All Hail the Peace Makers 18
IT IS now fashionable to say that “the two-state solution is dead”. Or: “Time for the two-state solution is running out”.
Why dead? How dead? It’s one of those things that need no proof. To say it is enough.
If pressed, though, the fake mourners of the two-state solution give a reason: there are just too many settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem. They can’t be removed. It’s just impossible.
Is it?
(A shorter version of this article was published yesterday in Haaretz).
AVRAHAM BURG (58) was a member of the Labor Party and for some time the Chairman of the Knesset. His late father was a long-time cabinet minister and a leader of the National-Religious Party, before it became a rabid messianic mob. The relations between Burg sr. and me were quite friendly, largely because we were the only two German-born members of the Knesset.
I DON’T know if the Guinness Book of World Records has a special section for Chutzpah.
If it does not, it should. That's the one competition where we might take home a few gold medals.
The first one would surely go to Binyamin Netanyahu.
I DIDN’T want to write this article, but I had to.
I love Egypt. I love the Egyptian people. I have spent some of the happiest days of my life there.
My heart bleeds when I think of Egypt. And these days I think about Egypt all the time.
POOR OBAMA. I pity him.
Right at the start of his meeting with history, he made The Speech in Cairo. A great speech. An uplifting speech. An edifying speech.
He talked to the educated youth of the Egyptian capital. He spoke about the virtues of democracy, the bright future awaiting a liberal, moderate Muslim world.
Hosni Mubarak was not invited. The hint was that he was an obstacle to the bright new world.
Perhaps the hint was taken. Perhaps the speech sowed the seed of the Arab spring.
Probably Obama was not aware of the possibility that democracy, virtuous democracy, would lead to Islamist rule. He tried to reach out tentatively, tenderly, to the Muslim Brothers after they won the election. But probably at the same time, the CIA was already plotting the military takeover
ISRAEL LOVES anniversaries. The media fill up with revelations and memories of the event commemorated, eye-witnesses recite their stories for the umpteenth time, old photos flood the pages and the TV screens.
In the coming days, two main memorial dates will play this role. True, the Yom Kippur war broke out only in October (1973), but already the newspapers and TV programs are full of it.
HERE IS another Jewish joke: A hungry young Jew sees an announcement outside a local circus: anyone who climbs to the top of a 50 meter pole and jumps onto a tarpaulin below will win a prize of a thousand rubles.
Out of desperation he goes in, climbs the pole and shudders looking down.
“Jump! Jump!” the ringmaster shouts.
“Jumping is out of the question!” the Jew shouts back. “But how do I get down again?”
That’s how Barack Obama was feeling, a moment before the Russians provided the means.
THE TROUBLE with war is that it has two sides.
IF SOMEBODY steals something precious from you, say a diamond, you may be angry.
Even God himself said so. When He sent a worm to kill the gourd which provided shade for the prophet Jonah in the desert, He asked him maliciously: “Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?” (Jonah 4:9)
YEARS AGO I disclosed one of the biggest secrets about Iran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an agent of the Mossad.
Suddenly, all the curious details of his behavior made sense. His public fantasies about the disappearance of Israel. His denial of the Holocaust, which until then had been typical only of a lunatic fringe. His boasting about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Cui bono? Who had an interest in all this nonsense?
There is only one sensible answer: Israel.
BINYAMIN NETANYAHU aroused my pity. From my 10 years of membership in the Knesset I know how unpleasant it is to speak before an empty hall.
His die-hard followers – a pathetic residue of Casino magnates and burnt-out Zionist right-wingers - sat in the gallery and an over-blown Israeli delegation sat in the hall, but they only underlined the general emptiness. Depressing.
WHEN RABBI Ovadia Yosef first appeared on the national scene, I heaved a deep sigh of relief.
Here was the man I had dreamed of: a charismatic leader of oriental Jews, a man of peace, a bearer of a moderate religious tradition.
“Rabbi Ovadia”, as everybody called him, who died this week at the age of 93, was born in Baghdad, came to Palestine as a boy of 4, gained huge respect as a religious scholar. During the 1948 war he was the chief rabbi of Egypt, later he became the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. When his appointment was not renewed, as a result of some obscure political intrigue, he founded a new political party, Shas, which quickly became a force in Israeli politics.
THOSE WHO are interested in the history of the Crusades ask themselves: what brought about the Crusaders' downfall? Looking at the remnants of their proud fortresses all over the country, we wonder.
The traditional answer is: their defeat in the battle of the Horns of Hattin, twin hills near the Lake of Galilee, in 1187, by the great Muslim Sultan Salah ad-Din (Saladin).
However, the Crusader state lived on in Palestine and the surroundings for another hundred years.
The most authoritative historian of the Crus
The term “apartheid” is often used purely for propaganda purposes. Apartheid, like racism and fascism, is a rhetorical term one uses to denigrate one’s opponent.
But apartheid is also a term with a precise content. It applies to a specific regime. Equating another regime to it may be accurate, partly correct or just wrong. So, necessarily, will be the conclusions drawn from the comparison.
On the occasion of my 90th birthday, a panel discussion of eminent historians took place in Tel Aviv’s Tsavta hall on the question: “Will Israel Exist in Another 90 Years?” There follows a slightly shortened version of my own remarks. A full video of the discussion with English translation will be published as soon as possible.
WILL ISRAEL exist in another 90 years? The very question is typical of Israel. No one would take it seriously in England or Germany, or even in other states born from immigration, like Australia or the USA.
ON MY 16th birthday, in 1939, I rushed to the district registration office of the Government of Palestine to change my name officially.
I shed the German name I was given at birth and adopted the Hebrew first and surname I had chosen.
It was more than a mere change of names. It was a declaration: a divorce from my past in the Diaspora (“exile” in Zionist parlance), from the tradition of my German-Jewish forebears, from everything that was “exilic”. “Exilic” was the worst insult you could throw at anyone at the time.
FROM THE first moment, I did not have the slightest doubt that Yasser Arafat was assassinated.
It was a matter of simple logic.
On the way back from the funeral, I happened upon Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Knesset for the nationalist Arab Balad party, who is a highly qualified doctoral pharmacist. We exchanged views and came to the same conclusion.
THIS IS not merely a fight between Israel and the US. Nor is it only a fight between the White House and Congress. It is also a battle between intellectual titans.
On the one side there are the two renowned professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. On the other, the towering international intellectual Noam Chomsky.
It’s all about whether the dog wags the tail or the tail wags the dog.
Good stuff CMOT.
THE GREATEST danger to Israel is not the putative Iranian nuclear bomb. The greatest danger is the stupidity of our leaders.
This is not a uniquely Israeli phenomenon. A great many of the world’s leaders are plain stupid, and always have been. Enough to look at what happened in Europe in July 1914, when an incredible accumulation of stupid politicians and incompetent generals plunged humanity into World War I.
But lately, Binyamin Netanyahu and almost the entire Israeli political establishment have achieved a new record in foolishness.
SO HERE comes John Kerry again, for the umpteenth time (but who is counting?) to make peace between us and the Palestinians.
It is a highly laudable effort. Unfortunately, it is based on a false premise. To wit: that the Israeli government wants peace based on the two-state solution.
Unwilling – or unable – to recognize this simple truth, Kerry looks for a way around. He tries approaches from different directions, in the hope of convincing Binyamin Netanyahu. In his imagination he hears Netanyahu exclaim: “Now, why didn’t I think of that?!”
CAN A country boycott itself? That may sound like a silly question. It is not.
At the memorial service for Nelson Mandela, the “Giant of History” as Barack Obama called him, Israel was not represented by any of its leaders.
The only dignitary who agreed to go was the speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, a nice person, an immigrant from the Soviet Union and a settler, who is so anonymous that most Israelis would not recognize him. (“His own father would have trouble recognizing him in the street,” somebody joked.)
SEEING HER face on the TV screen, one is struck by her beauty. It is the face of an angel, pure and innocent.
Then she opens her mouth, and what pours out is vile and ugly, the racist message of the extreme right. Like seeing a cherub parting its lips and revealing the teeth of a vampire.
Ayelet Shaked may be the beauty queen of the present Knesset. Her name is enticing: Ayelet means gazelle, Shaked means almond. But she is the instigator of some of the most outrageous right-wing initiatives in this Knesset. She is also the chairwoman of Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home faction, the nationalist-religious party of the settlers, the most radical rightist party of the current government coalition.