 The Rise and Decline of the State of Israel by Yaron Brooke Recorded live at SR Conferences 2000 On the night of April 9th, 1973, a small team of Israeli commandos, dressed as tourists, got out of the rubber raft on the beach of Beirut. Three cars with Mossad drivers waited for them. The commandos, members of an elite unit, piled into the cars with weapons hidden under their clothes. Each car was driven to a different apartment building in an affluent neighborhood of Beirut. The commandos went to their assigned buildings, climbed the stairs, broke down their apartment doors and shot the men inside. Three terrorist leaders, the masterminds behind the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes earlier that year in Munich, Germany responsible for PLO terrorist attacks in Israel and around the world were dead. Taking care of some resistance on the road, the commandos sped back to the beach from offshore rendezvous with an Israeli missile carrier which took them home. There were no Israeli casualties. But unfortunately, one target of the mission, a key terrorist whom Israel hoped to kill that night, was not there. The leader of the Israeli commando unit and the most decorated soldier in Israeli history, Ehud Barak, was to meet that target two decades later. The target that eluded him that night was Yasser Arafat. Now Barak is Prime Minister of Israel today and is currently meeting with Arafat and with Bill Clinton at Camp David as we speak. What has happened to bring Israel from that 1973 to that picture in 1999? From a country that resolutely seeks justice and its own self-defense to one that compromises with its known enemies. From its independence in 1948, Israel has had an uncompromising commitment to its self-defense. Let me give you a quick rundown of some of the highlights. Now this is the map of the Middle East and you can see that's Israel and everything in yellow Arab countries, most of those countries have at some time supplied troops to combat Israel. Israel began its existence by fighting off the forces of seven Arab countries whose troops far outnumbered Israel's. In the 50s and 60s, Israel fought off terrorists at its borders, often pursuing the terrorists into the Arab countries, hosting them. In 1967, in a preemptive strike, Israeli forces defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan and occupied the Sinai Desert, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Now just a note about the size of Israel. Israel is 290 miles long and at its widest it is 85 miles wide. In many places it is much narrower than 85 miles. During the 1970s, Israel fought terrorism around the world. Terrorists knew that they were not safe anywhere as this above story illustrates. The rescue of hostages from Entebbe, Uganda is probably the highlight of that decade. And in the 1980s, Israel invaded Lebanon to rid itself of the threat of terrorism in its northern border. Yet Israel is now in retreat. It returned the Sinai to Egypt and retreated from most of Lebanon in the 1980s. It has effectively decided to establish an autonomous Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza to be run by Yasser Arafat and the PLO. And for the sake of so-called peace, Israel has decided to return the Golan Heights territory to Syria. A country until recently run by a ruthless dictator. The idea of compromising in a land for peace deal has won widespread acceptance in Israel. Just in May of this year, Israel hastily retreated from its last security buffer zone on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Bloodlusting Hezbollah terrorists are now just a few yards, a hand grenade away from Israeli homes. Israel is in the process of committing suicide, of welcoming its destroyers in through the front gate. Why is this happening? What are the causes that have turned Israel from a country set on self-defense and fighting for its cause to one that is cravenly appeasing its enemies, sacrificing its national security? What caused the country to go from hunting down and killing terrorists to signing so-called peace agreements with them and shaking their hands? This is what today's talk is about. Before exploring this issue, let me first address the question of why you should care. Now, there are a couple of reasons. First, Israel is a crucial strategic partner for the United States. It is the only Western state in a region that is crucial to the West's supply of oil. Therefore, what happens in Israel will have a significant impact on America's well-being. American foreign policy has effectively been sacrificing Israel, a basically good country, for the sake of short-term political whim. This is unjust. And as Americans, it is important for us to understand the consequences of our foreign policy. Second, Israel is a vivid, dramatic illustration of the power of philosophic ideas on a culture. Because Israel is constantly in peril and its people in dire need of moral support, the ideas held by its intellectuals are quickly adopted and have immediate existential life and death impact. Because of this, Israel is an accelerated version of what is happening everywhere in the West. Thus, Israel illustrates the dangers we face here from our own intellectuals. Now, we know that ideas are the motor of history. Therefore, to understand the transformation that has occurred in Israel, we will examine the ideas that made possible Israel's existence and the ideas prevalent today among Israeli intellectuals. In addition, we'll examine the role America has played in Israel's decline. There is one thing I will not have time to cover, and that is to prove to you that Arafat and the other Arab leaders are the bad guys. Give me your general knowledge here and you can ask me about it in the Q&A. So to begin with, let us look at the founding and rise of Israel and its ideological roots. Now, Jews have a long history of persecution, going back at least to the rise of Christianity. We don't have time here to discuss the reasons and roots of this persecution, but only to identify the fact that it was still prevalent in Europe of the 19th century. Although the roots of anti-Semitism lay originally in religion, by the mid-part of the 19th century the idea was taken up by European nationalists and in the latter part of the century by so-called scientific racists. And for a detailed discussion of the rise of racism in Europe in the 19th century, see the ominous parallels. European anti-Semitism targeted people based on their ancestry. It was targeted even against those Jews who did not consider themselves Jewish. Anti-Semitism prevailed in academic circles as well as among the common people. This anti-Semitism took many forms and varied in severity. In some countries, like Germany and France, Jews were discriminated against in the workplace, in housing and at the universities. Elsewhere, particularly in Eastern Europe and Russia, brute force was used against the Jews. Jews were maimed, robbed, even killed. Such oppression of Jews was widely tolerated and in most cases orchestrated by European governments. Jews throughout Europe were politically helpless, unable to defend themselves. Yet the 19th century was also a period of great hope for Jewish professionals and intellectuals. They truly believed that if they distanced themselves from the Jewish religion and culture, they could assimilate into the countries where they lived. This was particularly true of Jews in Germany and Central Europe. Time and time again, however, these hopes were shattered against an unyielding wall of anti-Semitism. A heated debate ensued between those who believed in continued assimilation and its ultimate success and those who believed that Jews would never be welcome in Europe. Galvanizing the opposition to assimilation was Theodore Herzl, considered the father of political Zionism. Zionism, being the idea that the Jewish people should establish a country of their own. Political Zionism, being the first practical attempt to establish such a country. Herzl was a successful Austrian intellectual, a journalist and a playwright, well known in the Austrian capital. Herzl was viewed as proof of the success of assimilation. In his mid-30s, however, Herzl came to believe that despite all the efforts, his efforts and those of other Jews like him, he would always be discriminated against. Herzl concluded that assimilation was impossible, even to the most western, most cultured of Jews, never mind the Jewish masses. Thus, only a country devoted to the physical protection of Jews could stand up to the powers of Europe and protect Jews from what he felt in the long run was certain death. Now, given the Holocaust, we now know how wise Herzl was in seeing the growing European anti-Semitism. Herzl recognized a real problem and offered a solution. Creating a Jewish state to defend Jews from rapidly escalating anti-Semitism. He rejected the view of Jews as meek, as incapable of pride or of resistance. He viewed the existence of a Jewish state with a strong military as essential for Jews to defend themselves. Hence, the original intent of Zionism was to galvanize the Jews of Europe for the sake of their own self-defense in their own country. However, Zionism had to offer Jews a positive value, for which to leave their homes and fight. Avoidance of a negative is not enough to move people to make such a difficult and uncertain change. While Herzl was a liberal in the 19th century sense, a believer in the values of western civilization and private property, free enterprise, political freedom, he did not believe that these values were enough to motivate Jews to leave Europe, which on its face already respected these values. Indeed, Herzl's fiercest opposition came from Jews who continued to believe in assimilation, as one Jewish German leader put it, and I quote, we know but one fatherland, that in which we live, end quote. Herzl needed to define a set of values that somehow would inspire Jews to leave Europe and start a new country in the wilderness. Beyond the question of fighting anti-Semitism, what united Jews? Besides persecution, what was common to the primitive, uncultured Jewish masses of Russia, and to the university-trained Jews of Germany and France? Not to mention the wide cultural differences between the Jews of the East, Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, and the Jews of Europe. Herzl became convinced that for Zionism to unite these Jews for self-defense, Jewish cultural identity had to be the driving force of the movement. Herzl himself was not religious, and the Jewish state was never meant as a theocracy, but Herzl was trapped into articulating a vision for a Jewish state. Only Judaism, the religion, he concluded, could serve to unify the Jews. Ultimately, however, this meant that Jewish collectivism would play a primary role in Zionism, while Western values would be given a secondary role. Herzl was the founder of the Zionist organization and spent the rest of his short life, he died in 1904, aged only 44, working towards its goal of a Jewish state. His view of Zionism as an ad hoc unification for the purpose of fighting the evil of anti-Semitism, whether it was European, Nazi, or Arab, was a positive. His view that this could only occur in a new country was probably true, given the reality in Europe and given that the US shut its doors to European immigration in 1922. Tragically, Zionism contained the seeds of its own destruction. Countries cannot come about and thrive just in order to avoid a negative outcome. They must be a legitimate positive value to be achieved in 44. Being Jewish means nothing in a fundamental sense. It does not provide political or moral guidance, unless, of course, one is religious. Hence, Zionism fused a valid concern, self-preservation amid a storm of hostility, with a toxic premise, ethnically based collectivism and religion. Such was the intellectual context in which the idea of the Jewish state was born. After Herzl's death, a collection of mostly Russian socialists came to dominate the Zionist movement. The Zionists were strongly influenced by Russian socialism of the late 19th century. Although many of them saw internationalism as the ultimate goal of mankind, they viewed an autonomous Jewish state as a way to resolve the Jewish problem now and as a necessary transitional step. The early leftist intellectuals spent considerable energy trying to justify Zionism in Marxist terms. Many of these early Zionists came to settle in Palestine because Russia was moving too slowly towards the socialist ideal. When these settlers arrived in the unwelcoming, desolate and disease-ridden land of Palestine, their socialist idealism clashed with the reality of pioneering life. While some went on to found Kibbutzim, the ideal of egalitarian communist living, and you can ask me about those in the Q&A if you like, most turned to more practical approaches. They became less and less intellectual, though they retained many of their socialistic attitudes. Indeed, as the fate of Jews in Europe became worse, they focused their energy on Jewish nationalism and the goal of providing a safe home to the persecuted Jews of the world. Thus, over the years, the pacifistic egalitarian socialists who arrived in Palestine became pragmatic materialists. The ideal was the farmer's soldier, with one hand on the plow and another holding a rifle. They became men of muscle rather than ideas. They focused shifted from the dogmas of socialism to the enormous odds they faced in establishing a Jewish state. Most settlers cared primarily about building a country. They were productive, intelligent individuals with a mixed ideology. Together with their socialism, they brought with them some of the values of Western civilization. The urgency to save the Jews of Europe and their ever-growing belief in Jewish nationalism spurred them on. And indeed, from 1904 until the start of World War II, the Jewish population grew from 60,000 to 600,000. Jews came to Palestine with very little. Yet they built cities, dried swamps, and cultivated the desert. They built universities, opera houses, and theaters. They transformed Palestine from a backwards sparsely populated and often fought over a piece of land into a thriving, relatively Western, civilized place. It should be noted that the Arab population benefited enormously from this economic and cultural development. Far more Arabs during this period moved to Palestine than left the territory. Birth rates among the Arab population rose more quickly than in neighboring countries. And the standard of living was significantly higher than in other Arab countries in the area. By implanting Western values and an undeveloped wilderness, Jewish settlers brought prosperity and economic progress to Palestine and to all of its inhabitants. While the effort to build a country intensified in the 30s and 40s, ideological conflict among the new settlers thrived. The national collectivist Zionists, the hardcore social Zionists, and the religious Zionists were locked in conflict. Political Zionism had no coherent body of ideas, underpinning it. The leaders of the movement desperately needed but lacked an uncompromising philosophic justification for founding a state for Jews. Indeed this problem has persisted, festering to this day, and is one of the explanations why over 50 years after its founding, Israel has no constitution. Its political leaders are unable to confront the question of the meaning of Jewish nationalism without resorting to religion. And while the founders of Israel were sympathetic to religious traditions, they were far from religious themselves. It was only the existence of racism in the form of anti-Semitism, which made Zionism possible. And it is only the occurrence of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, which brought about the actualization of Zionism the founding of Israel. Adolf Hitler had proven her to write that the Jews could not survive in Europe, that they needed their own state for self-preservation. As a consequence, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations passed a resolution dividing Palestine into two countries, a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews celebrated in the streets, the Arabs mourned. A year later, on May 14, 1948, an oasis of Western civilization was created in the barbaric Middle East. Israel was a state whose citizens were basically free, a country in which freedom of speech and press were preserved, a country that protected, at least to some extent, the property rights of its citizens. Israel was a country that appealed political freedom in a region where brutal despotism was the norm. In its first 35 years, Israel exhibited a rarely seen commitment to self-defense and to the preservation of its Western values. This was true despite its socialistic economy and the rampant collectivism in almost every aspect of its culture. To a large extent, the memory of the Holocaust and the Zionist idea of Jewish strength in the face of anti-Semitism drove Israelis to be courageous and determined in their battle. For a while, they fought confidently. As the years were on, however, the memory of the Holocaust faded and a strong Israel made the dangers seem less immediate, less real. Israel was not founded on a cohesive, consistent set of values, but as a reaction to anti-Semitism. And therefore, as primarily a response to negative, its founders did not articulate the positive values in which Israel could defend its existence long-term. This is analogous to an American Declaration of Independence that lacks the passage about the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is impossible for America to have survived just on the basis of rejecting King George without advocating a positive ideological alternative. And gulfed by Arab terrorists and unending wars, Israelis today question the reasons for their struggle. What does Zionism have to offer in terms of answers? What positive values should Israelis fight for? What right do they have to use force against the Arabs? Isn't it easier just to negotiate? David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Zionist movement from the 1920s on, and Israel's first prime minister, articulates the modern Zionist answer. I quote, No Jew is at liberty to surrender the right of the Jewish nation and the land of Israel to exist. Even all the Jews alive today have no authority to yield any piece of land whatsoever. This right is reserved to the Jewish people throughout the generations. Our right to this land, in its entirety, is enduring and eternal. And until the coming of the redemption, we shall never yield this historical right." So what does that mean? It means that Israelis should fight because it is their duty to the Jewish nation, past and present. And because as Jews, they have a right to the land. Modern Zionism asks of Israelis to sacrifice their life for the sake of the dead and for the sake of the yet unborn generations of Jews. But the idea that Jews, as Jews, have a right to the land of Israel isn't valid. This idea relies by necessity and mysticism, the idea that God gave this land to the Jews, that they are His chosen people. No group, qua group, has any rights other than the rights of its individual citizens. Observe how secular Zionists like Ben-Gurion must reserve to religion an ethnicity to justify their claims. Also notice that all version of Zionism share a deeper premise. Despite surface differences, all these views are fundamentally consistent. They ask Israeli to lay down their lives for someone else, other Jews because they are Jews, in the name of nationalism or religion, or fellow Jewish proletarians in the name of socialism. These approaches are all forms of collectivism and altruism. Yet if one is an altruist and if one does believe in an ethnic group's right to land, to statehood, to self-determination, then what of the Palestinians? They claim to be suffering just as the Jews did. They claim that they as an ethnic group have rights over the land in effect the Zionist intellectuals did. How can Zionists continue their fight when on their own premises they are denying the Palestinians their rights? They cannot. That is why as soon as Arafat claimed to be seeking peace, the Zionists capitulated. Here was a man who represented a suffering people, an ethnic group that sought to make its claim for statehood a reality. How could Israel say no? Wasn't it similar too and so just as legitimate as the claims of the Jews? Zionists have no answers. They are trapped by their own premises, by their own altruism and collectivism. By denying Arafat's claim, Israel would be in a sense denying its own validity. But by capitulating to Arafat, Israel would ensure its own destruction at the hands of a man with thousands of murders on his hands. This is the necessary outcome of taking altruism seriously. If Israel sacrifices, it commits suicide. But if it rejects Arafat, it negates its own justification for existence. Either way, it's doomed. If Zionism had been an ad hoc unity for purpose of self-defense and had combined that goal with individualism and its political implications, freedom and individual rights, Zionism would have been a legitimate movement. It might have still resulted in a state of Jews, a state in which it was important to have Jews as a majority. But in that case, once Israel was strong, had secured its existence militarily, such a unification on the basis of a non-essential being Jewish would be dissolved and a free individualistic capitalist state would have emerged. However, this is not the basis on which her to establish Zionism. Zionism was fatally flawed from the beginning. Indeed, Zionism is an unfortunate package deal, combining a legitimate need self-defense with an illegitimate ideology collectivism. Looking for quality auto parts for your vehicle? Shop one of the 133 Los Angeles area O'Reilly Auto Parts stores. You'll find we have convenient locations, thousands of brand-name parts in stock, extended store hours, everyday low prices and well-trained professional parts people. O'Reilly Auto Parts, better parts, better prices every day. Who's so much here for a newborn? We need to start planning his baptism and his holiday outfit and, ooh, his birthday party. Sure, but, um, how long are you planning to stay? If you're one of those who goes to meet your newborn nephew and stays until his first birthday party, switch to Cricut Wireless. Use your phone as many days as you want in Mexico without extra cost. Smile, you're on Cricut. Requires eligible plan minimum $55 per month, which in other restrictions apply. Coverage not available everywhere. See store for details. Consequently, Zionism has rendered Israel incapable of defending itself. Not from a military threat, but from an intellectual one. Ideas shape men's lives and actions, and ultimately, ideas for better or worse, shape an entire culture. Israel is an illustration that, even with the best intentions, altruism and collectivism lead ultimately to self-destruction. Now today, the only ideological resistance to total capitulation to Arafat and Syria comes from the right-wing religious political parties. For the most part, the secular right as represented by the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu are complete pragmatists. They share the altruism and collectivism of the Zionist left. As Netanyahu illustrated when he was Prime Minister, the secular right is incapable of halting Israel's steady progression towards a so-called diplomatic deal with its enemies. The religious right, on the other hand, is adamant on its rejection of Arafat and all deals that involve land for peace. They spokesmen identify the dangers posed by the Zionist position. The religious right is unflinching in their demand that Israel place its self-defense above the reckless desire for an accord with terrorists. How do they justify their claims? Are they not like the Zionist, altruists and collectivists? In fact, Jews and the religious right are more altruistic and more collectivistic than their secular counterparts. The difference is that they confine their altruism to Jews. They believe that they are God's chosen people and as such, superior to the Gentiles in general and to the Arabs in particular. This superiority is not based on the superiority of whatever western values they uphold, but on their faith in the Bible. And what is the basis for their right to the land of Israel? Well, the same as Ben-Gurion's only stronger, more zealous. The land is theirs because God gave it to them. The land must be preserved whole because God meant it for them to have it all. I should note that not all religious Jews feel this way. Some refuse to care about or even acknowledge the existence of Israel. For them it is blasphemy. Israel can only legitimately come into existence once the Messiah arrives. Then there are other religious political parties which are interested in money and power alone. These are the permanent coalition partners of both the right and the left, which periodically blackmail the government for more funds. An analysis of the tension between religious and secular elements in Israel is beyond the scope of this talk. However, let me just say that these tensions are contributing factor to Israel's decline, ripping Israeli society apart. So the one group defending Israel's right to exist to defend itself and acknowledging its superiority over its neighbors does so for completely mystical reasons. Let's examine now what Israelis can expect to their contemporary intellectuals. What guidance can these thinkers provide? Whereas Zionism was based on the notion of Jewish self-defense in the face of anti-Semitism, many Israeli intellectuals today deny that Jews in general and Israel in particular ever needed self-defense. According to these intellectuals, Jews often brought anti-Semitism upon themselves. They claim that Israel has been their aggressor from the start. It was Jews who stole the lands of the natives and developed it. It was Jews who forced their way into Palestine and uprooted an ancient community of Muslims. It was Jews who insisted on bringing Western civilization to a part of the world that was hostile to it and then insisted on founding their own state. What could the Arabs do with self-defense? These intellectuals deemed Zionism a colonialist, racist and evil phenomena that stole another people's land by force and continues to oppress them. As historian Benny Morris writes Zionism was from the outset and I quote a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement infected by the European colonists' mental obliteration and who reduced the Arabs to objects to be utilized when necessary. A significant illustration of this intellectual shift was a TV documentary called Resurrection a 20-part series describing different eras in Israel history that aired on Israeli state television in celebration of its 50th anniversary. The segments dealing with the establishment in 1948 condemned Israel for evicting the Palestinians with brute force. Resurrection also blamed Israel for allegedly systematically massacring Arabs in many villages. Israel, quote, committed far more atrocities in 1948 than did Arab forces while practicing ethnic cleansing end quote. Thus the series presents the founding based on quote original sin. Now these arguments might not sound familiar to you in the context of Israel but of what historical analysis do they remind you of? Well of course, these are the same things said by American historians of Columbus, of American settlers and their treatment of the Indians. It is the view of modern deconstructionism a particular application of postmodernism that sees history as based not on objective facts but on purely subjective experiences. The past is whatever its author says it is to hell with the facts logic and truth. Such modern historians unapologetically evade facts drop context and make things up in order to rewrite reality to fit their subjective view of what happened. At root is their hatred of Western civilization. Instead of the good for being the good pure nihilism. The same hatred drives Israel's so-called new historians. They despise the state in part for good reason its heavy emphasis on religion but fundamentally because Israel is an oasis of Western civilization in the Middle East. These intellectuals hate what the West stands for and are ready to embrace the primitive Arab East. To make their connection to postmodernism explicit these new Israeli intellectuals call themselves post-Zionists and often cite American postmodernist literature. Now for more details on postmodernism I refer you to Dr. Hall's black hole article in TIA. These intellectuals come from a long line of egalitarians. They view all positions or cultures as equally legitimate. In this sense they follow in the footsteps of American multiculturalists. Another application of postmodernism. Indeed one Israeli politician and intellectual has proposed adding to the Israeli flag the Muslim crescent moon. Others have urged that Israel offer Arabs special rights a type of affirmative action for the protection of their culture and to guarantee an Arab majority in certain parts of Israel. They suggest establishing a day of mourning to remember the injustices committed against the Palestinians while at the same time oppose any kind of Holocaust remembrance programs. Post-Zionists take their egalitarianism to its logical consistent end. Consequently they view all uses of force as equal. Israel as the aggressor self-defense is meaningless it's still the use of force. They unabashedly compare the Israeli army with that of Hitler. One of Israel's most renowned philosophers has called the Israeli defense forces Judeo-Nazis and declared that Israel would be engaging in and I quote mass expulsion and slaughter of the ever population and setting up concentration camps. One of Israel's most respected historians asserts that nothing can be achieved through warfare the tool of the Nazis. Is it any surprise that Israeli intellectuals can so easily forgive Arafat or Assad their horrendous crimes? They used force just as Israel did. If all uses of force are equal then are they not Israel's equals? These intellectuals insist are not merely talking to their enemies but also giving them aid and comfort. According to the former Israeli foreign minister Jewish philanthropic organizations have an obligation to provide assistance to the PLO and Jordan. I quote, anyone who objects to American aid to the PLO has no right to be called a friend of Israel. End quote. How many of these intellectuals are universalists? They do not believe in any nation state but in a universal utopia. As one philosopher at Tel Aviv University says the only hope for Israel is a world in which traditional nation states wither away surrendering their power to make strategic, economic and ecological decisions to regional organizations and their power to structure cultural policies to local national communities. End quote. Note that these ideas do not remain in the ivory tower but have a real immediate impact. End quote. I quote, and the architect of the Austro agreement with the Palestinians. End quote. National political organizations can no longer fulfill the purpose for which they were established. That is to furnish the fundamental needs of the nation. A nationwide organization is not sufficient to ensure security. It can be seen that a new type of citizenship is catching on. A new personal identity particularist nationalism is fading and the idea of a citizen of the world is taking hold. End quote. Elsewhere Paris has said, they can be no doubt that Israel's next goal should be to become a member of the Arab League. End quote. It should be noted that 40 years ago Paris was a strong advocate for Zionism. A right-hand man of Ben-Gurion yet he has returned to the socialist roots of early Zionism. Today the explicit Marxist overtones are gone. Israel is no longer expected to meld into the international workers collective. Instead Israel is told to merge its culture, its western values with those of the Muslim Arab world. And what should Israel do in the face of Arab violence? Let me illustrate this. In early December 1998 Israeli television again and again played a video clip of an Israeli soldier surrounded and beaten by a Palestinian mob without making any attempt to defend himself followed by his fleeing without his gun. In some circles the action of the soldier was celebrated as the fulfillment of a new spirit in Israel. And editorial in the country's leading newspaper Haaretz gleefully wrote of the soldiers and I quote, heroic surrender. I'd further quote the article the myth of Israeli courage shatters before our eyes. A public outcry is sounded and hardly anybody asks whether perhaps the myth itself is unnecessary, anachronistic or even harmful. The recurring question pertains to the basic values of Israeli society. Do we really want brave soldiers who risk their lives? In today's Israeli society the macho man of the past must no longer be a hero. We are better off being a wimpy state end quote. The intellectuals question the validity of self defense of the use of force to a country like Israel in a constant state of war the repudiation of these ideas undermines the very basis of the moral foundation on which the country has existed and on which it has defended itself for over 50 years. It undermines the legitimacy of self defense by claiming that all power is corrupt and by rewriting history and claiming that Jews never need self defense intellectuals are branding Israel their aggressor. These contradictions do not bother them because they are complete subjectivists. Now while these intellectuals share a theoretical framework with their American counterparts there is one important difference for American intellectuals this is still for the most part a game in which the short term existential impact of their ideas poses little threat to the nation its economy or its security short term. In Israel by contrast the intellectuals have a much greater impact. Israel is a small country its population well read and educated Israelis are much more exposed to the ideas taught in the universities. New ideas spread like wildfire. While the contemporary source of post-dionist ideas can be easily traced to American post-modernists it is interesting to note that these ideas can be traced further back to a long line of Jewish intellectuals. Israel's first university the Hebrew university was founded by a group of German intellectuals in the early 1930s they were busy translating Kant into Hebrew. Since Kant is the father of subjectivism both in the US and directly in Israel its not hard to see how this intellectual beginning at the most important in Israel led to the current crop of post-modernists now the chain does not stop there it goes further back the intellectuals who founded the university were heavily influenced by their teachers Jewish German intellectuals of the 19th century these intellectuals were typically anti-Zionist and pro-German they were also explicitly Kantian one Jewish philosopher in particular had a strong influence on the intellectuals who later came to Palestine his name was Herman Korn and he was a full professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg the first Jew to hold such a position Korn took his Kantian philosophy seriously and vigorously applied it to the Jewish problem the hallmark of pure selflessness he argued is suffering its suffering on behalf of another and only in suffering on behalf of another does the individual vanquish his self-interested ego and attain true unity with his neighbor and only by suffering on behalf of all men can the individual attain unity with mankind the moral ideal now how do the Jewish people fit into this let me quote Korn Jewish history in so far as it exhibits moral ideas is a continuous chain of human of national suffering the servants of the Lord have always been despised and pierced through cut off from the land of life the messianic people suffers vicariously for mankind end quote for Korn it is the very essence of the Jews that they suffer and it is their suffering that gives them moral worth thus the Jews must be dispersed like a quote divine do among nations powerless and stateless demanding nothing for themselves the goal says Korn is to teach other nations to suffer as Jews do eventually in a quote through this widening of national limits of suffering which is demanded by humanitarian ethics end quote all the people of the world will have adopted Korn's Judaism Jews are meant to suffer if that is how they generate their moral worth then anti-Semitism is good and conversely a strong Israel an Israel that can defend itself is illegitimate and immoral if the role of the Jews to suffer and show the world how to suffer then inviting Arafat into one's home is the most moral thing one can do this is the logical conclusion of Kantian ethics thus we see Israeli prime ministers bending over backwards for peace known terrorists and dictators we see an army that has lost its resolve a once brave army that flees Lebanon in the words of a Hezbollah terrorist and I quote like dogs with their tails between their legs end quote and when so-called Palestinian police open fire on Israeli soldiers in the West Bank Israel ignores the obvious implications for the future only a self-doubting Israel unsure of its own moral validity would accept the word of a bloody authoritarian terrorist that he wants peace only a country in intellectual decay would believe that peace is possible exclusively by surrendering lands and with lands at security it is the moral uncertainty regarding its own existence combined with altruism that leads Israel to acts of self-sacrifice and ultimately to suicide Israel's decline serves as a microcosm illustrating Kant's continued destruction of Western civilization only in Israel the scale of intellectual time is accelerated the tool of destruction is the modern offstring of Kant post-modernism which has been imported to Israel from the US and ultimately from Germany ever I didn't mean literally now there's one other element that is important in understanding Israel's decline particularly to this audience and that is the role of the US we've already seen the central role of ideas in Israel's decline including the role of American intellectuals in influence post-Zionism however in its pragmatist anti-intellectual foreign policy America has also physically crippled Israel's attempt at self-defense contrary to popular belief and to American State Department propaganda America has been actively hampering Israeli self-defense from the very birth of the state of Israel not only as America's intervention existentially harmed Israel's security it has also fatally damaged Israel's moral resolve now I only have time to present you with a few lowlights but I think they will convey my point following the UN resolution to establish Israel a resolution the US supported the Truman administration slapped an arms embargo on the Middle East this was done with a full knowledge that the Jews in Israel had nothing but old rifles and homemade mortars to fight off heavily armed Arabs both the US State Department and the CIA predicted that the Jewish community could not defend itself and would be annihilated when Israeli independence was declared America refused to rescind the arms embargo again with full knowledge that Israel was being invaded by the combined forces of seven Arab states during the war the US pressured Israel to withdraw from territories it had occupied and let the invading Arabs escape with as little damage as possible the US though refusing to arm Israel had no qualms about arming several Arab states Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan and Iraq who would be directly involved in military conflict with Israel it was not until the late 1960s that America agreed to supply weapons and aid to Israel in 1973 while defending itself against a massive surprise attack from Syria and Egypt Israel captured positions within striking distance of Damascus and Cairo however Henry Kissinger the US Secretary of State made sure to stop Israel in its tracks Kissinger again intervened when Israel was on the verge of completely destroying Egypt's Third Army thus robbing Israel of the fruits of victory after the war Israel was forced to compromise to accept massive compromises in an attempt to appease the Americans in 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy PLO terrorists Israeli forces succeeded in surrounding Beirut trapping Arafat, his entourage and thousands of Palestinian terrorists but it was the Reagan administration that forced the ceasefire negotiated to let Arafat leave Beirut with all his men and supply troops to protect the departure now for those of you who remember 241 US Marines were murdered in their barracks by terrorists as part of a related mission to Beirut Arafat departed Beirut in a yacht bearing the UN flag to which he was escorted by a human shield of Red Cross UN, Greek and French ambassadors yet as his car passed through the streets of Beirut to reach the harbor Israeli commando snipers hidden in the buildings and on rooftops had Arafat in their gun sights every inch of his trip but whereas in the 1973 mission described in the opening it was luck that saved Arafat from this same commando unit in 1982 it was the West led by the United States but America's worst betrayal of Israel came during the Gulf War the US created coalition of international forces assembled to combat Iraq comprised of America's European allies and the forces of Syria and Egypt and other Arab countries Israel had the most competent troops the experience and the strongest interest was pointedly excluded from the coalition though neither Syria nor Egypt had much involvement in the war both countries were rewarded handsomely Egypt's $7 billion debt to the US was erased Syria was promised that the US would actively seek Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights but the real insult came when Saddam Hussein launched scud missiles at Israeli cities the US prohibited Israel from defending itself this proud country which just 10 years earlier had eliminated the Iraqi nuclear program single-handedly by bombing its nuclear reactor in an amazing mission a mission that was condemned by both the US and every other nation this proud country now stood helpless Israeli citizens with masks set passively waiting for the next missile to hit the image of the suffering weak helpless Jew was now reborn Israel's enemies had won and securing the victory for them was Israel's biggest so-called ally throughout Israel's history the US has used the threat of economic and military sanctions in an attempt to force Israel to compromise on numerous occasions the US has prevented Israel from benefiting the United States as Dennis Ross the Clinton administration's special envoy to the Middle East has written we are the only ones who can stop the Israelis in water the Arab world knows well that it has been the US that pressured Israelis to stop in every war this alone provides a certain baseline in our relations with states like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt not only is the US undermined Israel's military strength but more importantly as the Western superpower as the moral authority in world affairs the US has undercut Israel's morale not only has America done an enormous injustice to Israel but it has also committed an enormous injustice against its own citizens and damaged its national interest instead of supporting Israel's actions it has been propping up regimes around the Middle East anti-American terrorism the US has sacrificed its Western ally the one oasis of civilization in the Middle East in the name of what? in the name of pragmatism for the sake of short term so-called American interests since at least World War II US foreign policy has been consistently based on pragmatic range of the moment interests observe the hallmark of this approach the craven desire to appease the enemy whether it be China or Russia or Arab terrorist states just one example in order to secure access to Middle East oil the US has long sought to appease Arab states in 1973 when the US was pressuring Israel to show mercy in its war with Egypt and Syria and when the oil crisis was being felt in the US President Nixon is quoted as saying the only way we're going to solve the oil crisis is to end the oil embargo and the only way we're going to end the embargo is to get the Israelis to act reasonably I hate to use the word blackmail but we've got to do something to get them to behave end quote but if all were really the issue then supporting Israel and using it as a base to protect the oil flow to the west would be the best solution not to mention taking direct control of the oil wells that are justly the property of US and British corporations these corporations originally discovered the oil only to see it stolen from them by these Arab countries but pragmatism denies that there's a right long term solution it denies the existence of principles it denies that a free pro-west ally is any better than a hostile dictatorship and since Israel is strong the US demands in the name of altruism that it be forced to compromise to sacrifice its interest to those who are weaker those who suffer more America's treatment of Israel has its origins therefore in the same intellectuals that are destroying Israel whether it be through pragmatism or post-modernism or any other form of subjectivism and altruism so why is Israel in decline why can it not muster the will to defend itself now many commentators say that the cause of Israel's decline is a big deal Israelis are tired of war tired of the grueling fight they have been involved in for 50 years they are desperate for the calm of peace now in a sense this is true Israel has fought 5 wars in 50 years it's a small country every family has been touched by the horrific consequences of war and terrorism I should add that it has received little on the contrary it has often been isolated and vilified for its courageous actions yet this fatigue is caused not by the mounting death toll or by the number of terrorist bombs and school buses or by the international isolationism although all of these contribute no the fatigue, the exhaustion is caused by the disappearance of moral certainty in the cause for which Israelis are fighting they are fatigued because their teachers their intellectuals tell them that their cause is wrong that all the years of fighting were for naught or worse that all those years of fighting made Israelis the equivalent of Nazis such an assault Israelis cannot withstand Israelis today are left with nothing ideological to cling to more and more of Israel's youth are turning either to hedonism or religion to fill the vacuum of their teachers now I do not want to leave you with the impression that there is no solution to the problem that exists in Israel or that there is no rational justification for the founding and continued existence of the state of Israel that is false even if it is not identified by Israelis themselves the reason for founding the state of Israel was self defense self defense of Jews who were being persecuted all over the world in what was then Palestine when Jews came to Palestine it was a desolate uncivilized place the population was sparse swamps were everywhere over half the territory was desert the Jews brought in irrigation grew crops and in general conquered nature for their own ends they reclaimed land built villas, swimming pools to an area of nomadic tribes and substance farmers Jews brought industry libraries, hospitals, art galleries higher education, rule of law in short they brought western civilization to a mid eastern hellhole Israel's right to exist lies in that Israel created itself out of nothing it's founded, created a free country in a region dominated by totalitarian corrupt regimes to the extent that the Arab population in Israel was willing to accept the values that these westerners brought with them they thrived and succeeded the material evidence of this is visible in the relatively high standard of living to be found in many Arab villages and by the fact that many Arabs when they returned from visiting their relatives in Syria Egypt or Jordan bless Allah that they were born in Israel but don't the Arabs in the West Bank in Gaza have a right to self-determination no Israel is far from a tyrannical oppressor on the contrary to the extent that the resident Arabs accepted Israel's western values they flourished indeed, what Arab country gives them the liberty to protest, publish articles and books against the government none so what's their purpose the writing Arabs desire the right to live under racist collectivistic Islamic rule to quote Peter Schwartz writing an intellectual activist what they desire is not freedom but the primitive despotic statism of self-determination they are hostile to western values to liberty, capitalism individualism, industrialization reason of which Israel in the context of the Middle East of Middle East mysticism is the embodiment fundamentally no people have a right to their own state if what they seek is a dictatorship as Ein Rand writes in an essay collectivized writes and I quote the right for the self-determination of nations applies only to free societies seeking to establish freedom it does not apply to dictatorships end quote in the sense Israel has a right to self-determination and the Palestinians do not a major premise of this talk has been that the fundamental ideas of a culture are what ultimately determine its course so it is in the case of Israel its founders were well meaning productive individuals seeking a valid goal self-defense yet they were hostages of the premises that were false and ultimately destructive to their ends unfortunately the ideological alternatives in Israeli culture are even worse today's intellectuals are making perverse and strident calls for national suicide Israel is paying the price of these bad ideas sad to say, I'm not optimistic about Israel's future regardless of whether Israel survives its current suicide attempt or not it lacks a solid ideology to sustain it life in Israel will likely get worse if not impossible this is a tragedy Israel in spite of its flaws is a good country with good productive individuals the ideal solution that is for Israelis to establish a new fundamental ideological framework one based on the not not on the superiority of Jews but on the superiority of western civilization not on Jewish rights but on individual rights such a solution is impossible in the absence of an intellectual revolution as one of Israel's better intellectuals is observed Israel need not be defeated militarily to be defeated utterly the entire job may be done on the battlefield of ideas end quote as the history of Israel's decline amply demonstrates philosophy is the motor of history and the bad philosophy is lethal now that's a depressing way to end a lecture so let me end on this thought if Israel could have done so much with so few good ideas think how much they could have done or more importantly how much we can do with a complete and consistent philosophy for living thank you thank you questions I planted some so they have to be some Iran given the collectivistic and subjectivistic foundations of Israel how do you explain the fact that there seem to be a higher a fairly substantial number of objectivists in Israel first let me give the positive to that Israel is two thirds of the Israeli population are secular and I would say that the proportion of atheists in Israel is greater than it is in the US and probably any other country that I know of so lots of atheists again they're well-read and well-educated so a lot of my classmates meet so a significant proportion of the Israeli population is well-educated so just partially it's just the numbers the fact that they're educated the fact that I think we grow up quicker in Israel in the sense that when you're a kid you watch the news all the time the threat is so real that ideas become more important to you at an earlier age in that sense Israelis are more open to objectives however once they read Iron Man and maybe they think of objectivists it is very difficult to escape the magnet of Jewish collectivism and I have found that it is very very few Israeli objectivists who ever managed to escape that magnet now I have lots of horror stories about this but a lot of objectivists find that they can't leave Israel they can't come to the United States and if they come they go back within a few years they need whatever it is that Jewish collectivism in Israel provides them they cannot do without some of them become religious I have a whole series of old friends who are now orthodox religious so there are not that many Israeli objectivists that I know of that are left there used to be a lot in the 80s few of them have survived and I think it is that you grow up in Israel it is very hard to resist the collectivism that is it is everywhere in the culture it is in the songs it is in what you are taught in school it is in the way people behave towards one another it is just everywhere in the culture and they just can't escape it Richard Thank you for an excellent lecture I recall years ago Benjamin Netanyahu wrote an excellent book on how to combat terrorism there was fairly principled I just wonder if you could comment on that and also his fairly brief reign and why he didn't survive longer as a head of the state I don't have a good explanation for why it seems like two different people he could write that book and then completely completely contradict himself once he went into politics Did you repeat the question? Yes, the question was regarding Benjamin Netanyahu who wrote an excellent book on combatting terrorism but then in a short reign as prime minister negotiated with Arafat and was compromising even though in the book he was very principled and actually in many of his TV appearances before becoming prime minister was exceptional in his principled stand I think it has to do with power lust and the fact that once he attained power he became a pragmatist and he realized first of all to attain power in Israel he had to talk the talk which is the talk of pragmatism, of compromise because that's what would get him elected a principled stand in Israel today will not get you elected Israeli people have accepted the fact that compromise is inevitable so he had to do that in order to get elected and once in power he just fell into the pragmatism that many politicians I think fall into I don't know what he really thinks it's interesting that Netanyahu over the span of 10 years sounded a lot more principled in English than he did in Hebrew so when he was on American TV he was really good but when he gave the same interview in Israeli TV he was compromising and pragmatic as he turned out so to some extent he always had that split personality which I think had to do with his political ambitions I think he was always ambitious not just as an aside I don't know how many of you know this but Benjamin Netanyahu's brother Joni Netanyahu was the commander of the Entebbe raid and he was also the only casualty of the Entebbe raid and Benjamin Netanyahu was a soldier in the commando unit that I described twice one in the 73 and once with the snipers and he was under the command of Ehud Barak during a period both he and his brothers were in this top elite commando unit what should Israel do with Arafat and his PLO what should Israel do with Arafat and his PLO well the first thing Israel should do in my opinion is shoot him they should thoroughly and consistently go through the entire leadership of the PLO and anybody with any terrorists in its past should be shot then they should say to the Palestinians if you want to talk come up with a leadership that has no blood on your hands and let's talk in general what Israel should do is not give up a scrap of land because that land is necessary for its security for the people of Israel a Palestinian state would be literally a street across from Jerusalem this is the Palestinian state Tel Aviv this is 5 minutes drive it's just militarily impossible to defend so they should not give him an inch of land they should tell the Palestinians that they have the right to property they should benefit from the Israeli occupation and those who do not want to those who are riot can be sent to Jordan they can be prosecuted like any rioting mob should be and I don't know if you but during the riots in 1989 1991 Israelis used the softest treatment possible in dealing with those riots to the extent where they replaced a bullet with rubber bullets to some extent well they shouldn't have they should have shot them and the riots would have stopped very quickly I enjoyed your talk I agree that because they're persecuted on the basis of being Jews it's right for Jews to ban together in self defense if black hair people started slaughtering brown hair people I think we ought to get together and do something about it my question though is should a Jew make his Jewishness a central aspect of his personality I wouldn't think a persecuted brown hair person should put much weight on the color of his hair no he shouldn't I think as I said Jewishness all it says is kind of your ancestry it doesn't indicate shouldn't indicate any more than that and you know that's one of the problems in Israel is is collectivism, Jewish nationalism is very strong in Israel and being Jewish is an important and significant thing Jewish so the answer is no I would not consider myself Jewish other than in the face of anti-Semitism you mentioned at the start of the talk that there are talks going on at Camp David today between Israel and the Palestinians what do you think will happen if an agreement is signed between them I'll show you got a slide this is the numbers really killed in terrorist attacks I see when Israel was at its peak during the 1970s and 1980s I mean with a few big terrorist you know one-time significant actions terrorism was subdued look at what happens once they start compromising the Austo agreement was signed here this is where Israel basically recognized that there would be a Palestinian state look what happens now it's subdued again a little bit over the last couple of years you watch if they sign an agreement there will be more terrorist activity in Israel than ever before Al-Fad might hold him back for a little while just to get the process going but as soon as he has the lands I have no doubt Al-Fad and the PLO leadership once named the entire state of Israel to compromise until they are in Tel Aviv and in Haifa and in every other part of Israel and I saw Nightline last night and this one this one representative of the Palestinians said you know people everybody needs to compromise the Palestinians need to compromise and Israel needs to compromise and the Palestinians says we've already compromised and the compromise is we only want that West Bank we don't want the entire Israel so that's the compromise and that is just a step now if you read what Arab children are learning in schools on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip first of all they are learning that they have Nazi type cartoons throughout their books depicting Jews they are taught that Israel is a fascist country they are taught that it should not exist they are taught that they are real homes they tell of even Haifa and that the Jews should be driven into the sea if you go to Egypt and you look at maps produced by Egyptian map makers Israel doesn't appear on the maps now this is a country Israel has peace with they signed an agreement Israel doesn't appear on an Egyptian map so there is no doubt that violence will increase I expect that there will be a major war sometime yes yeah could you explain maybe a bit how a Palestinian political life is structured because I was always under the impression that the PLO and Arafat especially were really like top dog in power kind of authoritarian but then I read an article I think in the New York Times where the police were actually agents of some of these larger Palestinian families like it was more of an oligarchal structure so I was wondering if you could maybe explain a bit how that's all set up the Palestinian politics are that Arafat is dictator and everybody disagree with Arafat finds himself in jail and there were a number of stories in American press about in the areas where the Palestinians now have full control how every time an intellectual will say something that contradicted Arafat they would either be beaten, shot or placed in jail and this has happened systematically over the last few years there is also Arafat does not control the territories completely they are family based gangs there are also other terrorist organizations that are more religious in nature Arafat comes from a Marxist socialist background he's not a Muslim in the religious sense although he presents himself that way for political reasons and the Muslim fundamentalists have their own police force and gangs and terrorist activity so there's anarchy within there anarchy as all anarchy is completely based on force and non-violence thank you for your lecture I just wanted to you're doing some more of what I was going to ask I'd like some more facts about between Israeli political conditions and cultural conditions and those of the Arabs for instance I was surprised to learn a few years ago if this is correct that there are Arab in effect congressmen in the Knesset I assume there are no Jewish congressmen in whatever rules Syria, Lebanon Egypt no and Jews none of those countries as soon as the state of Israel was established there are Arab members of parliament in Israel there have been Arab members of the government there have been Arabs that have sat in the government I can't remember the exact ministries that they got Arabs vote you won the writers argued of the last few elections that the only reason the left Barak and before him won those elections is because the Arabs voted for the left's representative the margin was so close that it's clear that the Arab voters were determined the fate of those elections so Arabs vote there are actually some Arabs who are right wing now the only difference in terms of rights many people say Arabs are discriminated against in Israel and in some cases they probably are but Arabs have full legal rights in Israel if you view this as a violation all Jews in Israel have to serve in the army men serve at least in my time was three years women served two years Arabs do not have to do that they don't get to go into the army they can't even volunteer now there are sects of Arabs that do serve in the Israeli army because they have volunteered because they hate the Syrians and the Egyptians and so on as much as the Jews do there is a sect called the Jews and there are other sects that serve in the Israeli army and are very very diligent and good soldiers in that army so in terms of politics there is an enormous difference there is no democratic Arab country in the Middle East Lebanon is probably the closest during its heyday in the 60s then it became 1972 I think it was it went into civil war with the Muslims and the Muslims the Muslims the Christians and the Jews slaughtering each other until the early 1990s Hi my question is about Madeline Albright and her role in all this I personally feel no matter how many attempts she makes to try to be that peacemaker I really think that Arafat and all his people it's basically a religious war it's always been and it will continue to do so what is your opinion about that? I think Madeline Albright is evil not only is she encouraging negotiations with Arafat and compromising putting pressure on Israel in order to do so you know she's behind a policy with regard to China she's also was regularly visited Assad the Syrian tyrant and I can't remember if she went to the funeral or if Clinton was considering going to Assad's funeral and this is a man who when there was opposition in a northern town in Syria sent the troops in and they basically annihilated the town killing every man woman and children there this is a ruthless dictator and this is somebody who I hope died very slowly and painfully and who the Clinton administration wanted to send representatives to be at his wedding at his funeral yes Tom I just wanted to clarify something did you say that Israel for a period didn't have a constitution or doesn't have a constitution Israel does not have a constitution to this day and could you say more, you said something about religious conflict if you could just clarify that a little bit thanks Israel doesn't have a constitution today primarily because of the conflict between secular Jews and religious Jews the religious Jews will block it at every opportunity because the secular Jews would like to have a relatively secular constitution and the religionists would like it to be based on Jewish religion and Jewish law now in addition there's a conflict between the socialists and the right historically the socialists would have wanted a very socialist they would have wanted to put the socialist principles into the constitution and the right objective to that so it's kind of multiple conflicts it's religion, socialism the right the religious parties would have wanted to say something like this countries based on God's word we have a right to this land because of God and we have an established Jewish law now as it is in Israel certain aspects of life are governed by Jewish law so for example you cannot have a secular wedding you can only have a religious wedding otherwise it is not recognized by the state divorce is only is only the religious parties can do that so there are a number of these issues that relate particularly to families that the religious parties have a monopoly over and where civil law is secular and religious law applies to some parts of the country I think if there is a constitution the religious will demand much more expanded role they are actually now in the process of condemning the Israeli Supreme Court for being too secular being too European not that they are any good but they are not at least they are not religious could you say something about what children learn growing up in the kibbutz kibbutz is a fascinating phenomena the kibbutz, the original kibbutz was a true egalitarian communist community everybody did the same work everybody lived in the same kind of apartment you could not have a better apartment if you wanted a TV everybody had to have a TV the children did not grow up with their parents children grew up communally together in one big room they all slept together the person responsible for bringing up the children meals were eaten communally there were no kitchens in their apartments so that everybody had to go to the dining room to eat together now that did not last very long they couldn't hold on to that now for a while when the original generation of the founders really believed in this in spite of their right of everything sustained it the next generation could not kibbutz have changed dramatically today there are differences in apartments people can have bank accounts outside the kibbutz as soon as you join a kibbutz you had to give them all your property everything, you had to sell your home you had to take your bank account and give everything to the kibbutz all money was owned, all property land and everything was owned by the kibbutz it's also true that the kibbutz has always been subsidized it's never been economically sustainable but what's happened is that slowly deteriorates for example parents would sneak into the communal place for the kids and see their kids privately which was against the law people would snack outside of the general dining room and slowly kitchens started being introduced into the homes televisions and so on now kibbutz still exist they were a horrible place and the people on there are disgusting not because they believe in these ideals because they don't even believe in that they are in the kibbutz because they are afraid to leave because they're afraid of what reality going out there and working and dealing with reality and they hate each other's guts now I worked in a kibbutz we did, I was a construction manager in a former life and we built buildings on some of these kibbutz and the backstabbing the gossiping the obvious hatred they had for each other is amazing now they put on a nice front for tourists because they generate some other revenue from that and because they like to get those American teenagers coming to work on the kibbutz but they are very unpleasant places now what's happened today which is an interesting phenomenon and being there while we were building these buildings you could see this there are about five people who do all the work everybody else sneaks into the back home, they all go out at six o'clock because there's a social pressure to go out and do the farming but by eleven o'clock half of them are snuck back into their homes don't do anything and there are about five people who drive the whole thing forward and they are the ones who do the work they're the ones who do whatever slight innovation there is they're the ones who innovate but for many many years the kibbutz was the moral ideal in Israel it was the ideal that you grew up with this was perfection and that's part of this collectivizing that goes on in terms of collectivizing the youth Steven in recent years in this country it appears to me that I've been very aware of what strikes me as a somewhat disturbingly unprincipled obsession with commemorating the holocaust in other words I think there are school kids who are being taught in this country that we have to be always vigilant for people who might be wearing swastikas and call themselves Nazis once again they might surface and they have a hatred of Jewish people is there anything like this comparable in Israel and if that kind of thing goes on in Israel what's the impact given you say that they're being poisoned with the idea that Israeli actions are no better than Nazi actions this horrific yeah I mean we grew up with images of the holocaust they were blasted on TV regularly they were in the classroom they were in books it was part of this process of collectivization it was a lot more than just here's something horrible that happened it's historical role in the founding of Israel is this and these are the explanations for why it happened it was a call to arms it was a call to arms it was repeated over and over and over again and it's overdone there's no doubt about that and I think that's part of the reaction against that but imagine imagine growing up as I did with those images in your face all the time and then being compared to the Nazis it's exactly your point I mean think what that does psychologically to you you are one of those guys that throughout your life you've been taught of this is the most evil thing that can happen and you saw the consequences because they projected them on TV all the movie clips ever of the holocaust I've seen at some point so it has a horrific impact yeah Objectivism is making some progress in American universities is it making any progress in Israeli universities no because I think the good objectivist leave so we're making progress in the universities here because some of them no I mean as I said there are very few objectivists I think the better ones leave Israel because not so much because of the physical threat but because of the collectivism that's so embedded in the culture I think now I would leave because of the physical threat when I left it wasn't really as much of an issue in my mind it was more the issue of the socialism collectivism this is a little tangential I hope you can answer it can you explain why Jewish intellectuals always lean toward the communist socialist left wing axis and some who are not present I can speculate and that it has to do with I think altruism and the inherent altruism within the Jewish culture and the Jewish religion I also think that as I don't know if this is right but as a persecuted minority in the 18th and 19th centuries unfortunately for whatever reason they didn't see the US alternative the right to liberty they viewed all the west as discriminating and hurting them and for whatever reason it seemed like the left with its egalitarian notions of everybody being equal appealed to them much more than the alternative which wasn't philosophically didn't have a strong philosophical base and was in America which was I think still far for them especially those intellectuals growing up in the small villages in Poland and Russia it was some of the relatives had gone to America but beyond that they had no idea of what was going on that's the best I can do plus Jews have been attracted to intellectual movements since again the 18th century whether we like it or not the most intellectual movements of the 19th and early 20th century were all left wing there were no good right wing intellectual movements in Europe during those decades hopefully we're changing that Hi I'm the helpful Southern California Honda person and recently we've been doing Random Acts of Helpfulness like surprising a deserving dad with a brand new grill and helping give back to our veterans and during the Honda summer spectacular event we can help you too with a great deal on a reliable award winning Honda like the Accord the 2018 North American car of the year click the dealer locator link to find a dealer near you local Honda dealers dot com to suggest a random act of helpfulness for someone you know my question is about the professor Cohen that you mentioned instrumental in spreading Kantian ideas of Jewish duty was that also some elements or were there elements in his thought of I guess of Nietzschean ideas like in the genealogy of morals I know Nietzsche says that it's the role in history to teach suffering to the world and I because you talked about Jewish teaching suffering is there a strong strain of that Nietzschean thought in Israel I don't know I in Israel I don't know best dance I can get I have two related questions you were talking about the education level in Israel so I was wondering is there a brain drain going out of Israel and are there immigration restrictions out of Israel out of Israel or into Israel out of Israel no you can leave Israel it's not a problem to leave it's a question of where can you go the U.S. makes it very very difficult to get into the United States there is a brain drain going on you can see that if you go to Silicon Valley where a significant part of the startups and of the engineers there are Israelis however there is far less of a brain drain than one would expect given the conditions in Israel and this goes back to the sense of collectivism a Jewish collectivism that you know almost I won't say brainwashed but is pounded with farm childhood it makes it difficult for the best even the best to leave and Israel today is probably second only to the U.S. if not to Silicon Valley in high tech there are more Israeli startups in Israel in the high tech area than in any other country Israeli companies on the Nasdaq the only other country that has more companies on the Nasdaq outside the United States of Canada Israel has more startups on the Nasdaq than any European country so there is a brain drain but there are a lot of smart engineers still in Israel you know that has to do with we actually have a traditional fairly good educational system in Israel that with all this collectivism still teaches you math and reading and so you don't see it there's no problem in leaving Israel and there is still immigration to Israel mostly from most immigration recently to Israel has been from Russia and it has been a very uneducated very these people are relatively backward in both their education and their culture you can't expect much from somebody who has lived in the communism for so many years but that's the biggest immigration into Israel right now I guess that's a signal we're done, thank you all material in this program is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any form or manner nor played before a live audience without the express written permission of the producer, the Ein Rand Institute for further information or to order other products please visit estor.einrand.org or call 1-800-729-6149 so much for a newborn we need to start planning his baptism and his holiday outfit and his birthday party sure but how long are you planning to stay if you're one of those who goes to meet your newborn nephew and stays until his first birthday party switch to cricket wireless use your phone as many days as you want in Mexico without extra cost smile, you're on cricket requires eligible plan minimum $55 per month data speed usage and other restriction supply coverage not available everywhere, see store for details welcome to the total wireless store we're total confidence awaits I need a smart phone with an awesome camera got anything to fit in new dad's budget don't worry, you got this with total wireless select phones $99 and up my relatives won't miss a thing now you can focus on the important stuff like diaper duty discover the total wireless stores and get total confidence the latest phones, the best network, all at great prices now open in LA visit store for details