Maybe I don't get out enough
Ethan Bronner sends in a 'Memo from Jerusalem' in which he describes the country's mood on this, its 62nd Independence Day as 'dark.'But there is something about the mood this year that feels darker than usual. It has a bipartisan quality to it. Both left and right are troubled, and both largely about the same things, especially the Iranian nuclear program combined with growing tensions with the Obama administration.Here are the last few minutes of Monday night's celebration on Mount Herzl (admittedly not great quality because the person taped it off the television). Do you think people are depressed?
“There is a confluence of two very worrying events,” said Michael Freund, a rightist columnist for The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview. “One is the Iranian threat, an existential threat. Add to that the fact that for the first time in recent memory there is a president in the White House who is not overly sensitive to the Jewish state and its interests. You put the two together and it will affect anyone’s mood, even an optimist like me.”
Haaretz, the newspaper that serves as the voice of the shrinking political left in this country, is in a truly depressed mood. Its editorial on Monday contended that Israel “is isolated globally and embroiled in a conflict with the superpower whose friendship and support are vital to its very existence.”
“It is devoid of any diplomatic plan aside from holding on to the territories and afraid of any movement,” the editorial said. “It wallows in a sense of existential threat that has only grown with time. It seizes on every instance of anti-Semitism, whether real or imagined, as a pretext for continued apathy and passivity.”
...
Israelis are profoundly worried — and profoundly divided — about their isolation. The left blames the government for a failure to withdraw from the West Bank, remove Jewish settlements and agree to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians. The right blames Palestinian and Arab intransigence and Western gutlessness, and says Jews have always been resented, so concessions will change nothing.
One thing both left and right have come to believe is that the government’s difficulties with the Obama administration are likely to prove central to the country’s fate in the coming year, especially if Iran gets closer to making a nuclear weapon.
The Jerusalem Post, the voice of the right-leaning English-speaking immigrants here, titled its Monday editorial “62, Under a U.S. Cloud” and fretted that the Obama administration “has diverged from the tone of previous administrations on the status of Jerusalem, and it has damagingly publicly questioned fundamental aspects of our alliance.” It added that Washington needed to understand that “Israel is still resented and rejected by most of the Arab world, not because of this or that policy, or this or that territorial presence, but because of the very fact of our existence here.”
Let's go to the videotape.
Maybe I don't get out enough but I don't feel the 'darkness' in our mood here. Maybe it's because I have a basic underlying belief that somehow God will get us through this and something will happen to overcome Iran, which is the existential threat. Yes, I'm upset at the thought that America (or at least its leadership) is abandoning us, but I'm also convinced that's temporary and that things will improve once there's a new occupant in the White House (which I believe will happen in 2013). No, I don't think we will have easy days ahead, but I don't feel 'dark.'
Maybe I need to get out more?
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:16 PM
5 Comments:
A country that has a booming economy, almost non-existent terrorism and the highest population growth of any developed country, is a land full of light and manifold blessings. To be sure, Iran is an existential threat but when you considered all the obstacles the Jewish people have faced in the past, they have successfully solved them. And they will overcome the threat from Iran, too.
I think what is overlooked in much of the foreign commentary about Israel is the miraculous things that happened to it in the last half century and twelve odd years. You literally have to be a fatalist not to believe this is just the dark before dawn. And Israelis if anything are a nation of veritable optimists.
Yes, people are anxious about Iran but they are also grateful about their country's achievements and are not looking backwards but looking ahead to tomorrow. Israel has problems but also the smarts to deal with them and its best days are yet to come.
By the way, Foreign Minister Lieberman just reiterated the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin's statement about Jerusalem being the undivided, eternal capital of Israel and made it clear Israel would never give up Jerusalem. He made that clear at the Independence Day reception for the foreign diplomatic corps in Jerusalem. So if any one thought Israel was going to give ground on Jerusalem, they were sorely disappointed. This is as it should be.
I often feel deeply worried, sometimes longer than I like, about the faith of Israel. It is so though that every time a firm belief inside me assures me that G-d is watching over Israel and will see to it that she survives. Israel is our Hope.
The Obama admin. with himself as the front man are playing a most dangerous game in relation to Israel. They are playing with fire regarding Iran and so is the EU, because the regime is determined to continue its nuclear programme and eventually it will have its nuke/s. No doubt about that unless ...
If not at an earlier time a change in the White House will come in 2013.
Israelis are always worried, living under constant threat as we do. But Bronner should have been here in Hadera where celebrations went on much of last night, including fireworks till midnight, and all day today, with the smell of home BBQ still hanging in the air. I could hear the singing all the way to my house from downtown. Dark. Heh!
"Yes, I'm upset at the thought that America (or at least its leadership) is abandoning us."
Definitely NOT the majority of the American people, conservatives and moderates! It's the hard left that have captured the Democratic Party and put their sock puppet president in the White House that hates Israel and hates Jews in general. (I suppose its no more or less irrational than any group doing so, but why the H*ll most Jewish Americans continue donating money and voting Democratic, no matter what, just mystifies me. It ain't the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy any more, folks! It's now the party of Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Pelosi, Reid, etc.)
Like you, I also hope and pray that in 2012, we see a Republican candidate ousting Comrade President Hussein Obama.
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