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Re-engaging with reality
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Comments
1
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ShyGuy
said:
There's a 5th Column, over a million strong, on the Israeli side of the fence.
Oops.
Posted by: ShyGuy on September 3, 2005 03:06 PM
2
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BobW
said:
How determined was Israel's "determined counterinsurgency"? Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon and former GSS Director Avi Dichter disagree with Jonathan Spyer. The issue thus gets reduced to who knows more about counterinsurgency. I do not gamble.
The assumption, as understood by Jonathan Spyer, "that Israel, on condition that it has a border containing a large Jewish majority, can navigate and survive this reality.", is not topical but rather superficial. Israel cannot survive, let alone navigate, because a numeric equation is bouncing against a geometric equation. This is the birthrate matter. Only a Yevsektzia upbringing would agree to a two state final solution with Israel maintaining a hostile, antagonistic Arab bloc within its populace. Within the "large Jewish majority" is a segment that some do not deem Jewish within the meaning of Jewish law (Halacha). An additional slice of this "large Jewish majority" contains those Jews with no attachment to a Jewish heritage and, for example, with emigration opportunities, will depart.
Iraq was not-nor is-an experiment in nation-building, with a democracy component. It's a neocolonial war over natural resources. The natural resources are not lumber or rare earth elements.
There is a substantial Jewish component in the oil trade. Fortunes are acquired from this industry.
Jonathan Spyer needs to do some more research at the inter-disciplinary center in Herzliya before Herzliya joins Gaza as a gift to the Arabs along with Rabbi Riskin's Efrat.
Kol tuv,
BobW
Posted by: BobW on September 4, 2005 06:20 AM
3
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Mary Hogan
said:
I have a question for BobW. What do you believe, where is your heart? Are you the wolf insidiously fleeced in Christianity? Are you the thug wraped in blood? Are you the duped who stands before wooden dollies thousands of them or just one..Siddartha? Who are you, what are your credentials.
I am the Escaped from the wolf's fleece, wanna be...not Jew...but Hassidic Jew...only because I have spent hours not studying the lemming egoists, but the amazing Neshamah fulfilling Truth.
Who are you BobW?
Posted by: Mary Hogan on September 4, 2005 08:44 AM
4
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BobW
said:
Shalom Mary,
Preface; appreciate a single post to reply to. Otherwise, it's difficult to handle the many messages.
I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower does not bloom. Otherwise, I wouldn't have a dandelion lawn.
My heart is in my upper chest cavity. I reject the seat of emotions as relating to the heart. I reject the pagen gods such as Luck and Destiny.
Once was a wolf in the Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts; forgot which.
I have no credentials. I am retired now. Before retirement I was a social reformer. Visit my website at wwwdotbeyondredemptiondotcom.
This is where I stand. I cannot recant.
You've fluctuated between Orthodox and Hassidic. One is holy. One might not be. Regardless, I respect your choice.
I am protoplasm struck by lightning with some belief in a prime mover. Although not influenced by Brother Stair of Walterboro, South Carolina (shortwave radio ministry) or Reverend Swaggert (He admitted to raising $US12-13 million PER MONTH from very SMALL contributions)we always appreciate their efforts on our behalf.
Again, thank you for consolidating your thoughts into one post.
Kol tuv, all the best
BobW
Posted by: BobW on September 4, 2005 10:10 AM
5
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Mary Hogan
said:
I was not blessed to be born a Jew. I have no Rabbi, I have studied Sefet Yetzirah...and it is way over my head. I know the Vilne Gaon was opposed to Hassidim...
I know for a fact that I will never delve into Maasah Merkavah.... But I do also know that God is a Spirit...and beyond all our comprehension. I would never say the Maharal of Prague didn't create a Golom because I know my comment would be based on my lack of clarity.
I would love any information that you can give me...empirically that the Truth doesn't lie... Hassid. You can't.
I don't understand Orhodox, Ultra Orthodox...or any of those terms...because I believe that each one of us is at a particular madraga...and can only understand the elements of that madraga. Teach me, what you know.
Other than that, you should be ashamed of yourself for taking the easy road. You stopped learning the Truth...and delved into self. Mitzvos goros mitzvos....aveiros goros aveiros.... You are losing madraga...inch by inch.
Do you know the one about not performing a mitzvah at a grave site...think about it, Bob.
Posted by: Mary Hogan on September 4, 2005 10:22 AM
6
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Mary Hogan
said:
Here are my favorite teachers, Bob.... You will understand what my Neshamah is crying for.
Rashi
R' Saadiah Gaon
Chofetz Chaim
RamChal.. R' Moshe Chaim Luzzato
Chanina ben Dosa (by virtue of the Ammoraim)
Ibn Ezra
Metzudos (I'm not sure if this is a person or a group)
Rav Dessler
Rav Yohahan be Zakkai.
I feel like I'm at the Academy Awards and I'm missing my favorites... I love it that much
Modern:
ARTSCROLL!!!!! LOVE IT!!!!
R' Eisemann... I would highly recommend to you Bob at least Divrei Hayamim I and II...but then Iyov...and Yechezkel... Even you will need a dictionary, but every word is so...perfect.
R' Kalatsky
R' Tatz
Shira Smiles...
R' Gottlieb
R' Sauer
R' Shusterman
R' Cordoza
R' Buchwald
R' Kellerman
R' Grossman at Daf Yomi
and many more....life changers...not like you Bill, who works very hard to prove where he is right now....is all.
You aren't retired until they set Shiva.
Posted by: Mary Hogan on September 4, 2005 10:39 AM
7
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Mary Hogan
said:
One other thing Bob...you appreciate a single post because that is how long it takes you to look up truth.
You are probably a Catholic....
Posted by: Mary Hogan on September 4, 2005 10:51 AM
8
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ShyGuy
said:
I love these posts!
Bob, Hassidism not holy?! Maybe we're defining the term differntly from one another or you're pointing to its historic failures. If the latter, who doesn't have them?
Mary, are you converting/ted? Mazal Ubracha. My advice:
1. Learn within an established framework, if you're not doing that yet.
2. Advice from Ethics of the Fathers: choose yourself a rav - one that you can see - not just email to.
3. Often, points 1 and 2 above may coincide.
Posted by: ShyGuy on September 5, 2005 02:56 AM
9
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ShyGuy
said:
Hey, Bob, your site's for sale. Bummer!
Posted by: ShyGuy on September 5, 2005 02:58 AM
10
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BobW
said:
Shalom Shy Guy,
Actually was thinking vice versa. I just can't flesh out some matters here because the board is not completely Jewish.
Consider the Vilna Goan versus Hessidism issue. Recall that some orth rabbis turned in Jewish labor leaders to the Czar's constabulary. Of course, the Shoah can't be discussed here. Today, we have orthodox US Sen Joseph Lieberman make public pronouncements on orthodox Judaism's position re sodomy and abortion - although he knew his statements to the public were false. Perhaps his redemption is available because this highest of orthodox Jewish US elected politicans said he "respects" Farrakan.
Well, I guess it's time for a new website. How about wwwdotAIPACgoArabiagodotorg? Unfortunately, they're for sale also. I hold a 1999 bulletin where they support a 2 state final solution.
Kol tuv,
Bob
Posted by: BobW on September 5, 2005 05:56 AM
Re-engaging with reality
By Jonathan Spyer, Ha'aretz
(I totally concur. Ted Belman)
Two key processes currently taking place in the Middle East Israel's disengagement and the sharp scaling-down of Western hopes for a remade, democratic Iraq reflect the durability of existing patterns of regional political behavior.
Middle East politics remains dominated by the confessional and the ethnic, steeped in the legitimating tradition of Islam and in sectarian definitions of identity. It is complicated by the manifest failure of ideas meant to act as the engine of modernization, which live on as dysfunctional political systems and angry myths, generating developmental failure and a prevailing mood of rage and humiliation.
Israel's disengagement transcends the simple act of redeploying from the Gaza Strip and four northern Samarian settlements. There is a larger withdrawal taking place, which is not geographical. This is the withdrawal of Israeli policy from the idea of rapprochement between the Jewish state of Israel and Middle Eastern politics as currently constituted represented in its local version by Palestinian nationalism and its Islamist opponents.
The peace process of the 1990s represented the high-water mark of Israeli attempts to engage with the Palestinians, and through them with the dominant political language of the region. That experiment, as is known, was not successful. Regional politics, in its Palestinian variant, was ultimately responsible for the failure. A familiar combination of grand myth-making, militarist fantasies of revenge, and an abject disinterest in developing real and tangible instruments of government and administration, left the process doomed.
On the Israeli side, what has followed is a simple and curt dismissal of the very possibility of meeting the region, as currently constituted, halfway. Thus, Israel's security barrier follows a route defined unilaterally, according to the formula of maximum security, maximum Jews and minimum Palestinians. Israel developed and coordinated its unilateral redeployment with its United States ally, rather than its Palestinian neighbor. And it has, at least since the election of Ariel Sharon in 2001, answered insurgency not with frantic new political initiatives, but with determined counterinsurgency.
All these elements form part of a coherent whole. They are elements of a strategy which assumes the continuation of low-level conflict between Israel and whatever Palestinian entity emerges in the areas from which Israel will withdraw. It assumes, in the absence of any telling evidence to the contrary, that regional politics will remain its usual self for the foreseeable future, and it assumes that Israel, on condition that it has a border containing a large Jewish majority, can navigate and survive this reality.
In Iraq, meanwhile, another great experiment in rebuilding Middle East politics on rational lines is following a similar trajectory to its 1990s predecessor, albeit at an earlier stage of the curve. U.S. and allied ambitions of helping to build a democratic Iraq are in the process of being endlessly whittled down, in the forlorn hope that they will eventually reach manageable proportions. Thus, an Iraqi constitution that was meant to represent a beacon to a better way is mired in unreconciled contradictions between irreconcilable ethnic and sectarian interests. U.S. diplomats in recent days found themselves in the uncomfortable position of backing Shiite religious demands for the primacy of Islamic canon law in the new constitution, against Kurdish hopes for a less dominant role for Islam. The final document was rejected outright by the Sunni negotiators.
Reports of the situation on the ground detail the growing role of ethnic and confessional-based militias, enforcing their will upon the populace. This is the case not only in the Sunni center of the country, but also in the Kurdish north and Shia south. Often formally attached to the security forces, these elements are taking advantage of the absence of central authority to enforce what some observers are calling the "effective partition" of Iraq.
What is emerging in the vacuum in Iraq is certainly a very different arrangement of power to that which pertained under Saddam Hussein. It will include a level of political influence and power for non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims of a kind that is unprecedented in the history of modern Arab states. But in terms of the dynamics of power, of how it is gained and wielded and justified, of legitimacy, of individual rights, it seems that as the tidal waves unleashed by the U.S. invasion begin to recede, the familiar Middle Eastern layout of ethnic and confessional loyalty, politicized religion and myth is once more becoming visible in the Iraqi landscape.
A scaling-down of optimism and grand hopes, and a reengagement with reality constitute, as a result, the emerging mood in Washington. It is a mood that fits well with current thinking in Jerusalem (which will remain current for as long as the current government or something resembling it remains in office.)
In both cases, grand regional projects have given way to a new understanding that regional engagement is likely to mean the continued management of conflict for Israel, and the continued management of disorder and dysfunction for the broader Western world. The fact that such realization in both cases comes only at the end of a costly flirtation with utopia serves to confirm once more the old philosopher's dictum that the Owl of Minerva, which brings wisdom, spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk.
Jonathan Spyer is a research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center, Inter-Disciplinary Center, Herzliya.
Posted by Ted Belman at September 3, 2005 01:00 PM