If you will it, it is not a dream, Herzl said. But what if you stop dreaming it? A few items, in search of a big idea:
–Fawaz Turki, a Palestinian-American, writing in the Gulf News:
[A] lot of Americans believe that Israel's image as a 'tiny state' threatened at
every turn by its 'savage neighbours' is an imposture, a racially tinged
absurdity, and that Israel's continuing occupation of Arab lands is, at best, a
cruel and cunning disguise for economic and military exploitation.
Netanyahu ought to be equally concerned by signs that the Zionist ideal
is losing its hold within Israel itself. There are reportedly between
700,000 and one million Israeli citizens now living abroad, and
emigration has outpaced immigration since 2007. According to Ian Lustick and John Mueller,
only 69 percent of Israeli Jews say they want to remain in the country,
and a 2007 poll reported that about one-quarter of Israelis are
considering leaving, including almost half of all young people.
–Michael Oren echoes Walt in a package that Commentary runs called "Israel at Risk:"
Recent years have seen the flight of thousands of
secular Jews from [Jerusalem], especially professionals and young couples… If this trend continues, Ben-Gurion’s nightmare will materialize and
Israel will be rendered soulless, a country in which a great many Jews
may not want to live or for which they may not be willing to give their
lives.
–My wife and I have dinner at a Jewish
couple's house. The woman in the couple says: "I just don’t think the
Jews should have their own state." And she’s against going to Israel
for that reason, feels no kinship to it. The dinner table is quiet,
hearing her. Her husband's a Zionist.
–I was interviewed by Al Jazeera during
Gaza. The Norwegian cameraman tells me that a Jewish friend in Washington told
him recently, "I have no use for Israel. I don't need it."
–Former Ambassador Chas Freeman to me, in an interview earlier this year:
I am interested in seeing the survival of a humane and not a
thuggish Jewish state in the Middle East… The question is, in the
long run, will this be a crusader kingdom or not?
–From Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, which includes an essay by Lila Abu-Lughod about her late father Ibrahim's return to Israel/Palestine from the U.S. in the 90s, after years of refusing to go there out of refusal to recognize Israel's presence [I have changed the order of the two paragraphs]:
It was a former student of his, someone who had become a professor of Middle East politics, who had made him rethink his refusal to go back. She often traveled to Israel and the West Bank. He recalled that she had told him once, 'Ibrahim, Palestine is still there.' He was happy, he said, to find this to be true. On his first visit, he had asked some Arab kids on the street [in Jaffa] if they knew where King Faysal Street was. They immediately took him there, though he could see that the street sign said something altogether different. From this, he knew that Palestinian parents were still teaching their children the old names of things even as Palestine was being buried, erased, and rewritten by Israel…
Suddenly, my father said he had spotted the Hasan Bek Mosque where he had made the call to prayer as a boy. From there he had figured out where the coffee shop had been. He remembered this cafe because he used to hang around outside in the evenings, hoping to listen in on the storytellers and reciters of epics, only to be chased away because he didn't have the money for a glass of tea. Bit by bit, circling more widely around the mosque, he began to find his way.
Continued emigration is going to create a very dangerous situation. Clearly, those leaving are the more enlightened and talented members of Israeli society. They are leaving behind the less educated and the fanatic Zionist. Thus we will continue to see a more and more savage Israel that becomes more and more isolated. These are people who believe Masada was a great moment in Jewish history — they glorify mass suicide. Unfortunately, they are armed with 200 nuclear warheads in the form of submarine-based cruise missiles that can allow them to be delivered anywhere on earth. I wonder if any of the great powers have contingency plans for this eventuality.
?? When was the last time Israel threatened the existence of any other state? The reason Israel needs a strong army is because the entire world is against her, and has no interest in learning the historical basis for Israel, nor the truth surrounding its inception as a state.
They are leaving behind the less educated and the fanatic Zionist. Them, and the Hasids. And Ethiopians. And Sephardim. In other words those who, though they may be most hostile to the Arabs, have little to do with traditional Zionist ideology and are best suited by their tradition to living in a Middle Eastern society. One State gets closer and closer by the day.
Every major hi tech company has a research facility in Israel, who is working there? The Hasids? I'm glad you guys believe in the "one state" nonsense. Do you really believe that Israelis will live like the Copts do in Egypt? Dhimmihood is not in the cards.
i hate israelis and there army fuck israel donkeysssss alaa el shazly
Do tell LadyL. Tell us the truth that we are so blind too. That mainstream liberal American press – always siding with those savage Arab suicidal genocidal homicidal Islamist Fascist Florist Nazis! Oh and lets not forget Hollywood always making movies about the Nakba and the oppression of the Palestinians as if THEY are the ONLY ones in the world and throughout history who have ever suffered because of who they are! What NERVE! Oh and lets not forget the tremendous financial, military, political aide that the world's lone superpower gives to those Arabs and the Palestinians! It's like we're living in a twilight zone. Don't they realize that the Arabs are the reason for the destabilization of the ME!? Oh and lets not forget the persecution that Jews face every day in the US – the so-called shining light in the world. Everyday Jews are oppressed in the US. They are told not to wear their yarmulke in court rooms! They are mocked in schools and in the workplace! Let's not forget that after 9/11, a Jewish gas attendant was murdered! Why? Well here's the catch – he wasn't even a Jew! He just looked like one! And some hillbilly decided he was a Jew though so he stabbed the poor guy! Oh and lets not forget recently at a temple, a group of Jews were attacked with gas by a group of racists! Oh but the police didn't call it a hate crime. They just called it a regular crime. Its so disgusting in this day and age. Why cant people see this for what it is? Have we not learned the lessons of Fascist Germany? Its equally disgusting how a recent DVD faux-documentary entitled Bagel: Jewish Obsession with the West was released and distributed to most people on the East Coast! And guess what? It was a Leftist Islamic group who was behind it! They of course were hid behind some legit looking offices so as to hide their overtly partisan intentions. It's just so shocking. The whole world is against Jews. Why..even the US boycotted a UN convention on racism because it defined Arab colonialism as RACISM?! Seriously? So the Arabs get to build colonies in our home and then say its 'legal' under Arab law and hence NOT colonialism? Oh and what about those T-Shirts? The Arab army wearing t-shirts that glorify killing pregnant Jewish women.. Disgusting. These people are Nazis. Lets not forget how they butchered 1400 people in three weeks.
one state doesn't get closer day to day, maybe an explosion followed by god knows what gets closer day to day, but one state does not get closer day to day.
How many Palestinian donors and voters does any US leader have to assure his or her governing or influential slot complete with all its fringe benefits? Start with Truman, who first asked that rhetorical question when asked why he recognized Israel as a state among world states.
"Every major hi tech company has a research facility in Israel, who is working there? The Hasids?" And why not? Is germanium and silicon not Kosher? Admittedly, it would be difficult to get them to work Saturdays or late friday nights, but they're always willing to come in Sunday. Do you really think Hasids are too stupid to work at an electronics plant? I had Orthodox relatives, many with Hasid leanings (although they would never admit it, of course. ) They did all kinds of things to earn a living, some of them quite technical or administrative. Jeez, man, you can't control the world from the back of a schul in Brooklyn and be incapable of sticking ICs into a circuit board!
"If you will it, it is not a dream,… You got to be real careful with that "will" stuff. As I remember, the ancient Israelis exercised their will, instead of observing God's proscriptions and Commandments, and we got adultery, whoring after false gods, and the Golden Calf. And the consequences were disastrous, and as far as I know, irrevocable, in terms of forming a (as Witty, with his new-found obsequious obscurity, which he fancies will efface condescension) "nation state". Or perhaps the anti-Semites got to Jehovah and turned Him against the Jews?
The Jewish nation exists once more. It would seem that G-d had a hand in it.
Israel, in its short existence, has attacked every single one of its neighbouring states, except Cyprus. If that is not 'threatening their existence, what is?