All hail the peacemakers 19
A FORMER cabinet minister, an intelligent person (nonetheless) asked me the other day: "Let's assume that your plan is realized. A Palestinian state will come into being side by side with Israel. Even some kind of federation. Then, in a few years, a violently anti-Israel party will come to power there and annul all the treaties. What then?"
My simple answer was: "Israel will always be powerful enough to forestall any threat."
That is true, but that is not the real answer. The real answer lies in the lessons of history.
HISTORY SHOWS us that there are (at least) two kinds of peace agreements. One kind, the stupid one, is based on power. The other, the intelligent, is based on common interest
recently read some info on the joint French USA resolution before the Security Council this coming September, granting a separate Palestinian State...any firther updates on this would be good...as this resolution is guaranteed to pass with USA abstention...what are the consequences if Israel refuses to abide by a Palestine sovereign nation....
THREE WEEKS ago was Naqba Day – the day on which Palestinians inside and outside Israel commemorate their "catastrophe" - the exodus of more than half of the Palestinian people from the territories occupied by Israel in the 1948 war.
Each side has its own version of this momentous event.
According to the Arab version, the Jews came from nowhere, attacked a peace-loving people and drove them out of their country.
BINYAMIN NETANYAHU was racking his brain. His whole career is based on fear mongering. Since Jews have lived in fear for millennia, it is easy to invoke it. They are addicts.
For years now, Netanyahu has built his career on fear of the Iranian Nuclear Bomb. The Iranians are crazy people. Once they have the Bomb, they will drop it on Israel, even if Israel's nuclear second strike will certainly annihilate Iran with its thousands of years of civilization.
THERE WAS this guy who had an earth-shaking invention: an airplane that flies on water.
No more gas. No more pollution. No more astronomical prices. Just fill it up with water, and it will fly to the end of the world.
"Wonderful!" people cried out. "Show us the plans!"
"Plans?" the man said. "I have had the great idea. I leave it to the engineers to work out the technical details."
The inventors of the "One-State Solution" remind me of this genius. They have a wonderful idea. But there are a few questions left open.
FIRST QUESTION: how can it be achieved?
The obvious answer is: by war.
The Arab world will mobilize its armies. Israel will be conquered. The victors will impose their will.
This may be possible within a few generations. I rather doubt it. In a world of nuclear arms, wars may end with mutual annihilation.
Well, if not war, then "outside pressure".
"WAR IS HELL!" the US general George Patton famously exclaimed.
War is the business of killing the "enemy", in order to impose your will on them.
Therefore, "humane war" is an oxymoron.
War itself is a crime. There are few exceptions. I would exempt the war against Nazi Germany, since it was conducted against a regime of mass murderers, led by a psychopathic dictator, who could not be brought to heel by any other means.
This being so, the concept of "war crimes" is dubious. The biggest crime is starting the war in the first place. This is not the business of soldiers, but of political leaders. Yet they are rarely indicted.
The Second Battle of Trafalgar
A MIGHTY naval battle took place this week on the waves of the Mediterranean. It will go down in history as the equal of Salamis or Trafalgar.
In a daring move, the navy of the State of Israel intercepted the enemy, consisting of the trawler Marianne and the 18 people aboard. Israel naval commandos captured the ship and towed it to the harbor of Ashdod.
The admiral who commanded this glorious action has so far modestly remained anonymous. Therefore we cannot honor him with a column in the center of Tel Aviv, like Admiral Horatio Nelson's column in London's Trafalgar Square. Pity.
However, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lauded the courage of the victors in glowing terms, expressing the gratitude and admiration of the nation for their gallant deed.
EVERYBODY HAS already voiced his (or her) opinion on the Greek crisis, whether he (or she) has an opinion or not. So I feel obliged to do the same.
The crisis is immensely complicated. However, it looks to me quite simple.
The Greeks spent more than they earned. The creditors, in their incredible impertinence, want their money back. The Greeks have no money, and anyhow, their pride does not allow them to pay.
So what to do? Every commentator, from Nobel prize-winning economists to my taxi driver in Tel Aviv, has a solution. Unfortunately, no one listens to them.
AND WHAT if the whole drama was only an exercise of deception?
What if the wily Persians did not even dream of building an atomic bomb, but used the threat to further their real aims?
What if Binyamin Netanyahu was duped to become unwittingly the main collaborator of Iranian ambitions?
Sounds crazy? Not really. Let's have a look at the facts.
IRAN IS one of the oldest powers in the world, with thousands of years of political experience. Once they possessed an empire that spanned the civilized world, including our little country. Their reputation for clever trade practices is unequaled.
IN JAPAN in the good old days, Binyamin Netanyahu would by now have committed hara-kiri.
In England at that time, the monarch would have appointed him governor of the most remote little island in the Pacific Ocean.
In Israel, his popularity rating is bound to go up.
Because in our country, the old adage is getting a new twist: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure.
AND WHAT a failure! Wow!!!
BINYAMIN NETANYAHU is not known as a classical scholar, but even so he has adopted the Roman maxim Divide et Impera, divide and rule.
The main (and perhaps only) goal of his policy is to extend the rule of Israel, as the "Nation-State of the Jewish People", over all of Eretz Israel, the historical land of Palestine. This means ruling all of the West Bank and covering it with Jewish settlements, while denying any civil rights to its 2.5 million plus Arab inhabitants.
East Jerusalem, with its 300,000 Arab inhabitants, has already been formally annexed to Israel, without granting them Israeli citizenship or the right to take part in Knesset elections.
SOME OF my best friends demand that I write an article condemning unconditionally the "administrative detention" of Jewish terrorists.
Three suspected terrorists have already been arrested under this procedure.
They are members of a group following the teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane (the leader is actually his grandson). Kahane was an American Rabbi who came to this country and founded a group branded by the Supreme Court as racist and anti-democratic. It was outlawed. He was later assassinated by an Arab in the US. An underground group of his followers is now active in Israel.
I would look for people with more wealth than Adelson. $38 B is really chump change in thw world of the wealthy. Hell Vlad Ptuin's stack of chips is estimated at $70 B net and we wouldn't consider him as having much influence in the bankster controlled west. The committee that runs the world runs Israel so I would look at who sits on that committee...Warburgs, Rockefellers, Rothschilds etcetera..guys with money assets and plans for the world and the rest of us. Adelson is just a point man for "the committee". The Bush crime family may have moved up with an estimated $170 B in hand from their dealings in the under world, but still might not be on "the committee" yet as their money may still be considered "tainted" as not enough time has passed between crimes and gain?WHO IS the ruler of Israel?
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, of course.
WRONG.
The real ruler of Israel is one Sheldon Adelson, 81, American Jew, Casino king, who was rated as the world's tenth richest person, worth 37.2 billion dollars at the latest count. But who is counting?
Besides his casinos in Las Vegas, Pennsylvania, Macao and Singapore, he owns the US Republican party and, lately, both Houses of the US Congress.
He also owns Binyamin Netanyahu