Home | Ehud Barek wrote a column in Yediot Achronot today in the title of: "Only I can beat Bibi (Benjamin Netanyahu)".
And I thought that the mission of someone who competes on the job of the leader of the Jewish state is to beat the enemies which are Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran.
Since when Netanyahu is the enemy of the Jewish state? Ha? You midget!
We will never forget your tenure as prime minister in 1999. It was such a mess. We called you Ehud Bardak (mess).
You and your infantile smile are disgusting!
I agree with you 100%, perhaps not the mental midget part (that's a bit harsh)Originally Posted by The Israeli Guy
Yes and no, he handled both the Lebanon withdrawal and the Intifada very poorly. Very poorly indeed. One might say, he was Israel's Jimmy Carter and that's no compliment...
Having said that, what he did: the withdrawal and his overall settlement offer to Arafat, were very important. It was important because it showed Israelis and everyone else in the world, who is not a doctrinaire Israel basher, that appeasement does not work! The only path to peace is perseverance, steadfastness, meet force with force and compromise with compromise. Whether that was his intention or not, he made all sane Israelis see the real situation which is: You can't have peace just by wishing peace. In order to get peace, Israel has to fight for peace, I mean literally fight....Only when the Palestinians realize that war and violence will not get them what they want, that it will only get them endless suffering, only then will Israel get the peace that most Israelis so cherish....
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
And just think of the 6 digit numbers he's getting for lecturing...
No, it wasn't. Nobody cares about what Barak did or didn't do back then except for Israelis. At the same time his acceptance of Arafat was a bad thing. A strong stand would've send a better message to all, Israelis, other Jews, and all others. Instead he put Israel in this subservient position and let Arabs think that they can take more and more if they only prolong the conflict, instead of taking the minimum of what they were offered and being happy with that.
As you can see, prolonging this conflict works very well for them. The more Israelis they kill, the more stupid Israelis are willing to give them. And given their culture, they really don't care about how many of theirs will die in the process. To them the ends justify the means, and so far they are winning and Israel is losing. Thanks to Barak for that.
You are right, up to a point, with many non Israelis many of whom invented new mythologies about how Barak's offer wasn't really an offer and who raised the art of equivocation to new heights (although quite a few non Israelis have now woken up from their illusions about the Palestinian Arabs).
But more importantly, since Barak's offer, most Israelis now see what they are up against. They now know that they can't get peace by wishful thinking alone and they now know that their war of independence hasn't yet ended (it has been one of the longest wars for independence, it has been going on since 1948). They now know that in order to cement their self determination they have to keep on fighting till the Palestinian Arabs realise that they will never defeat Israel and till the Palestinian Arabs reach a stage that they can't take the suffering any more...Prior to Barak's offer, many Israelis didn't realize this and many were becoming delusional ...
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
Barak perhaps was guilty of refusing to understand that Palestinians can't be negotiated with. There is simply no point to it. Better the Palestinians should work to form some confederation agreement with Jordan, upscale their economy and standard of living first. Then when they truly truly have something at risk by continuing to wage war on the Jews only then will they accede to any rational bargaining. The existential issues will always be there which is why its pointless to worry about them. But once the Palestinians have something to lose, something big, like a functioning state then that will be the time to hammer out a final deal with them. Otherwise there's no downside in their waging war and being a liberation movement. And if they can't do that, if it's truly beyond their grasp to establish institutions then we need to simply discard them all in the dustbin of history and move on. Some cultures make catastrophically bad decisions to the point of extinction. It's possible the Palestinians are such. But it's up to them to prove that thesis wrong.
Whether he was guilty of it or whether he just set out to test the possibilities, is not really that relevant, at least for the point that I raised above. What is relevant is that what he did was important and necessary because it jolted many Israelis and some outsiders as well, back to reality...
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
I agree with you 100%, although we should recognize that it did not jolt enough Israelis or outsiders to awake from this fantasy. There is even a mashnoon on this forum who thinks Arafat was a man of peace and Oslo failed b/c of Netanyahu. I rest my case.
"It is cheap to attack Israel. I am certainly not going to make a cheap attack on Israel by howling in the woods with the rest of the wolves." - Geert Wilders
Unfortunately you too are right but it did go a long way towards waking many people up who otherwise would have still been deluding themselves...I agree with you 100%, although we should recognize that it did not jolt enough Israelis or outsiders to awake from this fantasy. There is even a mashnoon on this forum who thinks Arafat was a man of peace and Oslo failed b/c of Netanyahu. I rest my case.
But about this mashnoon of yours, where is he... let me at him ....
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
Yes? What has this culminated in? Seems to me that the left has simply caved and accepted that more surrender is needed. For instance the EU and UNWRA aren't suspending aid to Gaza because they're not dealing with Israel. They're suspending aid because it looks bad for them to have a part in Gaza's civil war + they don't want their own people killed. No one is rationally discussing why these factions are murdering the hell out of each other or even whether that means anything or not. It's as if the left has decided to simply wait for whomever survives to magically come back to the table at some vague point in the future. But what will this result in? More crazy fundamentalists with even less motivation to succeed.
I have a plaintive question for the Israelis here:
Does anyone besides me remember when the "Labor Party" was NOT identified as "leftist"???
Chevre! It's not that long ago! It only started with Rabin, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, letting Peres lead him by the nose. I myself never voted for Labor after Rabin lost his temper and yelled at Anglo-Israelis that they should go back to where they came from.... then he was assassinated and turned into a saint. Every Labor candidate after him was much too eager to sell the store to our sworn enemies.
Fifteen years ago, just 15 years!, I never would have DREAMED of voting Likud. Now, I see it as my only option as a voter. I think that more Israelis have to bite the bullet and wake up to our changed reality.
How I HATE our electoral system!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reffo makes a good point, but I would leave out "Palestinians", and say "Arabs" must give up the idea about destroying Israel, must give up the idea that there is such a thing as being "Palestinian". If you live in Israel and are Arab, you are an Israeli-Arab, since most Israelis should be Jewish. If you live in Jordan, you are a Jordanian. Anyone who doesn't like this should go elsewhere.
The sad thing is that they don't. The sadder thing is that they really don't have the spine to stand for what's theirs. And even sadder the fact that politically about 90% of Israelis are cretinous simpletons who don't think as much as one step ahead, not to mention 2 or 3 or 10. Has anybody ever asked the question of what would this or that decision lead to in 5, 10, or 15 years? If anyone has, I haven't heard of that. Which is why there are all this political swings back and forth, from Left to Right and back. It all relies on momentous feelings and the demented idea that things will just magically work out. They haven't and they won't, and that's the lesson of what's been happening since 1967, one that Israelis simply refuse to acknowledge.
What can I say, the left will always be the left. Some of them have been and some still are decent and have/had brains but those sure seem to be in the minority especially lately....
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
I'd like to think that your estimate of 90% is an exaggeration. In fact, I'd hope that the proportion of cretinous simpletons is small and if I'm right, then all I can say is that we too have our share of idiots. On the other hand, if I'm wrong then we are in big trouble. And if your estimate is right then all I can say is: "Heaven help us!"....
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
Just for the record: When I talked about Palestinian Arabs, I meant the Arabs who live in the WB and Gaza, not the Arabs who live in Israel. I guess, in doing so, I'm saying that we too have no choice but to accept reality and accept the fact that for their own reasons, the WB and Gaza Arabs have now chosen to define themselves as a separate Arab nation even though they didn't seem to feel that way between 1948 and 1967 when they were perfectly happy to be ruled by Jordan and Egypt respectively.
I will however say that both they and Israel would be better off if they would just agree to adopt that old attitude again. Both sides would end up better off if most of the WB and/or Gaza would revert to Jordan/Egypt instead of becoming a country called Arab Palestine. Of course, that should only occur as part of a proper comprehensive peace deal (definitely without the so called Right of Return).
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
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