I'd been wondering for a long time, what it was, exactly that seemed to distinguish my understanding of Israel from that of my (generally American) peers. I'd always figured that it was that I'd spent my first conscious years there - or that I lived the years after my family had moved to the United States in the same style and state of mind, for the most part.
This is largely true, but a vague sentiment yet; and one lending little understanding to the question.
After all, what does it mean to be in the state of mind of an Israeli? For a long time, it seemed to me that it was a nation-wide understanding, respect of, and celebration of Jewish tradition. Israel is, by definition, a religious Jewish state. However, it couldn't be just that. New York has one of the largest and most active Jewish communities, much of which is largely unassimilated, and more 'in touch' religiously with its (historical) identity, per say, than much of Israel is. There are many, many Jewish people all around the world, and in the Americas especially, who identify with and support Israel - as the state of their religion and its national revival, as the home of their beloved relatives, as a place of beauty and technological progress, whatever - but they do not see it as I do. They do not see it as all of the above, and something greater just the same.
Today, reading a NYT article describing a new exhibit in Yad Vashem, displaying the many cultural and otherwise contributions of Holocaust survivors to the (birth and development) of the state of Israel - rather than the terrors extolled upon them, their families, friends, and contemporaries - it hit me.
Yom haZikaron (יום הזיכרון), memorial day to the Israelis who have died in the protection and preservation of the Jewish state, is only a few days after Yom haShoa (יום השואה), memorial day to the victims of the Holocaust. This is by no coincidence. The two are largely interconnected - but not in the sense that anti-Zionists frame it. The founders of Israel didn't use the Holocaust as an excuse to create Israel; the Holocaust forced the Jews who did not believe, did not have the courage, did not want to leave the cultural development or the safety of knowing what is awaiting - to see that there is no other choice. If not they wouldn't have built Israel then, then when? When the next Holocaust came? No.
Half of those who fought, many if not the majority of whom died, in the War of Independence (1948-49) were Holocaust survivors. Yes, it could be said - and I assume it was said then - that these people had nothing to lose. They had lost their families, they had experienced the ultimate traumas, they had seen annihilation by the thousands. Many of them did not know what to believe in. Yet they fought to the last; men, women, and children stayed and fought - and prepared poison to create a second Masada, rather than die at the hands of enemies as so many had at the hands of Hitler. They fought for their survival, yes, and they fought for Israel. Why?
It is true that perhaps some had difficulty going to America; during the war the US had rejected Jews, and though it accepted thousands after the war, out of guilt (perhaps), perhaps it wasn't that easy. It may be that there were problems getting to South America (to which, many fled as well), or returning to Europe. Maybe; that is what many other survivors did, after all. But maybe it was something else.
After learning of the atrocities of World War II, Jews in the US, in particular, had a sudden strike of guilt. They had remained in relative safety, while so many had been devasted. So, they sent money in loads; all the money they had, even if they didn't have much for themselves. They sent money to Israel, to Europe, wherever it could be used. It was largely with this money, that the weapons with which Israel finally won the Independence War. Still, the effect was not the same; it couldn't have been.
The people that fought in 1948 saw Israel as redemption. It was religious and cultural redemption - a return to Jerusalem [even if it was officailly UN territory at the time...], a return to the very place where buried under layers of rock are artifacts of Jewish culture centuries back. It was a national redemption. spread around the world for millenia, Jews remained very much a nation; so much a nation, in fact, that Hitler had just attempted to terminate them as one. Now, their nationhood would be recognized, and they could unite with the people that had been thousands of miles away for years, and yet could be traced as family members of long ago...
Fine, this is all well known; it can be found on any Zionistic brochure, and it was well known to the many American Jews who passionately tended to Israel in its early years. There must have been something else, still.
My grandfather was 16 when he joined the Soviet Army. After his parents, his aunts, his uncles had become victims of the Holocaust through various terrible stories I could not possibly recount correctly, he dropped out of school and went to fight. After the war, he did not move to Israel. Yet his stories flow in my blood - though with a different understanding. Years after the Soviet army freed thousands upon thousands of Jews in concentration camps, my parents grew up in a country where to be a Jew meant to be limited, and to be a successful Jew meant to be so far above everyone else so as to inspire investment despite the handicap. It wasn't so bad, we could say, just as much as we can blame this or that unpleasant situation on whatever circumstances surrounded it, rather than...
The people who fought for Israel in 1948, and then in 1953, in 1967, in 1973, in 1982, 2006, and all the battles in between did so because Israel was built off sand and tears (as the songs go), built with a nationalism advertising ongoing construction, built as proof that the Jewish nation is far from dead, but more alive than ever in every aspect there is; built as the ultimate Jewish redemption, not just to the Holocaust, but to the years and years of what Hebrew-speaking individuals call חו''ל (HUL) - חוץ לארץ, outside of the country. And the people who stood there and fought to the last in 1948 did so because Israel was their personal redemption for the submissiveness that they had just exhibited in WWII.
In the 1920's in particular, anti-semitism was not foreign to America. A New Yorker article from some years back addresses the Ivy League policy to reject Jews on varying excuses, in order to restrain their growing participation in the elite educational system.
Today the United States is Israel's biggest supporter (followed by Germany, perhaps ironically). Inside, Jewish communities are thriving. It is unlikely that this will change in the forseeable future.
Yet, despite the ongoing threats, the attacks, the semi-functional government, I feel safer about Israel. Today, on יום הזיכרון, I praise and commemorate all those who, despite dangers and terrors have felt the same way.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Monday, May 28, 2007
News Analysis: Adopting the American Mentality
May 23, 2007
News Analysis
Israelis Don’t Want Gaza to Be Their Next Lebanon
By STEVEN ERLANGER NYT
JERUSALEM, May 22 — For the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, badly battered by last summer’s inconclusive war against the rockets of Hezbollah, launched from Lebanon, the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip seems a similarly intractable problem with no easy, popular response.
While the Hamas militants in Gaza seem to have taken a lesson from that war — how to use rockets against Israeli civilians to eat away at Israeli self-confidence and frustrate the Israeli military — Israel’s own lesson is less clear, because its ground assault on southern Lebanon did not end in a clear victory, let alone destroy its adversary.
The Israeli government is feeling constrained by its own weakness and damaged credibility. If it goes into Gaza too hard, it will be criticized for trying to overcompensate for its failures last summer against Hezbollah. If it acts with too much restraint and caution, it will be criticized for being intimidated by its failures last summer against Hezbollah.
“We don’t want to invade Gaza in a big way,” a senior official said. “But stalemate is impossible. We hope that a political process will prevail because we don’t want to be dragged into what Hamas wants us to be dragged into. But events will dictate. If a Qassam rocket lands on an Israeli kindergarten, all bets are off.”
Israeli helicopters and fighter planes, using their most precise weapons, are hitting Hamas camps, buildings, fighters and teams of militants charged with firing rockets toward Israel. On Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force struck a compound of the Hamas police militia known as the Executive Force in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. No casualties were reported in the strike, the third against targets in Gaza since a rocket attack on Monday that killed eight.
Israeli politicians are talking of harsher measures, including the assassination of senior Hamas military leaders who order the attacks, and warning that senior Hamas political leaders may also be at risk.
But trying to calibrate the amount of military pressure that might persuade Hamas and the Palestinians to stop the rocket fire and recreate a working cease-fire over Gaza is not an easy calculation.
And there are significant voices inside the Israeli security establishment who warn that, rockets aside, Hamas is organizing a buildup of weapons, reinforced tunnels and explosive matériel in Gaza that resembles Hezbollah’s efforts in southern Lebanon in recent years.
Sooner or later, those voices argue, Israel will have to confront Hamas in a serious way inside Gaza, especially since Fatah is failing to do so.
But with the Palestinian unity government of Hamas and Fatah in tatters after fierce factional infighting, there is no obvious Palestinian address for Israel to apply pressure. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, to whom the Israelis and Americans speak, appears weaker after the infighting.
Even Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas, a popular political figure, is being overshadowed and undermined by the actions and oratory of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades.
In general, Gaza’s gunmen — who come in many different stripes, with affiliations that cut across factional, institutional and family loyalties — appear to be listening less now than before to political leaders.
Hamas in particular appears riven politically, senior Israeli government and security officials say, with important figures like Mahmoud Zahar, the former foreign minister, and Said Siam, the former interior minister, opposed to the group’s participation in the unity government.
The Qassam Brigades have made it clear that they took the lead in the latest round of fighting, attacking the Presidential Guard of Mr. Abbas and the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security Force. They continued those attacks even when Mr. Haniya came out in favor of a truce.
Burned, Mr. Haniya took a harder line on Monday in his sermon at the funeral of the family of a Hamas legislator, Khalil al-Hayya, praising the fighters and saying, “We will keep to the same path until we win one of two goals: victory or martyrdom.”
Mr. Olmert is being careful, aides say, to keep on Washington’s good side. The Bush administration has openly supported Israel’s right to defend itself against rockets fired by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups, and has praised what it calls Israel’s restraint. But Mr. Olmert is also conscious that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is committed to pushing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts forward in her time left in the job, as is President Bush.
A major incursion deep into Gaza would take at least a month, a senior Israeli officer said, and would inevitably cause significant civilian casualties. There would be nothing like a major Israeli ground offensive to unite all Palestinian fighters, and it would do further damage to the more moderate Mr. Abbas and the chances for peace. More than 30 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids in the past week.
Even the leader of the rightist Likud Party, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is riding high in opinion polls, is speaking carefully about the options and suggesting graduated responses.
Last week he proposed “a wide range of actions that we can do to apply pressure.”
“And the actions begin with a general closure of Gaza,” he said, “through a controlled stoppage of services such as electricity and water, up to targeted killings and actions from the area on infrastructure targets, or limited ground incursion to the radius of the Qassam range or a larger ground incursion.”
Asked if he favored a large-scale infantry incursion, Mr. Netanyahu said: “I think the problem here is to return to the balance of deterrence that was so very eroded in the last year. As a result of the last war, Gaza has turned into Lebanon Two with bunkers.”
For now, the Israelis are barely using tank fire in Gaza and are not firing artillery, which is less accurate and has hit Palestinian houses and families in the past. Instead, they are relying on the most precise airborne weaponry they have, trying to send a message to militant leaders, especially of Hamas, that every rocket will entail a painful price.
Those around Mr. Olmert say that they, too, are concerned about how Israel and its will to defend its people are perceived — not just by the militants of Gaza, but by the Syria of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrians are training defensively, “but it’s easy to move from defense to offense,” a senior Israeli official said. “We’ve made it clear to him through credible channels that Israel has no offensive intentions. But we’re very worried about miscalculation.”
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This report is a bit old - it came from earlier this week, when Olmert and Peretz were giving interviews about how hard it is to restrain themselves from using force in Gaza.
The statement I emphasized above really stood out to me as something spectacular. One can make many arguments about pre-emptive striking. You can say that it is unfair to those being attacked; that like in the feuds over America's role in Iraq are saying now, the opponent may actually be in a neutral zone, not infringing on any laws or treaties. You can say that it is starting a war, unnecessarily. You can say that it is used as an excuse to go and execute innocent people - or warlords/terrorists - or to reoccupy Gaza. The true value of pre-emptive attacks lies in the success of their successions, but that's besides the point.
What amazes me is that Israel - not a nation notorious for paying too much mind to these arguments - is now playing with the press, trying to appease it with statements like the one above.
There are so many things wrong with it, I don't even know where to start.
First: Qassam rockets have been falling on the south of Israel without end for the past year. Thousands upon thousands of rockets have fallen upon Sderot in particular. This has caused dozens of deaths, injuries, destruction of land and property, and perhaps worst of all the feeling that at any moment a rocket may fall upon any person and any place; a feeling that is psychologically dismantling. The people of Sderot have been crying for a long time for their government to save them.
All this goes to say that there is nothing pre-emptive in a strike against Gaza. Despite UN mandates and internal treaties, rockets have kept flying onto Israeli soil, and they still continue to do so. In fact, just yesterday, a 36 year old man from Hod Hasharon was killed in his car when a Qassam hit him in Sderot (he was there on business). He left behind a 2 year old daughter and a pregnant wife.
There has been an incessantly continued war against Israel, and there is nothing pre-emptive about a strike in return.
Second: Pretending that keeping quiet will prevent anything from happening is not only ludicrous, but is the very Ostrich-in-sand approach that Israel has prided herself on avoiding - since doing otherwise could easily result in destruction.
Third: The very idea of the words - when an Israeli kindergarten - a place full of little Israeli children, guilty only of living in the country that their forefathers built to protect them (not at all comparable to children who provoke violence by throwing rocks and the like) - could get bombed under the watch of the Israeli government is stunning beyond words. How much are we willing to take before our the government will move its finger? It has to get to our children being murdered? That's what this man is saying.
He's saying let's wait till the kids die, and then we'll do something - granted that it will not be a question amongst the officials whether or not to move then (the public would be so loud by then that it wouldn't really be left up to them to decide, but hey, he can always say that he intended to before the riots).
A government's initial and most imperative role is to protect its citizens. This is the most fundamental of governmental facets, and it has been around since the most primitive societal structures. When it admittedly puts its citizens in empirical danger, it is not just a sign of total failure and corruption, but a sign of utter disarray.
There are arguments on the reverse, of course. It could be said that Israeli policy has abetted the continuation of this never-ending cycle: violence, meeting violence, meeting more violence, and so on.
It could be said that a strike in return would do nothing but provoke more anger and bloodshed.
However, diplomacy isn't doing anything, and we cannot leave our citizens out to die.
The political situation in Gaza right now is past deterioration, and on to full on chaos. There is periodic factional violence, where more palestinians die than in the Israeli operations for weeks to come (I didn't check the numbers, but comparing reports, this is often true. Dozens die in Hamas/Fatah clashes within two or three days, and then maybe one or two people - generally militants, and sometimes a standbyer - die in an attack by the IDF at some point later on in the week). The ceasefire that had been reached after the second Lebanon War has proven useless, as rockets haven't ceased (journalists discussing this generally say 'rockets have stopped for the most part...' If the rockets stopped, we wouldn't have this conflict. If there are rockets flying, then they haven't stopped. 'Most part', therefore means as much as not at all).
Hamas, who is in power right now, denies Israel's existence, and avidly supports 'resistance' against it - meaning terrorism.
---
What is being done, and what should be done:
Luckily, not everyone in the Israeli government is willing to wait for Isreali children to be killed in order to act. Operations in Gaza have been stepped up.
Which in particular, it remains uncertain, but something at least. It is my hope that there is some military strategy behind this, rather than just bloodshed and chaos.
Like some ynet articles have said: Despite it all, Gaza is in smoke as of now.
The IDF arrested a Khaled Shawis, a 'terror mastermind' responsible for dozens of Isreali deaths today: good.
The IDF attacked a Hamas training base today: good.
The problems will come when the dealings get to civilians, but it is often difficult to distinguish who is innocent and who isn't.
If a 14 year old boy is throwing rocks at an 18 year old soldier, he is not justified, nor guaranteed safety. He is no innocent civilian. What Israel needs to do is forget the press for a while. It is true that Israel is in desperate need of PR work, and even that a campaign has been launched for this, but PR is not the most important thing; least of all now.
What Israel needs is to extract a real war from this. Only real wars can be won.
An Economist article (two actually) from this week argued that Israel's 6-Day War in 1967 was futile all in all, since it only ended in increased problems for Israel
(and further chaos for the Palestinians - though really, it made things much clearer and easier for them in terms of struggle, and the Economist acknowledges this). Sever Plocker of Ynet argued back today, and they both have good points, but a main point to be extracted has a lot less to do with the effect of the war, and a lot more to do with the war itself.
The Economist noted that since 1973, Israel has not faced a 'real' war. This is true, and it is key.
There was no winner in Lebanon - not the first time, and not last summer. There was no winner in any of the Intifadas, or whatever it is that people call the terrorism in between. There was no winner as there was in 1948, as there was in 1967, as there was in 1973. And because there was no winner, there was no real conclusion, and no real result; just further chaos and propensity for the next conflict (though really it's just the same one, perpetually). Nothing is resolved and nothing is alleviated. The reason for this is simple enough: there are no concessions - something that is vital to post-war negotiations (for example, Pollack rightly points out that it is thanks to the 6-Day War and its occupations that Israel was able to forge peace with Egypt over Sinai, and almost peace with Syria over the Golan Heights). There are no concessions because there is no war.
There is no high-ground, and no way to lead the type of complete, and cohesive operatives that Israel needs to have some sort of effect to these attacks while it is within the realms of 'guerrilla warfare'; while it is in the midst of civilians, and while everyone is turning their heads to listen to the cries of liberals around the world who are too preoccupied with their infatuation with anything that proves their point about calling Israel names to pay attention to what is going on. Israel needs full-on soldier-on-soldier warfare in which there are no inhibitions and no strategy other than to win and to secure the nation (clearly random infiltrations of Gaza don't provide security. This doesn't mean that physical force isn't the answer - diplomacy has proven just as impotent - it just means that both physical force and diplomacy have to be tried in a different way)
But we can't get real war right now, what can we do?
A Ynet article posted yesterday caught my eye. I'm not one to lean too much with those who favor keeping isolated villages with some 40 people being protected meticulously by 100 soldiers in the midst of Arab land. However, this article had a good point. The article (Right-wing campaign: Returning to Homesh is answer to Qassams) speaks of the extreme-right religious group: Homesh First, who launched a campaign to resettle the settlements ordered out by Sharon last year. It sounds like nothing but stubbornness, but if you listen to their innate argument, you see they are right in one thing in particular.
If you follow the track of recent events you will see that Hamas has all the reason in the world to be encouraged to continue what it is doing. It is, in essence, winning.
What has happened? First, Sharon pulled out settlements from Arab territory. Now, under extreme pressure from Qassams, Israelis from Sderot are seeking refuge, and aided by rich Jews, are leaving- whether on vacation or to tenement camps around the country. What is happening, is that Hamas puts pressure on Israel, and Israelis leave land. This is the exact stimulating green light that they are seeking to continue.
It doesn't even matter so much that there is smoke and ash in Gaza, or that some Palestinians may be being attacked. This is of little consequence to Hamas, who has shown little to no remorse as to the sacrifice of its own people (whereas the Western media has shown great deals more).
What is most important is that strategically it seems to be working.
In this sense, it is exactly correct to seek a reprisal on terms that Hamas will understand; land.
It is precisely the point to go and overtake more Arab land. This has shown to be the only leverage of negotiation that they have really responded to in the past, firstly, and secondly, it is a direct signal that they are not going to acheive their ambitions by attacking Israel - something that is not being shown now.
When the Palestinians see that the consequence of their attacks is not Israelis fleeing, but Israelis coming to take more of their land, they will have a different conception of what they are doing, despite personal inhibitions against this. They will have no choice.
There are a lot of problems with this plan.
Firstly, planning to keep more settlements brings about numerous questions, to which the answer 'no' is most commonly to be found in terms of reason. Sharon had good reason to remove the settlements last year, despite the consequences amongst the masses, and these reasons of finance and logic, more than politics, stand.
Secondly, if these settlements are to be built as pawns, what about the people who are willing to risk their lives to go build them - they are not about to do this as a temporary project of political stategy. They intend to reclaim the land and live there.
If Homesh First (Rishon?) is going to go and inhabit more settlements, I say, let them. It is their choice, and they are aware that the government can remove them. The risks, pros and cons must be carefully evaluated by Israeli leadership. They must figure out the most beneficial approach to this - both short term and long term. They must sit down, with a clear head, and think, because hot-headedness won't get us anywhere. We need to get out of this endless era of perpetual guerrilla warfare and into some sort of new stage. A stage that can be resolved and concluded one way or another. For this we need to think.
For now, we need to protect the citizens of Sderot and the rest of Israel.
Hopefully there are enough smart people in Israel to be able to do both at the same time.
News Analysis
Israelis Don’t Want Gaza to Be Their Next Lebanon
By STEVEN ERLANGER NYT
JERUSALEM, May 22 — For the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, badly battered by last summer’s inconclusive war against the rockets of Hezbollah, launched from Lebanon, the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip seems a similarly intractable problem with no easy, popular response.
While the Hamas militants in Gaza seem to have taken a lesson from that war — how to use rockets against Israeli civilians to eat away at Israeli self-confidence and frustrate the Israeli military — Israel’s own lesson is less clear, because its ground assault on southern Lebanon did not end in a clear victory, let alone destroy its adversary.
The Israeli government is feeling constrained by its own weakness and damaged credibility. If it goes into Gaza too hard, it will be criticized for trying to overcompensate for its failures last summer against Hezbollah. If it acts with too much restraint and caution, it will be criticized for being intimidated by its failures last summer against Hezbollah.
“We don’t want to invade Gaza in a big way,” a senior official said. “But stalemate is impossible. We hope that a political process will prevail because we don’t want to be dragged into what Hamas wants us to be dragged into. But events will dictate. If a Qassam rocket lands on an Israeli kindergarten, all bets are off.”
Israeli helicopters and fighter planes, using their most precise weapons, are hitting Hamas camps, buildings, fighters and teams of militants charged with firing rockets toward Israel. On Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force struck a compound of the Hamas police militia known as the Executive Force in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. No casualties were reported in the strike, the third against targets in Gaza since a rocket attack on Monday that killed eight.
Israeli politicians are talking of harsher measures, including the assassination of senior Hamas military leaders who order the attacks, and warning that senior Hamas political leaders may also be at risk.
But trying to calibrate the amount of military pressure that might persuade Hamas and the Palestinians to stop the rocket fire and recreate a working cease-fire over Gaza is not an easy calculation.
And there are significant voices inside the Israeli security establishment who warn that, rockets aside, Hamas is organizing a buildup of weapons, reinforced tunnels and explosive matériel in Gaza that resembles Hezbollah’s efforts in southern Lebanon in recent years.
Sooner or later, those voices argue, Israel will have to confront Hamas in a serious way inside Gaza, especially since Fatah is failing to do so.
But with the Palestinian unity government of Hamas and Fatah in tatters after fierce factional infighting, there is no obvious Palestinian address for Israel to apply pressure. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, to whom the Israelis and Americans speak, appears weaker after the infighting.
Even Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas, a popular political figure, is being overshadowed and undermined by the actions and oratory of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades.
In general, Gaza’s gunmen — who come in many different stripes, with affiliations that cut across factional, institutional and family loyalties — appear to be listening less now than before to political leaders.
Hamas in particular appears riven politically, senior Israeli government and security officials say, with important figures like Mahmoud Zahar, the former foreign minister, and Said Siam, the former interior minister, opposed to the group’s participation in the unity government.
The Qassam Brigades have made it clear that they took the lead in the latest round of fighting, attacking the Presidential Guard of Mr. Abbas and the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security Force. They continued those attacks even when Mr. Haniya came out in favor of a truce.
Burned, Mr. Haniya took a harder line on Monday in his sermon at the funeral of the family of a Hamas legislator, Khalil al-Hayya, praising the fighters and saying, “We will keep to the same path until we win one of two goals: victory or martyrdom.”
Mr. Olmert is being careful, aides say, to keep on Washington’s good side. The Bush administration has openly supported Israel’s right to defend itself against rockets fired by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups, and has praised what it calls Israel’s restraint. But Mr. Olmert is also conscious that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is committed to pushing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts forward in her time left in the job, as is President Bush.
A major incursion deep into Gaza would take at least a month, a senior Israeli officer said, and would inevitably cause significant civilian casualties. There would be nothing like a major Israeli ground offensive to unite all Palestinian fighters, and it would do further damage to the more moderate Mr. Abbas and the chances for peace. More than 30 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids in the past week.
Even the leader of the rightist Likud Party, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is riding high in opinion polls, is speaking carefully about the options and suggesting graduated responses.
Last week he proposed “a wide range of actions that we can do to apply pressure.”
“And the actions begin with a general closure of Gaza,” he said, “through a controlled stoppage of services such as electricity and water, up to targeted killings and actions from the area on infrastructure targets, or limited ground incursion to the radius of the Qassam range or a larger ground incursion.”
Asked if he favored a large-scale infantry incursion, Mr. Netanyahu said: “I think the problem here is to return to the balance of deterrence that was so very eroded in the last year. As a result of the last war, Gaza has turned into Lebanon Two with bunkers.”
For now, the Israelis are barely using tank fire in Gaza and are not firing artillery, which is less accurate and has hit Palestinian houses and families in the past. Instead, they are relying on the most precise airborne weaponry they have, trying to send a message to militant leaders, especially of Hamas, that every rocket will entail a painful price.
Those around Mr. Olmert say that they, too, are concerned about how Israel and its will to defend its people are perceived — not just by the militants of Gaza, but by the Syria of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrians are training defensively, “but it’s easy to move from defense to offense,” a senior Israeli official said. “We’ve made it clear to him through credible channels that Israel has no offensive intentions. But we’re very worried about miscalculation.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This report is a bit old - it came from earlier this week, when Olmert and Peretz were giving interviews about how hard it is to restrain themselves from using force in Gaza.
The statement I emphasized above really stood out to me as something spectacular. One can make many arguments about pre-emptive striking. You can say that it is unfair to those being attacked; that like in the feuds over America's role in Iraq are saying now, the opponent may actually be in a neutral zone, not infringing on any laws or treaties. You can say that it is starting a war, unnecessarily. You can say that it is used as an excuse to go and execute innocent people - or warlords/terrorists - or to reoccupy Gaza. The true value of pre-emptive attacks lies in the success of their successions, but that's besides the point.
What amazes me is that Israel - not a nation notorious for paying too much mind to these arguments - is now playing with the press, trying to appease it with statements like the one above.
There are so many things wrong with it, I don't even know where to start.
First: Qassam rockets have been falling on the south of Israel without end for the past year. Thousands upon thousands of rockets have fallen upon Sderot in particular. This has caused dozens of deaths, injuries, destruction of land and property, and perhaps worst of all the feeling that at any moment a rocket may fall upon any person and any place; a feeling that is psychologically dismantling. The people of Sderot have been crying for a long time for their government to save them.
All this goes to say that there is nothing pre-emptive in a strike against Gaza. Despite UN mandates and internal treaties, rockets have kept flying onto Israeli soil, and they still continue to do so. In fact, just yesterday, a 36 year old man from Hod Hasharon was killed in his car when a Qassam hit him in Sderot (he was there on business). He left behind a 2 year old daughter and a pregnant wife.
There has been an incessantly continued war against Israel, and there is nothing pre-emptive about a strike in return.
Second: Pretending that keeping quiet will prevent anything from happening is not only ludicrous, but is the very Ostrich-in-sand approach that Israel has prided herself on avoiding - since doing otherwise could easily result in destruction.
Third: The very idea of the words - when an Israeli kindergarten - a place full of little Israeli children, guilty only of living in the country that their forefathers built to protect them (not at all comparable to children who provoke violence by throwing rocks and the like) - could get bombed under the watch of the Israeli government is stunning beyond words. How much are we willing to take before our the government will move its finger? It has to get to our children being murdered? That's what this man is saying.
He's saying let's wait till the kids die, and then we'll do something - granted that it will not be a question amongst the officials whether or not to move then (the public would be so loud by then that it wouldn't really be left up to them to decide, but hey, he can always say that he intended to before the riots).
A government's initial and most imperative role is to protect its citizens. This is the most fundamental of governmental facets, and it has been around since the most primitive societal structures. When it admittedly puts its citizens in empirical danger, it is not just a sign of total failure and corruption, but a sign of utter disarray.
There are arguments on the reverse, of course. It could be said that Israeli policy has abetted the continuation of this never-ending cycle: violence, meeting violence, meeting more violence, and so on.
It could be said that a strike in return would do nothing but provoke more anger and bloodshed.
However, diplomacy isn't doing anything, and we cannot leave our citizens out to die.
The political situation in Gaza right now is past deterioration, and on to full on chaos. There is periodic factional violence, where more palestinians die than in the Israeli operations for weeks to come (I didn't check the numbers, but comparing reports, this is often true. Dozens die in Hamas/Fatah clashes within two or three days, and then maybe one or two people - generally militants, and sometimes a standbyer - die in an attack by the IDF at some point later on in the week). The ceasefire that had been reached after the second Lebanon War has proven useless, as rockets haven't ceased (journalists discussing this generally say 'rockets have stopped for the most part...' If the rockets stopped, we wouldn't have this conflict. If there are rockets flying, then they haven't stopped. 'Most part', therefore means as much as not at all).
Hamas, who is in power right now, denies Israel's existence, and avidly supports 'resistance' against it - meaning terrorism.
---
What is being done, and what should be done:
Luckily, not everyone in the Israeli government is willing to wait for Isreali children to be killed in order to act. Operations in Gaza have been stepped up.
Which in particular, it remains uncertain, but something at least. It is my hope that there is some military strategy behind this, rather than just bloodshed and chaos.
Like some ynet articles have said: Despite it all, Gaza is in smoke as of now.
The IDF arrested a Khaled Shawis, a 'terror mastermind' responsible for dozens of Isreali deaths today: good.
The IDF attacked a Hamas training base today: good.
The problems will come when the dealings get to civilians, but it is often difficult to distinguish who is innocent and who isn't.
If a 14 year old boy is throwing rocks at an 18 year old soldier, he is not justified, nor guaranteed safety. He is no innocent civilian. What Israel needs to do is forget the press for a while. It is true that Israel is in desperate need of PR work, and even that a campaign has been launched for this, but PR is not the most important thing; least of all now.
What Israel needs is to extract a real war from this. Only real wars can be won.
An Economist article (two actually) from this week argued that Israel's 6-Day War in 1967 was futile all in all, since it only ended in increased problems for Israel
(and further chaos for the Palestinians - though really, it made things much clearer and easier for them in terms of struggle, and the Economist acknowledges this). Sever Plocker of Ynet argued back today, and they both have good points, but a main point to be extracted has a lot less to do with the effect of the war, and a lot more to do with the war itself.The Economist noted that since 1973, Israel has not faced a 'real' war. This is true, and it is key.
There was no winner in Lebanon - not the first time, and not last summer. There was no winner in any of the Intifadas, or whatever it is that people call the terrorism in between. There was no winner as there was in 1948, as there was in 1967, as there was in 1973. And because there was no winner, there was no real conclusion, and no real result; just further chaos and propensity for the next conflict (though really it's just the same one, perpetually). Nothing is resolved and nothing is alleviated. The reason for this is simple enough: there are no concessions - something that is vital to post-war negotiations (for example, Pollack rightly points out that it is thanks to the 6-Day War and its occupations that Israel was able to forge peace with Egypt over Sinai, and almost peace with Syria over the Golan Heights). There are no concessions because there is no war.
There is no high-ground, and no way to lead the type of complete, and cohesive operatives that Israel needs to have some sort of effect to these attacks while it is within the realms of 'guerrilla warfare'; while it is in the midst of civilians, and while everyone is turning their heads to listen to the cries of liberals around the world who are too preoccupied with their infatuation with anything that proves their point about calling Israel names to pay attention to what is going on. Israel needs full-on soldier-on-soldier warfare in which there are no inhibitions and no strategy other than to win and to secure the nation (clearly random infiltrations of Gaza don't provide security. This doesn't mean that physical force isn't the answer - diplomacy has proven just as impotent - it just means that both physical force and diplomacy have to be tried in a different way)
But we can't get real war right now, what can we do?
A Ynet article posted yesterday caught my eye. I'm not one to lean too much with those who favor keeping isolated villages with some 40 people being protected meticulously by 100 soldiers in the midst of Arab land. However, this article had a good point. The article (Right-wing campaign: Returning to Homesh is answer to Qassams) speaks of the extreme-right religious group: Homesh First, who launched a campaign to resettle the settlements ordered out by Sharon last year. It sounds like nothing but stubbornness, but if you listen to their innate argument, you see they are right in one thing in particular.
If you follow the track of recent events you will see that Hamas has all the reason in the world to be encouraged to continue what it is doing. It is, in essence, winning.
What has happened? First, Sharon pulled out settlements from Arab territory. Now, under extreme pressure from Qassams, Israelis from Sderot are seeking refuge, and aided by rich Jews, are leaving- whether on vacation or to tenement camps around the country. What is happening, is that Hamas puts pressure on Israel, and Israelis leave land. This is the exact stimulating green light that they are seeking to continue.
It doesn't even matter so much that there is smoke and ash in Gaza, or that some Palestinians may be being attacked. This is of little consequence to Hamas, who has shown little to no remorse as to the sacrifice of its own people (whereas the Western media has shown great deals more).
What is most important is that strategically it seems to be working.
In this sense, it is exactly correct to seek a reprisal on terms that Hamas will understand; land.
It is precisely the point to go and overtake more Arab land. This has shown to be the only leverage of negotiation that they have really responded to in the past, firstly, and secondly, it is a direct signal that they are not going to acheive their ambitions by attacking Israel - something that is not being shown now.
When the Palestinians see that the consequence of their attacks is not Israelis fleeing, but Israelis coming to take more of their land, they will have a different conception of what they are doing, despite personal inhibitions against this. They will have no choice.
There are a lot of problems with this plan.
Firstly, planning to keep more settlements brings about numerous questions, to which the answer 'no' is most commonly to be found in terms of reason. Sharon had good reason to remove the settlements last year, despite the consequences amongst the masses, and these reasons of finance and logic, more than politics, stand.
Secondly, if these settlements are to be built as pawns, what about the people who are willing to risk their lives to go build them - they are not about to do this as a temporary project of political stategy. They intend to reclaim the land and live there.
If Homesh First (Rishon?) is going to go and inhabit more settlements, I say, let them. It is their choice, and they are aware that the government can remove them. The risks, pros and cons must be carefully evaluated by Israeli leadership. They must figure out the most beneficial approach to this - both short term and long term. They must sit down, with a clear head, and think, because hot-headedness won't get us anywhere. We need to get out of this endless era of perpetual guerrilla warfare and into some sort of new stage. A stage that can be resolved and concluded one way or another. For this we need to think.
For now, we need to protect the citizens of Sderot and the rest of Israel.
Hopefully there are enough smart people in Israel to be able to do both at the same time.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Pragmatism
An interview with Middle Easy specialist Amir Taheri ('Iranian reknown journalist') with the Jerusalem Post produced some very interesting analyses of what is going on in the Middle East. His rational is very pragmatic, and though it ommits the intricate forces of 'political correctness' and such, it explains some facets of the current balagan in a way that makes me doubt the usefullness of political correctness in situations that clearly maintain it mostly for PR.
The whole interviewis available at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1178096596427&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Some particular questions and answers:
Hasn't Hizbullah emerged strengthened as a result of the war?
No, it has been destroyed. You know, Hizbullah was a major player in the Lebanese and Israel-Lebanon configurations in a certain context. That context has changed. As long as it controlled southern Lebanon, it could exert "proximity pressure" on Israel. That situation has changed; that status quo no longer exists. Now, whether Hizbullah is stronger or better armed today is a different question - one of speculation. Even if it has better arms, it doesn't have an area from which to launch new attacks without doing so from southern Beirut. But if it does that, the rest of the Lebanese population will say, "What is this business? You want to provoke us into a war from the middle of our city!"
That Hizbullah tried to camouflage its defeat by provoking a political crisis in Lebanon is also an indication of its understanding that the situation has changed and of its trying to find a new place in this new situation. It may become stronger in the future - I don't know; I'm not a prophet. But look, the Israelis killed 637 Hizbullah warriors out of a full-time fighting force of about 2,000. Usually in war, you talk of "decimation" - an army's losing one-tenth of its manpower. In this case, Hizbullah lost about a quarter of its fighters. It also lost literally all of its missile launching pads in the south, many missiles and arsenals. In other words, it lost manpower, territory and weaponry. What else do you want? But, you know [he laughs], Jews always want something more.
Could Hizbullah even exist without Iran?
Once it could have. But now, no. Finished. Nasrallah's big betrayal of Hizbullah was to transform it into an exclusively Iranian instrument of power, and become involved in a fight which doesn't have anything to do with it.
Anyway, while asking myself, "Why all this doom and gloom on the part of the Israelis?," I realized that a lot of it is imported from the West. Israel should guard against the danger of becoming too Westernized - too American - because the Americans are so powerful, nothing will happen to them, even if they are gloomy and doom-ridden. They can afford this luxury. You can't
Isn't the fact that we "have adopted more from the Western world" the reason we have a booming economy - as well as so many "gloomy" intellectuals? How would Israel look if it imitated its neighbors and not the United States?
Well, I don't want you to imitate your neighbors entirely, but rather to learn aspects from them. Israel, first and foremost, must be very Israeli, otherwise it's useless. It must be very Jewish, as well - otherwise, what's the point of it? So, the idea of having a cosmopolitan, Western, democratic, pluralist, hi-tech society, as such, is useless. I mean, you could have this anywhere in the world. The important thing is that the Israelis should not lose touch with their mythology, with their narrative. But, above all, they can't afford the luxury of self-loathing. You know, the Westerners can do that "we-are-guilty-everything-is-our-fault" routine. You are too small for this kind of luxury.
Should Israel, then, not have disengaged from Gaza?
No, I think you should not have disengaged from Gaza, unless in a broader context which becomes evident in the future. If you look at the history of the past 50 years or so, you see something very interesting. Israel has fought several wars with the Arabs and has won all of them. But these are the only wars in history where the winner was not allowed to impose the postwar status quo, because they all happened after the United Nations came into being. Every war in history has had a loser and a winner - which is the purpose of war. Otherwise it is useless. Its task is to change a situation through the use of force. If I have the force, I change the situation I don't like.
If I don't, I accept the situation. In the case of Israel's wars, the strange thing is that this principle didn't apply, because a third party intervened. You had others interfering in something that has nothing to do with them. They pass resolutions, and they say, "You should do this; you should do that."
Like this, there will never be peace. I mean, there is no example of this kind of peace-making. Once war is taken out of its natural role, people start speaking of a "just peace."
The concept of "just peace" is stupid, because peace cannot be "just" when somebody thinks it is unjust. Then they speak of "comprehensive peace."
Peace is peace. If you modify it with an adjective, it's like saying somebody is half pregnant or fully pregnant. You're either pregnant or you're not.
Then there's the "peace of the brave" - another ridiculous expression, because the brave don't make peace, they fight. Cowards make peace after they are defeated. The specificity of war is the clarity it creates. And you obfuscate that by adding all these modifiers. The only way that there can be peace in this region is to go back to the normal routes of war. So withdrawal from Gaza has no meaning unless Israel decides where it is and what it wants.
...Yet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has placed focus on the Jews by denying the Holocaust and by threatening to wipe Israel off the map.
The reason for this is that there are two Irans, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You have Iran as an expression of the Islamic Revolution, and you have Iran as a nation-state. As a nation-state, Iran has no basis for enmity with Israel. The two countries are not fighting over borders or access to markets or natural resources.
But Iran as an expression of the Islamic Revolution must hate Israel and vow to destroy it. This way, the regime can tell the Arabs, "Forget about the fact that we are Shi'ites; accept our leadership politically, and we will realize your dream of liberating Jerusalem and doing all the other nice things that you can't do yourself."
So, as an Islamic Republic, Iran is a mortal threat to Israel, but as a nation-state, it is a strong friend. There is no anti-Israeli sentiment or anti-Semitism in Iranian society. There's no Iranian writer or poet or filmmaker or playwright or artist who is an anti-Semite. It is something completely concocted by the regime.
Furthermore, you here may think that Iranians are knowledgeable about Israel. But they're not. Most Iranians don't even know where Israel is. Iran is a huge country with 70 million people, many of whom don't know where Pakistan is, or where Egypt is - let alone Israel. Nor do they care. Nor do the masses even know what the word "Holocaust" means.
Even if [the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran and commander-in-chief of the Iranian Armed Forces Ayatollah Sayyid Ali] Khamenei says no? Isn't Khamenei the one calling the shots? [in relation to declaring war]
It doesn't work this way - with Ahmadinejad saying, "Let's go to war," and Khamenei saying, "No."
This is not only the wrong way to look at it, but it is imprudent. Prudence dictates taking Ahmadinejad seriously and assuming that he has the power - even if he doesn't. It's like when Hitler came to power, and the British and the French said, "But there's still [president Paul von] Hindenburg."
Systems like that don't work according to the law. The most recent example is the showdown over the captured British sailors. Ahmadinejad seized control of the issue and handled it how he wanted before the others could maneuver. The same goes for the nuclear issue. The natural tendency of Khamenei and the others was to fudge a bit, to call [EU Secretary-General] Javier Solana and say, "Let's have some kebab together," then give him a carpet as a present and say, "Let's negotiate in three months," and "Keep hope alive." This was the phrase. But then Ahmadinejad came along and said, "You know what? This train doesn't have a rear gear; it doesn't have a brake - it's going to go straight ahead."
Now, how could Khamenei come and say, "No, you're wrong. You're going to stop this train"?
In a revolutionary situation, the person who pushes for the most radical policies usually has the upper hand, because a revolution is like riding a bicycle. As long as you pedal, you keep going. If you stop pedaling, you collapse. Ahmadinejad understands this and is using it to his advantage.
The whole interviewis available at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1178096596427&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Some particular questions and answers:
Hasn't Hizbullah emerged strengthened as a result of the war?
No, it has been destroyed. You know, Hizbullah was a major player in the Lebanese and Israel-Lebanon configurations in a certain context. That context has changed. As long as it controlled southern Lebanon, it could exert "proximity pressure" on Israel. That situation has changed; that status quo no longer exists. Now, whether Hizbullah is stronger or better armed today is a different question - one of speculation. Even if it has better arms, it doesn't have an area from which to launch new attacks without doing so from southern Beirut. But if it does that, the rest of the Lebanese population will say, "What is this business? You want to provoke us into a war from the middle of our city!"
That Hizbullah tried to camouflage its defeat by provoking a political crisis in Lebanon is also an indication of its understanding that the situation has changed and of its trying to find a new place in this new situation. It may become stronger in the future - I don't know; I'm not a prophet. But look, the Israelis killed 637 Hizbullah warriors out of a full-time fighting force of about 2,000. Usually in war, you talk of "decimation" - an army's losing one-tenth of its manpower. In this case, Hizbullah lost about a quarter of its fighters. It also lost literally all of its missile launching pads in the south, many missiles and arsenals. In other words, it lost manpower, territory and weaponry. What else do you want? But, you know [he laughs], Jews always want something more.
Could Hizbullah even exist without Iran?
Once it could have. But now, no. Finished. Nasrallah's big betrayal of Hizbullah was to transform it into an exclusively Iranian instrument of power, and become involved in a fight which doesn't have anything to do with it.
Anyway, while asking myself, "Why all this doom and gloom on the part of the Israelis?," I realized that a lot of it is imported from the West. Israel should guard against the danger of becoming too Westernized - too American - because the Americans are so powerful, nothing will happen to them, even if they are gloomy and doom-ridden. They can afford this luxury. You can't
Isn't the fact that we "have adopted more from the Western world" the reason we have a booming economy - as well as so many "gloomy" intellectuals? How would Israel look if it imitated its neighbors and not the United States?
Well, I don't want you to imitate your neighbors entirely, but rather to learn aspects from them. Israel, first and foremost, must be very Israeli, otherwise it's useless. It must be very Jewish, as well - otherwise, what's the point of it? So, the idea of having a cosmopolitan, Western, democratic, pluralist, hi-tech society, as such, is useless. I mean, you could have this anywhere in the world. The important thing is that the Israelis should not lose touch with their mythology, with their narrative. But, above all, they can't afford the luxury of self-loathing. You know, the Westerners can do that "we-are-guilty-everything-is-our-fault" routine. You are too small for this kind of luxury.
Should Israel, then, not have disengaged from Gaza?
No, I think you should not have disengaged from Gaza, unless in a broader context which becomes evident in the future. If you look at the history of the past 50 years or so, you see something very interesting. Israel has fought several wars with the Arabs and has won all of them. But these are the only wars in history where the winner was not allowed to impose the postwar status quo, because they all happened after the United Nations came into being. Every war in history has had a loser and a winner - which is the purpose of war. Otherwise it is useless. Its task is to change a situation through the use of force. If I have the force, I change the situation I don't like.
If I don't, I accept the situation. In the case of Israel's wars, the strange thing is that this principle didn't apply, because a third party intervened. You had others interfering in something that has nothing to do with them. They pass resolutions, and they say, "You should do this; you should do that."
Like this, there will never be peace. I mean, there is no example of this kind of peace-making. Once war is taken out of its natural role, people start speaking of a "just peace."
The concept of "just peace" is stupid, because peace cannot be "just" when somebody thinks it is unjust. Then they speak of "comprehensive peace."
Peace is peace. If you modify it with an adjective, it's like saying somebody is half pregnant or fully pregnant. You're either pregnant or you're not.
Then there's the "peace of the brave" - another ridiculous expression, because the brave don't make peace, they fight. Cowards make peace after they are defeated. The specificity of war is the clarity it creates. And you obfuscate that by adding all these modifiers. The only way that there can be peace in this region is to go back to the normal routes of war. So withdrawal from Gaza has no meaning unless Israel decides where it is and what it wants.
...Yet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has placed focus on the Jews by denying the Holocaust and by threatening to wipe Israel off the map.
The reason for this is that there are two Irans, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You have Iran as an expression of the Islamic Revolution, and you have Iran as a nation-state. As a nation-state, Iran has no basis for enmity with Israel. The two countries are not fighting over borders or access to markets or natural resources.
But Iran as an expression of the Islamic Revolution must hate Israel and vow to destroy it. This way, the regime can tell the Arabs, "Forget about the fact that we are Shi'ites; accept our leadership politically, and we will realize your dream of liberating Jerusalem and doing all the other nice things that you can't do yourself."
So, as an Islamic Republic, Iran is a mortal threat to Israel, but as a nation-state, it is a strong friend. There is no anti-Israeli sentiment or anti-Semitism in Iranian society. There's no Iranian writer or poet or filmmaker or playwright or artist who is an anti-Semite. It is something completely concocted by the regime.
Furthermore, you here may think that Iranians are knowledgeable about Israel. But they're not. Most Iranians don't even know where Israel is. Iran is a huge country with 70 million people, many of whom don't know where Pakistan is, or where Egypt is - let alone Israel. Nor do they care. Nor do the masses even know what the word "Holocaust" means.
Even if [the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran and commander-in-chief of the Iranian Armed Forces Ayatollah Sayyid Ali] Khamenei says no? Isn't Khamenei the one calling the shots? [in relation to declaring war]
It doesn't work this way - with Ahmadinejad saying, "Let's go to war," and Khamenei saying, "No."
This is not only the wrong way to look at it, but it is imprudent. Prudence dictates taking Ahmadinejad seriously and assuming that he has the power - even if he doesn't. It's like when Hitler came to power, and the British and the French said, "But there's still [president Paul von] Hindenburg."
Systems like that don't work according to the law. The most recent example is the showdown over the captured British sailors. Ahmadinejad seized control of the issue and handled it how he wanted before the others could maneuver. The same goes for the nuclear issue. The natural tendency of Khamenei and the others was to fudge a bit, to call [EU Secretary-General] Javier Solana and say, "Let's have some kebab together," then give him a carpet as a present and say, "Let's negotiate in three months," and "Keep hope alive." This was the phrase. But then Ahmadinejad came along and said, "You know what? This train doesn't have a rear gear; it doesn't have a brake - it's going to go straight ahead."
Now, how could Khamenei come and say, "No, you're wrong. You're going to stop this train"?
In a revolutionary situation, the person who pushes for the most radical policies usually has the upper hand, because a revolution is like riding a bicycle. As long as you pedal, you keep going. If you stop pedaling, you collapse. Ahmadinejad understands this and is using it to his advantage.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The New Addition to the Olmert Spectacle: Livni Enters Public Rebuke
I’ll admit that when the news uprising from the Winograd Report first came out, I had the archetypal response that led to the email I received the following day calling me to pass on the call for Olmert’s resignation, and the NYT article from that same morning reporting on the protest outside Olmert’s house, calling for the same thing. Following up, considering Olmert’s feeble responses and defenses, as well as talkbacks on Israeli news-sites, and the general atmosphere, I was beginning to believe he might be pushed out after all…and if not, it’s just another 3 months, right? Then again the next part of the Lebanon war sage is expected this summer.
Olmert’s approval ratings are even more ridiculous than his statements: 2-3% according to the NYT (whereas the margin of error is 3%...well about the same), and the possibilities for replacements have indubitably been pacing through Israeli minds for a long time. The Winograd report laid a clear, firm responsibility on him for the many failures and discrepancies of the war last summer, and he has accepted them (not that he really had a choice). However, despite the grandiose dissatisfaction that the Israeli people have with the current prime minister, the question of who’s next is perhaps more pertinent than that of when Olmert will step down.
That’s where today’s addition to theבלגן (balagan) comes to place. In a conference today, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced that she had asked Olmert to resign. No problem right? That’s what you might think on first site, but when you see the complementary statement, it all changes.
Ms. Livni suggests that since public opinion and the Winograd report have spoken (really more the report than the people, by her speech) Ehud Olmert must oblige everyone and step down from his post, to be replaced by a newly elected member of theקדימה (Kadima) party [elected by vote within the party].
It should bear no surprise that Tzipi is planning to run.
It’s pretty funny how undesirable situations unite a nation. It seems to me that there is a crystal clear consensus as to Israel’s answer to its humble ministress.
“HOLD YOUR HORSES!”
Granted, the attention was shifted to Olmert at the report’s release – maybe Peretz, who is so far beyond simple disapproval that it would be futile to discuss his myriad flaws [though it is inevitable to mention the ridiculous picture in which he posed, peering at a military scene with closed binoculars].
What has been omitted from major conversation, and is now once again surfacing is the plain fact that the war’s failure (as the Winograd report showed) was not Olmert’s fault. It was Kadima’s fault. Even Olmert’s actions were not individual decisions made and carried out from Olmert to the army. Practically everything that happened, happened through the entire party, Livni and Peretz, particularly included, as they both hold powerful positions. Even though Olmert was the acting Prime Minister, Livni is not less to blame than Olmert for the unpreparedness of the army, for the poor judgments in strategy, and most of all for the UN-coordinated cease-fire (with Hezbollah, as well as with Palestinians), which led to a continuation of thousands of rockets being shot at Israel (mostly Sderot), a suicide bombing in Eilat, and many attempts for more. In fact, it is largely Livni’s responsibility that the three kidnapped Israeli soldiers are not yet returned – another big complaint against Olmert (and his administration).
More so, talkbacks on Ynet, Haaretz, and J Post strike at Livni, (rightly) charging her with opportunism, incompetence, equivalency to Olmert, idiocy, lack of ethics/morals, being easily manipulated/swinging with the wind, and much more – some kinder, and others, rather ribald.
The situation is really best defined as one Ynet talk-backer said, “If anyone says it [that Olmert must resign], its okay. But, from Livni, its arrogance.”
I strongly recommend taking a look, for sheer entertainment, if for no other purpose. However, since the vast majority of them are uniformed in concept, a particularly riveting sample or two from each site will suffice.
Olmert’s approval ratings are even more ridiculous than his statements: 2-3% according to the NYT (whereas the margin of error is 3%...well about the same), and the possibilities for replacements have indubitably been pacing through Israeli minds for a long time. The Winograd report laid a clear, firm responsibility on him for the many failures and discrepancies of the war last summer, and he has accepted them (not that he really had a choice). However, despite the grandiose dissatisfaction that the Israeli people have with the current prime minister, the question of who’s next is perhaps more pertinent than that of when Olmert will step down.
That’s where today’s addition to theבלגן (balagan) comes to place. In a conference today, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced that she had asked Olmert to resign. No problem right? That’s what you might think on first site, but when you see the complementary statement, it all changes.
Ms. Livni suggests that since public opinion and the Winograd report have spoken (really more the report than the people, by her speech) Ehud Olmert must oblige everyone and step down from his post, to be replaced by a newly elected member of theקדימה (Kadima) party [elected by vote within the party].
It should bear no surprise that Tzipi is planning to run.
It’s pretty funny how undesirable situations unite a nation. It seems to me that there is a crystal clear consensus as to Israel’s answer to its humble ministress.
“HOLD YOUR HORSES!”
Granted, the attention was shifted to Olmert at the report’s release – maybe Peretz, who is so far beyond simple disapproval that it would be futile to discuss his myriad flaws [though it is inevitable to mention the ridiculous picture in which he posed, peering at a military scene with closed binoculars].
What has been omitted from major conversation, and is now once again surfacing is the plain fact that the war’s failure (as the Winograd report showed) was not Olmert’s fault. It was Kadima’s fault. Even Olmert’s actions were not individual decisions made and carried out from Olmert to the army. Practically everything that happened, happened through the entire party, Livni and Peretz, particularly included, as they both hold powerful positions. Even though Olmert was the acting Prime Minister, Livni is not less to blame than Olmert for the unpreparedness of the army, for the poor judgments in strategy, and most of all for the UN-coordinated cease-fire (with Hezbollah, as well as with Palestinians), which led to a continuation of thousands of rockets being shot at Israel (mostly Sderot), a suicide bombing in Eilat, and many attempts for more. In fact, it is largely Livni’s responsibility that the three kidnapped Israeli soldiers are not yet returned – another big complaint against Olmert (and his administration).
More so, talkbacks on Ynet, Haaretz, and J Post strike at Livni, (rightly) charging her with opportunism, incompetence, equivalency to Olmert, idiocy, lack of ethics/morals, being easily manipulated/swinging with the wind, and much more – some kinder, and others, rather ribald.
The situation is really best defined as one Ynet talk-backer said, “If anyone says it [that Olmert must resign], its okay. But, from Livni, its arrogance.”
I strongly recommend taking a look, for sheer entertainment, if for no other purpose. However, since the vast majority of them are uniformed in concept, a particularly riveting sample or two from each site will suffice.
16. It would be nobel on her part
If it were not for her own true goals and obvious incompetence
Reality Check ,
BaGolan
(05.02.07)
18. Livni ,Show him how it's done !
You are just another puppet politician who is easliy manipulated. You are out of your league. Just another yes,yes maam of Condi Rice and George Bush ! Go back home and bake cookies for the children.
Marcel ,
Florida
(05.02.07)
If it were not for her own true goals and obvious incompetence
Reality Check ,
BaGolan
(05.02.07)
18. Livni ,Show him how it's done !
You are just another puppet politician who is easliy manipulated. You are out of your league. Just another yes,yes maam of Condi Rice and George Bush ! Go back home and bake cookies for the children.
Marcel ,
Florida
(05.02.07)
LIVNI JUST AS RESPONSIBLE!!!!!!
Ben Uziel
Livni thinks she can rewrite history and whitewash herself of responsibility. Israel leadership must be completely replaced. New elections and nothing else!!! until then there will be spin, lie and superficiality to the resolution to many Israeli problems. Livni is as responsible as olmert, to deny this is to deny the whole point of political responsibility within a govt.
Livni Kicks Olmert When He Is Down
Ben Israel
Israel
Tzippi Livni is a complete zero..a political nihilist, post-Zionist with no program other than self-advancement, in other words, like all the rest of the Kadima gang. The government has COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY and she is just as responsible for the disaster. Now she thinks she is only a short step from being Prime Minister...it is truly frightening that someone like her could reach the top job.Her parents were revered fighters in the ETZEL (Irgun) in the pre-state period, so she cashed in on this to get ahead in the Likud even though like most of its "princes" she abandoned their nationalist/Zionist line. She attached herself to Sharon and as he moved to the Left, so did she. Like I said, she is a real nothing.
(Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/854673.html)
69. The Mighty & The Greedy Surely Will Fall.NO One In This Crew Is Speaking About National Interest. This Is A True Crime Against The PeopleAdina Kutnicki - US 05/02/2007 23:36
The sharks are circling within Kadima - Kadima, over the cliff. Justice dictates that ALL of these miscreants get tossed overboard. I am NOT in a forgiving mood and do not feel they even deserve life rafts!
Ben Uziel
Livni thinks she can rewrite history and whitewash herself of responsibility. Israel leadership must be completely replaced. New elections and nothing else!!! until then there will be spin, lie and superficiality to the resolution to many Israeli problems. Livni is as responsible as olmert, to deny this is to deny the whole point of political responsibility within a govt.
Livni Kicks Olmert When He Is Down
Ben Israel
Israel
Tzippi Livni is a complete zero..a political nihilist, post-Zionist with no program other than self-advancement, in other words, like all the rest of the Kadima gang. The government has COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY and she is just as responsible for the disaster. Now she thinks she is only a short step from being Prime Minister...it is truly frightening that someone like her could reach the top job.Her parents were revered fighters in the ETZEL (Irgun) in the pre-state period, so she cashed in on this to get ahead in the Likud even though like most of its "princes" she abandoned their nationalist/Zionist line. She attached herself to Sharon and as he moved to the Left, so did she. Like I said, she is a real nothing.
(Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/854673.html)
69. The Mighty & The Greedy Surely Will Fall.NO One In This Crew Is Speaking About National Interest. This Is A True Crime Against The PeopleAdina Kutnicki - US 05/02/2007 23:36
The sharks are circling within Kadima - Kadima, over the cliff. Justice dictates that ALL of these miscreants get tossed overboard. I am NOT in a forgiving mood and do not feel they even deserve life rafts!
34. Where it was sealedCry 05/02/2007 19:55
If the war planning and execution was a disaster, and it was, nothing was over until the end result was sealed at the UN. That was Livni's responsibility. She craves to be liked by Rice more then to advocate Israel's true interests. If you think Olmert is bad, he will seem to have been a great leader if Livni ever becomes PM.
If the war planning and execution was a disaster, and it was, nothing was over until the end result was sealed at the UN. That was Livni's responsibility. She craves to be liked by Rice more then to advocate Israel's true interests. If you think Olmert is bad, he will seem to have been a great leader if Livni ever becomes PM.
16. Livni: Gutless, Not "The Right Stuff"Ovadiah ben Avraham - Israel 05/02/2007 17:43
If she had made a move against Olmert, I would have called her a Kadima hack opportunist. If she had resigned I would have thought, hmmm, maybe she is in Israeli politics for the long run and the right reasons (to serve). But this gutless flop on her belly before Olmert is repulsive. She *is* the "princess" that the analysts say -- without a patron to promote her, she is nothing on her own. Next.
If she had made a move against Olmert, I would have called her a Kadima hack opportunist. If she had resigned I would have thought, hmmm, maybe she is in Israeli politics for the long run and the right reasons (to serve). But this gutless flop on her belly before Olmert is repulsive. She *is* the "princess" that the analysts say -- without a patron to promote her, she is nothing on her own. Next.
55. Livni - No Ethics, Honor, or CompetenceJerome Soller 05/02/2007 22:06
If she does not resign, I hope Olmert fires her. She and Peres should resign themselves, before Olmert resigns. Maybe, if Israel is lucky, it can include her in the trade for the kidnapped Israelis. I pray for an Israel with Peres, Livni, and Olmert in no position of responsibility greater than cleaning toilets. Jerome
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1178020750384)
OVERALL: There were a few supporting comments towards Livni, but they were miniscule compared to the opposition. There was little talk of a solution to the situation, or steps towards it except for the immediate removal of Kadima (one or two comments advocated keeping Kadima and Olmert). The vast majority of substitute suggestions were for Benjamin (Bibi) Natanyahu – a name I’ve come across often in terms of calls for primacy in Israel. If there were elections held now, I’d guess Bibi would be the likeliest to win (and probably the best to win), but Israelis don’t have much faith in their government right now. Sad as that is, there is very much room for a new generation of politicians of a different class. As Sharon withers away, Peres not far from, and the rest of them hanging from the ledges, the founders of Israel, who had been with it from birth, and who have seen it through it’s first 60 or so years are just about done. A recent article on ynet spoke of signs of a new Zionism and patriotism amongst Israeli youth as uprising, and I can only hope that this is true and prevalent. It is up to the next generation to come up with some leaders who will be credible and who will pull Israel out of the rut it has been in for the past decade. Who are these people? We don’t know yet.
All we can hope is that they will show up soon, because Israel’s transition time is running out.
If she does not resign, I hope Olmert fires her. She and Peres should resign themselves, before Olmert resigns. Maybe, if Israel is lucky, it can include her in the trade for the kidnapped Israelis. I pray for an Israel with Peres, Livni, and Olmert in no position of responsibility greater than cleaning toilets. Jerome
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1178020750384)
OVERALL: There were a few supporting comments towards Livni, but they were miniscule compared to the opposition. There was little talk of a solution to the situation, or steps towards it except for the immediate removal of Kadima (one or two comments advocated keeping Kadima and Olmert). The vast majority of substitute suggestions were for Benjamin (Bibi) Natanyahu – a name I’ve come across often in terms of calls for primacy in Israel. If there were elections held now, I’d guess Bibi would be the likeliest to win (and probably the best to win), but Israelis don’t have much faith in their government right now. Sad as that is, there is very much room for a new generation of politicians of a different class. As Sharon withers away, Peres not far from, and the rest of them hanging from the ledges, the founders of Israel, who had been with it from birth, and who have seen it through it’s first 60 or so years are just about done. A recent article on ynet spoke of signs of a new Zionism and patriotism amongst Israeli youth as uprising, and I can only hope that this is true and prevalent. It is up to the next generation to come up with some leaders who will be credible and who will pull Israel out of the rut it has been in for the past decade. Who are these people? We don’t know yet.
All we can hope is that they will show up soon, because Israel’s transition time is running out.
EDIT: Report: Livni Will Quit
(IsraelNN.com) Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will announce her resignation from the government if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not resign, Israeli media reported Wednesday morning. She is scheduled to meet with the Prime Minister at 4 p.m. (9 a.m. EDT) and then will hold a press conference. The Foreign Minister was catapulted into the top political echelon when she backed former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's program to destroy Jewish communities in the Gaza and northern Samaria regions.
(IsraelNN.com) Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will announce her resignation from the government if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not resign, Israeli media reported Wednesday morning. She is scheduled to meet with the Prime Minister at 4 p.m. (9 a.m. EDT) and then will hold a press conference. The Foreign Minister was catapulted into the top political echelon when she backed former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's program to destroy Jewish communities in the Gaza and northern Samaria regions.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Kidnapping
'Mashaal: If Israel doesn't yield we will kidnap again
Hamas politburo chief says Hamas will kidnap more IDF soldiers if Israel does not yield to Palestinian demands, meanwhile Abbas briefs Saudi King Abdullah on deteriorating security situation in Gaza
By: Ali Waked
"Hamas is determined to free all the Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails, be it by kidnapping more soldiers or other methods," said Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal on Monday at a rally for Palestinian prisoners in a Damascus refugee camp.
Mashaal said that kidnapped Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit will not be released until Israel yields to Palestinian demands. "If the enemy insists on continuing to refuse to free our prisoners, I am saying here that we have every capability to do again what we have done before," said Mashaal.
The exiled Hamas leader condemned the international silence in the face of "Israel's policy of terror, killing, arrests and siege against the Palestinian people.
"While the leaders of the world already know the name Gilad Shalit by heart, the name of Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Dr. Aziz Dwaik is of no interest to anyone."
Mashaal reiterated that Hamas' list of demands, including the names of the prisoners they want released, has already been handed over to Israel. "The Israelis initially accepted the list," he said, "but then later they started playing games with various excuses. The enemy is trying to manipulate and use extortion tactics, but I emphasize: Shalit will only be released if our demands are met and only in exchange for the price we have stipulated. We will not give in to their extortions."
Abbas in surprise Saudi visit
Meanwhile on Sunday Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah held an unannounced meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss recent developments in the region.
The meeting in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, came a day after Abbas met with Mashaal in Cairo. Their talks were the first since their blocs formed a coalition government in March under Saudi Arabian mediation.
A Palestinian official said that during Sunday's meeting Abbas briefed Abdullah on the deteriorating security situation in the Gaza Strip and the two discussed ''how to re-establish security (in Gaza) and reactivate the cease-fire."
Within the Palestinian Authority officials said that following Abbas' visit to Riyadh it is expected that the king will either extend a similar invitation to Mashaal or dispatch Saudi envoys to meet with him in Syria.'
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3393559,00.html
Hamas politburo chief says Hamas will kidnap more IDF soldiers if Israel does not yield to Palestinian demands, meanwhile Abbas briefs Saudi King Abdullah on deteriorating security situation in Gaza
By: Ali Waked
"Hamas is determined to free all the Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails, be it by kidnapping more soldiers or other methods," said Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal on Monday at a rally for Palestinian prisoners in a Damascus refugee camp.
Mashaal said that kidnapped Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit will not be released until Israel yields to Palestinian demands. "If the enemy insists on continuing to refuse to free our prisoners, I am saying here that we have every capability to do again what we have done before," said Mashaal.
The exiled Hamas leader condemned the international silence in the face of "Israel's policy of terror, killing, arrests and siege against the Palestinian people.
"While the leaders of the world already know the name Gilad Shalit by heart, the name of Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Dr. Aziz Dwaik is of no interest to anyone."
Mashaal reiterated that Hamas' list of demands, including the names of the prisoners they want released, has already been handed over to Israel. "The Israelis initially accepted the list," he said, "but then later they started playing games with various excuses. The enemy is trying to manipulate and use extortion tactics, but I emphasize: Shalit will only be released if our demands are met and only in exchange for the price we have stipulated. We will not give in to their extortions."
Abbas in surprise Saudi visit
Meanwhile on Sunday Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah held an unannounced meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss recent developments in the region.
The meeting in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, came a day after Abbas met with Mashaal in Cairo. Their talks were the first since their blocs formed a coalition government in March under Saudi Arabian mediation.
A Palestinian official said that during Sunday's meeting Abbas briefed Abdullah on the deteriorating security situation in the Gaza Strip and the two discussed ''how to re-establish security (in Gaza) and reactivate the cease-fire."
Within the Palestinian Authority officials said that following Abbas' visit to Riyadh it is expected that the king will either extend a similar invitation to Mashaal or dispatch Saudi envoys to meet with him in Syria.'
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3393559,00.html
...........................................................................................................................................
Israel is put in a very difficult position. The Palestinians have called a lose-lose game, where everything is in Israel's face; everything is 100% clear, but there may not be a way out.
One of the largest critiques of exchanging prisoners has always been that a successful trade always encourages Israel's enemies to turn to kidnapping everytime they want something. If anyone had any doubts, now this is being publicized by the Hamas leadership.
Further, Hamas has put Israel down in the sense that if Israel agrees to a trade-off, Israel is left vulnerable (to further attacks, kidnappings, etc.), Israel is the loser (who gave in), and Israel just released hundreds of potential terrorists.
From the other side, there is much pressure within Israel to abide by Israel's famous policy of retrieving its soldiers in any circumstance, at any cost. That is, Israel needs to get its three boys back, but how?
While the vast majority of Israel would agree that the soldiers must be returned, safely to their homes and families, the same majority would agree that concessions of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners is simply not a fair trade. Looking at the situation, it becomes clear that abiding by a trade is not an option to Israel anyhow, if for no other reason, then for the image that it sends out; exactly the signal that the Arab/Muslim (anti-Israel) world is looking for- the signal that Israel is weak and vulnerable.
Clearly, a different strategy will have to be enacted here by Israel. Hopefully our creativity will not fail us; this is no time for failure.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Why we can't let Naziism go.
:YNET:
France: Woman attacked for wearing Star of David
22-year-old French woman says youths of Middle Eastern origin snatched her Star of David necklace, lifted her shirt and drew a swastika on her stomach
by: Yael Branovsky
A 22-year-old French woman said Thursday she was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by two youths at an underground train station in Marseille.
The youths, who the woman said were of Middle Eastern origin, snatched her Star of David necklace, then lifted her shirt and drew a swastika on her stomach before fleeing the scene.
According to the Jewish Agency, the French police have refrained from releasing the details of the incident before it was proven that the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism.
The head of the Jewish Agency delegation in France, David Roche, told Ynet that representatives of the local Jewish community would continue to follow the investigation.
“We will be in touch with the woman and provide her with all the help she needs,” he said, adding that the attack was the most severe anti-Semitic incident in France since the murder of Ilan Halimi in February 2006.
Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski released a statement saying that “specifically during the course of the largest display of democracy France has known in many years this barbaric act is carried out.
"We are doing our utmost so that the issue of the fight against anti-Semitism will top the agenda of the candidates for the presidency and of the candidate who is elected," he said.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3392614,00.html
It's not the point that over 60 years have passed since the ending of the Hollocaust (though not if you ask Ahmedinejad and his treasonous neturei karta friends).
It's not even the point that Germany has numerous anti-racist/anti-anti-semitism laws (although anti-semitism is flourishing in many places and ways anyway).
It's that regardless of whether the anti-semitism is coming from Germans, French, Arabs, whoever, the swastika is their symbol. What does it represent?
The swastika represents a doctorine of hatred towards Jews; it says, 'Get out, we don't want you here.'
It says, 'We want you dead.'
It says, 'Don't forget, it's not that hard to get you the point of the Hollocaust.'
The last of the generation who bore witness to the Hollocaust is nearing death, and the younger generations seem to be living in a disillusioned saftey. The only question is, how real is it?
In recent news, we've seen anti-semetic acts world-wide increasing in double-digit percentiles, and anti-zionist sentiments spreading.
It appears to me that people are losing their understanding of Israel and its purpose - and not because of the corruption or the terrorism. Decades after escaping the harsh realities of anti-semetic surroundings have left everyone feeling as if the world is a safe-haven left only for them to judge. They had never felt fear for being who they are, therefore they see no reason to seek refuge from it.
Israel has seen progressivly rising rates of immigrants from France lately. I wonder why that is.
France: Woman attacked for wearing Star of David
22-year-old French woman says youths of Middle Eastern origin snatched her Star of David necklace, lifted her shirt and drew a swastika on her stomach
by: Yael Branovsky
A 22-year-old French woman said Thursday she was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by two youths at an underground train station in Marseille.
The youths, who the woman said were of Middle Eastern origin, snatched her Star of David necklace, then lifted her shirt and drew a swastika on her stomach before fleeing the scene.
According to the Jewish Agency, the French police have refrained from releasing the details of the incident before it was proven that the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism.
The head of the Jewish Agency delegation in France, David Roche, told Ynet that representatives of the local Jewish community would continue to follow the investigation.
“We will be in touch with the woman and provide her with all the help she needs,” he said, adding that the attack was the most severe anti-Semitic incident in France since the murder of Ilan Halimi in February 2006.
Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski released a statement saying that “specifically during the course of the largest display of democracy France has known in many years this barbaric act is carried out.
"We are doing our utmost so that the issue of the fight against anti-Semitism will top the agenda of the candidates for the presidency and of the candidate who is elected," he said.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3392614,00.html
It's not the point that over 60 years have passed since the ending of the Hollocaust (though not if you ask Ahmedinejad and his treasonous neturei karta friends).
It's not even the point that Germany has numerous anti-racist/anti-anti-semitism laws (although anti-semitism is flourishing in many places and ways anyway).
It's that regardless of whether the anti-semitism is coming from Germans, French, Arabs, whoever, the swastika is their symbol. What does it represent?
The swastika represents a doctorine of hatred towards Jews; it says, 'Get out, we don't want you here.'
It says, 'We want you dead.'
It says, 'Don't forget, it's not that hard to get you the point of the Hollocaust.'
The last of the generation who bore witness to the Hollocaust is nearing death, and the younger generations seem to be living in a disillusioned saftey. The only question is, how real is it?
In recent news, we've seen anti-semetic acts world-wide increasing in double-digit percentiles, and anti-zionist sentiments spreading.
It appears to me that people are losing their understanding of Israel and its purpose - and not because of the corruption or the terrorism. Decades after escaping the harsh realities of anti-semetic surroundings have left everyone feeling as if the world is a safe-haven left only for them to judge. They had never felt fear for being who they are, therefore they see no reason to seek refuge from it.
Israel has seen progressivly rising rates of immigrants from France lately. I wonder why that is.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Sex, Drugs, and REALITY CHECKS.
I'm so tired of the excuse: "I know it's bad, but I want to experiment so I can find myself."
I have two main critiques:
Firstly, what the hell do you expect to find? You'll know that you'll either like it or dislike it. If you dislike it, you'll either keep doing it until it grows on you (coughcoughADDICTIONMUCH?coughcough), or stop; or you'll like it and you'll keep doing and doing it.
If you know it's 'bad', why would you search for justification to do it? I've heard the 'it feels good' and the 'i've started, now i can't stop' shit a hundred times, but this doesn't exist before you tried it. By doing it, you're hoping to get some sort of benefit from it, obviously. No one (except sadists and masachists) does something they expect a negative result from. Therefore what you're doing is, doing something you 'know is bad' in hopes of liking it, and therefore getting caught in the 'it feels good'.
So you're trying to 'find yourself' a druggie or a consistant smoker or whatever. Goal accomplished? I bet that's not what you drew for 'what I want to be when I grow up' in 3rd grade.
Secondly, the excuse can be interpreted as being skeptical of activity x being 'bad', and wanting to experiment to find out for yourself.
Have you ever killed a person? Have you had a close one be killed?
You know killing is 'bad' though, right? When you read that someone was killed in the paper, you sympathize, don't you?
Your mommy and daddy told you it's bad when you were still wearing pajamas with feet coverings. Your teacher told you so in second grade. If you're religious, the ten commandments told you so. The constitution says so. The TV and movies that you watched growing up, the books you've read, the negative conotations towards murder in the news media, all told you that murder is bad, and that it is prohibited.
You understand that it is bad and sinful to perpetrate, and you don't even have a drop of blood on your hands.
This can go for thousands of things.
It is an undisputed, statistical fact that drug habits lead to not only health complications and risks (not only in direct damage), but in social hemorage.
There are constantly stories of hookers so desperate that they will take a client for 5 dollars worth of cocaine. Much of the 80's was characterized by gang wars, mass violence, health crises, destroyed lives - it was called 'The Cocaine Wars' for a reason.There are stories of how LSD users tear their apartments apart tile by tile, brick by brick - all because they saw something soul-searchingly evil in the walls. These are just a few, miniscule examples of the hundreds, and thousands of stories and facts we know, showing how absolutely detrimental they are - and btw some of the strong drugs, especially, are addictive in as little as two uses.
We hear all the time about cancers, hepatitis, HIV - all kinds of diseases - that seam directly to (cigarettes are drugs) drug use and/or permiscuity.
There are few people who are stupid enough to say that these things are not 'bad', and if you have the audacity to question that, you are fooling no one but yourself.
Let's wrap it all up together - there is nothing good you are searching for in persuing drugs/smoking/permiscuity/xyz. Stop making excuses that fool you, but surely not me., and just own up to it; if you do it, it's for the sake of doing it of it. There's no deep and meaningful rationale.
I have two main critiques:
Firstly, what the hell do you expect to find? You'll know that you'll either like it or dislike it. If you dislike it, you'll either keep doing it until it grows on you (coughcoughADDICTIONMUCH?coughcough), or stop; or you'll like it and you'll keep doing and doing it.
If you know it's 'bad', why would you search for justification to do it? I've heard the 'it feels good' and the 'i've started, now i can't stop' shit a hundred times, but this doesn't exist before you tried it. By doing it, you're hoping to get some sort of benefit from it, obviously. No one (except sadists and masachists) does something they expect a negative result from. Therefore what you're doing is, doing something you 'know is bad' in hopes of liking it, and therefore getting caught in the 'it feels good'.
So you're trying to 'find yourself' a druggie or a consistant smoker or whatever. Goal accomplished? I bet that's not what you drew for 'what I want to be when I grow up' in 3rd grade.
Secondly, the excuse can be interpreted as being skeptical of activity x being 'bad', and wanting to experiment to find out for yourself.
Have you ever killed a person? Have you had a close one be killed?
You know killing is 'bad' though, right? When you read that someone was killed in the paper, you sympathize, don't you?
Your mommy and daddy told you it's bad when you were still wearing pajamas with feet coverings. Your teacher told you so in second grade. If you're religious, the ten commandments told you so. The constitution says so. The TV and movies that you watched growing up, the books you've read, the negative conotations towards murder in the news media, all told you that murder is bad, and that it is prohibited.
You understand that it is bad and sinful to perpetrate, and you don't even have a drop of blood on your hands.
This can go for thousands of things.
It is an undisputed, statistical fact that drug habits lead to not only health complications and risks (not only in direct damage), but in social hemorage.
There are constantly stories of hookers so desperate that they will take a client for 5 dollars worth of cocaine. Much of the 80's was characterized by gang wars, mass violence, health crises, destroyed lives - it was called 'The Cocaine Wars' for a reason.There are stories of how LSD users tear their apartments apart tile by tile, brick by brick - all because they saw something soul-searchingly evil in the walls. These are just a few, miniscule examples of the hundreds, and thousands of stories and facts we know, showing how absolutely detrimental they are - and btw some of the strong drugs, especially, are addictive in as little as two uses.
We hear all the time about cancers, hepatitis, HIV - all kinds of diseases - that seam directly to (cigarettes are drugs) drug use and/or permiscuity.
There are few people who are stupid enough to say that these things are not 'bad', and if you have the audacity to question that, you are fooling no one but yourself.
Let's wrap it all up together - there is nothing good you are searching for in persuing drugs/smoking/permiscuity/xyz. Stop making excuses that fool you, but surely not me., and just own up to it; if you do it, it's for the sake of doing it of it. There's no deep and meaningful rationale.
Kids born to Cocain addicts have a physical addiction from birth--------------------------->
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