RELIGIOUS ZIONIST LEADER'S ALTERNATIVE VISION OF

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TEL AVIV 000372 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/02/2017 TAGS: PREL PGOV SOCI IS KPAL SUBJECT: RELIGIOUS ZIONIST LEADER'S ALTERNATIVE VISION OF ISRAEL Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Gene A. Cretz, Reason 1.4 (b) (d) ¶1. (C) Summary. Renewed Religious National Zionist Party leader, Reserve Brigadier General Effie Eitam, offered both a harsh critique and an alternative vision of Israel in a January 24 meeting with PolCouns and Deputy PolCouns. Eitam stated that the secular Zionist program had run its course, leading the Jewish people into a potential death trap in which Iran threatened to repeat the Holocaust through a nuclear attack on Israel. Eitam, who was born and raised on a secular kibbutz and converted to a religious Zionist worldview during his military service, claimed that the wave of corruption and sexual misbehavior cases shaking the Israeli establishment as well as the mismanagement of the IDF that became clear during the second Lebanon war had a common source: the moral and spiritual exhaustion of secular Zionism. Eitam asserted that only the reintegration of Jewish religious values into the Israeli state and society would save Israel from destruction. Without offering a specific program, Eitam declared that an Israel that insisted on its right to the Land of Israel and rejected pressure to make concessions to the Arabs would win the respect of the rest of the world. Eitam represents a minority of Israeli Jews, and he is often sharply criticized as an extremist, particularly by the Israeli left. His views, however, resonate widely among the settler movement, where he is considered a relative moderate. Formerly Minister of Housing and Construction in Arik Sharon's government, Eitam resigned over Sharon's decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip. End summary. Israel A Potential Death Trap for the Jews -------------- ¶2. (C) PolCouns and Deputy PolCouns called on Eitam January 24 in his Knesset office. Meeting the day after the announcement that two counts of rape charges would be filed against President Katsav, Eitam launched into a prolonged but articulate diatribe against what he termed the failures and illusions on which the secular Israeli state is founded. Eitam proclaimed that Israel was failing to achieve its principal raison d'etre: to be a haven for persecuted Jews. Not only is Israel the only country in the world today in which Jews are murdered simply because they are Jews, Eitam declared, the threat of nuclear annihilation by Iran meant that the entire Zionist enterprise might turn out to be the cruelist of hoaxes: The state founded to serve as a safehaven for the Jewish people could turn out to be their latest mass graveyard. Loss of Jewish Values Leading to Moral Exhaustion -------------- -------------- ¶3. (C) Warming to his subject, Eitam described the spate of corruption and sexual misbehavior charges currently shaking the Israeli establishment as the logical outcome of the secular Zionist attempt over the last century to create an Israeli society and state stripped of traditional Jewish traditions and values. The Zionist founding fathers believed that if they created a "normal" country in which there would be Jewish thieves and prostitutes as well as Jewish police, anti-Semitism would cease to exist because the rest of the world would accept Israel as just like them. Instead, anti-Semitism was becoming as virulent today as it had been in the 1930s. Furthermore, if Israel was established only to become a miniature America, why should Israeli citizens put up with bearing the burdens of the constant threat of war, a burden that would likely continue for generations to come? Israelis had skills and connections around the world. Absent a more powerful sense of purpose, Israelis could easily emigrate to the U.S. rather than endure the threats and hardships of living in Israel. ¶4. (C) Turning to what Israelis now term the Second Lebanon War, Eitam said the gradual decline of the IDF's morale and fighting spirit that had been exposed by the war was also a direct result of the failure of Israel's secular establishment. Former IDF COGS Halutz and Defense Minister Peretz had refused to call up the reserves until the last minute because reserves insist on asking questions. Young recruits, by contrast, can be sent to the front without having to explain the war's goals or the tactics chosen. The decline in the IDF's capabilities was not an accident, but a result of the moral and intellectual vaccuum at the top of the Israeli ruling class, including a corrupted military leadership selected on the basis of political connections, not leadership ability. (Note: Critics of the IDF's performance on the Israeli left tend to offer a somewhat similar critique except that they blame the effect of policing the occupation of the Palestinian territories for the loss of the IDF's traditions of audacity and command by TEL AVIV 00000372 002 OF 002 example.) A Recipe for Israeli Revival? -------------- ¶5. (C) Eitam harshly criticized his former mentor and political ally, Arik Sharon, for losing his grip the last year before his stroke. Eitam, who resigned from Sharon's government in 2004 over Sharon's decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, insisted that Sharon was largely responsible for the situation in which Israel found itself. Eitam insisted that Sharon and many Israelis had understood perfectly well that Hamas would turn Gaza into a terrorist base, and that Qassam rocket attacks would continue to hit nearby Israeli towns and kibbutzim. "How can we expect Arabs to respect us when they see us destroying our own synagogues?" he asked rhetorically. Eitam also asserted that "everyone" had understood that Hamas would win the Palestinian national assembly elections, and yet the GOI had not insisted on barring Hamas from participation. In his analysis, the process of unilateral Israeli withdrawals, including Ehud Barak's decision to withdraw from southern Lebanon, had merely served to whet Palestinian and Arab appetitites and undermine Israel's deterrence. ¶6. (C) Despite the grim picture he painted, Eitam described himself as optimistic. Many Israelis were fed up with the country's current feckless leadership and were hungry for a moral revival grounded in Jewish traditions. Israel could restore its deterrence by returning to the doctrine of asymetric retaliation, a doctrine once personified by Arik Sharon. Recounting a vacation in a remote area of Alaska, where he faced down a bear by following his American guide's advice that he stand still and tall while speaking softly to the bear, Eitam said the lesson he had internalized was that Israel would thrive and prosper if it simply stopped making concessions and made clear that it had no self-doubts about the morality of its right to the Land of Israel. While Iran was a serious challenge, it was one that Israel had the means to handle if it could find the will. At the same time, Israel could revive itself socially and politically by embracing its Jewish religious identity and rejecting secular Zionism. ¶7. (C) Comment: Eitam's vision is simplistic and without nuance. In many ways he comes across as a throwback to the Gush Emunim settlers of the 1970s and 1980s, who believed that settling the West Bank would trigger the coming of the Messiah. While we doubt Eitam's extreme religious approach is likely to appeal to many mainstream Israelis, his disgust with Israel's current leadership reflects a broader sense of profound dismay in Israeli society that is by no means limited to the far right. ********************************************* ******************** Visit Embassy Tel Aviv's Classified Website: http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/telaviv You can also access this site through the State Department's Classified SIPRNET website. ********************************************* ******************** CRETZ