Len, most people in the West think of the war in the Middle East as basically an unfortunate, unsought ordeal inflicted upon peace-loving Israelis --how wrong they're... As I said repeatedly, Israel's trigger-happy Judeofascists view the State of Israel as a warmongering enterprise, a war machine whose arch-enemy is the Muslim world as a whole and whose Nemesis is... peace. Peace, even a phony one, with the Arabs would indeed toll the demise of Islamophobia, a key prerequisite of Judeofascism.
Hence the dilemma facing Israel's ruling class and its helplessness to re-invent the country as a recreational resort. Warfare didn't mean an overstretched military only, it also shaped up the whole Israeli fabric into a Spartan society, a stratocracy. For such a war-addict people, the prospect of becoming a Mediterranean Las Vegas is a dreadful curse. For them war was not, is not, and never will be a calamity... war is their oxygen:
haaretzdaily.com
Excerpt:
But the issue of geographic borders is only a symbol of the abysmal difference between Israeliness that yearns for normalcy and peace (or, alternately, secular self-definition within demarcated borders) and the "people-of-Israel" Israeliness of the settlers - transcendental, borderless, deliberately anomalous, contemptuous of the constraints of real-politik - the kind of Israeliness to which occupation has become not second-nature, but first-nature.
The truth is, this only looks like a dispute between hawks and doves over relations with the Palestinians. Actually, the settlers have their own special agenda - a nice, solid one that conflicts with the agenda of most Israeli citizens. Over the years, however, they have managed to hide its true essence behind a veil of defense concerns or nostalgic-Zionist inertia.
Only occasionally does the truth slip out, via an unplanned shout at a rally ("The people of Israel don't want peace!") or the careless remark of a settler ("The real dispute is over the character of the state. We've never had any intention of being a nation like all others.
"Secular Zionism has got it all wrong. We're going to build a Temple on the Temple Mount, and the mosque will be torn down," a settler told Ha'aretz correspondent Daniel Ben Simon in September 2001).
Not so much through their own planning, but by virtue of the spiritual decline and emptiness of the secular Zionist movements since the Six-Day War, the settlers have commandeered the national agenda, sabotaging normalization efforts for 30 years and now openly embracing the greatest of anomalies - kindling and escalating war.
Yes, it's Arafat's fault. Yes, it's the Palestinians' fault. But only one Israeli leader, Yitzhak Rabin, found the courage to stand up to the deeper, more tenacious form of occupation - not our conquest of territories but the conquest of the Israeli agenda by the settlers. But look where he is. And look where they are.
_________________________
Is a settlers' coup d'état next? |
