A fool who eats his own flesh
By Elia Leibowitz
Haaretz, November 14, 2003
Among the photographs that adorned coffee table
books published in Israel following the 1956 Sinai
War were shots showing hundreds of shoes abandoned
in the sands of the desert. They were the shoes of
Egyptian soldiers who fled the battlefield and
thought they would be able to make better time
barefoot. The photographs were a visual
representation of the superiority of the Israeli
fighter over his Arab enemy. The victories of the
Israel Defense Forces were achieved mainly thanks
to the troops' superiority of spirit, determination and self-sacrifice.
In the past few years, this qualitative gap between the
Israeli fighter and the Arab fighter appears to be
constantly becoming narrower. The 1973 Yom Kippur War was the portent of the process of the gap's closing, and now the Palestinian intifada has shown that it simply no
longer exists. In the next war between Israel
and the Arabs, we are unlikely to witness
spectacles of frightened Arabs fleeing waves of
Israeli tanks.
Because of the minuscule size of the Jewish
state, its physical existence depends on the
absolute superiority of the Israeli fighter
over the Arab fighter. And as in the past, such
superiority continues to reside entirely in the
realm of the spirit.
However, if the IDF's superiority in spirit,
sacrifice and courage is in the process of
vanishing, what can constitute the Israeli
soldier's advantage in the future? The answer
is self-evident.
The Israeli soldier and officer must be smart,
rational, capable of independent thought and
better trained than their Arab enemies. Any
doctrine that attributes these qualities to
genetic superiority is without foundation. It
follows, therefore, that Israel must, as an
existential need, engage in the relentless
cultivation of the qualities noted above. This
is the only way in which Israel can compensate
itself for its numerical inferiority.
The research universities in Israel are the only
institutions in the society which have as their
very purpose the cultivation of these elements
of the human spirit.
True, intellectual curiosity and respect for the
truth are qualities that can be found in the
activity of other educational institutions as
well, such as technical schools and colleges.
However, skepticism, independence of thought and
uncompromising aspiration to reach the truth
are not the essence of existence of these other
institutions. Certainly they are not the top
priority of any other body or institution, with
the possible exception of certain units in
Military Intelligence.
On the other hand, many elements in the society,
above all political and commercial advertising,
work against these values, usually knowingly
and deliberately, and sometimes explicitly and
openly.
The research universities in Israel, which
almost alone bear the flag of rationalism and
independent thought in Israeli society,
constitute the most vital element for our
survival as a Jewish state in the Middle East.
In recent years these institutions have come
under intensifying attack from various quarters
of Israeli society, headed by the government of
Israel.
These attacks are now reaching unprecedented
peaks, such as in the government's decision,
taken in September of this year, which is
embellished with the Orwellian phrase, "Plan to
Enhance Higher Education."
According to this decision, universities that
will not leap to attention at the command of
Finance Ministry officials and that will not
accept their dictates about how to conduct
scientific research and how to build up
institutions geared for this, will have their
budgets slashed by dozens of percentage
points.
The Israeli government's subverting of the
foundations of the country's research
institutions is not just cutting off an
important branch on which the Jewish state is
perched; it is in fact pulling out the root of
our existence.
Ecclesiastes 4:5 describes "The fool [who] folds
his hands together and has to eat his own
flesh." That individual is undoubtedly
undergoing a profound economic crisis. He is
suffering from genuine hunger. But he eats his
own flesh and thinks that he is thereby saving
his life.
One needn't be the wisest of men to agree with
the conclusion that this person is nothing but a fool.
