Israel should lead the world’s small state revolution

Israel’s greatest problem today is its American friend President Obama, only the most recent rock-star leviathan in a sequence of “gods-that-failed” to toss it around for four to eight years. The EU is second, a pitiful imitation.

To America, Israel is exactly what India was to Victorian England: The jewel in the crown; our best, brightest and most precocious student of whom we are most proud. But this is the very worst kind of territorialization; a nebulous psychological dominance and enslavement. To be a free state, Israel must step away.

Gandhi was the one indispensable figure to tell Britain that India no longer desired her determined interest, but more importantly, to convince India herself that she was not British, never could be, never would be, never should be.

{mosads}It is exactly what Israel needs today; a Gandhi figure and a revolutionary generation to raise it to its existential moment and to tell the American friend to turn away. That moment begins to surround as trouble brews today on Temple Mount, where Jews are forbidden to pray. Temple Mount will be its symbol; the symbol of liberation for all Israel past and future.

And that rising generation is just a shadow away today in Israel. You can tell who the rising leaders will be because the Western establishment press in Europe and America and sadly, inherent in the Americanized Israeli press as well, calls them the nastiest things. Knesset members Moshe Feiglin, Ayelet Shaked and Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett especially prompt their ire. The next generation always intentionally turns the tables on the last and the press, guardian of the past, does its job to prevent time and future generations from awakening. ‘Twas ever thus.

But what happens today in Israel may become the world model for the rise of small states. The “second great political trend of the age: devolution” forecasts a world ahead according to a recent report to the CIA. Scotland, Venice, Catalonia, Texas, Vermont, northern California and even Wisconsin have all shown symptoms.

One issue rising today in Israel and supported by Shaked should be considered by smaller states seeking autonomy and even connected states like Texas and California, which recently have been feeling as far away from Washington as Tibet is from Beijing.

Shaked proposes a bill “allowing the Knesset to override High Court of Justice rulings that strike down laws as unconstitutional.” The Supreme Court of course in the U.S. trumps the people’s will and post-war Israel was designed on Western models. But prosperous smaller states (Switzerland, Singapore) have different dynamics than vast, globalist abstractions and are able to advance a deeper and more unified moral and cultural ethic within their groups as large conglomerates are not.

Even in the United States, a high court with the ultimate say brings challenges today from mature, autonomous, developed regions. Especially given the recent history of the Supreme Court, which some even consider complicit in a coup d’etat in 2000, as I heard a full-fledged Columbia University professor say last night. The Supremes of colonial days when America consisted of three cities and a forest did indeed share a common ethic. Today, justices are chosen by political friendships and in a strange shift from states and regional identities to ethnicity.

A high court trumping the will of a fully matured and morally educated people is an insult. And that insult has been felt in our times in Texas, California and elsewhere. Food for thought as the call for a new constitutional convention sends shivers through the establishment.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.