Jewish tycoons cannot get respect from Jewish masses that are only jealous at their illicit gains, and seek respect from Gentiles by misrepresenting themselves as Jewish leaders. The tycoons usurp the respect accorded to Jews as a whole, and discredit the Jews as a whole by their unprincipled wickedness.

Jewish leaders imagine they can fool their Gentile colleagues. Rabin hardly went to Oslo to give Palestinian Arabs a state, and Olmert who campaigned against Barak’s partitioning of Jerusalem in the 2000 hardly intended partitioning it in 2007. Unfulfilled promises are a viable strategy on personal level, at least temporarily. That is not so on communal level because promises create expectations. Bizarre promises or examples recalibrate the scale of possible options. Intermarriage was rare in 1940s, but once the Jewish community accepted the bizarre couples, the range of accepted behavior was recalibrated and the torrent of intermarriage ensued. Rabin, likewise, was the first mainstream politician to promise the Palestinians concrete concessions at the expense of Jewish idea. Israeli population quickly got used to the suggestion; while almost everyone opposes dividing Jerusalem, few people protest. Political promises, even unfulfilled, are dangerous. The wicked, un-Jewish promises are especially harmful given the twisted Jewish mentality. Some of the Jews are the greatest moral beacons; they are offset by the majority who would rather abandon their Jewishness, who stay in Israel insofar as they cannot get a Canadian visa. The millennia of persecutions weren’t conducive to goodness; in the oppressive environment, wickedness is the evolutionary beneficial trait. Wicked Jews eagerly recalibrate their Jewishness according to the wicked promises of the defeatist politicians.

So it is not surprising that polls show about half of the Israeli population objecting to releasing Yigal Amir. They don’t care about Rabin: few Jews buy the government’s hysterical cult of Rabin’s personality. He was an ugly character by any measure. The mob opposes Yigal because he is a good Jew; the mob prefers defeatist, assimilated Jews like themselves. The concern about taking Rabin’s life is ludicrous: all people put values above lives. Of all people, Jews most surely put values above lives: why else did we suffer murder and persecution instead of baptizing into Christ? It is morally permissible to kill perfectly good people in perfectly senseless wars sanctioned by government, but is ostensibly reprehensible to execute clearly evil persons when no just, God-fearing court is available to sentence them. The WWI, fought on purely ideological grounds cost twenty million lives. Twenty million souls died over the arcane issues of monarchic politics. The concern over Rabin’s death is exaggerated.

It is mandatory under Jewish law to kill the Jews whose collaboration with Gentiles, even if legal, threatens the Jewish community. It is mandatory to uphold the Jewish values by executing those who conspire against them. It is prohibited to follow a democratic majority to evil.

Any way we look at it, the half of Israelis who favor releasing Yigal Amir are right.

Medieval knights and barons rarely fought the pervasive bandits who besieged their castles. Ransom was a more common outcome. Also, Torah requires the Jews to ransom our compatriots. We, however, proclaim ransom unacceptable.

The effect of ransom is shifting the risk from the current victim onto the other innocents. Ransom spares some, but encourages the terrorists to take other hostages. In our case, other hostages are also Jews, and we care about them.
Medieval barons, however, were too sparse to form a society. Each of them didn’t care about others, and averted the risk for himself by paying ransom and thus encouraging the bandits to besiege others.
The Torah’s case is also different. Modern hostages have no value other than for ransom; ransoming them increases the value of subsequent hostages (for exchange), while refusing ransoming them discourages the kidnappers from subsequent attempts. In the antiquity, hostages had intrinsic value – they could be sold as slaves. Refusing to ransom them won’t have discouraged the kidnappers who would just as well get their money by selling the kidnapped Jews into slavery.
When the hostages lacked intrinsic value (e.g., were old) and were only captured for extortion, they should not be ransomed so as to avoid setting precedent for the kidnappers; thus, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg in the thirteenth century prohibited his community to ransom him. The rabbis long recognized the problem of intrinsic value, and Talmud (Gittin 4:6) prohibits ransoming fellow Jews for more than their market value as slaves. The sages recognized that no law can stop close relatives from rescuing their dear one; husband is allowed to redeem his wife on the first occasion for ten times her market value as a slave, but that is his right, not the community's obligation.

Refusing to ransom fellow Jews from terrorists is no more morally objectionable than limited funding of free medical programs or road safety. We’re our brothers’ keepers only to an extent. Would an Israeli government promise to refrain from shooting at a thousand enemies on the battlefield in exchange for them not shooting at a single soldier?

The one thing worse than ransoming hostages is prisoners’ exchange.

"Just as they are killing us, we have to kill them so there will be a balance of terror…. We will do as they do. If they kill our women and innocent people, we will kill their women and innocent people until they stop." Osama bin Laden, October 2001. That's a good advice for Israel in Gaza.

What is the alternative to balance of power in international relations? Idealists scream against violence, but it was violence that overturned French monarchy or Nazi regime. Short of violence, European settlers won’t succeed against aborigines and establish America or Canada. Police violently arrest criminals. Violence not only defends liberties, but pursues other useful objectives. Germany and Italy were unified in modern nation-states through violence. Ataturk resorted to violence to crash Turkey’s Islamic backbone. Commodore Perry threatened violence to open Japan to American commerce. Violence is an indispensable instrument to both good and evil ends.

Societies change, but many parties refuse to accept the changes – which must, accordingly, be pushed through. There are two theoretical alternatives to violence: good faith negotiations and arbitration. The good faith assumption never worked in history because societal issues are too important. People readily consider others’ interests and forfeit their own in trivial matters because they expect that in other, equally trivial matters, others will give way. Good faith is a way of exchanging favors: consider others’ interests now and expect them to consider your interests in other issues. That scheme can only be implemented in a system of myriad small transactions. In international relations, conflicts of interests are relatively few and of overwhelming importance; such systems do not submit to statistical approach. A country which gives way on the issue of its borders cannot expect similar treatment from its neighbors. France and Germany, for example, had a single territorial dispute – Alsace-Lorraine; one country’s compassionate consideration of the other’s interest won’t be reciprocated.

Good faith negotiation could lead to mutually acceptable settlement which doesn’t depend on expectation of future reciprocity. Sort of, divide Alsace-Lorraine between the two states. But how to divide, especially when strength of the contestants is very unequal? To divide in half is unjust to the stronger state. And why would a stronger state agree to the division instead of taking it all by force?
Justice is elusive. Israelis point out that the Palestinians settled coastal planes for hardly a century before fleeing in the wake of Jewish state’ creation; a century is too little to claim tribal sovereignty over the land. Palestinians sensibly counter that the Jews settled the place for much less time in the modern history, and surely have fewer rights to the land. Justice depends on a common set of values and generally doesn’t work between nations whose values are opposite. Cooperation is modus operandi inside groups; groups compete.

If nations generally don’t cooperate, how about setting up an arbiter? That could work if contenders see the arbitration as just. Legal system consists of laws and procedures; laws amount to values. In order to accept an arbiter, contenders have to accept his system of values – the basis for judgment – as just. Since, however, they have conflicting values, no third-party value system can justify both. Jews and Arabs each equally accuse the UN of bending to the other party.

If mutually acceptable international arbiters do not exist, how about creating an internationally acceptable court of law and imposing its verdicts? The UN shows that such approach is unworkable. How to define “internationally acceptable”? “Acceptable to most nations” means equating the vote of France and Madagascar, evidently unreasonable arrangement. “Acceptable to most people” would allow the two most populous states, China and India, to rule the world. Civil courts developed many safeguards against self-interested judges and jurors; in the UN, every party is self-interested and cannot act as faithful judge. Almost every country is interested in Arab oil supply; no country is interested in the fate of Israel. Guess the results of UN votes on Israeli-Arab matters.
The ability to enforce one’s opinion is the only viable benchmark in international relations. Nor is it bad. Technologically inferior Indians and numerically inferior Irish achieved independence through violence. Violence is an indicator of the depth of people’s interests beyond binary yes or no votes. Violence is often the only way for an insignificant group to be listened to; Palestinian state happened only due to the PLO’s terrorism. Balance of power rarely erupts in violence; most of the time, parties act according to the perceived threat.

Violence is indispensable now as it was in the Stone Age.

The phrase “and it was good” concludes every act of Creation. Everything is good – including the evil, also a created thing. Everything stems from the divine goodness. Why do we fight, then? Why not accept the good intentions of Arabs who breed to dominate the Land of Israel? One answer is that for Jews the ultimate goodness rests in the Torah, and every opposition to it should be quashed in the name of goodness. On the practical plane, goodness doesn’t matter. Our actions toward Arabs are evil. People pursue self-interest which, in the case of Israel's right, only incidentally correlates with the divine goodness of Torah. Roaches are not happy when we squash them. They are unthreatening, but merely aesthetically detestable. Arabs, likewise, suffer through no guilt of their own. They are good, but still have to be evicted from Israel for the Jewish good.

Judaism resents hunting because animals have to be killed for food properly, with respect for their lives. Stone Age people enjoyed hunting because it gave them food; modern hunting is recreational. Enjoyment of murder, even of animal, is unethical. There is nothing wrong with Arabs. They lived their lives on the hills which they plowed for generations when Jews came to their country. Naturally, the Arabs fought back – not because of the European Judophobism, but as normal people who resist their country usurped by aliens; it’s a pity that Jews are less normal than Arabs and accept that Arabs breed to become a majority in Israel. Jews have to push the Arabs out and inflict suffering. That’s regrettable, but there’s no choice: as we need food to sustain bodies, we also need sovereignty to sustain our communal body. We "hunt" the Arabs without enjoying it - just because we have to live in a state of our own.

The historic role of Jewish Defense League consisted in shuttering Jewish barons’ attitude that Jews should keep low profile while oppressed. Self-appointed Jewish leaders needed unquestioned consent of masses to negotiate with Gentile authorities on their behalf. Independent Jewish action, whether uprising in Warsaw ghetto or JDL’s bombing of Soviet offices in America, discredited the Jewish “leaders” claim of representation. The Judenrat attitude – keep silent while repressed and let me do the talking with oppressors – permeates Jewish establishment.
The proper attitude is zero tolerance to suffering of our brothers and sisters. When Bedouin systematically rape Jewish girls – not Arab, for which they would incur flood feud – Israel must burn the villages of perpetrators. If the government doesn’t act, honest Jews have at least to besiege that village and clash with Israeli police that interferes to protect the Arab marauders. When rockets fall on Sderot, Israel have to retaliate in all power like she did in Lebanon regardless of the peace process nonsense. Arabs must be the only victims of the peace process.

Sudanese refugees fleeing to Israel present an interesting moral case, besides showing holes in Israeli border security. Biblical obligation of charity extends only toward neighbors. Talmudic sages, however, discussed charity to itinerants and resident aliens. The approach recalls twentieth-century American discussion of fighting evil vs. searching for distant monsters. To decide on the appropriate object of charity, we need to dwell on the definition of neighbors. Torah seems to define neighbors as all of “your brothers,” Jews, by default plus submissive resident aliens. Evangelist Luke in the proverb of Good Samaritan, probably drawing on Jewish sources, defines a neighbor as the one who is expected to do good to oneself, thus even despised Samaritan was declared a good neighbor since he had helped the wayfarer. Luke’s definition catches the essence: Jewish criminals cease to be neighbors and deserve punishment rather than compassion, and well-wishing Gentiles fall into the category of neighbors.

Back to the Sudanese. Surely, the Sudanese at large won’t help the Jews – neither in the UN, nor in the hypothetical case of Jewish refugees fleeing to Sudan. Fundamentally, Jews have no moral business in Sudan, and Jewish participation in Save Darfur campaign is silly; go save Sderot. The few Sudanese who arrive in Israel, however, could be expected to be good citizens of our country and qualify as our neighbors. They are too few to change demography, influence voting, or lobby. They lack educational skills or work ethics, but there are plenty of jobs in Israel occupied by Arabs suitable for the Blacks. The Sudanese refugees have every reason to be loyal to the Jewish state and they hate Arabs. While the Jews – or other people, for that matter – need not go around the world helping every afflicted tribe, victims knocking on our door deserve minimal help, allowing them residency in Israel.

One problem is that allowing a few Sudanese into Israel suggests thousands of others to flee in the same direction. That many Blacks we don’t want; morality to aliens is good only so long as it doesn’t affect our lifestyle. An immediate solution would be for Israel to press the Egyptians to stop the Sudanese from infiltrating Sinai. Strategically, a smarter move would be to welcome any number of Sudanese refugees and dump them into the Palestinian-held areas of Samaria. Given some goats and weapons to defend them, the Blacks will habitually move to fight the Arabs.

As a general rule, Jews need not be ashamed to refuse charity to aliens who demand it.

Torah generally prohibits murder, though allows killing of enemies. To kill an enemy while defending oneself or the dear ones is reasonable: the aggressor’s life is taken to avoid extinguishing one’s own life. Torah, however, permits and even encourages taking enemies’ lives in expansionist war. Proper expansionist wars defend core values of Jews, their spiritual essence rather than their bodies. Expanding the land of Israel is sufficiently important that the prohibition of murder is lifted. History gives no right to the land. Rather, countries are acquired with actionable systems of values and the will to fight.

It is ridiculous to claim the land because the nation lived there nineteen centuries ago. Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, however, never ceased. Jews prayed to Jerusalem and dreamed to return there. We didn’t abandon the land two millennia ago, but took the land with us into Exile and kept it in our hearts. Arabs settled the physical hills, but the real hills of Judea were in Jewish ghettos. We carried Jerusalem with us as our ancestors had carried the tabernacle. These arguments are important for Jews but mean nothing to Arabs. Naturally, they don’t care about our souls and longings. Jews want this land because we have always lived in it, physically or spiritually. Jews are powerful enough to take the land from Arabs whatever they think of our moral arguments.

Is an approach based solely on power immoral? That depends on your definition of morality. In the theoretical milieu where nations show compassion to each other and value others’ interests before their own, power as a sole benchmark of relations is immoral. If, however, morality is defined as historically acceptable behavior, then balance of power is the only moral approach – and the one the Arabs subscribe to. At most, nations mitigated power considerations based on their system of values – not their opponents’. Jews, from their perspective, conduct a highly moral war for religiously and ideologically significant land. What does the enemy think, we don’t care.

What is the alternative to Jewish claim to the land? Arabs never settled Palestinian lowlands which are the core of modern Israel. Arabs began developing the plains only during the late nineteenth-century citrus boom. Few notables, not Arab communities owned the plain – unlike the hills areas held by Arab villages as communal homestead property. Palestinian Arabs lack any trait of a nation: dialect, culture, music, or law. Their system of governing amounted to village autonomy, a far cry from framework of a state. Palestinians now act like a nation and should be dealt with as a nation, but Jews need not recognize their fake national aspirations.

Chicago is a distinctive city but clearly not entitled to statehood. Spain rejects nationhood for Basques, Russia – for Chechens, Turkey – for Kurds, and America – for Red Indians. Even a long history, administrative autonomy, distinctive language and culture do not automatically allow for statehood. What does allow? Power. The ability to claim and realize one’s rights. Viability. In 1948, Americans realized Jews as smart, distinctive, hardworking – but thought us not viable, thus remained skeptical about establishing Jewish state. We proved ourselves viable in several wars, and America changed its attitude. Palestinian Arabs failed to stage a single decent revolt, and don’t deserve a state.

Osama bin Laden introduced a wonderful concept into modern politics: seed money. Al Qaeda gives small money, support, and training to many groups, and some of them bear rich fruits. The concept of seed money allowed Osama to build a large following with moderate funds. Israel can do likewise, financing responsible charity NGOs in Africa, human rights groups’ operations in Muslim countries, global warming anti-oil pseudo-scientists, academics who develop ridiculous political treatises, and grassroots movements many of them merely need a hundred computers. Even a small state like Israel has resources incomparably larger to the financing available to NGOs, and can buy them off. If the money runs short, run a Ponzi scheme for Saudi princeling investors.

Israel cannot afford a simple equal-handedness of leftists. When human rights watchdogs criticize both Israel and Hamas, Hamas doesn’t care. Westerners also discount the criticism of terrorists and barbarians, and only hear condemnations of Israel. Israel cannot accept even-handed treatment, but needs positive evaluation from influential human rights groups.

Some leftist programs are worthwhile. Introduce a 0.5-1% tax on Jeffrey Sachs’ prescription to finance the most basic food and health programs in Africa. For a billion dollars per year, NGOs will have to sing praises to Israel - and dance her line. That money will also buy goodwill in anti-Muslim African countries, following Israeli traditional peripheral approach of engaging Africa. The aid might even pay for itself by strengthening Israeli ties with resource-rich African countries.

The Torah speaks of charity strictly to neighbors, though the rabbis expanded the use of charity funds to resident aliens and travelers. An obligation of helping Africans, however, is clearly deducible from the Torah. Recall the commandment to help one’s enemy to unload his donkey fallen under the burden. The idea is of disproportional effect: a minor effort ends enmity. Minimal aid to Africans has similar disproportional effect. The world wasted half a trillion dollars in Africa in the recent decades because the aid was stolen or spent on ambitious rather than emergency programs. Jewish Diaspora organizations send money to Africa with similar wastefulness. The solution is to stop giving the Africans money, which they misuse or steal, anyway. Send them cheap antibiotics and malaria treatments to save a life at below $1. Give them insecticide-treated bed nets. Send Israeli planes to spray DDT on malaria-ridden swamps. Send them only protein-rich soy flour, not any other food; mind the delivery cost per calories.
Black Africans are backward and cannot form viable nations. They lack a culture of learning and work ethics. Even so, they need not die twenty thousands a day from hunger and malaria. They won’t develop an Israeli-level agriculture, but even a basic form of modern agriculture will alleviate the pressure of overpopulation. There is no equality.

Israelis, Americans, or Europeans have no business of bettering lives in Africa, but saving those lives cheaply is a valid humanitarian goal.

International humanitarian interventions are a must. People like the Tutsi are not our neighbors in any sense, but the world cannot stand by when hundreds of thousands of non-combatants are massacred. The world, however, never cared about massacres. America entered WWII against Germany for reasons of power politics, and never attempted to solve the humanitarian crisis of the Holocaust. America eagerly launched a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan by financing mojahedeen to embroil the Soviet Army; 1.5 million Afghanis, mostly civilians, subsequently perished. Saddam Hussein’s regime was not particularly murderous in terms of civilians compared to other undeveloped nations, yet was overthrown at great cost to America.

Power politics is necessarily costly because the attacker has to maintain military pressure long enough to force lasting changes in the victim’s attitude and international policy. Humanitarian interventions are inexpensive: puncture the tumor, remove the most malignant parts, help the victim to develop protective immunity with small-scale arms supplies, and withdraw. There is no need or obligation to build states or democracy, but only to stop the most heinous and widespread crimes against humanity. In Iraq, America could kill Saddam with missiles, let the Iraqis try choosing a less murderous leader, and continue killing subsequent leaders until one of them starts respecting human life at least remotely.

Doing good is cheap and relatively easy.

Historically, many cultures tolerated homosexuality, but many had also tolerated excessive drinking, violent conquests, or communism. Acceptance of a behavioral trait doesn’t prove its morality. Societies are often intolerant to alien rather than abominable practices. In the past twenty years, American attitude quickly moved toward acceptance of homosexuality because media made that lifestyle familiar, non-threatening. But the public acceptance of homosexuality sunk after the Massachusetts court mandated gay marriage and therefore posed a threat to societal values. In Judaism, homosexuality threatens ritual purity of the society.

Torah bans gay relations and various improbable modes of female bestiality, but not lesbian relations. The message is clear: any recreational sex is fine, but do not deviate from normal procreation. One of Judaism’s major tenets is sanctity of life, specifically of moral life. Gay relations threaten that tenet on both counts: of life and morality.

It is truism that most people who tolerate homosexuality shrink in horror when their children engage in it. Homosexuals constitute tiny minority. For all the popularity of that decadent lifestyle among mass culture idols who influence uncritical youths, for all the leftist brainwashing of its acceptability, for all the hysteria around the gay parade in Jerusalem, only 4,000 deviants took part in it. Moral rather than sexual perverts made up much of the crowd: unknown numbers of leftists and “human rights” activists came to support the gays against religious Jews. Organizers likely brought in many demonstrators for hire, like the leftists bring to events ranging from Peace Now orgies to European vigils in support of various Islamic causes. (That’s right, if you watch European pro-Islamic demonstrations closely, you’d notice most people are not enthusiastic. They are brought on essentially free trips: bus, hotel, food, and often entertainment paid by organizers).

All societies suppress some deviating minorities. Gays are too few in Israel to care about their wishes.