To preserve Zionism, Netanyahu must end the occupation (Haaretz - Israel News)
At the celebratory cabinet meeting in Tel Hai this week, his government adopted a program for restoring and reinforcing national heritage. Once again, the decision was derided and ridiculed. Secular France invests greatly in commemorating its cultural and national heritage, while democratic United States glorifies its past and speaks incessantly about its uniqueness and greatness, and yet this is forbidden for Israel.
It is forbidden to preserve David Ben-Gurion's home in Sde Boker, or the Herzl House in Hulda, or Kinneret Farm, or the Ben Shemen Youth Village. It is forbidden to preserve the water tower at Negba, or the homes of the first settlers at Kfar Giladi. It is forbidden to preserve the treasures of Hebrew song, Hebrew dance and Hebrew theater. It is forbidden to preserve the manuscripts, photographs and films documenting the beginning of the Zionist enterprise. It is forbidden because any attempt by Israel to preserve the assets of its past is an anachronism, unenlightened and tainted by flawed nationalism. It is forbidden because any attempt on the part of the Jewish people to tell its story deserves to be condemned and silenced.
The absolute misunderstanding of the Herzliya speech and the mad assault on the effort to preserve national heritage sites suggests that Netanyahu touched a sensitive nerve. The original plan prepared by the cabinet secretary, Zvi Hauser, did not include the Tomb of the Patriarchs or Rachel's Tomb. This proves unequivocally that the values the government sought to renew are not the values of the settlers in Yitzhar or Itamar; these are the values of the settlers of Ruhama and Revivim, the founders of Gedera and Rosh Pina, and those who established Tel Aviv. These are the values of Bezalel, Habima, the National Library and Neve Tzedek.
The unbridled assault on the plan, therefore, is not an attack on the right and the occupation. It is an attack on the values that have shaped and defined us. An attack on Israel's core identity.
Something bad has happened to us over the last generation. The struggle against the war in Algeria did not lead the French left to turn against the French Republic. The struggle against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq did not lead the American peace movement to abandon belief in the United States. But in Israel, the drawn out and justified struggle against the occupation has led to us turning our back on Zionism.
Netanyahu is doing something important in trying to revive Zionism, but without confronting the occupation his effort will fail. If Israel is to be a global technological leader, grounded in its values and moving toward peace from a position of power, it must gradually leave the territories. The prime minister deserves a good word this week, but he must know that only if he removes Israel from Yitzhar and Itamar will he have the strength to restore it to what was promised at Ruhama, Kinneret, Hulda and Rosh Pina.
- There are three fundamental options on how to confront this challenge. The ultra-Orthodox have chosen to create a community as insulated as possible from the voice of modernity and thus inoculate its followers from its influences. For the assimilated Jew, the choice has been to accept all of modernity and its ideas and values and to reject the claims and authority of tradition in their lives. The committed liberal Jew, amongst whom we can count the centrist or modern Orthodox and the religious Zionist communities, have chosen a third path, a path which lives in the modern world, learns from it and tries to engage in a dialogue between the world and our ancient tradition. The nature of what the synthesis entails varies amongst rabbis, not to speak amongst denominations, but what all have in common is a search for a new synthesis which will allow the best of modernity to participate in the shaping of the content, direction, and meaning of Jewish halakhah, thought, and life.
A view from on high (Haaretz - Israel News)
- While the IDF has vastly improved in many areas, its basic structure and mindset have remained virtually unchanged for half a century. Since its last decisive, albeit problematic, victory during the Six-Day War in 1967, it simply has not delivered the military-strategic goods to the political leadership. In contrast to its image as a lean and effective army, the IDF is increasingly becoming a large, ponderous institution, still struggling to provide security to the citizenry, despite its apparent technological and tactical combat abilities.
The strategic balance of the last 40 years is as follows: There have been three successful campaigns - the war in 1967, the attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, and the successful handling of terrorist attacks by suicide bombers in 2000-2002. On the other side of the equation are five failures: the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1982 Lebanon War and 17 pointless years of involvement in Lebanon, the first intifada in 1987, the inability to handle ballistic missiles launched from Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
Since 1967, the IDF has not developed a system-wide approach to operational maneuvers, and thus cannot exploit its technological and combat strengths. The IDF has not internalized that anticipating further developments is the essence of strategy. In general, the addiction to actual management of each military campaign has prevented the senior command from perceiving a reality beyond the prevalent paradigm. Due to a lack of research institutions and a failed education system for its high ranking officers, the IDF has not learned from its own history, or from the experience of others, and has not exploited the knowledge available outside.
Thus, over 43 years in the Palestinian territories, successive governments have shattered perceptions of IDF command, authority and responsibility. All of these governments lacked the courage to determine the fate of the territories and left the IDF to rule, but undermined its authority in informal, indirect and, at times, illegal ways. Or, as one member of the General Staff once put it: "The government pisses on the army." The governments were unable to decide what came first - the state or the land of Israel - and amid the conquest of territories and of the displacement of Palestinians, the political echelon simply relinquished its role of demonstrating leadership, solidarity, responsibility and authority.
Also over the years, in addition to its other problems, the IDF establishment has had to function in an atmosphere of social and political extremism. Such an environment often demands solutions to complex problems by means of brief military operations - in the style of the 1956 Sinai Campaign or the 1967 war - which bring about relatively few casualties and are deemed a great success.
Case Malmö: What Happens When You Tolerate Intolerance? (CORRUPT.org: Conservation & Conservatism)
It's pretty simple logic. A multicultural society, or any form of society, cannot build trust and community based upon tolerance for everything and everyone. If we do so, groups will misuse that tolerance principle to please their own self-interests. This is how kids began manipulating their parents in the 70s, how Muslims have forced European leaders to compromise with Western constitutional rights, and how women have created feminist lobby groups to compensate their own individual inertia in the work field with socialist policies.
European leftism hasn't yet understood what Right-leaning leaders have trying to assert for a long time, and what the Danish government already is saying. No, we cannot and should not accept whatever culture takes root in our society. We need certain bedrock beliefs that we uphold above else. Call it cultural superiority if you will, or selective multiculture. We embrace diversity, but only if we stand on a firm platform. This viewpoint is unacceptable in the current European climate, as evidenced by how Right-wing leaders are attacked in the media:
For the Jews, however, this analysis is simply no longer true. The tables have turned. If liberal-leftism was dominant in protecting and defending the right of Jews after WWII, it's currently constructing conspiracy theories against them and Israel in an attempt to discredit the homeland and allies of the Jewish people. Instead the conservative Right-wing parties in Europe have become pro-Zionist and critical of the Arab-Palestinian movement.
There are partly party political reasons for this, and they can rightly be criticized on their own. The main point, however, remains fundamental: centuries of Judeo-Christian culture has shaped the West and Israel is the only truly Western-oriented nation in the Middle East. There are no obligatory ties, but obvious ties for cultural reasons, and therefore the Right is correct in ceasing this opportunity to expose the liberal-leftist hypocrisy.
Case Malmö is really case multiculti. We've essentially imported cultural conflicts, and since we lack the mojo to uphold our constitutional rights and traditional values, we lose the game, every time, along with any group too weak to defend itself against the crowd. Yes, this is how tolerance for intolerance paves way for decadence. Democracies, who are systematically weak on their own, self-destruct when they become tolerant of groups or ideas critical of their founding principles. This is what Constitutionalists feel about Obama in America and what Sweden Democrats feel about immigration in Sweden. And they're both Right.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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