Moshe Feiglin Video

Moshe Feiglin: Israel Must Build an Exemplary Society (6:24)

27 Tevet '72/Jan. 22,  '12

English transcript under movie screen

 

Moshe Feiglin: Israel Must Build an Exemplary Society

Manhigut Yehudit translated its ideology into political power. It has pushed forward my candidacy for leadership of the Likud. Its goal is to create leadership that will unite Israeli society around its Jewish identity and give the State of Israel substance and purpose and goals that go beyond the current slogans about Israel being a Jewish state. These have become nothing more than just slogans because, in practice, the national Israeli agenda is being led by forces that desire to chip away at this identity.
In my opinion, the greatest threat for the state of Israel at this time is the process of delegitimization that is challenging the Jewish State’s right to exist.

In the Western world they no longer see the Jewish nation’s right to have a state of its own as a foregone conclusion.
That is the danger.

Our right to exist is being challenged. When there is a question mark hovering over our right to exist, this deligitimization process will transform from an intellectual threat to an existential threat.
That, in my opinion, is the biggest of all threats.

Just to strengthen the point that I am making right now, I want to remind the public that the brutal Holocaust which we went through 70 years ago did not spring up out of nowhere. It came after a long process of delegitimization similar to this one.
In other words, delegitimization always precedes the phase of physical destruction, and we are now in such a process of delegitimization.

There are two causes of this delegitimization process.
The first cause is that when the modern Amalek, Ahmajinedad, said that he wants to annihilate the Jews, he was not met with any serious response. Immediately after he said that, everyone was shocked, but afterwards, just like with the Biblical Amalek; he jumped into the hot water and was criticized for it, but when the world saw that we were not reacting, his statements became part of the public discourse.

Our very right to exist as a state is being questioned and has become a subject of discussion.
He broke through the barrier, and now, in the universities and intellectual forums in the Western world, like Sorbonne and Cambridge, the question of whether the state of Israel has a right to exist is an increasingly popular and legitimate discussion topic.

Because of this new trend, Israeli military officers and government ministers cannot travel to many European nations, which is something that we have never seen in the past. There is a big question mark hovering over our right to exist and it is growing.
From where is this coming? Up to now I have outlined the external reason for our deletigimization.

From a deeper perspective, what is the source of this threat?
It comes from the fact that we, ourselves, do not really want to be a Jewish state, and we express this in our body language and politics, in our domestic and foreign policy. Although we say that we are a Jewish state, we are in reality running from it.
It is very interesting to see the intellectual discussion; how British intellectuals and others explain their objection to the state of Israel. They explain that it is this behavior that bothers them. In truth, the British really did establish the physical foundation of the state of Israel. They say, we gave you a state; although the accuracy of that claim is questionable; they say, we gave you a state because we thought that the nation of the Bible would return to Zion and a new message would come out of Zion that would redeem the entire world.
 
This is how they speak. It’s fascinating. I saw this in an interview in the newspaper Makor Rishon between Meir Uziel and Professor Zeev Tzachor, the president of Sapir College in Sderot, who is an extreme Leftist, and he explained what his colleagues in England told him.

How is it that when they describe why the state of Israel has lost its right to exist, they say the exact same things that Manhigut Yehudit has been saying? They say, you were supposed to bring forth a new vision to the world. You were supposed to establish an ideal society, and by using your cultural foundations, build a new path of freedom, like what the prophets described; something new, a vision for all of humanity.

Instead, what has come out of all of this? You have created a new outpost of the Western world.
But we have enough Western outposts, we don’t need another one, another outpost of the West, of democracy, of America and Europe.

This outpost has become a hot spot for wars and conflicts, and may even cause a Third World War. For that, we don’t need you.

So maybe we made a mistake in giving you a state.
And, you know what, they are right. And that is Manhigut Yehudit’s message.
We want to change direction, make a 180 degree turn, embrace our identity and create a truly Jewish society.
To give Israelis a new vision that will unite them in happiness and pride.
That will unite all aspects of society, whether it is our approach to the family or the economy, and of course, security, an approach that will unite us all around our Jewish ideals, and as Manhigut Yehudit continues to develop within the current political reality, we discover that we have the answers. Not only to the question of what we will do with the Arabs, that is small change. But what we will do with the Jews. What we will do about education, economy, and the status of the family.