Hi d[-_-]b; Re: "Complete malarkey - it's a great place to live and apparently thrive - ";
Why are so many Jews leaving Israel?
Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, October 2013
THOSE WHO are interested in the history of the Crusades ask themselves: what brought about the Crusaders’ downfall? Looking at the remnants of their proud fortresses all over the country, we wonder.
The traditional answer is: their defeat in the battle of the Horns of Hattin, twin hills near the Lake of Galilee, in 1187, by the great Muslim Sultan Salah ad-Din (Saladin).
However, the Crusader state lived on in Palestine and the surroundings for another hundred years.
The most authoritative historian of the Crusades, the late Steven Runciman, gave a completely different answer: the Crusader kingdom collapsed because too many Crusaders returned to their ancestral homelands, while too few came to join the Crusaders. In the end, the last remnants were thrown into the sea (literally).
THERE ARE vast differences between the Crusader state that existed in this country for two hundred years and the present State of Israel, but there are also some striking similarities. That’s why their history always attracted me.
...
In the years when “descenders” were considered trash, we were proud of being Israeli. During the fifties and sixties, whenever I presented my Israeli passport at any border control, I felt good. Israel was viewed with admiration throughout the world, not least by our enemies.
I believe that it is a basic human right to be proud of one’s society, one’s country. People belong to nations. Even in today’s global village, most people need the sense of belonging to a certain place, a certain people. No one wants to be ashamed of them.
Today, when presenting his passport, an Israeli feels no such pride. He may feel a sense of contrariness (“us against the whole world”), but he or she is conscious of his country being considered by many as an apartheid state, oppressing another people. Every person abroad has seen countless photos of heavily armed Israel soldiers confronting Palestinian women and children. Nothing to be proud of.
This is not a subject anyone ever speaks of. But it is there. And it is bound to get worse.
counterpunch.org
Ich bin ein sub-slime Israelische
Alarmed as some of its best brains leave, Israel resorts to an old tactic: Mark emigrants as traitors.
Haaretz, 2013
Finance Minister Yair Lapid is no stranger to controversy. He has starred in quite a few furors since abandoning television for politics. But the ire he roused last week was grand, even by his standards.Using his favorite medium for communication – Facebook – Lapid vented about people who leave Israel because of financial stress. "They'd throw away the only country the Jews have because Berlin is more comfortable," he admonished, then launched into a Holocaust-themed tirade.
The impetus was a Channel 10 series about the new yordim – emigrants. The verb form literally means “to descend.”
The series described the growing phenomenon of Israelis – mostly young – leaving Israel for no better reason than the cost of living. According to Channel 10, since the cost-of-living protests of 2011, emigration has been spiking. Thousands leave each year, and it's not just the young anymore.
According to a Channel 10 survey, 51 percent of Israelis have considered emigrating because of the high cost of living and difficulty buying a home. In Berlin, buying an apartment takes 67 monthly wages on average. In Tel Aviv that's 170.
...
haaretz.com
en.wikipedia.org
Let's take a look at the trend in immigration to Israel: The last time they beat 20,000 was 2004. Rocket attacks began in 2001. For the year 2000, immigration was 60,201. Data is from the Jewish Virtual Library here:
jewishvirtuallibrary.org
That's a reduction in the Israeli population of well over 40,000 x 11 years = 440,000. Compare that number with the number of Gazans killed by the Israelis.
Re: "they even have a growing tourist industry.";
Israeli Tourism Minister Uzi Landau has said that the tourism hit is tough to swallow for a country that relies heavily on visitors, though he also recently told Reuters that he expects the industry to recover over the remainder of the year.
fortune.com
Re: "Nonsense - there is no required DMZ size - you make all of Gaza a Demilitarized Zone - go house to house and remove all the weapons ..."
Oh come on now. What if the people who live in Gaza are not complete idiots? Suppose they hide their weapons in some place other than a "house"? Gaza is a lot of square miles. Removing weapons from it is impossible. The guards needed to keep weapons out of it would take steady casualties. The reason the Korean DMZ works is because they removed all (well almost all) the villages from it.
Re: "... you can then bring in UN forces to keep the place clean.";
This must be something that would happen in some alternate universe. In this one, the UN is completely against Israel and would never save their bacon.
Re: "Make peace with Israel and stop being stupid.";
Unfortunately for Israel, they aren't the ones who decide whether or not the Palestinians "make peace with Israel and stop being stupid". In war, and in little squabbles like this, both sides get to make moves. Hoping that the Palestinians are somehow going to be different from what they've been is not a plan. That's just hope. And the experience of the past suggests it's pretty forlorn.
And so why do you suggest it? Of course you know that it can't happen. I think you're bringing it up in order to score propaganda points only. But you're bringing it up with the wrong person. I don't give a crap about the morality of "who's right and who's wrong". In this thread at least, I'm interested *only* in the application of force, in the limitations on force, what force can do and what it cannot do. And in this case, it appears to be inevitable that the Palestinians will continue to apply pressure on Israel. That pressure goes up and down but it is maintained. And there is nothing the Israelis can do about it.
-- Carl |
