by Dror Eydar
1. An image of victory.
Even if Gaza is leveled and a single Hamas fighter remains, half-dead,
he will crawl among the ruins and hold his fingers up in a victory sign.
From Hamas' perspective, the very fact it is waging war with us is a
victory for them, justifying its existence.
In the movie Monty
Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur encounters the Black Knight, who
refuses to allow him to cross a bridge. When they battle, Arthur cuts
off the knight's arms, but he refuses to admit defeat. Armless, he
continues to leap about and declare his certain victory. When his legs
are also lopped off and only his torso remains on the ground, he mutters
"All right, we'll call it a draw." King Arthur leaves, but not before
we hear the amputated knight calling: "Running away, eh? You yellow
bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your
legs off!"
People wonder why Hamas
didn't care for its citizens but rather invested its money, resources,
and energy in purchasing weapons and turning Gaza into a war citadel.
What is there to wonder about? Look around. Why do Arabs all through
throughout the region live in conditions like these? Since when do Arab
rulers care for their people? First let's wipe out Israel, and then the
free world, and then we'll see. In the meantime, Gaza has been razed,
infrastructure destroyed, buildings are about to come crashing down, the
concrete trucked in was used to make terror tunnels, thousands have
been killed, hundreds of thousands displaced. The main thing is to shoot
rockets at the Yahud (Jew). Um, thousands of rockets were intercepted
by Zionist inventions. So what's left? Right, death – the most in-demand
good in Gaza. "While the frightened Jews love life, we the brave love
death." This week, Professor Moshe Sharon quoted me an Arab proverb:
"Get off me! My neck is red from the beating I gave you."
***
2. From the war's
latest supplement: Complaints from the Left about being censored. The
same bunch that for years shut us all up -- the Israeli majority -- and
decided what we would think and what we would say, and mostly kept up
its guard lest someone with differing political opinions break through
the media fort it built -- is now lamenting that the rules of the game
have changed without it being consulted.
On the leftist website
The Seventh Eye, Dr. Yuval Dror published criticism of Walla news site
editor Yinon Magal, who dared, heaven forbid, to declare that he was
"first and foremost a Jew, first and foremost an Israeli, and only after
that a journalist." Journalism, Yuval Dror said, is comprised of three
components: honestly working to expose the truth; striving for
independence; and serving the public. You can guess the direction of his
piece: he decided that Magal (and the rest of the conservative-Right
journalists, as well) are not only not journalists, but actually
"anti-journalists," since he served the public and not the "truth." But
"we" -- we're really journalists.
Now, try to think back
over the last 20 years. Has anyone of that condescending bunch made a
peep about silencing those who opposed the Oslo blood accords? Did
anyone issue strong criticism of the disengagement process from Gaza in
2005? Did anyone feature the voices of the opponents? Just look at Gaza
today. This is the gang that sold the genius idea of "disengagement,"
another whitewashed word that the "independent" media cooperated with,
simply because the corrupt, disastrous move served its political goals.
Journalists. … Right.
***
3. Today is Tisha B'Av.
In many communities, it is traditional to date the destruction of the
Temple as 68 C.E., making this 1,946 years since our glorious Second
Temple and our people's nation was destroyed. But we know that the date
of the fire -- when Titus breached Jerusalem and demolished the Temple
-- was 70 C.E., or 1,944 years ago. How does this work? I asked Rabbi
Yoel Ben-Nun. He said he believed that the sages considered the date of
the destruction to be the year when a Jewish civil war began, two years
before the great fire. This fits their description of Nebuzaradan,
Nebuchadnezzar's general: "You have killed a slain nation, you burned a
burned Sanctuary, you ground flour that was ground already…"
This is a good insight.
The civil war was the main problem, whereas the actual fire was just a
symptom, an external expression of the internal conflagration that
consumed people's hearts. If so, what does it matter to us if most of
modern Jerusalem is rebuilt if the Jerusalem in our hearts is still
waiting for its sons and daughters to return?
Zion, don't you ask about your prisoners -- the prisoners of Hatikva, who are longing to be a harp for your songs.
Dror Eydar
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=9483
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment