The Jews Are The Source Of All the Problems In Israel

I just remembered a conversation I had this past week with someone. he had wanted me to post his comment as a post, while I kind of wrote his comment off - laughed at it and moved on. His thoughts were not acceptable, and I thought they were more designed to make trouble than to actually be thoughtful.

After a week of the news centering on Jew - Jew fighting, Bet Shemesh, haredim, violence, sexualization of women, etc. I decided to post it. Maybe he has a point. Maybe we need a new approach. At least I want to hear what people have to say about it.

This fellow said to me that the source of all our problems here in Israel, the Bet Shemesh issue just as much as any other issue that comes up (as there is always something we are fighting about in the Israeli public forum), is that Jews are in charge. Jews, he said, are not meant to be leaders.

[He also said this about blacks, specifically black people leading white people (black over black is ok according to him, but not black over white) and women as well, but let's not go there (and yes, he even said he knows he is a bigot, but he said he believes it to be true and practical).]

Jews are not meant to be leaders. Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, he says, was the exception. Moses was divinely appointed to the job and that was the exception. Even when the Torah talks about appointing a king, it is only after it is demanded by the people, but is not considered the ideal situation. Jews in leadership positions, he says, do not command respect, and often create more divisiveness. This is why he says he would never vote for a Jewish candidate running for president of the USA.

To impose that thought over our situation, there is so much dissent in Israel over every issue that enters the public discussion because nobody respects the leaders. The Jewish leaders do not command the respect of the people. In the Diaspora, be it the United States of America or Great Britain or France or Australia or anywhere else, Jews don't act with such dissent the way we do in Israel. And it is because, this fellow claims, we are under Jewish leadership in Israel. Non-Jews can be leaders and command respect of the people. Jews cannot. It is just not part of our nature to be leaders in that sense.

We Jews can lead the way in academics, in innovation in many other things, but not as social leaders of movements and in politics.

Knowing this does not solve the problems we are having, unless we would be willing to stop Jewish leadership in Israel and only elect imported non-Jewish leaders (or local Christians and Muslims), but it at least identifies it.

What do you think?