Seeking a Leader With Alternatives to Retreat, Surrender, Concern for Long-Term National Interests Above Personal Interests …

Wanted: An Unrealistic Leader

Excerpt;

Who is unrealistic, those who want to ‘converge’ or those who oppose it?

If you will it, it is no fanciful dream -Theodore Herzl

In the prevailing political reality in Israel today, it has become more and more common to dismiss political programs that oppose Israeli withdrawal from territories beyond the 1967 Green Line as “unrealistic” or “impractical.”

However, in light of the dismal failure of the alternative approach – that endorses such withdrawal – one cannot avoid broaching the question of whether any particular political philosophy should be labeled – or rather libeled – as “unrealistic”.

But by what yardstick can any given policy be deemed “unrealistic,” or impossible to implement? This should be reasonably simple, especially when repeated attempts to implement a particular policy have failed miserably, time and time again.

This, of course, is exactly what has occurred – for almost a decade-and-a-half of disaster, death and destruction – from the Oslowian policies of flight and faint-heartedness, to its subsequent and more radical derivatives – including the latest ill-begotten off-shoot, a unilateral “disengagement” that has vindicated all the most ominous forebodings of its opponents: Intensified Qassam bombardments, increased motivation of terror organizations, escalated smuggling of deadly armaments into the abandoned Gaza Strip, the rise of Hamas to power, the emergence of al-Qaeda cells in the “territories” and so on.

In light of these repeated failures and the thousands of unnecessary casualties, perversely branded “victims of peace,” and in light of the ascendancy of Palestinian radicals and marginalization of moderates, it indeed requires gross obtuseness and galling effrontery to adhere to the forlorn claim that there is anything remotely
“realistic”, “pragmatic” or “enlightened” in a policy likely to result in the formation of a stronghold of Islamic radicalism on the fringes of the heavily populated coastal plain, commanding the runways of Ben-Gurion International Airport, adjacent to the length of the trans-Israel highway, and atop vital water sources, which desalination cannot possibly replace in the foreseeable future.

To be sure, great acumen and tremendous resources, both spiritual and material, will be needed to escape the stranglehold of the all-pervasive but misleading assumption, which has acquired almost axiomatic status, … according to which the establishment of a Palestinian state is both unavoidable and indispensable for a cessation of hostilities.

… It is a task that demands a leadership with the intellectual prowess, ideological commitment, and oratory skills that well exceed those manifested in the Israeli polity today. Intellectual prowess is needed to formulate cogent and compelling alternative paradigms to replace those of retreat and surrender which have characterized the conduct of Israeli governments since the early 1990s; ideological commitment must compel our leaders to adhere to these new paradigms, giving precedence to the long-term national interest over short-term personal interest.