Passover Lessons

Passover Lessons
 
Paul Eidelberg
 
A propos of Passover and the failure of Moses to persuade Egypt’s
pharaoh to let the Children of Israel go, despots can’t be talked out of their
despotism. Plague after was required to liberate he Jews from Egyptian bondage.
Every Passover is an object lesson that one cannot negotiate with evil.
Israeli prime ministers from Yitzhak Rabin to Benjamin
Netanyahu have simply lacked the intelligence to recognize the futility of negotiating
with “Palestinian” pharaohs. Israel’s leaders, past and present, could also have
learned this lesson from the bloody war that resulted from Chamberlain’s efforts
to negotiate with Hitler.
On the other hand, for any Israeli prime minister to think he
could win peace from the PLO-Palestinian Authority by yielding Jewish land manifests
not only naiveté but arrogance and contempt for Islam. It is to harbor the benighted
conceit that Muslims think nothing of their own religion! Did any Israeli prime
minister believe that he could undo 1,400 years of Islamic history? Did Rabin
or Sharon or Netanyahu believe that he could negotiate genuine peace with Muslims
animated by hatred and violence on the one hand, and utterly contemptuous of
reason on the other?  Leaving academics aside,
can you imagine a sober politician advocating a policy of “reciprocity” vis-à-vis
such an enemy—especially a politician that celebrates Passover?
Doesn’t he know that the Egyptian pharaoh was so fixated or
self-intoxicated that he had to suffer plague after plague before he deigned to
let the Children of Israel go—only to drown in a moment of liberalism?
Passover is an object lesson in despotic stupidity. Alas, this
stupidity has been at the helm in Israel for at least 20 years.  But let’s look at the bright side—especially
today when the democratic world is suffering serious economic and other woes.
Any intelligent observer—certainly if he’s Christian—should know
by now that Israel’s existence and remarkable prosperity is a demonstrable affirmation
of Biblical prophecy.  It seems, however,
that this affirmation of Biblical prophecy has yet to stimulate and embolden the
mentality of Israel’s ruling—or should I say apologetic—elites. It was as if
they were still in Egypt. Hey fellas! Dayenu! Wake up! The world is yours!