Israel adheres to classical socialist ideology: rational reforming of societies. Despite the evident enmity between Arabs and Zionist Jews, Israeli political establishment imagines that simple steps like propaganda or signing a peace treaty will make the wolves and not exactly sheep friends. Israel is vehemently atheist, from anti-religious brainwashing in schools to the purposely humiliating gay parades in Jerusalem. Israel substitutes an artificial ideology of Zionism for Judaism. Challengers to the official ideology are ridiculed, labeled right-wingers and/or religious extremists, smeared, and discounted.
The early Israeli society was in many respect more hard-line socialist than the USSR. Israeli association of trade unions, Histadrut, held the total sway over the economy; labor strikes and racketeering wage demands were common. They continue now in monopolized and state-owned industries.
Israeli was effectively a single-party state, ruled by the Labor party MAPAI. Though several parties form the government now, they collude to the point of no distinction among them. The leftist Avodah and centrist Kadima reached consensus on labor and economic issues, atheist Avodah and fundamentalist NU/NRP maintain a common religious policy, defeatist Kadima and demagogically right Israel Beitenu agree on the borders and settlements.
Israeli bureaucracy is immensely powerful. Economic regulation far exceeds the Soviet and even the current Russian levels. Politically motivated police investigations discourage ministers from pursuing efficient approaches, and they play it safe in accordance with bureaucratic instructions. The system continuously churns out new instructions to cover every contingency and strip the officials of personal responsibility. Frequent rotation of ministers reinforces the bureaucratic regulations’ role of providing a semblance of continuity.
Political appointees permeated governing bodies, security apparatus, and justice. No one in the echelons of power has a slightest interest in reforming the socialist totalitarian system. Strict licensing and censoring of mass media allows manipulating the public opinion into consent. Opposition leaders are deprived of media access to clear themselves from the PR attacks and stripped from funding: the establishment presses the sponsors to abandon support for opposition; small funding comes from mostly a few foreign Jews who did not embrace the leftist slogans and don’t depend on Israeli government for profits.
After the fall of the USSR, Israel likewise replaced her socialism with a mild version of fascism. The features of Israeli political lifestyle include rationalist ideology, intolerance to opposition, media and education control, militarizing of society and cult of force, an extremely strong security apparatus which targets the opposition, consensus among the major political parties, concentration of private capital on the background of mass poverty, convergence of government with large businesses through tenders, underpriced privatization, and political donations, and a specific type of corruption where the government officials disperse favor by accepting bribes rather than the bribers’ controlling the recipients of bribes. Israeli socialism did not break down, as in Czechoslovakia, but evolved into a sturdy totalitarianism. Israeli political system is self-reinforcing: justice supports the left, magnates prop the government, political parties oppose newcomers, leftist media employees condemn Judaism, and religious parties place no hopes in Zionism and seek government subsidies. Israeli police is equally brutal to Jewish and Arab protesters. Its allegiance lies with the state. State is a body neither of Jews, nor of Arabs, but an independent body worshipped by voters, bureaucrats, and law enforcement. The state is an idol.
Such a strong system cannot be possibly reformed, but only demolished.
Israel need new leaders.
Certainly there are plenty of brilliant Jews to chose from.
For starters, nobody with an IQ below 150 should apply for the position of Prime Minister.
On top of IQ tests, we need additional test for courage, integrity, and team leadership ability. Finally and most importantly the candidates need to be tested for psychological and social disorders.
Will, we get a perfect leader? Perhaps not, but certainly better than what we got now!
It is funny that if you ask people to perform a brain surgery, or design an airplane, most will have enough clarity to say, “sorry I am not qualified”.
Strangely if the question is would you like to be a president or a prime minister of a country, many if not most people would actually say yes, and would have all kind of “great ideas” of what they would do. This of course will lead to disasters on a much bigger scale than if they undertook brain surgery.
If Israel changes from so called “democracy” which really is mobocracy, to meritocracy, the Jews will become the light of the world.
I've been thinking for years that a revolution - fast, decisive, uncompromising, is the only thing that can save the idea of Israel from the Israeli system.
The brainwashing succeeded in creating a generation of people who just don't care - They would either save themselves by going abroad, or accept their inevitable death - knowing all too well that it is their fate, because they wouldn't dare question the system, or themselves.
The only thing they fight for is the right to stand at a red traffic light ahead of 'the other guy, thus gaining a precious 3 meter advantage'.
And they dare claim land isn't hollier than lives
IQ is not a perfect measuring system for leaders. Did King David have an IQ of 150+? How about Alexander, Julius, Napoleon (Well, he probably did), Oliver Cromwell, Frederick the great, Bismarck, George Washington? And they were all geniuses in their own right.
On the other hand - Yosi Beilin seems like a very intelligent person. Shimon Peres isn't a retard either. Most of Israel's academia is, in fact, comprised of leftists.
Forget the IQ requirement, just give Israel Jewish politicians, leaders, teachers and judges. Being born a Jew does not equate to being Jewish.
Eric S.
IQ is one of the very important criteria. Proper IQ test should not measure knowledge, but rather one’s ability to learn new things.
I did mention integrity, courage, team leadership ability.
IQ is especially correlated to one’s ability to recognize patters. Certainly someone a high IQ alone would not be a sufficient: For example the “Unabomber” had IQ of 170.
We should design other tests, for measuring one’s ability to work under the pressure, ones ability to make quick intuitive decisions, as well one’s ability to have a long-term focus and long term forecasting ability.
The point I am making is that we need to change the system from “democracy” to meritocracy, and let the people with the greatest merit and greatest ability lead the country.
Example: one Israeli Nobel Price winner (game theory) strongly warned against unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza. He certainly has merit, yet has not been heard.
It will be a great loss to whole humanity if the Jewish nation disappear from this planet. If Jews can face this great danger, they will institute the only system that can save them. When 2500 years ago, the small Athenians republic invented democracy it was light-years ahead of everybody else’s system. Today Jews have the necessity to make an equally important contribution that move the whole humanity forward.
The IQ is just an example, once we accept the idea, we can search for the best criteria to test for and abilities to measure.
Leaving specifics aside, you must know that human nature stands against this system of intelligently picking up a leader.
People who seek power are usually the ones who least deserve it, and people in power positions are rarely willing to give up any of it.
Who will choose these meritorious people? The 'people'? The same morons who vote for politicians? A secret conclave? Who? Whatever system you'll try to create - someone will find a way to manipulate it and ruin the original idea - just like it happened to democracy and communism.
Not to mention the fact that we simply don't have TIME to implement such a system. By then everyone in Israel will be DEAD, enslaved, or worse.
I, too, would like to see the best lead, but - and someone wrote about the exact same thing in the 19th century already - democracies simply do NOT put their most able citizens in command. Far from it, as you clearly see for yourself.
The only hope I see for Israel is some opportunist genius in the right place and the right time, taking harsh moves in order to take power from those who use it to destroy the Jewish state, in order to save it.
The Prophet Michah describes this:
" I will make her the remnant halted, daughter of Zion, to you shall it come. There will come the first government, the kingdom to the daughter of Jerusalem. Now why does she cry badly, because she has no king, and her counselor has perished? For pangs have taken you as a woman in labor. Be in pain and labor to bring forth, oh daughter of Zion ". (4:7 - 10)
The Maharol of Prague Wrote that in the future the messianic king will establish a new kingdom which will emerge from the first kingdom which will precede it. It is as a unripe fruit grows in a peel till the fruit is ripe, then the peel decays. This is like Moses who grew up in the house of Pharoe.1