Former UCLA Professor Gordon Klein and Linir Abu Hazaz, advisor to chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Ram Ben Barak, are two sides of the same Bitcoin. About a year ago, Prof. Klein was fired for refusing to go along with a demand from the Black Lives Matter movement to grade Black students according to easier criteria. He told students he did not discriminate based on skin color, a statement that branded him a primitive racist. His courses were handed over to different lecturers, apparently ones who were privileged to discriminate.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Facts didn't help Klein, not even in an institution responsible for scientific, critical thinking. The obligation to bow down to the weak and oppressed is being accepted in growing circles of the liberal west, just like it was with Karl Marx, as an objective law of nature. There is no parameter for measuring abilities or generalizations that can be rationally justified. If there are gaps in reality, the progressive spirit of the times, the result of unacceptable circumstances, manipulations or artificial constructions, decides that humanity is obligated to fight them and wipe them out.

The woman, the Palestinians, the impoverished, the African American, and finally, even animals – all are equally talented and qualified for everything. It's only the oppressive occupier that hasn't given them a change, and now he is morally obligation to correct this and pay. Is the price irrational? Dangerous? Chaotic? So what – the justified revenge of the oppressed proletarian is worth any price.

The spirit of the oppressed proletariat where it may be was apparently present in Ben Barak's office when he interview Linir Abu Hazaz. He felt progressive when he – as chairman of the most classified Knesset committee – an Arab Muslim woman without wondering of there was any significance to the circles to which she belongs.

"Actually, if you hire her today, Ram," the proletarian spirit whispered, 'You will have passed the entry test into the tribe of the enlightened and you'll throw off the curse of the unenlightened. If you don't, you'll be crucified as a racist."

His years on Moshav Nahalal, in the IDF's Sayeret Matkal unit, and the Mossad, did not prepare Ben Barak for the fight against the winds of progressivism. Even when he was sent pictures of Abu Hazaz with active supporters of terrorism, and he could have concluded that the congenial lawyer felt at home in the subversive and terrorist milieu of Arab Israelis, he ignored it. Only the public shock that caused major PR damage to his party [Yesh Atid] prompted him to announce that he was suspending her temporarily.

Ram Ben Barak is a peon in this global war. Our consciousnesses are all being steamrolled, and the steamroller is demanding that we remove elements of people's identity, saying that a person is a person is a person, and that is all they are. Not gender, not religious, not nationality – these are the products of a false consciousness that we must present as irrelevant. This framework of identities is presented in lectures, in legal tribunals, and in the enlightened cultural milieu, not as a lesser evil, but as a lofty moral peak. Divergence from it turns you into a primitive, excluded racist.

There is no need to say that people must not be rejected based on their ethnicity or religion without relevant context. But it is definitely vital to say that the components of our identity are inherently significant to how we assess and handle reality. The west's distancing itself from identity distances it from insight and threatens its liberty as well as its modern achievements.

One can be blinded by the darkness of the Middle Ages, but also from blinding enlightened-ness. Like the residents of Sodom were blinded, Ram and his friends are blinded by the new pseudo-liberal enlightened-ness. Intellectuals are silent, but any kid can see that the emperor is naked.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post The blinding light of the enlightened appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

"Yitzhar in exchange for Bushehr" – this was the formula proposed to us in 2009 by Rahm Emmanuel, former US President Barack Obama's chief of staff. If you want our support against the ayatollah regime's nuclear program – give us, or rather give the Iranians, Palestine.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

This equation wasn't even groundbreaking at the time. Starting in the late 1960s, Arab states charged a consistent Palestinian tax for any deal with Israel. Every Western leader was forced, as a precondition for diplomacy with Riyadh, Qatar, or Damascus, to publicly denounce Israel, support the Palestinian refugees, or later on – transfer exorbitant amounts of money to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian issue was the entry ticket to the Middle East. If you didn't champion the Palestinian cause, you weren't welcomed into the club.

Somewhat ironically, Iran's growing strength was the primary tool used by Benjamin Netanyahu to fundamentally change the rules of this regional game. As Netanyahu has described, his speech in the US Congress, which saw an Israeli prime minister dare stand up to the leading superpower in its own house and considerably sway American public opinion, inaugurated the Copernican revolution he spearheaded in the region.

In the Middle East and many countries across the globe, leaders largely discarded the Palestinian lie in favor of the benefits of peaceful relations with Israel. For the first time, under the banner of the "Abraham Accords," Muslim states recognized our national rights and historical roots in the region. This diplomatic tsunami surged onward as European and South American countries recognized our biblical and historic capital, Jerusalem, and largely stood alongside Israel in international forums.

Netanyahu's illustrious diplomatic legacy, the fruit of laborious efforts, is now in danger of collapse. The Obama equation is making a revised comeback: "Eviatar in exchange for Bushehr." Obama's protégés in the new administration aren't wasting time. With the ink yet to dry on the letters of congratulations to the Bennett government, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke for a second time with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and reiterated that "practical steps for the Palestinians" have been agreed upon. The details were hashed out in Rome this week, not far from Vienna, where the nuclear deal with Iran was being simultaneously revived.

But what happens in Vienna – won't stay in Vienna. The Palestinian issue, which once again has been propelled to the top of the regional and international agenda, will only bring old-new tidings – absolute de-legitimization of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and murderous jihadist terror.

Buses don't blow up overnight, but the spirit of the Oslo Accords is once again blowing through our region as the dominant paradigm. These winds are also undermining the foundations of the new peace deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. It's not for nothing that the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, echoed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in congratulating Iran's newly elected president and wishing "the Islamic republic and our bilateral relations stability, continuity and prosperity." All of the players can sense this old-new change of direction in the neighborhood and are acting accordingly.

In contrast to the Netanyahu era – and this is a real danger – today the American administration is playing against an empty net. Lapid's promise to keep disagreements "behind closed doors" is essentially a declaration of concession. It means forfeiting Israel's only leverage over American public opinion, and with it any tangible ability to truly effect change.

Similar to the Oslo era, the Palestinian doctrine has many faithful representatives in the Israeli government. Blinken doesn't need to sweat. The foreign, defense, and finance ministers in Israel support a Palestinian state and amending the nation-state law; Nitzan Horowitz, the country's health minister and member of the diplomatic-security cabinet, views IDF officers as war criminals; and all members of the coalition are of course preoccupied with civil matters. They are leaving the diplomatic process, as we saw on Tuesday, to MK Mansour Abbas.

Similar to its apparently singular focus on the coronavirus pandemic, this government seems to only care about the Palestinian issue. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is serving as an excellent government secretary, such that the justification for appointing Shalom Shlomo to that position this week isn't exactly clear.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Oslo winds again blowing through the region appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

On Sunday, Naftali Bennett opened with first cabinet meeting of the new government with the "Sheyechyanu" blessing. And what were the endless blessings about? What value in our national lives has the Bennett-Lapid government put at the center of its agenda? Bennett did not disappoint, and laid out his vision: "Restraint in ideological aspects and progress in practical action, or what is known as 'life itself.'"

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The vision of "practical action" isn't a slip of the tongue. It is the direct continuance of "If it isn't COVID, we don't care about it.'" Bennett is innocently talking about a years-long agenda by Israeli and international forces to "civilianize" patriotism, neutralize our particular identity and redefine the public sphere as a big tenants' committee that supplies services to residents who happen to have found themselves in the same strip of land.

The agenda of Bennett and his fellow "city council" members – Lapid, Gantz, Michaeli, and Abbas – is a dramatic, wretched, and dangerous U-turn for the Zionist movement as it was defined by Binyamin Zeev Herzl, the father of political Zionism. The only common ground the members of this government have is a low-level, civil one.

A coalition like this will cave in along the entire diplomatic line, from Washington to Tehran, from Brussels to Abu Dhabi, because a leadership on this front requires a Zionist agenda and needs to stand up proudly for our national identity and our justified historic and religious rights, which stem from it. Without that, Zionism will be turned into racism and the predictions about a diplomatic tsunami will come true.

The cosmo-politics in the Biden administration and the European Union won't require a lot of effort to strip Israel of its strategic assets and return us to situations of dependency and isolation. The "HOA" of Lapid, Frej, Michaeli, and Abbas won't be able to stand up to them. The opposite – it will lay down a red carpet and together they will march Bennett across the ceremonial lawns of the world to complimentary headlines in the New York Times and, of course, Yedioth Ahronoth. How could they not?

Bennett's first diplomatic instructions to his ministers was to arrive on time for cabinet meetings. Anyone who isn't on time, he said, would be late. But given what the government's work plans look like, they won't miss much.

The daily schedule of Netanyahu, who continued to follow the path of Herzl's legacy, mostly included Sisyphean work to convince others that our path was the right one, and to bring Israel to an unprecedented diplomatic position that fed a meteoric rise in its security and economy. He initiated cooperation that reached its peak when many nations, like Russia and Hungary, stood beside us, and the Abraham Accords were signs with four Muslim nations that recognized the Jews' historic rights.

It didn't happen in a single day, but it could fall apart in one. The average citizen's daily programming could cause them to err. Ayelet Shaked's lip service and Bennett's Singaporean "aspiration for generations to come" of clearing away bureaucracy and red tape will supply coverage at first. And then they will be defended by the legal system and the media. All these will hide the existential danger that this government of all its citizens poses to our borders, and ultimately, our home.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post From Jewish state to local council appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

But our enemies at home and abroad are usually a little smoother than that. They will renounce the direct weapons instead choosing to topple Israel through patience and a hospitable demeanor. "The Zionist factor will be brought to its ruin in a pleasant manner," said the secretary of the Progressive List for Peace, Haim Hanegbi, in the 1980s. Why aggravate the Israelis with firearms when you can finish them off in a more pleasant manner? This quiet elimination policy is based on one central principle: opposition to Israel's definition as a Jewish state. To that end, soft tactics are employed: Israel's opponents "only" seek the cancellation of Jewish aspects of the state, in the name of equality, of course. It is easy to brand this opposition legitimate. Cloaked in democratic terminology and waving the flag of equality, it is easy to brand this opposition legitimate, but the significance, the end of the State of Israel, is clear.

Allow me to repeat what should be obvious: An Israel that is not Jewish is not Israel. Canceling Israel's Jewish identity would mean canceling its very existence. This basic insight guided the Israeli legislature on a series of laws, among them Basic Law: The Knesset, which bans political parties that oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish state from running in elections. The law's wording was not enough to keep the High Court of Justice from repeatedly forcing the Central Elections Committee to allow opponents of the Jewish state to run for elections and allow their representatives to serve as members of the Knesset. Joint Arab List MK and Balad party chairman Jamal Zahalka was not ashamed to say, "We in Balad have a historic position against the character and the fundamental definition of the state as Jewish." His fellow faction member and Ta'al party chief Ahmad Tibi has likewise emphasized that "we do not recognize a Jewish state. I say this on every stage; it is a doctrine."

The tragedy is that thanks to this false democratic and humanistic rhetoric, what was once common among Israel's opponents has now penetrated Israel's defensive layer. The salient outcome of all this is the attack on the nation-state law, which in the name of equality managed to enlist the support of the Zionist Left. Zionist Union MK Shelly Yachimovich cursed the "contemptible, cowardly and hateful nationalism" and claimed it was "racist and vile." Zionist Union party leader and opposition head Tzipi Livni, who supported the law in the past, now maligns it on every stage. When the destruction of the state is veiled behind the word "equality," Zionists fold and retreat. The true battle is then over Israel's legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people. The country's borders are not just geographic but also cultural in nature.

Zaatra's stance in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and against the idea of the Jewish state is dangerous in that it poses the most significant existential threat to the Jewish state by an admirer of Israel's sworn enemy, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. When it comes to the latter, we are alert and unified enough to defend ourselves. But presented with the former, we are confused, divided and helpless and tacitly approve the appointment as deputy mayor of someone who holds Nasrallah's positions.

The post A threat to our existence appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.