Tuvia's views of the news
08 November '11
http://tuviainil.blogspot.com/2011/11/ex-mossad-chief-ephraim-halevy-and.html
With the same breath that Israel’s Left promotes ‘democracy’ for Israel, it betrays democracy and threatens its survival. In case you have forgotten, democracy requires multiple basics, including—at its foundation--both an honest press and majority rule. One might well argue that the fastest way to destroy a democracy is through a dishonest press and leadership from self-appointed elite. History has taught us repeatedly that democracy can fall when the press is more propaganda than truth or when a minority assaults the voice of the majority; and democracy completely fails when the press suppresses truth and leadership rejects the will of the people. Such is the case today here, right now, in Israel. The greatest threat to Israel’s democracy is a Leftist call to defend a fictitious ‘democracy’ using a viciousness that is closer to religious hatred than democratic tolerance.
Recent statements of former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy illustrate this point. Halevy, in a speech to a reunion of military academy graduates, identified the haredi (ultra-religious Jews) as a greater threat to Israel than Iran. He seemed particularly angered that, among today’s religious in Israel, boys will not dance with girls and religious soldiers do not want to be required to listen to female singers. For some, it is laughable that anyone intelligent enough to become head of Mossad should believe that (non) dancing and (non) listening represent a greater threat to Israel’s survival than an Iranian nuclear weapon. But these remarks are serious because they reflect the mantra of Israel’s Left: (1) ‘democracy’ is synonymous with ‘no-religion’; and (2) ‘democracy’ must be protected by attacking or denigrating religion and the religious--which exactly what Halevy did. Haaretz, one of Israel’s leading newspapers, makes its living by defining religion as the nemesis of democracy. Indeed, as if to remind us of this connection, Halevy echoes a report (during the same week) that quotes Leftist journalist Gideon Levy declaring that religious Jews (he calls them ‘settlers’) have a mark of Cain on their foreheads—and we must stop them before they complete a ‘hostile takeover’; in the same week, Ilan Ben Zion wrote that the ‘mullahs [rabbis] of Mea Shearim’ aim to take over all of Israel (notice the denigrating references). The inference here is that the greatest threat to Israel’s democracy is the settler, the religious and the haredi. This is a truth for the Left because they define religion as fascism; and as Haaretz reminds us repeatedly, fascism is the enemy of democracy. Of course, what these comments actually mean is that the anti-religious Left is terrified that the religious could actually be serving in the IDF or attending Israel’s schools, participating successfully and competitively in a modern world even with strongly held religious beliefs. In America, these would be called inspiring examples of democracy’s freedom of religion. But in Israel it is called fascist and racist—and a threat to our survival that must be stopped. This is how the Left defends our ‘democracy’, by dismissing, demonizing or otherwise attacking the religious.
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