Ehud Barak, who in 1999 was briefly the “peace candidate” for PM before he became the peace movement’s executioner in December 2000 and then went on to design and unleash Israel’s most recent assault against Gaza, has been at it again.
Today’s Haaretz tells us that Barak
- has authorized the building of 300 new homes in the West Bank, defying U.S. calls for a halt to settlement growth.
What a sad, sad guy.
I guess we got some very early inklings of his fondness for the settlers back in the early days of his (disastrously mishandled) premiership a decade ago, when he went to visit the settlers at Beit El and said something like “I will always stand with you.”
It’s been a notable feature of Israeli politics that military leaders have always had an extremely easy entree into the top ranks of the political system. In 1998-9 Barak was catapulted almost directly from being IDF chief of staff to being head of Labour’s ticket in the 1999 election. Then in the early 2000s, after he lost an internal party election for head of the ticket he left political life completely, to go off and make a ton of– extremely immoral– money selling Israeli military systems around the world. (I think he was also put on the board of a couple of big US defense companies, as well.)
But then, the moment the party ran into trouble because of party leader Amir Peretz’s disastrous performance as ‘defense minister’ during the 2006 war on Lebanon, the party called Barak back once again. And once again he catapulted straight to the top of the party– and into the just-vacated defense minister slot in the government, from which he masterminded the “rehabilitation” of the IDF as a fighting force that could both strike fear into the heart of Israel’s neighbors and allow Israelis to feel “good” about themselves again.
Which was the whole “point” of last December’s war.
(It worked as planned regarding the second of those goals, but failed to achieve the first one.)
And now, here Barak is again, strutting his Napoleonic-style stuff in defiance of the United States on the settlements issue.
So President Obama, what will your response be?
Both Barak and Netanyahu are relics of another age, when Zionism was a magnet for Jewish youth around the world, imbued with good intentions and idealism for a better world – for themselves and all others who had suffered during a devastating world war. That was over 60 years ago before Netanyahu or Barak were born and Zionism was a movement of which to be proud.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the realization gradually dawns – even among conservative Jews in NY and CA – that Israel’s government has no intention whatsoever to collaborate in the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian state. Ever.
The answer now must be for the US to stop all aid and trade without further delay. Take the Israeli government by the neck and bring it back into the community of nations and let the Middle East and the world progress. Political Zionism is as dead as Communism.
Netanyahu is a political theorist who supports the creation of a greater Israel that excludes all Arabs, Muslims and non-Jews. That involves a system of ‘transfer’ as this particular ethnic-cleansing is euphemistically termed by Likud.
Arguably, Netanyahu is an ideologue of the worst kind in that his social philosophy is harshly detrimental to the indigenous population that suffers ever-increasing hardship as a direct result of his skewed ideas.
Zionism is, in the end, a dead duck for it tries to build a political and social edifice on foundations inherently weakened by violence and hatred. This is the age of democracy – although not of the US variety – and colonial type ethnic-cleansing is unacceptable to a world that watches every move of politicians such as Netanyahu with a knowing, beady eye.
I have to disagree with Colin & Blue Canary.
Zionism has already succeeded since Israel is a reality, therefore your ideas are moot. Discussion about zionism is so last century! Talk about platforms of different parties and you are relevant. Otherwise, it pointless.
It must feel good to use words like “ethnic cleansing” but again it is just rhetoric. There is a doubling and tripling of the Palestinian population. You are not dealing with reality, just repeating boiler plate cliches from Pro-Palestinian sites.
And another thing, Zionism is totally compatible with democracy. And with a Palestinian too! Go see democracy in action in Israel. This a fight over land, not ideology!
Zionism can mean the establishment of an area around Jerusalem as the Jewish homeland. I don’t see why it has to only mean the right wing vision of Netanyahu/Lieberman of a Greater Israel state that forces all non-Jews out. This government with its lack of serious interest in working for a sovereign Palestine should not be the only arbitrars in the definition of Zionism. I think this lack of interest can ultimately bring this ruling government down, and I don’t expect Zionism to be latched with them.
@ RUTH ‘Go see democracy in action in Israel’
Even if I were to stand on my head, it would still not be possible to accept that political Zionism is compatible with democracy.
Just a few short months ago, there was a terrible atrocity in Gaza when the IDF killed over 300 children. That massacre is a documented fact from international sources.
The ‘excuse’ offered was that these children and some of their mothers were a threat to the most powerful army in the Middle East who attacked a virtually unarmed and predominately civilian population with planes, tanks, bombs and missiles.
There is a UN investigation taking place now in which the Israeli authorities have refused to co-operate – which would seem to confirm their guilt.
Although I am Jewish, or because I am Jewish, I am adamant that those responsible must be brought before a war crimes court. Let us hope that this will be in the near future.
Inkan1969, 300 children? Is that all who were killed? The IDF set an objective of murdering 300 innocent children, and once they achieved this objective, they went home and threw a party?
Is intellectual honesty dead?
If you think stating that “I’m a Jew” absolves you of participating in a process of rational thought, you are sadly mistaken.
Instead of Barak or Netanyahu I am pasting what George Will recently opined on the topic:
George F. Will was the featured speaker at the dinner Monday evening at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, in celebration of the Claremont Review of Books. Will received the Salvatori Prize in the American Founding, and gave a masterful speech that included a mixture of political insight, conservative philosophy, humor and baseball stories.
After the speech, he took a few questions, including one that led him to reflect on President Obama’s apparent belief that disharmony among nations results from misunderstandings that can be cured by dialogue and communication (and the force of his own personality) — a view that Will characterized as reflecting a 1930s approach to foreign policy:
“We’ve seen this in his treatment of Israel in that remarkable speech, the atmospherics of which were fine, the specifics appalling.
“I mean, in the 61 years since Israel was founded on one-sixth of one percent of land in that area described as land of the Arab world, there has not been a moment of peace for Israel, not as peace is properly understood.
“How many Americans understand that when Israel was founded in 1948, no Palestinian state was invaded, no Palestinian state was destroyed? There had not been a Palestinian geographic entity since between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of British rule.
“How many know that the West Bank, referred to by the President as `occupied territory,` inferentially as occupied Palestinian territory, is under international law unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate rightfully occupied by Israel, because it occupied it in repelling aggression that came from that territory in 1967.
“How the President believes that if we return to the 1967 borders, the antipathy to Israel, which predated the 1967 borders, will disappear, I do not know.
“It would help if he … spent some time. George W. Bush, for all his defects, went to Israel shortly before he was elected and was squired around by another rancher named Arik Sharon. He took him up in a helicopter, to where Israel was at one point nine miles wide, and George W. Bush came home and said `My God, in Texas we have driveways longer than that.` He sort of got the picture.
Comment from… Victor, at June 23, 2009 08:37 PM:
Inkan1969, 300 children? Is that all who were killed? The IDF set an objective of murdering 300 innocent children, and once they achieved this objective, they went home and threw a party?
Is intellectual honesty dead?
If you think stating that “I’m a Jew” absolves you of participating in a process of rational thought, you are sadly mistaken.
This is a defence of an atrocity?
This is the age of democracy – although not of the US variety – and colonial type ethnic-cleansing is unacceptable to a world that watches every move of politicians such as Netanyahu with a knowing, beady eye.
What does this claptrap mean anyway? Why is the democracy of this age not compatible with the “US variety” (whatever that is)? And why is “colonial type ethnic cleansing” unacceptable, when the term itself was only recently coined in 1991? And whose “beady eye” is watching Netanyahu’s every move anyway?
G W Bush’s attempt to impose American democracy has been a pitiful failure on numerous counts which are obvious to any informed observer.
Israel’s attempt at ethnic cleansing will not be tolerated by the new US administration – regardless of your views.
And the eye that is watching Netanyahu’s every move – even in the bathroom – is that of billions of ordinary people in our wired society who will cut off his nuts if he tries to be too clever.
Thank you canary for your pitiful attempt at clarifying Colin’s rhetoric. Unfortunately, all you did was just spout some more claptrap.
Again, why is the “democracy of this age” not compatible with “US democracy”? Is US democracy not really democracy? Or is the “democracy of this age” not really democratic?
Again, you fall back to the usual assertion of “Israel’s attempt at ethnic cleansing”, yet, as Ruth rightly pointed out, the Palestinian population has only grown over the past 60 years, and during most of the occupation had the highest growth rate in the world. So where is the “ethnic cleansing”? I live here, and I certainly don’t see any evidence of “ethnic cleansing”.
You actually don’t know what my views are, you a**hole, but frankly I couldn’t care less if they tried to cut off Netanyahu’s nuts. I didn’t vote for him.
Oh, and by the way:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1095226.html
JES,
You pitiful soul, don’t make me come after you again. Remember what happened the last time?
Why don’t you just crawl back under your rock, and let the world enjoy a little peace and quiet?
This is a defense of an atrocity?
I wouldn’t call the lack of intellectual honesty an atrocity. Nor am I convinced you care, in the least, for Palestinian children.
It’s been a notable feature of Israeli politics that military leaders have always had an extremely easy entree into the top ranks of the political system.
As opposed to the Palestinian leadership? Abbas and Haniyeh are not strutting around world capitals, leveraging the pain of their people to enrich themselves?
The lack of any pretense of balance in your work belies your stated goal of universal justice. The double standards inherent in your view of the world are stunning violations of moral reason itself.
It’s been a notable feature of Israeli politics that military leaders have always had an extremely easy entree into the top ranks of the political system.
Is that so? Well, out of the State’s 12 PMs, only three (Rabin, Barak and Sharon) had been generals. Even if you add in the leaders of the revisionist militias – Begin (IZL) and Shamir (LEHI) – that still adds up to less than 50%
Even with Ministers of Defense, where there may be a better case for the need for a former military leader, there have only been 11 out of 22 former career military men who have held this post.