yes a powerful commentary by Uri Avery(?) and all the more powerful conclusion...that the growing divide in Israel can only be united by war!
And as we see the threats of global war every more threatening? Will Israel by necessity, force the cataclism? very dangerous times!!
SO HERE we are. Either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be our next president.
"Our"? I am not a US citizen, and have no desire to be one.
But I live in a world in which the USA is the sole superpower, in which every decision of the US administration has an impact on the lives of every human being.
FOR ME AS a citizen of Israel, this impact is much greater than for most and much more immediate. I just saw a cartoon showing both Trump and Hillary crawling on the ground and licking the boots of an Israeli soldier. This is not too much of an exaggeration.
Both candidates claim to be unwavering supporters of "Israel". But what does that mean? Do they support all sections of Israeli society?
Certainly not. They support one certain part of Israel: the ultra-right-wing government of Binyamin Netanyahu, which is supported by the American Jewish billionaires who contribute to their coffers.
The Shot Heard All Over the Country
ON JUNE 28, 1914, the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, visited Sarajevo, the main town of Bosnia, then an Austrian province.
Three young Serbian inhabitants of Bosnia had decided to assassinate him, in order to achieve the attachment of Bosnia to Serbia. They threw bombs at the car of the archduke. All three failed to harm him.
Later on, one of the assailants, Gavrilo Princip, chanced upon his intended victim again. The archduke's car had made a wrong turn, the driver tried to reverse, the car stalled, and Princip shot the duke dead.
The Future belongs to the Optimists
IF I were a cartoonist, I would draw Israel as a length of hose pipe.
At one end, Jews are flowing in, encouraged by anti-Semites and a large Zionist apparatus.
At the other end, young disappointed Israelis are flowing out and settling in Berlin and other places.
By the way, the numbers entering and leaving seem to be about equal.
FOR SOME weeks now, I have felt like a boy who has thrown a stone into a pool. Rings of water created by the splash get larger and larger and expand more and more.
THE SCENE at Ben-Gurion airport this week was rather astonishing.
More then a thousand young male fans came to welcome the two Israeli Judo fighters - one female, one male - who had won a bronze medal each at the Olympic games in Rio.
It was a very raucous welcome. The crowd went wild, shouted, pushed, raised fists.
Yet judo is not a very popular sport in Israel. Israeli sports enthusiasts pack the soccer stadiums, as well as the basketball courts. But in these two sports, Israel is far from winning any medals.
SOMETHING STRANGE happens to retired chiefs of the Israeli internal Security Service, Shin Bet.
The service is by definition a central pillar of the Israeli occupation. It is admired by (Jewish) Israelis, feared by Palestinians, respected by security professionals everywhere. The occupation could not exist without it
I AM not the envious type, but I envy the Germans.
I envy them for Angela Merkel.
Merkel did something that was completely opposed to her political interests. She opened the gates of Germany to almost a million refugees, mostly Muslims, many from war-torn, bleeding Syria.
No people, not even a people of Angels or Angelas, can absorb a million foreigners without some misgivings. Yet Merkel had the moral and political courage to take the risk.
Now she is suffering the consequences.
IN THE state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, one of the components of the German Federal Republic and Merkel's own home state, she has been delivered a shattering blow. In the state-wide elections, her party slid to third place, after the Social-Democrats and the far-right. A devastating defeat, which could mean that Merkel will lose power at the next nation-wide elections.
ZIONISM WAS a revolutionary idea. It proposed that the "Jewish people" should create a new Jewish entity in the land of Palestine.
The Zionist project was very successful indeed. By 1948 the embryo nation was strong enough to create a state. Israel was born.
When one builds a house, one needs scaffolding. When the building is finished, the scaffolding is removed.
But political ideas and structures don't die easily. The human mind is lazy and apprehensive, and clings to familiar ideas, long after they have become obsolete. Also, political and material interests become vested in the idea and resist change.
Thus "Zionism" continued to exist after its aim had already been achieved. The scaffolding became superfluous, indeed obstructive.
SHIMON PERES is a genius. A genius of impersonation.
All his life he has worked on his public persona. The image replaced the man. Almost all the articles written about him since he fell ill are about the imagined person, not the real one.
As the Americans like to say: He is so phony he is real.
ON THE surface, there are some similarities between him and me.
He is just 39 days older than I. He came to this country a few months after me, when both of us were 10 years old. I was sent to Nahalal, a cooperative village. He was sent to Ben Shemen, an agricultural youth village.
MAHMOUD ABBAS was not present at my first meeting with Yasser Arafat during the siege of Beirut in the First Lebanon War. That was, it may be remembered, the first meeting ever between Arafat and an Israeli.
Some months later, in January 1983, a meeting was set up between Arafat and the delegation of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, consisting of (retired) General Matti Peled, former Director General of the Treasury Yaakov Arnon and myself.
DAVID BEN-GURION was not buried in the Great of the Nation portion of the national cemetery in Jerusalem, but next to his wife's grave in Sde Boker, the Negev settlement he loved.
Shimon Peres, his pupil and follower, was not buried next to his wife's grave in Ben Shemen, the place she loved. But in the Great of the Nation plot.
That's all the difference.
I DID not take part in the hullabaloo that accompanied the funeral. All in all, it was quite ridiculous. Everybody who had once shaken his hand or exchanged a few words with him felt obliged to write about him at length, expressing his profound insights. Most of it was sheer nonsense.
I AM writing this (may God forgive me) on Yom Kippur.
Exactly 43 years ago, at this exact moment, the sirens sounded.
We were sitting in the living room, looking out on one of Tel Aviv's main streets. The city was completely silent. No cars. No traffic of any kind. A few children were riding about on their bicycles, which is allowed on Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day. Just like now.
Rachel, my wife, I, and our guest, Professor Hans Kreitler, were in deep conversation. The professor, a renowned psychologist, was living nearby, so he could come on foot.
SHIMON PERES would have enjoyed it. A public battle about his funeral.
The Arab members of the Knesset did not attend. So what?
I did not attend, either. We never liked each other, and my attendance would have been sheer hypocrisy. I don't like hypocrisy.
The Knesset members of the Joint List decided to boycott the event. They accused Peres of having devoted most of his life to the fight against the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular.
WHAT WILL Donald Trump do if he loses the elections in a week and a half from now, as most polls indicate?
He has already declared that he will recognize the results - but only if he wins.
That sounds like a joke. But it is far from being a joke.
Trump has already announced that the election is rigged. The dead are voting (and all the dead vote for Hillary Clinton). The polling station committees are corrupt. The polling machines forge the results.
No, that is not a joke. Not at all.
THIS IS not a joke, because Trump represents tens of millions of Americans, who belong to the lower strata of the white population, which the white elite used to call "white trash". In more polite language they are called "blue collar workers", meaning manual workers, unlike the "white collar workers" who occupy the offices.
WHO WILL win the elections in the US in three days?
I know for sure. No need to ask the public opinion polls, the modern equivalent of the Roman interpreters of animal entrails and the more modern readers of coffee grounds. The polls are no more exact.
The winner will be the PLE – the Party of Lesser Evil. Or, in this case, the Candidate of Lesser Evil.
People will not vote FOR somebody, but AGAINST somebody. Against the greater evil.
This is a world-wide phenomenon. In almost all democratic countries, the Lesser Evil wins.
