Q&A: Moshe Feiglin’s Statement
Moshe Feiglin’s Statement
Question
Hello Rabbi,
What does Feiglin’s statement mean: “If Gaza does not become Jaffa, Jaffa will become Gaza”?
Does he mean that we need to transfer the Arabs living in the country to Gaza? I’m starting to worry that, contrary to the trendy morality common today, maybe we really should do something about this catastrophic problem. Especially after Sinwar’s explicit threat: “If Israel messes with Al-Aqsa, we have more than 10,000 suicide terrorists.”
Little by little I’m starting to grasp the depth of Feiglin’s thinking.
I understand that some of them are not to blame, and I understand their pain, but that still doesn’t stop my survival instinct from making me think twice when I meet an Arab on the street.
What is the meaning of Feiglin’s approach?
What do you think about this catastrophe?
Thank you very much,
A Jew worried about his fate
Answer
I don’t know what Feiglin meant. You should ask him that.
But the Palestinians really are a terrible problem, including those who live among us, and perhaps especially them.
I wouldn’t get too worked up over the threats. Arab and Palestinian spokesmen routinely use typical Middle Eastern bluster that has no real connection to reality.
But even aside from that, you are right that something should definitely be done about this problem; the only question is what. I don’t really see what can be done, beyond the things I wrote in the column before last, and even those are not a sharp and quick solution but perhaps a way to improve things somewhat.
Discussion on Answer
It turns out Feiglin has an updated website.
Here is part of a text he wrote on 25/05/2021 (about the riots of 5781)
”
Never before has such a thing happened in Israel, and like zebras that go back to grazing after the lion has satisfied its hunger for a while with the flesh of one of them, so too, as soon as the fire died down, the Israeli politicians went back to their nonsense, racing toward a fifth round of elections..
The pogroms that the human savages of ‘Arab Israel’ gave us a taste of in the first campaign of the Second War of Independence are going to be only the appetizer before the next round.
There is only one way to stop the terrible deterioration and turn the defeat in the first campaign of the Second War of Independence —
into victory in the war as a whole,
victory that will prevent more and more campaigns.
The Temple Mount.
The Israeli flag must once again fly over the Temple Mount.
Only the Israeli flag
Only the Israeli police
Only the Israeli army
No sign of foreign sovereignty
Full freedom of prayer and access for every Jew.
A thorough search of every Arab —
In short: exactly what there is now, only the other way around!
For Jews, what you have until now given to Arabs,
and for Arabs, what you have until now given to Jews.
The prime minister and his ministers must stand on the Temple Mount and swear —
‘If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.’
And the Jewish people must be ready to fight and pay the price for the renewed liberation of what is holiest of all to them.
Because if that does not happen — if we keep buying quiet in exchange for disgrace — in Churchill’s words
we will receive both the greatest of disgraces,
and the most terrible of wars.
”
This is true. But I can’t understand how the Temple Mount is connected here.
Maybe the meaning is that liberating the Temple Mount will cause total chaos that will make the Palestinians move out of this land?
Is there anything in the sources about active steps to liberate the Temple Mount?
The Temple Mount as a symbol of governance and sovereignty, and as a mystical foundation of a Jewish state. This is not a claim about some specific political-security tactic.
Feiglin is a liberal who, unlike the left, also treats our survival instinct as a supreme value. The left, for the most part, holds to the method that we are all animals, but with higher intelligence by means of which we understand the supreme value of human freedom, bottom line. Everything is permitted (subject to the law), we are all equal, but they forget that animals also include a survival instinct within them, and that is part of the essence of our freedom. Why criticize animalistic behavior, if that is what should be expected from everyone?
The left operates with an internal contradiction, and part of what is included in that higher intelligence gets to judge the world impressively, but only subject to their ethics.
They forgot to ask themselves whether their ethics are the “correct” ones.
(Similar to scientists who seek to determine that the source of their existence is ‘accidental,’ but forget to ask themselves what lens they are using when they look at their studies.)
And those who claim that religion proportionally creates wars — there is something to what they say.
But it is worth remembering that there is no other option but to adopt it, whether it is “true” or not, that is, whether it is the fruit of human ideas or not. It has been established for enough years, and I do not see how a philosophical outlook that is merely the product of human thought can prevent a person with material power and authority (not subject to the law) and no conscience from committing crimes. And even more than that, how it can cause a person with no divine moral command to take a risk and stop him. And even more than that, to be convinced that the morality human beings saw fit to formulate is the right one, and not his own.
Maybe it is not for nothing that the Sages did not attribute significance to moral philosophy.
What do you think about the left’s basic assumptions?
I really fear that because of such dangerous outlooks, we may find ourselves in an irreversible situation.
Thank you.
I don’t answer such general questions (what do you think about the assumptions of the left?). Is there a point you want to discuss? Please write it clearly, and only that.
MK Yair Golan publicly criticized (on Twitter) the reprimand by the foreign minister (Gabi Ashkenazi) of the French ambassador.
The assumption that territory should be given from our state for the sake of Palestinian sovereignty. As well as justification of the ambassador?!
I don’t understand how one can take his ideas seriously.
Thank you.
Who said you can? Yair Golan is a first-rate idiot. As for granting sovereignty, there are reasons for that, and it is not completely stupid. They have something to lose, they simply deserve it, etc. I don’t see any point in this thread.
Do you have an article analyzing the ideology prevalent among them?
Thank you.
It does not seem to me that a mere “survival instinct” can suffice as a justification for such a question. One can simply present the argument for the property rights that Jews have over all parts of the land, which give them the ability to decide that enemies cannot live here (unlike good Arabs). As Nehemiah said to the Horonite, the Ammonite, and the Arab:
“So I answered them and said to them: The God of heaven, He will make us prosper; and we His servants will arise and build; but you have no portion, nor right, nor memorial in Jerusalem.” (2:20)
Whoever keeps saying “Feiglin, Feiglin” immediately has a nocturnal emission.