MK Rafael Eitan, a leader of the ultra-nationalist Tehiya Party and a former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Force, charged that the Israeli government “does nothing to encourage aliya.” He said that Israel lacks “the moral justification” to ask the Jews of the world to come and live in Israel, while so many Israelis leave Israel to live abroad.
“They (the leaders of Israel) do nothing to attract new olim and to stem yerida (emigration of Israelis),” Eitan said during an interview Thursday with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency here. He said that the Jews of the world do not come on aliya because of the government’s red tape, Israel’s “deteriorating” education system, and because “no new settlements are built in Eretz Yisrael.”
Eitan, who served as head of the IDF during the controversial Lebanon war, argued that two factors determine aliya: severe, violent anti-Semitism, such as the Holocaust; or idealism of would-be olim, who want to come and be “pioneers” in Israel.
“Today, thank God, we don’t have a Holocaust. But those idealistic Jews who want to come and build new settlements, cannot do it because the government does not build new settlements. Israel, therefore, is not attractive to them…”
Eitan scoffed at the suggestion made Wednesday in Jerusalem by Absorption Minister Yaacov Tsur that direct flights from the USSR and Eastern Europe to Israel be established as a way of curtailing the “neshira” (dropout) of Soviet Jews who do not settle in Israel after leaving the Soviet Union.
“Well, I ask the Minister, what would he do then with Soviet Jews who refuse to stay in Israel? You can’t build an aliya movement on a direct flight from one country to another… The issue is deeper than that. Today’s Israel does not attract the Jews.”
LAMENTS LACK OF VALUES
Eitan lamented the lack of values in Israeli society today. He said that the situation is a direct result of a failed education system. He warned that unless major improvements are undertaken in the field of education, the situation may have a devastating effect on the future of the Jewish State.
“Education must be Israel’s top priority, even before security,” he said. “When it comes to Israel’s defense, things and mistakes can be corrected in a relatively short time. But if you fail in education, you have to improve on things gradually and step by step during many years.
“The government should allocate for education all the money needed. The teaching profession must be given top priority in Israel and only the best should be recruited as teachers. If we will start now — there are 20 years of work ahead of us. Israeli society has lost many values. The leadership did not know how to keep and preserve values, Zionist, nationalistic values, values of work, national honor, values of modest consumption.”
But, Eitan stressed, the education system in Israel has also failed in teaching tens of thousands of children, who have grown to be illiterate adults lacking basic reading and writing skills. He said he does not believe that the present government is going to do anything to improve the situation. “If anything, they make it worse,” he charged.
WEST BANK SETTLEMENTS DO NOT IMPEDE PEACE
Eitan, who advocates the annexation of the West Bank to Israel and believes that Israel has the sole right to the whole Land of Israel, said that it is “nonsense” to believe that if Israel leaves Judaea and Samaria, then there will be peace in the Mideast.
“Did any Arab come to make peace before the Six-Day War when we did not control Judaea and Samaria? Why should they make peace if we withdraw? If they wanted peace so much they could have made it before June 1967. The simple truth is that the Arabs do not want peace at all. Only when they realize that they can never defeat us, only then they will start to move toward peace,” Eitan said.
He said that he does not believe in formal peace agreements, and that he prefers de-facto peace between Israel and its neighbors.
“Look,” he said, “we have a peace treaty with Egypt, but we have better relationships with Jordan than with Egypt. We have developed trade, tourism and dialogue with Jordan. Who needs more? Besides, King Hussein knows that once he signs a formal peace treaty with us he is doomed. He will be killed like Sadat and it will be the end of his kingdom.”
Eitan, who left for Israel Thursday night after a five-day lecture tour here, declined to discuss any aspect of the Jonathan Pollard affair. He said, however, that he has a great deal of criticism of the Israeli government’s part in the affair, but, he stressed, “I intend to make all the criticism only when I am back home.”
CORRECTION: Due to the garbled transmission from Israel, David Landau was incorrectly identified as the author of articles on a Cabinet meeting and the criticism by Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith leaders of the way Israel has handled the Jonathan Pollard affair. Hugh Orgel wrote both stories which appeared in the March 12 Daily News Bulletin.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
