Size worked against Israel. The huge United States provided its early pioneers with vast expanses of empty land to live free. By the time the American bureaucracy had established control over its subjects, they had grown used to freedom. Israel lacked that immense advantage of space. The early Israeli kibbutzniks were pioneers not inferior to the Americans. The Israelis were tough and daring in peace and war.
But in minuscule Israel bureaucracy established itself quickly and bound citizens with legalese. The system usurped responsibility, but wasn’t responsible. The political echelon and the army bureaucratized and played according to rigid rules, and lost consistently. Now even soldiers are afraid to shoot Arabs, and there is no question of commanders performing independent operations. If the Yom Kippur war happened now, Ariel Sharon wouldn’t violate orders and break behind the Egyptian lines.
Talmudic tradition made Jews legal-minded. There is no way to limit bureaucratic expansion in the Jewish state. It must be Jewish, but not a state. The Bible teaches us that in the absence of a righteous and rightful monarch, the best system of government is Shoftim—independent townships without legislative power, only with judges. In modern political theory, that’s free market anarchy. It presumes minimal legislation, diversified among jurisdictions. Sort of like every town having its own speed limit, though in reality basic laws tend to converge among jurisdictions. Judea must adopt the biblical system of Shoftim.
Unless Jews break the state now, the state will break the Jews.
In this context, Shoftim are rather judges.
sh-p-t, like in mishpat (laws, judges, courts)
How did we protect ourselves before 1948? Settlers would have long ago restrained the Arabs, if not for Israeli government.
As for the Arab armies, rely on nukes.
LJ: But note that France is acting reasonably. Why alienate its huge Muslim community because of a Jew? On other hand, appeasement will only provoke more Islamic outrage.
But I’m not entirely sure about light sentences. That would run against Sarkozy’s policy.
Israelis found the way to kill Earl Kruger of the JDL in US prison
I find it incredible that somehow two JDL members were murdered in high-security US prisons at different times, but accidentally and with the cameras turned off.
Israeli security establishment is notoriously vengeful, so it is entirely plausible that we can draw a straight line through the Israeli murders of R. Meir Kahane – Dr. Baruch Goldstein – R. Benny Kahane – JDL folks. The two last murders were meant to formally end the JDL existence.
As for Halimi, I won’t bother avenging him. Jews must live in Israel, and whoever lives elsewhere does so at his own risk.
Maybe you’re right, but there is a huge difference between caring of Holocaust or Soviet Jews where the masses of Jews are involved and a single Jew who willingly endangered his life by living among Gentiles.
From Obadiah: It is incorrect to fish for quotes. You can always find an isolated quote to substantiate anything, that’s what reformists do.
“Do not STAY at the sight of your brother’s blood”.
“You don’t know whose blood is redder.”
A woman raped in a town is executed if she didn’t call for help.
That is, we have to help when witnessing a crime, but not go to the ends of the earth to punish a crime, and it is the victim’s foremost obligation to avoid the criminal situations and resist the crime.
Again, maybe you’re right: exemplary punishment rather than avenging a single death.