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October 31, 2008

An Interview With Israeli M.K. Dr. Arieh Eldad

by Jerry Gordon, New English Review, November, 2008

M.K. Arieh Eldad

Israeli Knesset Member, Dr. Arieh Eldad, is a nationalist gadfly among the country�s politicians. He is a member of the Moledet party list of the minority National Union faction that favors the willing transfer of �Palestinian� Arab refugees from the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria to the de facto Palestine: Jordan. With more than 70% of Jordan�s population composed of Palestinian Arabs, Eldad considers that the real �two state solution.� Jordan has plenty of territory to absorb their fellow Arabs now languishing in the squalid UNWRA camps in Samaria, Judea and Gaza. Eldad and others in his party argue that international investment in agricultural production, water, energy, urban and jobs development in Jordan is required to help facilitate absorption.

This has not made Dr. Eldad, a world ranked plastic surgeon and reserve Brig. General in the IDF Medical Corps by profession, a welcome party in the current discussions between the Kadima government and PA President Mahmoud Abbas leading to a possible �peace agreement.� Neither would secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the waning days of the Bush Administration look with interest on Dr. Eldad�s suggestions. The agreement under discussion is virtually in tatters given the waning days of the Bush Administration in America and the prospects for a general election in Israel. Eldad is pleased with this outcome, as it stifles any �shelf agreements� from being concluded.

Eldad, however, has a more expansive agenda. He is gathering world parliamentarians in Jerusalem in December, 2008 to attend a conference on �Facing Jihad.� He considers Israel as the �canary in the mines of radical Islam,� something his fellow Israelis would rather not think about. He is bringing courageous Dutch parliamentarian, Geert Wilders to show his controversial film �Fitna� (strife or chaos in Arabic) and legislators from Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the U.K. and America to formulate a declaration against Islamization among Western democracies. Eldad deems it to be crucially important for Israelis to become educated about the nuances of this existential threat that seeks to extinguish the Jewish state as well as other non-Muslim nations.

Eldad has traveled to conferences in Brussels and America to confer with anti-Jihadists and in the process create an alliance to oppose the Grand Jihad. In Manhattan in late September, while attending a Hudson Institute conference featuring Wilders, he took time to speak at a protest rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel, where the latter was attending an interfaith Iftar dinner during Ramadan. (Continue Reading this Article)

Posted by Jerry Gordon @ 10:30 pm | 3 Comments »

3 Responses to An Interview With Israeli M.K. Dr. Arieh Eldad

bugsy says:

November 1, 2008 at 12:50 am

eldad for pm now!!!!!!!!
yamit82 says:

November 1, 2008 at 3:25 am

Gordon: Your father, the late Israel Eldad was a heroic independence fighter, educator and opposition leader in Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) or Lehi. What can you tell us about him and his influence on you as a member of the Knesset?

Eldad: My Father, Prof. Israel Eldad, was a rare combination of a rabbinical scholar, philosopher, and underground leader in the pre-State of Israel era. He was a teacher, a trenchant idealist, but also a person full of humor and love: love of his family, his people, and the Jewish Homeland, Israel.

Orthodox Jews often refer to their fathers as “my father, my teacher”. This is a very apt description of my father. He taught me the Torah and to play chess. He taught me history and what lay in the future. He taught me not to be afraid to be in the minority of prevailing opinions and always to be cautious when praised by rivals. He taught me that the Jewish people can only rely on themselves. He taught me to put my personal interest after my nation’s interest, and to always seek out where I can serve my country in the most effective ways. When I was a child he took me to the fields to watch the ants. When I grew older he took me on the Ninth of Av (that sorrowful commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in 586 B.C.E. and 70 C.E and the Jewish Republic in 135 CE) to the Israel Museum. We stood before the statue of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who smashed the last rebellion of Bar Kochba at the fortress of Betar in Judea. My father would look into his eyes and ask him:” Nu? (Well?), where are you and where are we?”

Teddy Kollek and Israel Eldad exchange views about Jerusalem. …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L38w37MDSHg

The Holy Land: To Whom Does It Belong? (Hebrew)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU9JaRsyi-I

Principles for a Hebrew Liberation Movement

(A lecture by Dr. Israel Eldad to students in Jerusalem, published in Sulam, no. 53-54, Elul 5713-Tishrei 5714 [Autumn 1953])

http://www.saveisrael.com/eldad/eldadhebrew.htm

Actually, the intention in framing the title of this lecture is to negate it, and arrive instead at “principles for the redemption of Israel.” This is the goal. The very concept “liberation movement” includes a hidden contradiction: the term “liberation” is modern, we translated it into Hebrew, took it from other peoples. The Jews gave the world the concept “redemption” (“the redemption of Israel,” personified by the “Messiah”). Over the past few years, when we began relating to redemption from a practical point of view, we failed to call it redemption; instead, we spoke of a national movement, or a revival, and so forth, which we translated into Hebrew. But if a “Hebrew liberation movement” is really Hebrew, it must be called a “redemption movement.” This term carries with it obligations totally different from those on which Zionism, which really is a liberation movement, is based.
yamit82 says:

November 1, 2008 at 3:52 am

An Introduction to the Book of Shmot

by Dr. Israel Eldad

“One leaves Beresheit(Genesis)and enters Shmot,(Exodus) as one leaves the home of mom and dad, where even the arguments were warm and heartening . . . . No more whistling of flocks, but rather whistling of the masters’ whips; not one person’s prayer, but rather the crying of the multitudes; not a dream, not one single dream, but a difficult and bitter reality; no visions in the night, no but rather a People drowning in water, and an entire People yelling in thirst in the desert ‘Bring us water;’ not a son who buys from his father a blessing and the freedom at their divine father and demand to be returned to the fleshpots.

And from a singular Lech-Lecha to the Lech-Lecha of a People. When you close your eyes, how wonderful it is to reminisce and remember the good book of Beresheit; and when you open your eyes again, it is the book of Shmot that you see, that you feel, with its screams of bondage and its scorch of desert. Now go and see: how easy were the works of creation, how easy it was for the Creator to make light and order out of chaos, to form life from material. And how hard, oh how hard it is to form a People out of the Children of Israel.”

Contemplations of the Bible, Tel Aviv, 1986