Eight years ago, on January 3, 2008, the Jerusalem Post published a tirade by Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe. Rabbi Wolpe denounced Israel’s left-wing political elites. He accused the Left of collaborating with Israel’s implacable enemies, the crypto-Nazi Palestinians. He blasted then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a “traitor who … collaborates with these Nazis.”

Wolpe was roundly condemned by politicians and other rabbis for his bald denunciation of Israel’s left-wing rulers, especially for his saying they should be hung for collaborating with the Palestinians. Not that he was calling for vigilante violence. As any fair-minded person would see, he had in mind punishment meted out to criminals in a court of law.

Of crypto-Nazi attitudes and double standards

The outcry against Rabbi Wolpe was another manifestation of the double standards operative in Israel: one standard for the secular Left, another for the religious “Right.” Israel’s policy-makers and opinion-makers have long been dominated by the Left, the Labor Party. But Wolpe’s broadside also applies to the Likud. The Likud has been called the right-wing of the Labor Party. This may be inferred from the fact that Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu has not only released Arab terrorists who have murdered Jewish men, women, and children. Like his reputedly hawkish predecessor, Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu has endorsed a Muslim state in Judea and Samaria, Israel’s heartland.

Now, to obtain a historical framework for this Labor-Likud collaboration with the Muslim-Arab successors of the Nazis, let us examine Left’s condemnation of Israel’s religious community. Before doing so, however, we need to clarify the meaning of Nazism.

What is a Nazi?

According to the Nazi, Martin Heidegger, reputedly one of the greatest philosophers of the 20^thcentury, not National Socialism, but hatred of Judaism is the quintessence of Nazism. Heidegger knew whereof he spoke. But if Nazism is hatred of Judaism, then any individual who harbors hatred of Judaism may be called, say a “crypto-Nazi.” Although he may not support genocide, the crypto-Nazi may be as insidious as the outright Nazi.

To illustrate, many people in Europe intimate, what former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad baldly stated, that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” What is the existential difference between this genocidal idea and the idea of those who support statehood for the Palestinian Authority, which entails the expulsion of Jews from Judea and Samaria, the strategic as well as the spiritual heartland of the Jewish people? The answer is None.

What a crypto-Nazi might be

Yet the elimination of Jewish sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is the logical consequence of the political attitude and territorial position taken not only by Pope Francis, but also by Benjamin Netanyahu! Moreover, as reported by the Jerusalem Post on June 21, 2016, Israeli opposition Leader Isaac Herzog is willing to relinquish 100 percent of Judea and Samaria to the Arabs and even allow Arab refugees to return to Jerusalem!

None of those mentioned in the previous paragraph is a Nazi; yet their territorial position entails the Nazi’s Judenrein conclusion! Hence, Jews in Judea and Samaria might reasonably regard the creeping crypto-Nazi position of Pope Francis, Netanyahu, and Herzog more insidious than that of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas!

Moral relativism again

To make my position crystal clear in this age of “political correctness” or obscurantism, I disregard any subjective or peaceful intentions of the Pope or of Herzog or of Netanyahu regarding Judea and Samaria. I contend that opposition to Jewish possession of Judea and Samaria, which includes Jerusalem, is existentially equivalent to a primitive animosity toward Judaism. The basic grounds for this animosity have been indirectly conveyed by a multitude of left-wing academics in America.

The Left has dominated “higher” education in America, as well as in Israel, for more than four decades. The most distinctive philosophical characteristic of the Left is the historical relativism of Karl Marx, which translates into the academic doctrine of cultural and especial moral relativism. This moral relativism of the Left prompted me to write a critique of American higher education, “The Crisis of Our Times,” which was published in the Congressional Record, Senate, July 31, 1968.

The academic doctrine of historical-cum-moral relativism negates the trans-historical or universalistic ideas of the Bible of Israel, the seedbed of the American Republic. Hence left-wing academic hostility toward Israel is a cover for hatred of the Bible. This animosity obviously entails Jew-hatred, the meaning of “anti-Semitism.”

Anti-Israel sentiment at the UN

The flag of the United Nations. (Public domain as per UN policy.)

Jew-hatred or Israel-hatred is a recurring obscenity of the United Nations. The European members of the UN often vote with the Arab states, and not merely for economic reasons. The countless UN resolutions condemning Israel suggest that a majority of its members qualify as crypto-Nazis – given Heidegger’s definition of Nazism.

But what shall we say about the hatred of Judaism by Jews? It would be outrageous to call such Jews “Crypto-Nazis” – even though the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz had the audacity to refer to Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria as “Judeo-Nazis.” That Leibowitz was not denounced by the media for such an outrage is evidence of pervasive Jew-hatred. Nor was the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin criticized when he referred to the religious opponents of Oslo as “degenerates.” The ugly truth is that Rabin was a closet anti-Semite or self-hating Jew, which is why he appointed the ultra-secular Shulamit Aloni Minister of Education who expunged Judaism from the texts of public education.

Worse than Hitler?

However, as Tel-Aviv University Professor Shlomo Sharan has written, “the cesspool of anti-Semitism belongs to Amos Oz, the famous (or infamous) Israeli novelist, who refers to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as “A messianic cult, insensitive and cruel … a herd of … gangsters criminals against humanity … sadists … murderers … who have sprung out of … the cellars of depravity and bestiality … in order to impose their blood-soaked and insane rituals…” Surely any Gentile that used such language to describe Jews would be deemed a racist, indeed, a Nazi!

Compare Hitler’s less vicious and more interesting assessment of Jews in Mein Kampf: “The Jewish people … is without any true culture, sense of ideal, or defined spatial setting. Thus the Jew lacks those qualities which define nationhood.”

Hitler’s assessment of Jews is not far removed from the post-Zionist attitude and policies of Israeli politicians – Left and Right – who have embraced the policy of “land for peace.” This policy, which trivializes the Holy Land, erases the distinction between the Labor and Likud parties. I will go further and expose the Machiavellian motivations of these two parties.

Demography is destiny

The leaders of both parties know how to count. Both know that such is the high birthrate of religious Jews that, given the democratic principle of one adult/one vote, the demise of these secular parties is inevitable. Indeed, its awareness of its demographic demise induced the Labor Party (with the surreptitious support of the Likud) to initiate the 1993 Oslo Agreement, which was intended to yield Judea and Samaria to the successors of the Nazis!

Both parties discerned that Judea and Samaria, the land on which the prophets tread and taught, would eventually become the most fertile breeding ground for religious Zionists, whose burgeoning number would drastically reduce the Left’s membership in the Knesset and its pivotal power in the Government. The Likud willingly followed Labor’s policy. This is why Netanyahu has opposed abrogation of the Oslo Agreement despite its having been violated countless times by the Palestinian Authority.

Power play

Unseen by journalists and conventional political scientists, the Oslo policy of “land for peace” was a left-wing Machiavellian power play. Only fools believed that peace could be achieved by giving Jewish land to the disciples of Muhammad.

In other words, the Left’s target in Oslo was Judaism and the religious community. This is why the Rabin-led Government that came to power in July 1992 erased the words “Judaism, “Zionism,” and “Eretz Israel” from the Soldier’s Code of Ethics. This is why Rabin appointed the ultra-secular Shulamit Aloni Israel’s education minister. Her task, as indicated, was to purge the public school curriculum of Jewish content.

Only the naive failed see that entrenched in the left-wing Rabin-Government of 1992 was a hatred of Judaism analogous to that which Heidegger deemed the quintessence of Nazism! Small wonder that the left-wing Professor Leibowitz called the Jewish settlers “Judeo-Nazis” – an academic pot calling the kettle black.◙