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For me it was a moment of shocking revelation.
I was listening to one of the daily speeches of our Prime Minister. He said: "We are a wonderful people!" He said: We have already won this war, it is the greatest victory in the history of our state. He said: We have changed the face of the Middle East. And more to that effect.
Well, I told myself, that's Olmert.
I have known him since he was 20-something. At that time, I was a member of the Knesset, and Olmert was the book-carrier (literally) of another member. Since then I have followed his career. He has never been anything but a party functionary, a small-time politician special[ty] in manipulations, a run-of-the-mill demagogue. On the way [he] changed parties several times and served as a mayor with a grade of D minus, until he climbed on the bandwagon of Ariel Sharon. More or less by accident he was given the empty title of "Deputy Prime Minister", and when Sharon suffered his stroke, something happened that took Olmert too by surprise: he became Prime Minister.
Throughout his career he has remained a complete cynic, basically a right-winger but willing to pretend to be a liberal when faced with leftists.
So, I told myself, this is just another cynical speech. But suddenly a ghastly thought struck me: No, the man believes what he is saying!
Hard as it is to imagine, it seems that Olmert really believes that this is a successful war. That he is winning. That he has radically changed Israel's situation. That he is building a New Middle East. That he is a historic leader, far superior to Ariel Sharon (who, after all, was beaten in Lebanon and who allowed Hizbullah to build up its arsenal of rockets). That the longer he is allowed to go on with the war, the more his stature in history will grow.
Ehud Olmert has obviously cut himself off from reality. He lives in a bubble all by himself. His speeches show that he has a very real problem.
Of all the dangers facing Israel now, this is the most severe. Because this man is deciding, quite simply, the fate of millions: who will die, who will become a refugee, whose world will be shattered.
* * *
BUT OLMERT'S problem with megalomania is nothing compared to what has happened to Amir Peretz.
Exactly nine months ago, after his election as Labor Party chairman, Peretz made a speech in Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square in which he revealed his dream: that in the no-man's land between Israel and the Gaza Strip a football field will be built, and a match between the Israeli children of Sderot and the Palestinian children of nearby Bet-Hanoun will take place. An Israeli Martin Luther King.
Nine month's later, a monster has been born to us.
In the Knesset election campaign, Peretz appeared as a social revolutionary. He announced that he would change the face of Israeli society, set new national priorities, cut billions from the military budget and transfer them to education, welfare and measure to reduce the glaring gap between rich and poor. As a veteran peace-lover, he would, of course, achieve peace with the Palestinians and the entire Arab world.
This won him the votes of many citizens, including many who would normally never consider voting for the Labor Party.
What followed is history. He seduced himself, when Olmert offered him the Ministry of Defense. That was still Olmert the cynic. He knew, as we all did, that Peretz was walking into a trap, that as a rank civilian without serious military experience he would be easy prey for the generals. But Peretz did not shrink back. The supreme aim of his life is to become Prime Minister, and in order to become a credible candidate he believed that he must present himself as a security expert.
Mark LeVine is a Contributing Editor to Tikkun. He teaches in the Department of History at UC Irvine, and is the author of Why They Don't Hate Us and Overthrowing Geography. The following is excerpted from:
Is This A Just War?
Tortured Ethics
..."Israel needs a partner" for peace, one which clearly doesn't exist today. That may be true, but in what way has Israel demonstrated itself to be a worthy partner for peace in the last decade, never mind the last forty years?
It has violated the terms of the Oslo agreement as a matter of routine; its wholesale expansion of settlements, destructions of Palestinian homes, farms, olive orchards and other agricultural land, killings and detention of civilians, refusal to abide by any of the agreements it signed with the PA whenever it suited its interests, all suggest that Palestinians have been equally deprived of a partner for peace.
In Lebanon it would seem that Israel is on stronger ground vis-a-vis Hezbollah, but in reality it was precisely the last minute refusal of the Sharon government to honor the terms of its 2004 prisoner exchange with hezbollah (Israel refused to release three prisoners whom it had already agreed to release) that led Hezbollah leader Nasrallah to warn that the group "reserved the right to kidnap more Israeli soldiers" to use to exchange for the prisoners left behind. Indeed, the very name Hezbollah gave the recent kidnapping operation, "Truthful Purpose," alludes to Nasrallah's determination to keep his promise to force Israel to complete its end of the original deal.
...calling on the international community to "sponsor and support" Palestinian and Lebanese governments that can make real peace with Israel.
This is certainly good advice, but it will prove worthless if at the same time the international community, and particularly the United States, do not sponsor and support an Israeli government that is equally committed to reaching a just and lasting peace in the region. And until, at the very least, American liberals are willing to demand our government do just that...peace...will remain a distant dream, while the wars that continue will be anything but just.-Mark LeVine
"This miserable war in Lebanon, which is just getting more and more complicated for no reason at all, was born in Israel's greed for land. Not that Israel is fighting this time to conquer more land, not at all, but ending the occupation could have prevented this unnecessary war."-The real estate war
By Gideon Levy /Ha'aretz Aug. 6
When an honest third party brokers for Peace and Justice:
When the occupation ends,
When ALL the people of that land have basic human rights,
When Jerusalem becomes an International capital,
When Palestine is indeed a state,
When Israel addresses the refugee crisis and makes ammends:
There can
There will
be peace in the
Holy Land
and that can and will
lead to
Peace in the world.
"The Peace of the World begins in Jerusalem"
-Rev. Theodore Hessburgh 6/26/05 at the Interfaith Peace Conference in Jerusalem,
for full report read:
Thanks, Uri Avnery, for this open-hearted analysis of the benefits that the present expansionist war (number six, is it ?) by the state of Israel on Lebanon has brought to the people of Israel. Think, if only we could obtain such an open-hearted analysis by an equally knowledgeable Lebanese (the best analyses of the views of «the other side» that I have seen come from the Asia Times correspondent presently stationed in Lebanon, Syed Saleem Shazahdi - see, e g, his interview with a high-ranking Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Bilal, in today's article entitled «We are just hit-and-run guerrillas»), but I don't think Mr Shazahdi is Lebanese, and while he reports from it and on it, he certainly doesn't pretend to represent an important segment of Lebanese society, the way Mr Avnery does an important segment of Israeli society) ! My guess is that the war on Lebanon, although necessary to prevent the Israeli state from occupying (the southern part of - as a first step) the country, is having and will have an equally destructive effect on Lebanese society, over and above the immense number of people killed and maimed and the physical infrastructure destroyed, as it is having on Israeli society. It will contribute to the further Islamisation of resistance to Israeli and US aggression, making it still more difficult for the remaining secularists in Lebanon and the region to reform society in the direction that these countries and their people so desperately need. Nice work, Messers Bush & Olmert ! Now that's what I call faith-based foreign policy in action !...
by
mhenriday (0 articles, 11 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 152 comments)
on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 at 7:52:30 AM
To watch as Israel destroys Lebanon, is bad enough, but to know that my gov't, led by the depraved Bush and co., is the real instigator for this insane catastrophe, makes me sick to my stomach. I have had to watch as he invaded Iraq, and killed many thousands of innocent people. As soon as he took office, he declared war on the poor and the middle class of this country, and he has done everything he can to harm us. Now he is colluding with Israel to do his dirty work for him, and insane Israel is only too happy to oblige. Don't be fooled, this is only the beginning. Bush is out to get Iran and Syria and he won't stop until he has brought them down. The majority of Americans are so ignorant, they aren't interested in "politics", they say, and so they are enabling this tragedy. And anyone who tries to inform them is shouted down and shunned. And yet we must continue to try to inform them. They are our only hope, after all. No nation can ignore the united will of its people, not even Bush. Peace to all.
by
Regina Carpenter (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 38 comments)
on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 at 3:42:34 PM
3 comments
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