An automatic majority

The Arabs command an automatic majority in the UN Assembly General. The resolution to adopt the Goldstone Report was preordained. Israeli speakers could only praise the few Member States which voted against Goldstone and call them "The Moral Minority, those who were not intimidated".

Israel commands an automatic majority in the US Congress. The resolution to condemn the Goldstone Report was preordained Arab speakers could only praise the few Representatives who voted in favour of Goldstone and call them "The Moral Minority, those who were not intimidated".

He deserves it

"An embarrassing moment was registered yesterday, at the memorial rally for the late Prime Minister Rabin. When Defence Minister Ehud Barak rose to speak, loud whistling and booing were heard in the audience" (Yediot Aharonot, November 8, 2009.)

He deserves it. For daring to come there and address a crowd of peace-seekers, Ehud Barak should be noted down in the Guinness Book of Records. With a record level of chutzpah to his name, or of mendacity. Or both.

Legal Smugglers

Throughout the Mediterranean, ships are sailing, carrying weapons. A lot of weapons and ammunition of all kinds, light weapons and heavy weapons. Guns and machine guns and missiles, also tanks and artillery pieces, sometimes also helicopter gunships and fighter planes. A very great quantity of weapons is carried over the waves in a great many ships and boats. Nobody stops them and nobody intercepts them, en route to the ports of Haifa and Ashdod and from there to the armouries of the Israeli Defence Forces.

The arms smugglers of the State of Israel need not hide, need not put civilian cargoes in front for camouflage or raise all kinds of flags of convenience. Everything is perfectly legal.

Reciprocity

It turns out that there are now in Gaza missiles which can reach all the way to Tel Aviv (at least, they can get to the city of Holon, to this house where I am just now sitting at the computer). Rather unpleasant.

It is already known for a long time that in Tel Aviv there are fighter airplanes which can reach all the way to Gaza. That, too, is quite unpleasant – especially to the inhabitants of Gaza.

What now? Perhaps it is worthwhile to ensure that there will be no new war? No bombardment – either of Tel Aviv or of Gaza? Perhaps it would be good to include in the peace negotiations – if and when there will be negotiations – also the Hamas? As the late Yitzchak Rabin said, peace is something which you make with your enemy.

Rabin's Heritage

On November 1, 1995, three days before he was assassinated, the late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was interviewed on TV. Among other things he was asked: "Do you think that a government relying for its majority on the support of Arab Knesset Members is a legitimate government?"

Rabin answered: Of course such a government is legitimate, and anyone who says otherwise is simply a racist. We live in a democratic state, and all citizens of Israel are equal. All Knesset Members are equal".

Will we hear this part of the Rabin Heritage quoted by any of the many speakers scheduled to address the Rabin Memorial Rally, this coming Saturday in Tel Aviv?

Extremist weeds in the settler garden

It is true, not all settlers are like Yaakov Teitel. Not all of them go out at night to kill Palestinians indiscriminately. Not all of them go to burn their neighbours' olive groves. Many of them are honest and law abiding people, who are content to let the army do their dirty work for them.
It is the army which declared land which had been Palestinian for generations to be "state land" and passed it on to settlers. The soldiers keep tight guard all around when the settlement is being built. And if one of the people whose land it was tries to come near, it is the army which shoots tear gas and rubber bullets and sometimes also live bullets which kill. And the army continues to guard the settlement day and night, and if its inhabitants decide to create outposts and take over some more hilltops, the army guards the outposts day and night, too. (Even when it is an outpost which had been declared illegal).

The army also creates Jews-only roads for the settlers' private use. And if a Palestinian on whose land the road passes tries to drive on it, soldiers remove him from the road immediately (and sometimes beat him up for good measure).

Yaakov Teitel is really a fool. He could have trusted the army instead of getting his own hands dirty. Than, he would still sit safe and sound in his home at the settlement of Shvut Rahel, a respectable and law abiding citizen.

Fire on the Mount

A bit of history: on the evening of June 10, 1967, the last day of the Six Days' War (which 42 years later is in fact still going on), the Israeli bulldozer made a debut appearance in United Jerusalem, Eternal Capital of Israel etc.etc.etc. The inhabitants of the Mugrabi Quarter – a neighbourhood of thousands of people, which had existed for hundreds of years – were given expulsion orders, effective immediately. Within a few hours, the entire neighbourhood was razed and wiped off the face of the earth. As later told by Etan Ben Moshe, the officer in charge, an old woman who did not leave her home was crushed to death, her body found the next morning under the ruins of her home.

It was not done because of any deed with which the inhabitants were charged. Simply. it was their bad luck that they lived near the Wailing Wall. Moshe Dayan, the then all-powerful Minister of Defence, wanted to have a very big open space to all the Jewish worshippers who would come to pray at the Wailing Wall. So was created the great , wide (and not exactly beautiful) Wailing Wall Plaza,

You can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughrabi_Quarter

At least. Dayan had the sense not to go too far in provoking the Arabs and Muslims. The Jews were given a big and wide place for prayers at the Wailing Wall, and the Mount above left to the Muslims who had been praying there for 1300 years already. It just happens that this place was very holy and precious to about a billion people all over the world, and it would be unhealthy to heat them up. True, the Jewish Temple had stood there once upon a time, and when the Messiah comes it might stand there again Meanwhile, the Chief Rabbinical Council ruled unanimously that until the coming of the Messiah it is neither worthwhile nor advisable to ascend the Mount – if fact, it is strictly prohibited on purely religious grounds.

That was 42 years ago. Meanwhile things have changed – and not for the better. A new generation of rabbis has arisen – nationalist rabbis, settler rabbis, fanatic rabbis, provocateur rabbis, rabbis who are already used to create accomplished facts at every hill and vale. Now they cast covetous eyes also at this holy mount, caring not at all that they are setting aflame a very big fire.

How shall we put off the fire? There is needed a clear and unequivocal declaration, on the most senior level of the State of Israel: This Mount is a Muslim place of prayer, and so it will stay. Jews wanting to pray in this area have a big and wide plaza available at the Wailing Wall. To climb the Mount they can – but only as guests of the Muslim owners. Those for whom this is not enough will just have to wait patiently until the coming of the Messiah.

A governmental declaration? Certainly not from Binyamin Netanyahu's government. Meanwhile, the fire will continue to burn. It might burn all of us.


A Temple? No, thanks!

A small question. Supposing that the space was completely open, and that it was possible to create a Jewish Temple without harming anybody and without provoking a billion Muslims, would that have been what we really want, in the Israel of 2009? To go back to the time when the public slaughter of living beings was the peak of religious worship?

If there are people living among us who get a sublime feeling of closeness to God by watching poor sheep and cows being killed and their blood scattered around, they can get complete satisfaction by just going to the nearest abattoir. And they had better also see a psychiatrist.