I've heard people this week bemoan about the terrible state that Israel is currently in - whether with regard to the security situation or the deep divisions in society.
Honestly, I think they are mistaken. I think Israel is doing great.
With regard to the security situation, aside from the Iranian threat, things are pretty good. Of course, it's unrealistic to expect that there won't be any security problems, since there is a Hamas-run state next door and millions of Palestinians living in our borders who reject our history, lack full rights and resent us to a greater or lesser degree. But taking that into account, we have been doing remarkably well. The last Gaza operation was successfully completed almost as soon as it started. There has been no Third Intifada. The IDF has successfully neutralized many terrorist cells. There is no major international pressure to imminently create a Palestinian State, since the US and EU understand that it is unrealistic at this time.
With regard to Israeli Jewish society, we are also doing well. The notion that there is a huge national divide is an artificial artifact created by certain politicians for their own purposes. 80% of the population agrees on 80% of the issues, whether relating to security or society. In fact, were it not for a certain politician who is incredibly successful at alienating people, there would be a very broad and stable government coalition.
So don't believe those who talk about the terrible situation. All things considered, the Jewish People in Israel is doing pretty well.
Shabbat Shalom!
“But taking that into account, we have been doing remarkably well.”
ReplyDeleteOther than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
The question is, why would someone from Ramat Beit Shemesh care that Meirav Michaeli defunded essential transportation projects past the green line? And we are not taking about remote hilltops, we are talking about Efrat and Maale Adumim. Also, it is unlikely that there will be trains and buses on Shabbat under your windows any time soon.
So you are a spokesman not for the Old Left which has gotten smaller, but for the New Left which has gotten bigger.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't really against this government until they pushed through the Lebanon agreement which is both a terrible agreement and clearly not something that should be signed by an interim government less than a week before an election. When I heard what Lapid said when he explained why he didn't bring it to a vote in Knesset was when I realized what kind of person is at the top.
ReplyDeleteAt least you don't say "clearly" a terrible agreement, because it sure ain't.
DeleteAnd let's be honest: Every time an international agreement is brought before the Knesset, do you think it has a chance of failing? No, never.
Gantz pretends to be center even right leaning, but when you look at what he's doing in Yehuda and Shomron you can see that he's letting illegal Palestinian building in area C go on unabated. Try doing that as a Jew in area C. Also his "moral" stance which puts our soldiers at risk to protect enemy civilians, look for that clip where he was talking about it in English them imagine that it's your son bring given the order not to fire at the risk of your own child's life. I have my problems with every single true right wing party, so I'm going to vote for the lesser of all evils. But I don't kid myself that Lapid or Gantz are running things well.
ReplyDeleteSo between him and Bibi there, a wash.
DeleteNatan, what are you doing toward Jewish unity? Besides hosting a blog that consistently aims to delegitimize certain individuals and groups in the Jewish people.
ReplyDeleteWhat you casually dismiss now as the “Far Left”, as though it were some fringe group, wasn’t so long ago the ruling majority party in Israel. And in those days too, at the same time, we were also hearing the same doomsday predictions that 25 years hence - in other words, today, when, as you say, Israel is doing fine - would be in ruins, overrun by charedim, etc. My my my, how some people never seem to learn!
ReplyDelete"Meanwhile, the charedim will destroy the economy and hence the country long before the Palestinians anyway."
ReplyDeleteSo Israel is doomed. Surrender now.
The usual YA
The far right has a realistic long term plan for many years which is to do with the rest of Land of Israel the very same thing the left did for Jerusalem only (to annex it and not to give Arabs the citizenship).
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how the hate blinds you: towards Haredim for a while and towards Bibi just recently.
That might be the long-term plan of the far-right, but it's not realistic.
DeleteIsrael offers citizenship to East Jerusalem Arabs. Not all of the accept it, since they also consider themselves citizens of Palestine and being an Israeli citizen is a betrayal to their fellow Palestinians.
If Israel were to perform an annexation of the entire West Bank, they would also be forced to offer citizenship to the Palestinians in the annexed territory. Just leaving sparse autonomous regions where the people there have PA citizenship only will be equated with South African Apartheid-era Bantustans.
Sparse? Annexing Area C would mean offering citizenship to 40,000 or so Arabs.
Delete"South African Apartheid-era Bantustans."
And we can't have that, can we? After all, look what a paradise South Africa's turned into since Apartheid ended!
Slifkin, did you fall asleep on the job? No comments posted in a while! If you are too busy to moderate comments, perhaps consider outsourcing it to the Philippines.
ReplyDeleteAbbas will die several years from now. There will be likely a power struggle in the Palestinian Authority areas.
ReplyDeleteThe Usual YA
It's pretty obvious that, thank God, Israel does very well. And in general, politics has little to do with it. Even if, God forbid, "democracy" somehow "fails" due to the people's will prevailing. :-)
ReplyDeleteBut I must comment here:
"Palestinians living in our borders who reject our history, lack full rights and resent us to a greater or lesser degree."
And, you know, shoot and bomb us every now and then. That little thing. And "resent" isn't exactly the word for an entire nationality based on hatred of us. Abbas didn't exactly murder eleven athletes in Munich because he "resents" us.
And I see what you did with that "lack full rights" thing. We're all wrong, yadda yadda.
And yet somehow their lack of rights under their *own* (Fatah and Hamas) doesn't cause them to "resent" it as much. Funny that.
The "peace camp" never seem to extrapolate in that direction. What they hope is that land concessions to the Palestinians will result in peace, just like land concessions to Egypt and Jordan resulted in peace.
DeleteThe problem is that Hamas and even the PA view Israeli land concessions as slicing off another piece of the salami of the "Israeli occupation". All of Israel is an occupation of Palestinian land to them. Land concessions only embolden them to ask (or fight) for more later. Case in point: Hamas had no trouble arranging a " Great March of Return", even after Israel left the entire Gaza Strip, and should ostensibly have no more territorial claims against Israel.
Well said.
DeleteLiving in America, it’s a constant frustration to me that much of our right wing likes to (falsely) claim that our country was founded as a “Christian nation” and must uphold their retrograde version of Christian values even as their behavior and their other public pronouncements reflect little of the stated values of their faith or even blatantly contradict it.
ReplyDeleteIt’s tragic that after two millennia of exile and finally restoring our statehood, we Jews have proven just as hopeless at living our alleged Torah values, even though the great Hillel could sum them up in a single sentence. The evidence of that failure can regularly be found here in many of the comments, usually in hateful statements made without apology or regrets. It disgusts and saddens me that given some power, Jews turn out to be just as hypocritical as the goyim. So much for being a light to the nations.