Herbert Zweibon

The most shameful act in modern Jewish history, the uprooting of flourishing Jewish communities by a Jewish government, was carried out, with horrible fitness, on Tisha Be’av, which commemorates the destruction of both the First and Second Temples. A Connecticut rabbi has characterized this as the destruction of the Ethical Temple.

It was done at the whim of one man, Ariel Sharon, who betrayed his convictions, his campaign promises, his party, his supporters in the communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, who had believed in him, and his country. Why did he do this? Reluctant as we are to admit this, the only possible explanation is the one most Israelis, left and right, now accept: Sharon saw this as a way to avoid looming indictments of himself and his son by the Attorney General on corruption charges.

In the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee the normally reticent Uzi Landau, a rare voice of conscience in the Likud, finally turned on Sharon in passionate indignation: “You are a liar, a swindler and cruel. The time has come to resign. You have brought Israel to the peak of corruption. You are not worthy of being a leader.”

But the responsibility goes well beyond Sharon. The Likud voted against the disengagement plan and Sharon promptly broke his promise to abide by the results of that vote. Why then did 27 out of the 40 members of the Likud tamely “follow the leader,” voting in the Knesset for the plan the party had rejected? If they had rejected it (as a mere 13 Likud Knesset members properly did), Sharon could not have cobbled together his coalition of leftists to ram his plan through.

Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuval Steinitz has been warning against the catastrophic security consequences of “disengagement.” Recently he pointed out -- he called this a “bombshell revelation” – that Egypt will now be free to arm the PA with tanks, armored personnel carriers and other heavy weaponry. It will be under no legal obligation to prevent the influx of advanced arms into Gaza. With Israel turning over control of the border to 750 Egyptian troops, Steinitz warned that Israel would “seriously damage the most significant achievement of the peace treaty with Egypt: the demilitarization of the Sinai.” So why did Steinitz repeatedly vote for the plan whose lethal results he saw so clearly?

Benjamin Netanyahu, in a shameless display of cynical opportunism, waited until the uprooting of communities was virtually underway to position himself as its opponent. He resigned from the cabinet with an eloquent letter detailing the ways in which the disengagement would “endanger the security of Israel, divide the nation, and set the principle of withdrawal to the ’67 lines that are not defendable.” All this was of course obvious from the beginning, while Netanyahu continued to vote for it.

Israel’s only hope for survival is in a clean broom that sweeps away all the failed politicians and the mechanisms that allow Prime Ministers to operate more like African “Big Men” than democratic leaders. Politicians need to be responsible to a geographic constituency, not a party caucus. Fundamental systemic change is necessary if Israel is to address a host of its most pressing problems: corruption, a runaway Supreme Court, police brutality, a disintegrating education system, to name only a few. Above all there must be a breed of new leaders who believe in the rights of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and are willing to stand up to pressures, foreign and domestic, to secure those rights.

Herbert Zweibon is the Chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel