Seashore Thoughts

IT WAS wonderful.

I went to the seashore for the first time since my operation three weeks ago. A five minute walk from my home.

The sea was placid, smooth. A mild sun was shining near the horizon, not too hot, not too cold, just as we like it. A cool wind, not too cold, was blowing.

I was sipping a cup of "americano" coffee, thinking that all was well with the best of all possible worlds.

BUT OF course it wasn't. In fact, all was wrong with the worst of all possible worlds.

True, beyond the blue sea, in faraway Paris, the largest assembly ever of world leaders was deliberating on how to save the planet from climate disaster. Our own Binyamin Netanyahu was there with a huge delegation, though most Israelis, including Netanyahu, have only contempt for the issue, which they consider a phony problem for pampered countries which have no real problems, as we have aplenty.

He went there only to shake hands and have his picture taken shaking the hands of all the world's great leaders, including Arabs, giving the lie to all those who bemoan Israel's growing isolation in the world.

But all this was sham. Israel, the country I love, is in grave danger. Actually, it is in more dangers than one.

LOOKING OUT at the sea, I thought about the three great dangers I perceive, and which I could not forget even in the hospital.

First, there is the danger of Israel becoming an apartheid state (which is already the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.)

Sooner or later, the imaginary border between Israel and "the territories" will completely disappear. It still exists in legal terms. For how long?

Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River there live Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in more or less equal numbers -- some 6.5 million each. This will be an apartheid state in the worst meaning of the word.

If Israel may eventually be compelled to grant equal rights to the Arab inhabitants, such as the right to vote (something that seems far-far away) this will be a state of perpetual civil war. These two peoples have nothing in common -- socially, culturally, religiously, economically -- except their mutual hatred.

The second danger is symbolized by Daesh (or IS/ISIL/ISIS). All the neighboring states may unite under the black banner of Allah, and turn against us. It happened 900 years ago, when the great Salah-ad-Din (Saladin) united the Arab world against the Crusaders and threw them into the sea. (Saladin himself was no Arab, but a Kurd from Northern Iraq.)

Waiting for this eventuality, Israel will remain armed to the teeth, with nuclear bombs galore, becoming more and more militarized, Spartanized, religiously fanatical, a Jewish mirror image of the Islamic Khaliphate.