Column One: The Father of Post-Modern Zionism
Excerpts;
IN SPITE of the Israeli media’s best efforts, Zionism did not die on Tuesday. Although the formation of Kadima strengthened the Israeli post-Zionist Left, it is impossible to view the election results as a mandate to implement Kadima’s policy of mass expulsions and military retreat from Judea and Samaria.
The nation is split in half between Left and Right. The parties that support capitulation won 54 seats and those that oppose capitulating won 50 seats.
Although both Kadima head Ehud Olmert and Labor leader Amir Peretz are capable of forming coalition governments, with the support of all seven MKs from the Gil Pensioners’ Party – support that is far from assured – both have but a bare majority for the expulsion and retreat plan. Indeed, the only stable coalitions for Kadima or Labor include anti-capitulation parties. This state of affairs together with the low voter turnout Tuesday means that Kadima and its sister parties on the Left did not receive a mandate and do not have the political strength to automatically implement their expulsion and retreat plan.
So Zionism, as represented today by the Nationalist camp, is not dead. But as they did in Herzl’s time, the Zionists today face difficult and complicated challenges. If Herzl’s followers today follow the example he set in 1897, like him they can change Israel’s current diplomatic, military and social realities. They can renew the nation’s faith in itself and strengthen Israel’s international posture and legitimacy. By accomplishing these goals, they will remove the threat of capitulation and loss of Jewish sovereignty for the foreseeable future and set the conditions for Israel’s victory in the Palestinian terror war.
To achieve these aims, Herzl’s disciples, whose most prominent political representatives are the Likud and National Union-NRP, need to operate simultaneously in the international and Jewish arenas.
Internationally the Nationalist camp needs to address three separate audiences. First, they must turn to the neo-conservative leadership in the US, Australia, Canada and Europe.
Two years ago, the Nationalist camp was abandoned by American neo-conservatives. This was largely as a result of the neo-conservatives’ unqualified support for US President George W. Bush, who supported Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria in spite of the fact that his plan flew in the face of the Bush Doctrine…
Second, the Nationalist camp should strengthen its ties to the American Christian Zionists whose leaders just founded a lobbying arm modeled on AIPAC which they hope to use to extend US support for the Jewish state. The Nationalist camp should help them understand that implementing Kadima’s capitulation plan will harm US interests by strengthening Iran and Syria and their Shi’ite and Sunni proxies in Iraq and Lebanon; endangering the Hashemite regime in Jordan; and providing global jihadists a stable base of operations in Judea and Samaria that will endanger Israel’s long-term survivability. The anti-capitulationists should show them that the converse is also true. An Israeli victory against the Palestinian terror war will strengthen the US and its allies and weaken its enemies.
The Nationalist camp must strengthen its ties to Diaspora Jewry… By emphasizing the shared fate of world Jewry, the Nationalist camp will strengthen Jewish solidarity and Jewish identity among Diaspora Jewry and increase interest in aliya.
On Wednesday, the US and Canada cut off all ties to the PA following the formation of the Hamas government. Their moves were portrayed as shows of support for Israel, which indeed they were. And yet, irrespective of Israel, it is in the national interest of all states that oppose the victory of the global jihad to cut off support for the Hamas-led PA…
TURNING TO domestic affairs, to prevent the implementation of Kadima’s capitulation plan, the Nationalist camp should conduct a continuous campaign to bring down Kadima and enlarge the Nationalist camp’s political base. This needn’t be particularly difficult.
Olmert is not Sharon. Any doubts that this is the case were dispelled when his party colleagues attacked him for Kadima’s loss of 40 percent of its supporters during the last two and a half months since Sharon’s incapacitation…