“If you do not let my people go,” says Moses to Pharaoh, “all of Egypt will be filled with frogs.”
“Nonsense!” Pharaoh snorts. He claps his hand, and his wizards add their own frogs to Moses’s croaking chorus.
It sounds strange, doesn’t it? It is as if, in reaction to Kassams on Sderot, Israel would also bomb the town. What we must understand is that the plagues did not threaten Pharaoh. What threatened his regime was the concept. The entire Egyptian regime was based on idol worship. It was the power source of the regime and the foundation of Egypt’s societal order. According to Pharaoh’s logic, as long as his wizards could perform the same wonders as Moses, everything was under control. The plagues were just a technical difficulty that he would somehow deal with.
When we see Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hell-bent on dividing Jerusalem, surrendering the Golan, expelling Jews, and doing more and more of what has already caused us so much anguish, we can see that Pharaoh still lives. The current regime is not at all interested in the nation that it is supposed to be leading. It is interested in just one thing – its own survival, even if that comes at the expense of the nation’s survival.
We all understand that the madness will continue – for the same reason that Pharaoh remained stubborn in face of the plagues. An entire tyrannical elite has built itself on the Oslo rationale. What did we think? That after the first bus exploded, Peres, Beilin and all the journalists, professors, army officers, secret service agents and Yossi Ginosars – with fat profits from the new order – would say, “Sorry, we made a mistake,” bury their faces in shame, apologize and resign?
It is difficult for the average citizen to accept the fact that his fate does not really interest the government. But that is the reality. The art of good governance is to create a situation whereby the leadership and citizens share the same interest. But here in Israel, at least since the Oslo Accords were signed, the interests of people and government have become diametrically opposed. That is why the people of Israel absorb blow after blow while the Accords continue to provide quite well for a very particular group of personalities. The most prominent among them is President Shimon Peres. It is just what Sharon’s former assistant from Unit 101, Shlomo Baum, a”h, once told me: “Shimon Peres doesn’t care if the entire country turns into a heap of ashes – as long as he is standing at the top of the heap.”
We recently commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. We all feel that the state is rapidly turning into a heap of ashes. Somehow all the modern traffic interchanges, the hi-tech, the economy, and the glitter do not cajole the nation from its chronic state of depression. Everyone more or less feels the pervading despair – that everything in Israel is temporary, and we are living here on borrowed time. Israel’s leaders will do whatever they must to retain their own interests, even if those interests contradict the interests of the nation.
An elderly man once told me how, on the Shabbat of his bar mitzvah in Hungary, a strange, ghost-like figure suddenly burst into the synagogue, ran up to the stage and began shouting, “I escaped from Auschwitz to warn you, my Jewish brothers. Run away! Run away or they will burn you!”
“Within moments,” the elderly man continued, “the caretakers of the synagogue took the poor man by the arms and removed him from the synagogue. When they dragged him out, he accidentally touched me. I still remember how my entire body shook. Not long after, I was also deported to Auschwitz.”
What can I tell you, dear readers? What you see and what you hear and what you feel is the exact truth. The State of Israel really is turning into a heap of ashes. In your hearts, you know it. That is why you do not mange to rejoice on Independence Day, and all the 60-year celebrations seem to you more like the grand finale. Don’t believe a word that the caretakers tell you. Get rid of them and follow those people who have liberated themselves from the idols of peace and Oslo, the people who love you and believe in you. Follow those people who sacrifice themselves for you, who cling to this land and to our God.
Moshe Feiglin is the founder and president of Manhigut Yehudit (the Jewish Leadership movement), dedicated to building authentic Jewish leadership for Israel. For more information or to order Feiglin’s newest book, The War of Dreams, visit http://www.jewishisrael.org/.
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