THERE IS NO FUTURE..."If someone says we have to talk peace, he’s considered extreme left."

[bemildred]

Xpost (by kpete) from Editorials. Seems to come from Haaretz originally.

"If someone says we have to talk peace, he’s considered extreme left."

Israeli broadcaster Shlomi Eldar gave Ha'aretz an important interview, in which he talked about some things that Americans are not allowed to discuss:

A few days after the end of Operation Pillar of Defense, I gave a talk at a Herzliya high school. The children, who said they came from good homes, told me we have to kill all the Arabs, including the Israeli Arabs, because where do they get off thinking they will get control of the country. Their ideal is to go into the army and kill as many Arabs as possible. That’s one side of the picture, Israeli youth, the new generation, living in an atmosphere of demonizing the Palestinians ? which is something the Israeli media are responsible for in no small measure. The other side of the picture is the young generation in Gaza, a child of five or nine. Let’s say he is not wounded, but a four-ton bomb landed next to his house. Do you know that in Operation Pillar of Defense, not one pane of glass remained intact in the whole of Gaza? It’s a tactic of creating sonic booms to frighten people without hurting them. A child who has a bomb like that land next to him can’t hear anything for the next three days. What does he think about the Jews afterward? And where will we end up, if this is how Jewish youngsters think about Arabs?

Nowhere good.

We are on a nothing-to-lose track. Which is why I say there is no future. When I told the high school class that we have to look at them as human beings, one boy jumped up and said, “Who do you vote for? You’re extreme left, no?” I replied, “It would surprise you to know who I vote for.” But that’s not the point. The point is that we in Israel have reached a situation in which if someone says we have to talk peace, he’s considered extreme left.

http://www.arabist.net/blog/2013/1/20/there-is-no-future.html

[Jefferson23]

1. And there is no reset button..not one I can see. n/t

[bemildred]

2. Like watching a train wreck. nt

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

3. A train wreck that some on the hard left are hoping for.

Sad.

[azurnoir]

4. sad state of affairs all around

and there's no light at the end of this tunnel

[bemildred]

5. You never know.

Who would have predicted Barack Obama before they knew of Barack Obama?

As the Robot says, it would be easy to take satisfaction in being right, I've been chewed on for ten years here for saying this was where it was going. But I'd much prefer they had worked things out, along the '67 borders, along the lines of Oslo, along the lines of "we have to live together so we ought to get started", along the lines or respect and sharing, they were not that far away 20 years ago. Then they could have both had a future. Now we have fundies duking it out, wall to wall, from Algeria to Iran and everywhere in between.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Daneel_Olivaw

[azurnoir]

6. I keep wondering how did it come to this?

you could see it coming but I keep holding out the hope that Israeli voters will scare themselves just in the nick of time

[bemildred]

7. I have not given up.

It happened the way it always happens, short-term thinking rules the day, it's so much simpler that way, no need to make compromises, no need to sweat over the long term consequences of present trends, no need to grow up, no need to ask questions, just keep everyone fat, dumb, and happy.

[geek tragedy]

9. Obama's election was possible because of demographics.

Just like looking at Israel's demographics leads one to conclude that Naftali Bennett will be PM one day.

[bemildred]

10. Hindsight is always 20-20.

That doesn't mean anybody would have bet we'd have a two-term AA President NOW in 2002, which is what I was taking about.

[geek tragedy]

11. No, but a liberal pragmatist could certainly have been contemplated.

Doesn't really matter who gets to wear the PM crown in Israel--the electoral coalitions make apartheid unavoidable.

[oberliner]

12. You have not a clue what you are talking about

Literally, everything you have written here is wrong.

[geek tragedy]

14. Just like the rest of the world was wrong when they saw Netanyahu

publicly piss in Obama's pool during last year's election.

Go ahead and tell us how a population that is already ultra-nationalist and that is getting moreso every year because the left isn't having children is going to decide to become a light unto humanity instead of its current course of South Africa on the Mediterranean.

[bemildred]

13. I've been contemplating liberal pragmatists since the 60s, that's easy.

And I was pretty sure Bush would make a mess, and result is some sort of counter-reaction, if that's what you mean. That's what bad drivers do, drive in the ditch.

[geek tragedy]

15. Key difference between Bush and Netanyahu is that Bush had

the demographic tide against him. The demographic wind is at Bibi's back.

[bemildred]

16. Yep, they are clearly not identical, nor are the political situations. nt

[delrem]

8. I can't see how it isn't way past the point of no return.

Educate me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the biggest difference (re. I/P issues) between the Netanyahu-Lieberman Likud-Yisrael_Beiteinu coalition and the Bennett Habayit_Hayehudi upstart is that the former is (relatively speaking) more gradualist and wily in its tactics whereas the latter is blunt and contends that it's now time to finalize the action.

Neither of these parties seek to negotiate some kind of "peace" or co-existence of equals with equals. In fact that's the furthest thing from being the case. These parties are the ideological mirrors of Islamic_Hamas. The biggest difference between these parties and Islamic_Hamas is that they command exponentially greater military power along with the blessing of the USA, so in the western media the military/policing actions that they engage in aren't called "terrorism" (and that, dear readers, is the biggest and most central spin.)

I just read a profile on Bennett describing him as a "liberal on social issues". Which goes to show how the term 'liberal' can be bastardized by political spinners and bone lazy profilers. (I *hate* the terms 'centrist', 'left', 'right', 'liberal', 'conservative', 'progressive', etc., in political discussions - esp. when used by MSM pundits! Those words say NOTHING of substance; they only play on political spin.)