch can be designed in such a way as to protect these minorities. In the 21 Arab-defined countries — this excludes Iran — there are approximately 250 million people, some 40 million of whom are non-Arabs ethnically or nationally, or non-Muslims religiously. These 40 million inhabitants of Arab countries are not nationally or religiously affiliated with them. This substantial minority includes about 10 million Christians, particularly the Copts in Egypt, and large ethnic groups such as the Kurds and Berbers.[xiv]

Contrary to the conventional view, ethnic multiplicity is widespread in the Middle East. The Iraqi Kurds, for example, are Muslims but not Arabs. Like Iraq’s ruling Sunni Arab majority, they are citizens of the state. Nevertheless, the Kurds’ ethnic loyalty is far more meaningful and stronger than their political loyalty. Also, their ethnic loyalty is stronger than their religious identity, else they would not seek separate nationhood vis-à-vis the Arab Muslims of Iraq. Much the same may be said of the Druzes in Lebanon and Syria, the Baluch of Pakistan, and the Berbers of Morocco and Algeria. In contrast, the so-called Palestinians, far from being an oppressed minority, are part of the Sunni-Arab-Muslim majority which has ever aimed to smother the non-Muslim minorities of the Middle East.[xv]

A non-secular democratization of Islam must be attentive to its minorities, especially those which, like the Christians, have been degraded as dhimmies. “Dhimmitude” (as well as slavery) must be eliminated from Islam, and of course the status of women must be elevated without encouraging the West’s family-destructive feminism. Constitutional democracy in the Middle East is a necessary precondition of peace in this region. Another is a Jewish foreign policy, to which I now turn.

Part II. Principles of a Jewish Foreign Policy

1. Israel, the teacher of ethical monotheism is supposed to set an example to mankind. Accordingly, Israel will not establish diplomatic relations with any tyrannical regime. To do so is to dignify tyrants and perpetuate their unjust rule over their people. Courting tyrannies demeans Israel and lowers the moral standards of the Jewish people. The Torah makes distinctions between good and bad regimes, and warns against seeking relations with those which are wicked. (See Numbers 25:1-3, 17-18; Jeremiah 10:23.) Even before the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt, a military dictatorship, was followed by an increase of anti-Semitism in Egypt’s state-controlled media. Much the same may be said of Jordan, where to sell property to Jews remains a capital offense. Until Islam undergoes a structural transformation, for Israel to court recognition of Arab states only magnifies their contempt. By not seeking relations with hostile Arab regimes, Israel will cease to be diplomatically dependent on the United States.

2. Consistent with the preceding, Israel should either resign from the United Nations or call it to account. “Praiseworthy is the man who walked not in the counsel of the wicked, and stood not in the path of the sinful, and sat not in the session of scorners” (Psalm 1:1.)  Tens of millions of American have participated in a movement — “GET US OUT OF THE UN!” They perceive this organization as anti-American. Surely Israel can have no higher opinion of this anti-Semitic organization. Dominated by Arab-Islamic and other dictatorships, the UN has repeatedly passed resolutions condemning Israel. Here is a brief summary:

Whereas the General Assembly cast votes against Israel 55,642 times (!), it has yet to condemn any Arab state.

Whereas Security Council, first convened in 1946, passed resolutions that “condemned” or “censured” or “deplored” or “strongly deplored” Israel 49 times, no Security Council resolution was ever critical of any Arab state.

Whereas at least one Arab state has sat on the nine-country Security Council almost every year of its existence, Israel has never been a member of that body. In June 2002 Syria, still designated by the U.S. State Department as a “terrorist state,” was voted in as Head of the Security Council!

The vast majority of the countries represented in the UN are dictatorships which should never have been admitted to, or allowed to remain in, the UN, since they violate Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declares, “Everyone has the right to take part in the Government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.” If Israel does not resign from the UN it should introduce resolutions calling for the democratization or expulsion of any member that violates the UN Charter.

The one nation/one vote principle of the UN General Assembly places democratic and despotic regimes on the same level. This is morally repugnant and inconsistent with Israel’s world-historical function as a light unto the nations.

David Bukay has this to say of the UN: “This is an organization that has never advanced peace and never prevented war; this is an organization that works for its own sake alone, and strives against the values for which it was set up. This is an organization that surrendered to the dictates of the Arab and Islamic states, against the social-economic interests of the Third World countries.”[xvi]

Fred Fleitz, senior adviser to Under Secretary of State John Bolton, exposes UN waste and corruption and the resulting human costs. His book, Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s: Causes, Solutions, and U.S. Interests, provides a comprehensive and highly critical assessment of the UN. Among other debacles, he shows how the failed UN mission in Bosnia led to unmitigated atrocities; how the UN debacle in Somalia emboldened terrorists the world over; how the UN operation in Cambodia enabled a ruthless dictator, Hun Sen, to consolidate and retain power in that country; how the UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti collapsed, with the billions of dollars squandered on it, principally benefiting Haitian President Jean-Bertrande Aristide. To all this, add the UN sponsored Durban Conference, which became a vicious instrument of anti-Semitism and Israel-bashing.

The very reason why Israel (belatedly) refused to become a member of the recently formed International Criminal Court (ICC) is the same reason why Israel should seriously consider whether it should remain a member of the UN. The ICC is a supranational tribunal designed to supersede concepts of national sovereignty. The U.S. has not signed on to the ICC because Americans are concerned that the ICC will be influenced by people with anti-American or indeed anti-Western agendas. Its officials may launch frivolous prosecutions against American soldiers or diplomats to further their own political ideas and ambitions. What applies to the U.S. applies doubly to Israel. The UN’s unfriendly Security Council can instruct the ICC to try Jewish settlers, soldiers, and statesmen as “war criminals”! 

The UN is not only a sinkhole of corruption and ineptitude. It is intended by globalists to metamorphose into a secularized world government. Such a government (like a theocratic one under Islam) would constitute the greatest tyranny in human history. A world government would have a monopoly of military power with agents everywhere to prevent any country from developing its own arms. Such a government would impose a stultifying uniformity on all nations, contrary to the Torah. God creates nations, which have a right to develop their own cultural identity, limited only by the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality.

3. Israel’s having a forum at the UN is of dubious value. If the UN cannot be reformed, better that Israel remain true to its biblical reputation as a nation that stands apart, at least from that pernicious organization.

4. Israel’s embassies in democratic countries are another matter. A Jewish ambassador must be familiar with the way of life and government of the host country. His senior staff will include Israelis born in and educated in the host country.  Every embassy will establish a lecture bureau and develop electronic networks to explain Israel’s foreign and domestic policies and encourage aliya. The same may be said of Israeli consulates. Each should have a rabbi, synagogue, a Jewish library, and a person of broad academic learning. Except in emergencies, these embassies and consulates, like Israel’s government, will not conduct business on the Sabbath. This will enhance Israel’s dignity in the eyes of other nations.

5. A school of diplomacy will be established to teach how Jewish diplomats should comport themselves as Jews vis-à-vis other nations.

6. Consistent with Jewish law, Israel will not export arms to any foreign nation except under extreme circumstances. International arms sales promote war, sustain tyrannies, and impoverish people.

7. Israel will seek self-sufficiency regarding resources essential to its survival.  So far as possible it will establish military independence and refrain from accepting foreign aid.

8. Given weapons of mass destruction, no nation — certainly not minuscule Israel — can afford to wait to be attacked before it retaliates. Accordingly, Israel will pursue a pre-emptive war strategy.  

9. It will be the standing policy of Israel’s government to take the diplomatic initiative in international affairs, rather than merely react to the actions of other nations.

10. After uprooting every vestige of terrorism in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, Israel will enact a law that explicitly incorporates this Jewish land into the State. Such a law will merely confirm Amendment 11B of the Law and Administrative Ordinance of 1967, which authorizes the Government to apply Israeli law to any area of the Land of Israel that had come under the control of the IDF and which was not previously included within the jurisdiction of the State. By a simple order, the Government can thus bring Judea, Samaria, and Gaza within the jurisdiction of the State (as was done in eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights).

11. The Government will speak with one voice only. Any elected official that criticizes any act of Israel’s Government while that official is abroad will be dismissed.

12. Israel’s Government will comport itself in such a way as to sanctify God’s Name.

Conclusion

Israel, faithful to the Jewish heritage, is the connecting link between East and West. By virtue of its unique synthesis of particularism and universalism, Judaism can simultaneously justify ethnicity and emphasize the one doctrine that can prevent ethnic conflict and bloodshed: the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality, i.e., ethical monotheism. Moreover, because of its long-established affinity to science, Judaism can endow science — which has served despots as well as democrats — with ethical constraints lacking in the West and urgently needed in the East whose stockpiling of weapons of mass murder is not for purposes of deterrence. But for Israel to set an example to mankind, it will need to pursue a distinctively Jewish foreign policy.

Only such a policy can inspire Israel’s friend, the United States. These two nations are the most natural allies. America was founded by men educated in universities whose presidents and curriculums were very Hebraic. Indeed, the American Constitution owes very much to Jewish principles and values. (Would to God that Israel had a similar constitution!) Recently, 98 out of 100 Senators, and 412 out of 435 Representatives passed a resolution supportive of Israel. If Israel had a presidential form of government headed by a man of Jewish pride and conviction, allied with the Christian pride and conviction of his American counterpart, America and Israel would together save mankind from a religion that has become a cult of death.