Human Beings -A New Definition

I couldn't help but read the blog post "Treat Us Like Jews" by Israel Perspectives . Here is an excerpt:

"...the essence of being a human being is the belief that nothing is sacred, nothing is worth fighting for, nothing is worth sacrificing for and nothing is worth dying for. Everybody has a price. Faith, ideology, and a life lived based on belief and ideals are all admirable, but at the end of the day, those are also for sale - even if it requires paying a hefty sum..."

Well worth reading the entire post (and comments).

Calling A Spade, A Spade!

Natan Sharansky in an interview with the MEQ interview:

"We saw the Soviet Union as a rotten, weak society, liable to fall apart quickly, if only the West stopped supporting it. The first step in the Soviet Union's demise would be the West's enunciation of the true nature of the [Soviet] state. When Ronald Reagan, the leader of the free world, called a spade a spade and defined the roots of the struggle, the Soviet Union was doomed. And that's what happened. The same thing applies today. We are speaking about a struggle between the world in which human life is the highest priority and those societies that treat human life with disdain and hold their citizens hostage in an attempt to blackmail civilization."

How come Israeli's "ruling elite" is so ignorant, when the people with answers are right in front of them!

if you wish it, it is!

Am I going to be criticised for this .... but if it had not been an Arab that told me this story, I would never have repeated here (or elsewhere).

Many years ago I lived in Kiryat Arba. Several times a week, at the same time each day, I would walk downtown to the Arab Taxi stand and catch a 'Sherut' to Jerusalem. Over several weeks and months I came to know several drivers quite well. We would discuss in Hebrew (and occassionally English) current events, and I would use these conversations as an opportunity to learn about the mind-set and culture of my Arab neighbours.

One day, I really don't remember in reference to what, my favorite "teacher" of Arab culture stopped me in the middle of a question and cried out: "But you don't understand!" When I pressed him, what don't I understand, he explained to me in English, but only after lowering his voice so everyone else in the cab wouldn't hear!. "When I was a boy my grandafther told me a story ..."

Abdul was lying on his hammock trying to take an afternoon siesta when the neighbours children ran into his yard with their games and noisily thwarted his plan. Gruff commands to exile them back to the street where they came from came to nought. Finally Abdul came up with a plan!
"Why are you wating your time playing here when they are giving away dates in the marketplace?" he asked the children?
After a few exchanges of disbelief that grew into acceptance with Abdul's continued insistence, the children raced out of the yard towards the village marketplace.
Leaning back into his hammock to take advantage of the newly acquired quiet, Abdul rests for a moment or two ... till suddenly he jumps out of the hammock, in the direction of the market.
"What an idiot I am, to miss out on free dates ..." he's heard muttering to himself.

My teacher, the driver, clarified the issue as I looked at him, trying to guess the "message" the story was supposed to communicate. "With Arabs, if you wish it, it is!" explains my teacher!

It does not make a difference who destroyed the twin towers in New York or who destroyed the "shrine" in Iraq. If enough muslims agree with Ahmadinejad that the Zionists and the Americans did it, then for them - that is reality!

Modern Golden Calf

I'm certain there are going to be those of you who read this who will scratch their heads: "What took him so long!" None-the-less I feel it is important to go on record that just today, the 23rd of Sh'vat 5766 (02/21/2006) did I finally figure out what the Jewish-Israel argument is all about.

All these thirty five years that I live here in the State of Israel, it was totally understood (by me) that "the State" is a vehicle for the realization of the aspirations of the Jewish People. Somehow it was clear to me that Jews who came here, came because they wanted to live Jewishly in a cultural milieu that was "Jewish" in the Land that was the cradle of Jewish consciousness. Yes I realized there were many differing views of what "Jewish" meant to different people, but somehow I naively believed that there was enough common denominator to provide a basis for all us "Jews" to work together and find a workable modus vivendi.

What apparently has happened is a divergence between those of us who see the State of Israel as a "means" to something greater, and those who have turned the existing reality into an "end-in-itself". Simplistic? Yeah but it works!

The "Israeli"s are very threatened by the idea that we "Jews" are not satisfied with the existing State of Israel, it's institutions (Parliament, Justice System, Law Enforcement Agencies). To the degree that they perceive our growing dissatifaction as a threat, they entrench themselves into positions of defending an obviously deficient if not corrupt system. More over, they actively seek ways of fossilizing the existing system in the hope that this will guarantee its preservation in the face of the demographic threat of the Jews.

On the other hand, as "holy" as the State of Israel may be to the National Religious, they still only see it as a "keli" or instrument. The "holiness" stems not from the instrument itself, but its purpose or ultimate objective. From 'day-one' the religious establishment has seen the existing organisms of the State of Israel as a temporary compromise, with the hope that improvements could be made as things developed. There are no "holy cows" when it comes to the secular institutions of the state!

Ironically it is the Israelis who have 'fossilized' the State and its frameworks into some sort of "Golden Calf" for whom any thought of change, especially democratization and increasing accountability to the electorate and the public is deemed sacrilegious.

It never ceases to amaze me how the imagery and metaphors of Jewish history are often as relevant today as they were millennium ago!

Sign Up for Heaven

At the start of the current war of terror I sketched out several fictional scenarios as to how such a war could be waged. One idea was that of multiple suicide bombers blowing themselves at multiple locations disrupting life simultaneously in different locations, and ultimately bringing the civil and military response and health systems to a state of collapse. To accomplish such a feat would require hundreds of suicide bombers, an idea so alien and foreign to me that I totally refused to pursue it. Someone just brought the following old news item to my attention. All of a sudden my wild fictional idea begins looking more and more like a possible nightmarish reality.

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 17 Fifty thousand Iranians have signed up for martyrdom-seeking operations and 1,000 of them have already beeen organizeded into operational units, Mohammad-Ali Samadi, the spokesman for a government-orchestrated campaign to recruit suicide bombers told an Iranian news agency.

Samadi was speaking a day after a rally on Tuesday in the city of Shahroud, north-east Iran, where 1,000 volunteers signed up for suicide attacks against the West and Israel. A video film of the full speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on October 26, in which he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and threatened the leaders of other Muslim countries, was shown to the audience.

My thanks to AbbaGav for the tip.