Instead, as Hashem’s ambassadors, we must use the tools we have to spread our values. We must spread the cycle of creative change, followed by timeless rest, demonstrated at the very beginning of our Torah. It is why we are here.
But how? How can we spread our values and undermine the ideology of the destroyers? The answer is simple. Designate a canton. Designate it as a place where Palestinian Arabs who pass background checks are free to settle. In that canton, establish basic physical infrastructure and set up rules which encourage creation, punish destruction and enable peace. Much like Hong Kong or West Berlin, its function will be to attract a population which seeks its values and to serve as a model for those governed by something else. This will not be a democratic place – it will be governed by the delegates of the Israeli government. The job of those delegates will be to attract a population. Ideally, its rules will be superior to our own mess of regulation and protected interests.
The people the canton attracts will be the most productive people in the disputed territories. They will be drawn by the opportunity to live lives of fulfillment. I imagine very similar opportunities helped drive the major influx of Arabs prior to the establishment of the State. Over time, the canton can be granted political freedom and autonomy. More critically, over time, we can spread the model, enabling other parts of the disputed territories mechanisms by which they can abandon destructive corruption and join something new and better.
Over time, we can isolate the truly evil – those whose actual objectives are violence and destruction. We can isolate them until they are so concentrated that, with a clean conscious and as ambassadors of G-d, we can banish or destroy them.
In a recent article for the Jewish Press, A Rip in American’s Moral Fabric, I spelled out a biblical foreign policy. It argued that those who want to spread their values must intervene on behalf of friends, respect treaties, seek greater goals than wealth, pleasure or power, welcome those who seek to escape tyranny and punish those who are dedicated to unjustified hatred.
With this policy, we can fulfill all of these objectives.
With this policy, we can begin to spread the values of G-d. We can begin to fulfill our national mission and we can recognize the root causes of our own salvation.
Perhaps, with G-d’s blessing, we can experience the final redemption.
