Caught between sobbing and war chants
by Gilad Atzmon
Jul 18th, 2008 at 9:28 • Category: Analysis, Gilad Atzmon, Gilad's Choice, Israel, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Our Authors, Palestine, War, Zionism
Monitoring the current Israeli collective pornographic lament in the Hebrew press, I found, to my amazement, a critical editorial written by Dr Mordechai Keidar, an Israeli rightwing academic.
“Our enemies,” says Keidar, “see in front of them a frenetic, emotional, weeping, corrupted, hedonistic, possessive and liberal nation. People who grab and eat, people who lack historical roots, people who are short of ideology, naked of values, lack a sense of solidarity. People who are only concerned with the ‘here and now’, people who are happy to pay any price without taking into account the grave consequences of their reckless behaviour.” (Dr Mordechai Keidar http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3568863,00.html).
It is slightly encouraging to find out that someone in Israel may realize how severely the Israeli reality is viewed. Keidar grasps how pitiable the current collective mourning festival appears to outsiders and Israel’s neighbours in particular. As much as one can empathise with the pain of the soldiers’ families, Regev and Goldwasser were IDF soldiers in uniform serving a very hostile army. When abducted they were in a military patrol on the disputed Lebanese border. For those who still didn’t get the picture, they were soldiers rather than merely ‘innocent civilians’. They were theoretically capable of defending themselves. The case of Gilad Shalit is not very different. Shalit, who is presented in the world media as an ‘innocent victim’ was nothing less then a post guard in an Israeli concentration camp, namely Gaza. Shalit, like Goldwasser and Regev, was wearing an IDF uniform when captured. Neither Regev, Goldwasser nor Shalit were victims. They were all serving a state that employs some devastating genocidal tactics including starvation, ethnic cleansing and assassination of those it views as its enemies.
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Jul 18th, 2008 at 9:28 • Category: Analysis, Gilad Atzmon, Gilad's Choice, Israel, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Our Authors, Palestine, War, Zionism
Monitoring the current Israeli collective pornographic lament in the Hebrew press, I found, to my amazement, a critical editorial written by Dr Mordechai Keidar, an Israeli rightwing academic.
“Our enemies,” says Keidar, “see in front of them a frenetic, emotional, weeping, corrupted, hedonistic, possessive and liberal nation. People who grab and eat, people who lack historical roots, people who are short of ideology, naked of values, lack a sense of solidarity. People who are only concerned with the ‘here and now’, people who are happy to pay any price without taking into account the grave consequences of their reckless behaviour.” (Dr Mordechai Keidar http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3568863,00.html).
It is slightly encouraging to find out that someone in Israel may realize how severely the Israeli reality is viewed. Keidar grasps how pitiable the current collective mourning festival appears to outsiders and Israel’s neighbours in particular. As much as one can empathise with the pain of the soldiers’ families, Regev and Goldwasser were IDF soldiers in uniform serving a very hostile army. When abducted they were in a military patrol on the disputed Lebanese border. For those who still didn’t get the picture, they were soldiers rather than merely ‘innocent civilians’. They were theoretically capable of defending themselves. The case of Gilad Shalit is not very different. Shalit, who is presented in the world media as an ‘innocent victim’ was nothing less then a post guard in an Israeli concentration camp, namely Gaza. Shalit, like Goldwasser and Regev, was wearing an IDF uniform when captured. Neither Regev, Goldwasser nor Shalit were victims. They were all serving a state that employs some devastating genocidal tactics including starvation, ethnic cleansing and assassination of those it views as its enemies.
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