"ISRAEL HAS BECOME A PARIAH STATE"
We're All Suckers for Playing that Game,
by Michael Bavli, Haaretz (Israel), December 29, 2004
"For better or worse, this is part of the world of concepts we have created. To be called a tahman (a schemer) is a definite compliment. "Professor" is a disgraceful sobriquet, along with "good soul." As for sucker - there is no one stupider or more ridiculous than the person who wins that particular title. A sucker is a person who behaves according to the (unwritten) law. He pays his taxes, doesn't link up to cable TV without paying, and doesn't buy into the "one nation-one software program" as others do smilingly, understandingly, with pleasure and even undisguised pride - we'll fix those anti-Semites. We are record-breakers in stealing intellectual property and in illegal copying and smuggling of CDs. We have become a pariah state not only because our policy is incomprehensible and unacceptable, but also because we have become a major refuge for black-market money, a world center for trafficking in women, and attained seniority status as drug-sellers and smugglers. We are champions at passing bad checks and are persona non grata in foreign hotels if they're faucets are not soldered to the wall and their towels not under lock and key.If you stand in line, you're a sucker. Giving somebody the right-of-way puts you squarely in that category, as the taxi driver behind you will remind you with a loud blast of his horn. He passed me in that old jalopy? I'll show him who's a sucker. I'll drive on the shoulder, I'll zigzag between lanes, I'll endanger the lives of 30 drivers but he won't get ahead of me. What am I, a sucker? Meet requirements to get an academic degree? After all, the degree is not an education, it's about money, an add-on to salary; I'm no sucker who's going to devote two years of hard work to that. Does this sound over the top? Can anyone point to one aspect of our lives, be it medicine, agriculture, banking, or the vegetable market, that doesn't subscribe to this terrible norm? Are there many Israelis who will apply for a license to close off their balcony? And it's not limited to everyday behavior. We'll get out of Gaza, but when we do, Hamas will have a victory party and we, heaven forbid, will look like suckers. So let's kill as many as possible, blow up a few hundred houses, before we leave. Nobody can say we ran - they'll beg us to leave! (Army commanders have a sterile, scientific military term for this: "rehabilitation of the force of deterrence".) ... If we don't go back to being law-abiding suckers, and fast, and denounce in no uncertain terms the "non-suckers," there is a reasonable fear that the coming generations will decide that they are not suckers, and will get out of the country we are creating for them ... The writer is a former deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry."
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