This is
really following a separate thread on the state of the state of Israel, but
thought other FWers would be interested in these current observations:
My perspective is that all parties, the
Israelis and Palestinians who live there, the offsite Jews and non-Jews,
everyone has to admit that the old dance steps are not the answer. Each side must look in the mirror and
change. This is Twelve Steps time. The I-P solution is a petri dish for
what all multiethnic, limited-resource nations face in a globalized modern
world still carrying ancient tribal themes: to fail here is a symbolic failure
for the rest of us.
Personally, I don’t have much optimism
that either Israel or a new Palestinian state has much viability as long as
they are founded with official state religions. The tribal traditions are so intense in this region, the land
battles now embedded in the genes of another generation. An eye-for-an-eye has led to a lot of
blindness.
Karen Watters Cole
TEL AVIV — Maybe the most telling fact in this coming
Israeli election is that at this moment of intense crisis, a tiny Israeli
party, Green Leaf, which advocates the legalization of marijuana, could win one
or two seats in the new parliament. Green Leaf's motto might as well be: since
every other solution has been tried and failed, why not just get high?
I've covered a lot of Israeli elections, but I have never
seen one like this. I've never
seen the Israeli public less interested in the two major parties — indeed, in the whole event. The
reasons are not hard to discern. The last two years of suicide bombings and
collapsed peace have knocked the stuffing out of this place.
It is not that Israelis are about to surrender. The Palestinian fantasy that the Jews will just pick up and leave if
you turn the heat up on them high enough was so wrong, so foolish. (You should
see the number of concerts and theater and dance performances in Tel Aviv on
any given evening.) Nevertheless,
there is a deep and growing sense among Israelis of "No Exit," a sense that every idea has been tried —
peace overtures, crackdowns, settlements, targeted killings, the left-wing
solution and the right-wing solution, and nothing works. As an Israeli friend told me over
dinner: "You look at your kids and your grandkids now and you ask
yourself: What
if it never ends?"
“…All of this, politicians and political
scientists say, mirrors
deep changes under way in Israel. "More than
ever before, the advertisements represent the structure of Israeli
society," said Yoram Peri, chairman of the Chaim Herzog Center for Media,
Politics and Society at Tel Aviv University. "We have a very divided society with a very
strong emphasis on your identification with your tribe."
… The Russian parties generally include
Hebrew subtitles, though not always.
Two of the Orthodox parties also run Hebrew subtitles when their leaders
speak, although both speak Hebrew.
The reason is that both are aged rabbis, and they mumble. One of them, Ovadia Yosef of the party
Shas, is shown telling congregants that when they are judged after death, an
angel will reassure them: "Don't worry, relax — you went to the ballot
box, and you put in a ballot for Shas. You go to heaven — go to the fifth
floor."
On Thursday evening that commercial was immediately followed
by one for a left-wing party, Meretz. That ad also showed a clip of Rabbi Yosef
cursing the Meretz leader, Yossi Sarid. "May his name be erased," the
rabbi declares. In fierce
competition with other secular parties, Meretz is bidding for anti- religious
voters.
That Meretz message demonstrates the limited ambitions of
these parties. "The
real campaign is within a camp, not between camps," said Sam Lehman-Wilzig, the vice
chairman of the department of political studies at Bar-Ilan University. Each party is not trying to reach swing voters in the center as much as it is "going after the near circle of potential
supporters
who are seriously considering one or two other parties in the immediate
vicinity."
(end
of excerpts)
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