Re Ends and Means
I like to read the writings of Batya Medad who writes in Shiloh musings, a political blog close to my heart. On August 28th, in Musings #138, (http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/)
she wrote a piece that she calls Ends and Means.
She had found herself in an unpleasant argument, as she calls it, on Shabbat, with friends of like mind. The issue was the campaign that Moetzet Yesha had conducted against the so-called ‘Disengagement’. She says, if the campaign failed, then obviously there’s something intrinsically wrong with it. I’m not sure. But I do agree that the slogan, “Let the People Decide” was not really good. It was meant to delay the evil decree. But what we were really interested in, was to cancel this terrible plan. Very simply she explains that instead of campaigning to have a referendum, we should have been putting all our energy into showing the public that withdrawal from Gush Katif and northern Shomron would endanger the entire country. From her point of view, we should have given people a chance to see what vantage points were to be turned over to terrorists. Movies and stills from the sites showing how they look over into the coastal plain should have been shown and distributed. There should have been clear and simple quotations from the Arabs, explaining that they’re not offering peace, and certainly not promising it.
I would agree with her if we were trying to influence an aware and objective community who was just uninformed of the facts. Unfortunately, it isn’t like that. Not at all. In my business (commercial photography), I come into close contact with people from both sides. I listen to what they say, and I’ll admit it, occasionally, I try to influence some of my friends on the other side. There’s not too much thinking or rethinking on our side either. Most of us know that we are right, and we are tired of arguing whether the Arabs have rights and just what those rights might be after suffering from three years of a terrible cruel war, and hundreds of killed and thousands of wounded. Most of my right wing friends don’t even want to talk about such things. They see things in black and white. You’re either for the Jews or against them. The Arabs rejoice at the murder of Jews. The best thing would be if we would somehow be able to ship them all out of the country. Say, if one of their bomb factories blew up and burned down all of Gaza, most of my friends would not start crying over the innocent children killed by such a tragedy. In fact, when they hear of “innocent” children killed by accident in an attempt to wipe out some terrorist, they aren’t heartbroken at all, because they see those kids as much like little cockroaches who will soon grow up to be big cockroaches. But I don’t have to tell you about this. You know it all already. You know the thoughts, and you know the people. We live in the same land. What I want to tell you is that there is something similar on the other side of the barricade. I’m not talking about the arabs. I’m talking about the Jews on the other side. They too, are tired of the argument. They too, are sure they are right. They don’t think there is any point in justifying deomocracy. For them, it is as important, as all emcompassing, as much the truth, as religion is for some of us. And the enlightened world believes in it. If we are hated by all the peoples of the world, at least there is one thing to our credit. And that is that we are a democracy. It would be inconceivable for them to ever give up on this advantage. And they feel the ground is being pulled out from under them. They are uncomfortable. They barely have any children, and a good part of those that they do have are living in Los Angeles and northern Europe. The only people having children these days are Arabs and Haredim, and for the enlightened ones, that’s about the same. A lot of people think that a homosexual marriage is as good as the other kind… and if they can't have children, they can adopt them. They feel the day is close upon us when we will be a minority in our own land. And that will be the end for them; the end of the Jewish state. What difference would it make to hold on to holy places for a few years, if in the end, in another generation, all will be lost.And why would they care about the settlers, who used cunning and deceit to gain territories in the midst of great Arab concentrations, and who were trying to turn back the clock to more primitive times. Here, we’re trying to be at least as (post) modern as Europe, and actually, have it in us to be the leaders in the fields of culture, science, and technology, and here, we are being undone by these fools, who take pride in the fact that only a few generations back, they were monkeys!
Now how are we going to convince these people? They know that the army can always win the wars. They have no great sentimentality for the ground…. Ground is good for flower pots… they don't feel that different living here than they would have felt living in Uganda. It's very much the same for them… especially that wanting to be part of the "great wide world" outside. … And just possibly, they have the sympathy of the majority in a democratic poll! And all the while, We don't really have a popular leader on our side!
I'll continue in future bloggings, Shimon
haveil_havalim
she wrote a piece that she calls Ends and Means.
She had found herself in an unpleasant argument, as she calls it, on Shabbat, with friends of like mind. The issue was the campaign that Moetzet Yesha had conducted against the so-called ‘Disengagement’. She says, if the campaign failed, then obviously there’s something intrinsically wrong with it. I’m not sure. But I do agree that the slogan, “Let the People Decide” was not really good. It was meant to delay the evil decree. But what we were really interested in, was to cancel this terrible plan. Very simply she explains that instead of campaigning to have a referendum, we should have been putting all our energy into showing the public that withdrawal from Gush Katif and northern Shomron would endanger the entire country. From her point of view, we should have given people a chance to see what vantage points were to be turned over to terrorists. Movies and stills from the sites showing how they look over into the coastal plain should have been shown and distributed. There should have been clear and simple quotations from the Arabs, explaining that they’re not offering peace, and certainly not promising it.
I would agree with her if we were trying to influence an aware and objective community who was just uninformed of the facts. Unfortunately, it isn’t like that. Not at all. In my business (commercial photography), I come into close contact with people from both sides. I listen to what they say, and I’ll admit it, occasionally, I try to influence some of my friends on the other side. There’s not too much thinking or rethinking on our side either. Most of us know that we are right, and we are tired of arguing whether the Arabs have rights and just what those rights might be after suffering from three years of a terrible cruel war, and hundreds of killed and thousands of wounded. Most of my right wing friends don’t even want to talk about such things. They see things in black and white. You’re either for the Jews or against them. The Arabs rejoice at the murder of Jews. The best thing would be if we would somehow be able to ship them all out of the country. Say, if one of their bomb factories blew up and burned down all of Gaza, most of my friends would not start crying over the innocent children killed by such a tragedy. In fact, when they hear of “innocent” children killed by accident in an attempt to wipe out some terrorist, they aren’t heartbroken at all, because they see those kids as much like little cockroaches who will soon grow up to be big cockroaches. But I don’t have to tell you about this. You know it all already. You know the thoughts, and you know the people. We live in the same land. What I want to tell you is that there is something similar on the other side of the barricade. I’m not talking about the arabs. I’m talking about the Jews on the other side. They too, are tired of the argument. They too, are sure they are right. They don’t think there is any point in justifying deomocracy. For them, it is as important, as all emcompassing, as much the truth, as religion is for some of us. And the enlightened world believes in it. If we are hated by all the peoples of the world, at least there is one thing to our credit. And that is that we are a democracy. It would be inconceivable for them to ever give up on this advantage. And they feel the ground is being pulled out from under them. They are uncomfortable. They barely have any children, and a good part of those that they do have are living in Los Angeles and northern Europe. The only people having children these days are Arabs and Haredim, and for the enlightened ones, that’s about the same. A lot of people think that a homosexual marriage is as good as the other kind… and if they can't have children, they can adopt them. They feel the day is close upon us when we will be a minority in our own land. And that will be the end for them; the end of the Jewish state. What difference would it make to hold on to holy places for a few years, if in the end, in another generation, all will be lost.And why would they care about the settlers, who used cunning and deceit to gain territories in the midst of great Arab concentrations, and who were trying to turn back the clock to more primitive times. Here, we’re trying to be at least as (post) modern as Europe, and actually, have it in us to be the leaders in the fields of culture, science, and technology, and here, we are being undone by these fools, who take pride in the fact that only a few generations back, they were monkeys!
Now how are we going to convince these people? They know that the army can always win the wars. They have no great sentimentality for the ground…. Ground is good for flower pots… they don't feel that different living here than they would have felt living in Uganda. It's very much the same for them… especially that wanting to be part of the "great wide world" outside. … And just possibly, they have the sympathy of the majority in a democratic poll! And all the while, We don't really have a popular leader on our side!
I'll continue in future bloggings, Shimon
haveil_havalim
posted by Shimon at 2:48 AM
1 Comments:
I found that the pro D was filled with so many lies, like that it was for peace. Well, the Arabs never promised peace. That should have been repeated constantly that all that was promised was more demands.
A chart comparing the amount of terror attacks with the government's attitute toward giving away land.
These and what I wrote could influence the confused.
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