One of the most important ingredients of statesmanship is to foster national unity. A prerequisite of national unity is the citizen’s belief that he and his fellow-citizens share supreme values. Which usually means invoking the Name of God.

God in America

How did George Washington address this issue? Let’s consider a few words from his famous “Farewell Address,” America’s most important state paper.

In exemplary fashion, Washington engendered and reinforced belief in the value of national unity by appealing to the three motivating factors of human nature: sentiment, interests, and ideas. Accordingly, he points out that:

With slight shades of difference, you have the same Religion, Manners, Habits and political Principles.

Note: he mentions religion first.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the renowned author of Democracy in America, writes: “Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.” Americans, he said, combine the notions of religion and freedom so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”

Hence, with the exception of Barack Obama, American presidents often invoke the name of God. In fact, the American Presidency Project website lists the whopping number of 10,984 presidential references to God, with only 267 to Jesus.

Israel v. Arabs

Unlike Israeli prime ministers, Arab leaders, in their ambition to gain control of the Land of Israel, frequently invoke the name of God – in their case, “Allah.” Even if they have murder in their hearts, their appeal to God (or “Allah”) sanctifies His name and thereby furthers the Arab cause vis-à-vis Israel whose leaders are unabashed secularists. Perhaps I am mistaken – and if so I apologize in advance – but Mr. Netanyahu rarely if ever invokes the name of God in a public address.

This goes to the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It underlies the failure of critics of the “peace process” to have any discernible effect on Israel’s government-sponsored territorial shrinkage since the 1993 Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement.

Anwar Sadat

No one can deny that the Arabs have made enormous gains since Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977. Recall his speech in the Knesset, a speech broadcast to countless millions of people around the world. In the first ten sentences of that speech Sadat intoned the name of God ten times!

Wonder of wonders, without firing a shot, Egypt recovered the Sinai with its Alma oil fields and sophisticated air bases – a $17 billion infrastructure developed by Jews. Egypt obtained all this in exchange for what Sadat scornfully called “a piece of paper.”

Arafat and Hussein

And when Yasser Arafat, exiled in Tunis, triumphantly marched into Gaza as a result of the Oslo Agreement and there spoke of the ultimate aims of the “Palestinians,” he, too, invoked the name of God on behalf of the Arab cause. Behold the result! The Arabs now control Gaza. Worse: PM Netanyahu has verbally or virtually yielded Judea and Samaria by endorsing a Palestinian state!

Turn, now, to the late King Hussein of Jordan. Again and again Hussein intoned the name of God while calling for “peace and justice,” whether he was speaking from Amman or from Washington. And lo and behold, in October 1994 he signed a peace treaty with Israel, in which treaty the godless government of Yitzhak Rabin rewarded Hussein with 330 square kilometers of Jewish land!

Arabs, inspired by “Allah” and confident in the justice of their cause, advance; Jews, longing for peace and silent about God, only retreat. Let us try to understand the Arab advance and the Jewish retreat in psychological terms.

Jews give up the store when they fail to call on God

Because Jews clamor only for peace, they make no serious demands on Arabs. Indeed, Israeli governments are ever making unilateral concessions. This can only arouse Arab contempt and encourage them to make more demands, however outrageous. But the Arabs are predisposed to make demands if only because they demand “peace and justice.”

Justice involves a relation between persons and things. In the present context, the persons are Arabs and Jews, while the things consist of land. Arab leaders vow they will not be satisfied until they possess all the Land of Israel. Contrast the Jews, satisfied with a mere strip of this land. The asymmetry is striking and ominous.

The Arab’s maximalist attitude, paraded in terms of justice, precludes justice. So does the Jewish attitude, which is silent about justice. The Jews are also silent about Divine Justice, according to which the entire Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish People. The Jews want only peace, for which they are willing to give Arabs land. But peace, unlike land, is not a tangible thing. Justice in these terms is not possible. Only Divine Justice is possible, but this exalted idea does not animate Israel’s godless leaders.

Nevertheless, godless Jews have been desperately seeking a common ground with their Allah-inspired Arab enemies. The Jews would like to believe that Arabs, like themselves, fear violent death, hence war. But Arab suicide-bombers tell a different story: they believe in paradise. Godless Jews do not – another asymmetry. As for religious Jews, they cling to life under the danger-to-life avoidance concept of pekuach nefesh. So how can Jews, by yielding land, purchase peace from Arabs who love war and even death in the name of “Allah”?

Will the people see wisdom?

But wait! God has given the Jews the best of enemies! This enemy exposes the artificial foundations of the present secular-Zionist State of Israel! Day after day the Jews of Israel suffer degradation from the insincerity, deviousness, and lack of moral courage of their prime ministers. We behold such leaders with increasing disgust – their lack of wholehearted dedication to that which alone justifies Israel’s existence: the God of Israel, the Torah of Israel, and the Land of Israel.

Sooner or later, Israel will vomit out these play actors who pretend to speak and act for the People of the Book. Sooner or later, this People will rise up and restore God’s Holy Name in the domain of statecraft. ◙