The Last Days of Pompei
Military men desert Gaddafi in droves
So far NATO have been merciful to Gaddafi , personally…
Does Zuma lack the puma’s temerity to kindly advise Brother Gaddafi to step DOWN?
Attack helicopters getting ready to finish the job.
Is Mladic in good health and fit to be flown to the Hague?
This was 13th May, 2011, compliments of Peter H, I get The Bob Cats Newsletter regularly.
“Welcome to another edition of the Bob Cats Newsletter. It’s night time in the big city and the Kid is lying on his belly on the hotel roof watching the park where ballon’s are rising, barbeques are flaming and the Black Swan where the Cracked Thespian’s resting in an armchair outside on the pavement, spitting at passers-bye quoting the soliloquy of Montesqueu while Toinette Laveau and Marie Antoinette smokes Hedges & Benson discussing stock market prices and weather it’s true or not that the mayor got caught red-handed with his hand in the jar and his pants down. They’ve been out of town for six months sewing blue jeans at The House of the Rising Sun and now they’re up for some good old fashioned fun. The Kid don’t hear, he stares and glares and throws a dove’s egg down at the street, watching it explode on the windshield of a bus of strangers from out of town. Brakes hiss as the Black Dog crosses the street as the traffic light turns blue.”
THE BOB CATS NEWSLETTER 2011-05-13.pdf
1393K View Download
That was May 13th
Today’s Daily Alert is also full of surprises
I can never do justice in reporting my impressions about what I saw, heard and thought yesterday evening. At one point I thought of Sir Karl Popper leaving Austria in 1937 (before it was too late ) and emigrating to New Zealand , as he tells us on pages 110-111 of his autobiography Unended Quest
I was also thinking of a lecture held at the Jewish library this past Monday – a lecture about Inte Med Oss (Leonie and Walter Frankenstein’s life) by such a clear-minded lecturer and what a phenomenal memory for an 87 year old! And was thinking about some of the questions that Bertil Oppenheimer ( author of Till Sverige) had fired at him and the answers that he gave ……
Yesterday, May 26th was the last in a series on the International Writers Stage and the marvellous Amos Oz much loved in Israel and worldwide was holding house at Kulturhuset, an evening not to be regretted with the blessings of the electricity inherent in the male-female dynamic and there we the audience were, sitting in the dark, attentive , watching & listening the spotlight on him having an engaging conversation with the equally fantastic literati, Johanna Koljonen. ( It could have been another intellectual savvy and perhaps politically more engaging academic like Arne Ruth sitting in Johanna Koljonen’s chair, in which case the emotional chemistry inevitably generated by the feminine mystique sparkling with un-ostentatious intelligence would have been missing – absent – and the witty wizard of Oz would probably have been as present as he was but not bubbling with the same irrepressible sense of humour…
My Better Half was also sparkling yesterday evening and asked him the most interesting Literature based question from the audience, about his moving description of his parents life in the old country in his “ A Tale of Love and Darkness” as if he himself had experienced what they had experienced, the flowers, the trees the fruits, and then moving to Israel which was by contrast then something of a desert…No, he said ( he seemed quite pleased with the question) he couldn’t, had not gone back there, but Sonya his aunt had told him plentifully about all this and when he was writing the book he visited her once a week on Sunday mornings, so he was very nervous he says, about her possible reaction to what she read as his narrative, asked her, nervously and she told him that it was as if she had been sitting for a portrait and he had painted a life-like portrait ……something like that…….
In our personal tale of love and darkness, my Better Half is love and I am the darkness….ha ha…
How to describe Amos Oz? Words will never be enough, nor would the sum total of his own words……
Yesterday, we ( me, Better Half, Bibi) were at Kulturhuset at 18.40 , the show was supposed to start at 1900hrs and we joined the tail end of the queue into the venue at 18.45. The queue itself looked serpentine, like a picture of a voting queue in South Africa in 1994, the first democratic elections held for all colours in that country, and as said, we were at the tail end of that queue, with myself the honourable darkness bringing up the rear. Ever heard the saying, “ The first shall be the last and the last shall be the first”? Suddenly, the doors at my rear end ( not my derrière) opened and so the rear end of the queue was made to enter first. We rushed in and secured ringside seats behind the seats specially reserved for the press and diplomats and some of the others special dignitaries. All in all about 494 people were in the hall last night, only six people were absent. I counted.
Unfortunately, no welcoming, relaxing blessed glass of wine as part of the ticket as when David Grossman another Israeli writer peace-man / peace-nik was here the last time and interviewed by Arne Ruth
Amos Oz’s immediate impact is to be found in the Teskedsorden the founding of which was inspired by his book How to cure a Fanatic.
The evening started with a discussion of his latest book Scenes from a village life published by his Swedish publishers, Wahlström & Widstrand, as ” Lantliga Scener”
A village, Jewish villages of course, created by his imagination, in the language of creation, the Hebrew language, using the Hebrew alphabet, the village always a Jewish village of his dreams, families, unhappy families , of fictional people “each of whom has lost something” characters with secrets that they themselves do not know…enigmatic stories, stories about disintegration…..
And a very interesting story about the re-creation of the Hebrew Language in the last decade of the nineteenth century, as the national language of Israel. Because Ashkenazi Jews could mostly only speak Hebrew, whilst Sephardic Jews mostly spoke Ladino or Arabic so that when a Sephardic boy met an Ashkenazi girl, I LOVE YOU in Hebrew , were the first holy Hebrew words that he had to acquire in his pursuit of happiness and the fulfilment of the commandment to be fruitful and to multi-ply & replenish the earth…
Some years ago when Amos Oz was here and at Hedengrens, to promote “ A Tale of Love and Darkness” which had just been published in Swedish, I had heard him tell about the poetic resources of Hebrew and sing melodiously in English of the glories of the Hebrew Language ( which of course – inevitably – always suffers in translation) but this time it was even more interesting and at one point he said that Hebrew was “like a wonderful musical instrument” ( his exact words…..
And he spoke in glowing terms about his translator into English Nicholas de Lange with whom he has had a fruitful collaboration, earlier on, translating. After which Amos Oz and Johanna Koljonen spoke highly of Rose-Marie Nielsen’s translations of him into Swedish .
I wonder if she would like to translate Haim Sabato’s “ Aleppo Tales”
Whilst we are at it, Mr. Oz himself recommends his The Same Sea as a good introduction to his works, it is, he told us, his writing in which it is difficult to distinguish between where the poetic prose begins and the poetic poetry takes over in the symphony at which point I whispered in my Better Half’s ear a question as to whether he was talking about the same sea as composed on his fabulous musical Hebrew Instrument , the Hebrew Language, and whether she thought the symphony would retain the same musical quality in Swedish or English translation, but at that point she simply ignored my question and contiuned, with rapt attention, listening to his spoken prose in Queen Elizabeth’s English….
” The Same Sea” is now an opera…
Politically, about the Middle East, his most outstanding observation was about another tragedy : that unfortunately in Muslim countries in that area , women were still being OPPRESSED and that the women’s liberation would be the key to real progress in that area. Exactly what a woman’s ear likes to hear. But I did not notice whether or not Johanna Koljonen was nodding in agreement with him….
Oz believes that oppressed women bring up narrow-minded children. ( I once asked a Chechen woman from Grozny about how their kids are brought up and she told me that their kids are never oppressed as youngsters and therfore do not grow up to be people who are cowardly or afraid
Bringing the conversation to a close, Johanna Koljonen the perfect hostess, politely asked Profesor Oz what he thought was the value of Literature, what can Literature do to foster tolerance? Dr. Oz told us that Literature can broaden our perspective, disarm stereotypes – that at home in his household, it was a home in which ( understandably ) his parents had passed a fatwa against speaking the German language or purchasing any German goods but that later on it was through reading post-Holocaust German Literature, Heinrich Böll, Gunter Grass etc., that Germans had become humanized once more…Let me hasten to add that he said that it was not only the German language that had been forbidden at home, but all European languages had been forbidden to him, because his parents feared that with the acquisition of a European language , young Amos would probably want to set sail for anti-Semitic Europe where Jewish people were not welcome – and that apart from yes and no, the only other English that he knew then was three words, throwing stones at anti-British demonstrations and shouting “ British, Go HOME!!”
But from the purely linguistic and literary let us move on to the political part of the evening , which given the seriousness of present time I was hoping would be given equal attention , given that where there are two Jews present you are likely to find at least three opinions, and especially after Professor Oz intimated to us that in the present day Israel of 7 million people – one million of whom are from the former Soviet Union, everybody believes him or herself to be right: everybody is highly opinionated, everybody is a prophet, everybody or everybody’s rabbi knows best, everybody is a journalist, a religious extremist or pacifist, everybody is a great philosopher, everybody’s a theologian when it comes to the theology of the holy Land or the holiness of the land, everybody’s a political extremist, a Zionist of one shade, colour or the other, and everybody believes himself or herself to be right or to be the way, the truth and the light , everybody is the Messiah of Instant Redemption, eveybody is talking all of the time and no one is listening…..
And so to Amos Oz’s other flashes of profundity ( the writer as poet, prophet, literary liberationist, peace-ful politician and high priest, although he says that he is not a politician:
In response to a straightforward question in which Johanna Koljonen asked whether his writings were an apology for Israel ( she used the word apology in the sense in which apologia is usually meant) , Dr. Oz was definitive: Israel is beyond that – Israel is beyond the need for any sort of apology…..
If I had not been so moved emotionally I would have remembered his each and every word of response , but even though we were in perfect synchronisation at that moment I was temporarily (body, mind-memory and heart-soul ) enjoying another visionary experience the moment I heard what he had begun to say and was anticipating another flow of words…..I returned to earth a few moments later and by then I heard him saying that “Hamas is an idea”. I wish he had said, “Hamas is a bad idea” but by then he had launched headlong into some other pointless pontification about a two-state solution without even breathing a word about indefensible pre-67 borders, so I found my spirit being sapped into the energy-draining suction of his not so mellifluous words that the Israel-Arab (Palestinian) conflict is a clash between right and right, and that “Palestinians have nowhere to go”. Nowhere to go ? What about Jordan? Mecca? Can Jews emigrate to those kind of countries? As Dylan the prophet-bard sings,
“ Democracy don’t rule the world
You’d better get that in your head
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that’s better left unsaid
From Broadway to the Milky Way
That’s a lot of territory indeed “
Ah yes, he ( Oz) said , Europe has shed so much blood, has shed more blood than anyone else, more than has been shed in Africa , the Middle East or any other continent. ( The guilt ridden Nobel Prize committee is perhaps not going to take too kindly to those words…… even if the song he is now singing is “ make peace not war” – the song that he should be singing backed by a converted Hamas choir, instead of even remotely suggesting the forcible removal of Israelis from one part of the Holy Land ( Judea and Samaria) to another part of the Holy land. Ditto with Israel leaving the buffer zone of Southern Lebanon : 6,000 Hezbollah rockets rained down on Israel in 2006 and they still have the urge and more than 40, 000 more advanced missiles and more Iranian backing for their demonic wipe out ambitions . And even as Dr. Oz is moaning that as a result of Ariel Sharon forcibly removing 15,000 Jews from Gaza, Hamas and their terrorist pals are still holding Gilad Shalit prisoner and still raining down rockets on Israel. On the way back home I came across a poster featuring Mattias Gardell & advertising that they are going to be celebrating the one year anniversary of the so called “ Freedom Flotilla”, on 31st May 2011, at Sergels Torg…..
It’s 16.15 and I’m badly pressed for time. Would like to take up a few other political and literary matters that surfaced yesterday evening, at Kulturhuset….. some thoughts about the parochial being able to be elevated to being universal, some thoughts about Horace Engdahl’s misgivings about American Literature , some thoughts about the two latest novels I’ve read by Philip Roth, some thoughts about ” Once Upon a Country.”
It’s 20.00hrs. I have just been listening to Amos Oz holding forth at the Great Synagogue of Stockholm. More about that later.
Shabbat Shalom everyone…..
Aminatta Forna has won this year’s Commonwealth Writers Prize with “The Memory of Love”
Congratulations to Aminatta Forna!
Breaking news: Aminatta Forna wins Commonwealth Writers Prize
She’s appeared on my blog, twice before :
1. Aminatta Forna: She ought to be available in Swedish.
What more to add but to say once more that such an excellent writer ought to be available in Swedish…..
A review of “The Memory of Love” in the Australian
Another review of “The Memory of Love”
Tomorrow I look forward to meeting Amos Oz at the Kulturhuset…. and in the near future hope that Aminatta will also be with us here in Stockholm at the same venue
In the meantime, a celebration song for Aminatta
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netantayu spells it out : the importance of US – Israel relations and makes the case for supporting Israel so very clearly in his address to AIPAC.
Later in the day Prime Minister Netanyahu will address both Houses of Congress and that is something to look forward to.
ADL’s tentative, cautious/diplomatic neutrality about Barack Obama positing pre-67 borders as a starting point of negotiations, gives the impression that it gives the stamp of approval and the ADL having issued that statement what amendments are to be made to that statement should things go awry during negotiations? The bottom line now and tomorrow is that 1967 borders are indefensible.
This means that the ADL statement ought to be amended to include misgivings about the 1967 borders being indefensible. And we are talking about the necessary existence, survival and prosperity of Israel – in peace – and about indefensible borders that invite aggression.
The lines are clear and it’s reasonable to swing with Bill Levinson here
Food for thought: Wild Bill speaks his mind : The Israeli Heart
Barack Obama loves Stevie Wonder; In short: this is Barack Obama’s song
Finally zapped through Barack’s speech this afternoon… A great speech, practical, inspiring giving enough room for freedom to think; he’s not a dictator nor is he actually dictating everyone’s move, but encouraging some thinking in the right direction.
An African American knows what she’s singing about …
His first mention of Israel in his policy speech: ”Antagonism toward Israel became the only acceptable outlet for political expression.” (Barack Obama)
What a very accurate observation! In all the Arab countries, from Mauritania, through Syria, to Iraq and Revolutionary Islamic Iran, criticism of Israel and demonstrations against Israel have been the rallying cry and uniting factor, have been the only criticism that can be given public expression and endorsed as legitimate by the various regimes in all these countries – most of which would not and many of which still do not permit criticism of their own wonderful regimes. To that end, Iran wants to pose as the leader of the Middle East Muslims by suggesting that when they have the capacity they will wipe that country out of existence – as if it is Israel that is oppressing all the countries over which the wind of change is blowing, or preventing the democratisation of all those countries, preventing them from using all their wealth and resources to improve the lives of their local populations, their own people.
In most of the commentaries on president Obama’s policy speech not enough emphasis or attention has been placed on these his very important words :
“Provisions must also be robust enough to prevent a resurgence of terrorism; to stop the infiltration of weapons; and to provide effective border security.”
As expected, this past Sunday, President Obama’s speech to AIPAC turned out to be complementary to his earlier policy statement. So, my earlier, self-appointed task of commenting on his grand statement is almost superfluous, in the aftermath of President Obama’s further clarifications and reassurances about exactly what he meant with reference to the pre-1967 borders as a starting point for negotiating the creation of a Palestinian State, re – “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognised borders are established for both states.”
The full text of Obama’s speech to the AIPAC
Great guy, Barack Obama. In that speech he called upon Hamas to release Gilad Shalit and got a standing ovation for that. It’s about time that Hamas reacted or lose yet another day, to insane delay. Not so sane. What would the Prophet of Islam say about this sort of thing – kidnapping? The prohibition against kidnapping is primarily what is being referred in “ Thou shalt not steal.”
And by the way, “ an eye for an eye” is one of the earliest statements of equality, democracy.
Not, “ a King’s eye = 1,000 ordinary men’s eyes,” but, on the scale of equality and justice, it’s “an eye for an eye.” ( All eyes are equal!)
“Took a stranger to teach me, to look into justice’s beautiful face
And to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” (Bob Dylan. Mazel Tov! Tomorrow, Tuesday, 24th of May 2011, we’ll celebrate his 70th birthday)
Terror and terrorism aside, about Hamas the first thing that we have to be clear about is that Hamas is not interested in a two-state solution or in pre-67 borders. They do not want a State called Israel living/co-existing side by side in peace and harmony with a Palestinian state of whatever name. They want their Palestinian State to completely replace and dis-place the Jewish State known as Israel.
And this is the same Hamas that has now joined forces with Mahmud Abbas & Fatah, it would appear, to negotiate a two-State solution, perhaps as a first stage to a final stage, one-state solution?
Chairman Mahmud Abbas is living on extended time, with two extra years – over his mandate period as chairman….
…and it’s quite possible that Hamas will win the next election and take over the reigns of government in both Gaza, and the so called West Bank comprising Judea and Samaria….
To my way of thinking, the first serious indication that the Palestinians do not want negotiations to go forward is their insistence on “the right of return” of exile Palestinians, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, not to the proposed Palestinian state, but to Israel proper to within Israel’s borders. They should know better than that since they would not want any Jews living in their Palestinian state, (therefore the hullabaloo about natural population growth, new housing units and settlements?).
If they ( the Palestinians) were really serious, then “right of return” would not be on the agenda, certainly not at the top, because that is an absolute non-starter. The so called “ right of return” to Israel would increase Israel’s demographic nightmare and pose a serious threat to the very Jewish nature of the Jewish State. There are already over one million Israeli Arabs living in Israel as Israeli citizens – and so far it seems that they would not prefer to go and live in any other Middle East democracy….
A much more feasible idea would be that Palestinians first get their Palestinian State and then invite their peoples’ descendants and exiles to return to their own state and not to Israel. But they prefer to put some time-wasting obstacles like this in the way of negotiating their own progress to Statehood.
Yesterday in the BBC interview Barack Obama said that it would be logical and in the interests of national security and the security of the United States of America’s allies to go into Pakistan if necessary to liquidate some arch-terrorists planning havoc and sabotage their plans so that their plans do not mature into fruition…..
Hamas may think that this is perilously close to legal Jewish religious thinking which I understand states that if you have reliable intelligence that Shahid X is on the way to kill you, it is your duty to finish him/her off before that plan is brought to “ fruition.” Not that you should go and arrest him, or take him to a mental asylum, but you should finish him…
Primitive?
It’s the very nature of what’s known as a pre-emptive strike, sometimes a part of what’s also known as “targeted ass-assination” Something that terrorists are more sensitive about since the dramatic demise of Sheikh Osama bin Ladin
There are of course people like Danny Glover who a decade ago did not believe in the death penalty, to the extent that he thought that if bin Ladin were to be apprehended, tried and found guilty he should be spared receiving the death penalty…
Thinking about targeted assassinations, this is a good song, and you can interpret it one way or the other, and though I don’t like the title please consider this line in the lyrics:
“Now the crux of the confusion is that some people - always – have more than they ever need.”
Listening to this song over the years I always get to thinking that the one thing that Israel does not have enough of (but the Arabs do) is land, that which some other people want to take away from the Jewish people, that which the Almighty Himself has given in love…
“Some songs were done by chosen men,
Some from men insane.” (Marvin Gaye)
…
One of my favourite cantors, favourite perhaps because I heard him first (before listening to some of the other great ones) and he sounded like what a pious Swedish Lutheran would probably identify as pietistic (an approved religious emotion) and what I feel is fervour/ kavannah (from the point of view of modesty, something one does not show publicly):
Pierre Pinchik : Rozo d’ Shabbos – The Mystery of Sabbath
There’s Ha Tikva
There’s The Kotel…
Here’s Cantor Sawel Kwartin’s Vetiher Rabbi Yishmael
And so we ought not forget that there is a spiritual dimension to the on-going history of Israel.
A good place to start is here: Everything you always wanted to know about Israeli Politics
Meanwhile, the chimps and other Obama detractors are at it again.
And what if al -Qaeda, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and all the cool cats in the Martyrs Brigade got word that the Messiah was here – would they renounce their militant anti-Zionism and embrace him or would they still want to wage war against him and on all the innocent civilians and military of Israel, the US, Europe, the best of the West?
Honestly, I don’t like to see every other sick dick, tom and dirty harry jumping on Brother Obama for no just cause – and there are some major tasks ahead for him : sooner or later he will have to deal with Iran – if he deals with Iran now (and Iran is no Christmas chicken or Thanksgiving piece of turkey or Afghanistan or Iraq or Pakistan) but if he deals with Iran ( knocks out their nuclear facilities successfully or achieves regime change before the end of his first term as president, he will be assured of a second term – otherwise he will have to do it during his second term – if there will be one or one of the hungry McCain type of Republicans now hovering on the horizon will do it and get done with it.
Apart from the non-starter, the preposterous pre-’67 lines– even as the suggestion of a starting point of forward -looking discussion about the future of the Holy Land, I really don’t like seeing Brother Obama having to take such flak, because you must admit that he said some pretty nice words and some home truths to both of his best friends (Israel and the Pals).
What has he done or said to deserve all the opprobrium coming from some of those predictable places?
Sure, it’s nursery rime time -
“A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds
And when the weeds begin to grow
It’s like a garden full of snow
And when the snow begins to fall
It’s like a bird upon the wall
And when the bird away does fly
It’s like an eagle in the sky
And when the sky begins to roar
It’s like a lion at the door
And when the door begins to crack
It’s like a stick across your back
And when your back begins to smart
It’s like a penknife in your heart
And when your heart begins to bleed
You’re dead, and dead, and dead indeed.”
Surely, they do not see Brother Obama as merely a man of words – of great oratory but not of deeds?
OK, we know that some people don’t like him because he caused Sheikh Osama bin Laden, their hero, to be despatched to a watery grave – dead indeed, indeed dead prematurely – according to them. Even though they know that there is the al-qadr which is avoidable and the al-qadr which cannot be avoided.
Which one was it? That is a question asked in humility and one into which I think the believer does not pry too deeply.
Of course, Hamas doesn’t like the deed he caused to be done because from their point of view, terminating bin Ladin is dangerously close to the once successful Israeli policy of targeted assassinations of terrorists. So Hamas doesn’t like it. What if Obama should send the US Navy Seals after them? That kind of fear would make Khaled Meshaal think twice about leaving his relatively secure hideout in Damascus and relocating to Hamas’ other headquarters in the Judenrein Gaza Strip.
What exactly do they want, those who say that they believe in the one and only Almighty but do not recognise Israel ?
They want Brother Obama to give some orders to the IDF to do si and so – OR ELSE the awesome might of the US military will descend upon them, heavily….
As I said just before the Sabbath,”I will soon read and listen to the speech he (Obama) made yesterday. I haven’t done so yet, not beyond paragraph 5, because I’m afraid of reading what could be “the bad parts”. So I’ll do that on Sunday and hope that I will still like Brother Barack Obama as much as I have liked him up to now….. “
Ehud Barak, who at Camp David, 2000, offered Arafat 91% of the West Bank & half of Jerusalem (caught here playing with Arafat) is Israel’s most decorated soldier and is currently Israel’s Minister of Defence, so he must know as much as anybody about Israel’s sovereignty and the requirements for the defence of Israel’s territorial integrity. He says that Obama’s speech was “not such a bad thing”
So, I was much encouraged to take a deep breath of the kind that Donald Davie understood and approach what some people call Obama’s rhetorical recital, the very same that some others call incitement to revolutionary non-violence of the kind that Dave Dellinger would endorse. Obama’s flight of pro-democracy oratory has turned out to be more poetical & musical to the ear than had been previously expected.
( to be continued : an honest , unbiased reaction to the Israel aspect of Obama’s new policy statement.)
“Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won”
Barack Obama is ambitious. He wants to go down in history as the President who succeeded in getting Hamas to abandon terrorism, succeeded in establishing a viable Palestinian State, and getting Israel to do what some of the Palestinians want to see: this Breaking News item that “Israel has agreed to commit suicide by withdrawing to 1967 borders “
Human Rights & Democracy Champion Carl Bildt, Sweden’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, is supposedly ” satisfied”, but hopefully, not tickled by Obama’s policy speech.
The Palestinians have not quite achieved Democracy yet, even thought there is a truce between Fatah and Hamas, after the post-election victory shoot-out between them in Gaza. But it seems that Democracy and greater respect for Human Rights will have to give way to at least temporary co-operation – at least until after successful negotiations.
And what if Hamas wins the first election after Palestinian Independence – will Article 11 of the Hamas Charter then be fully operational, until the Day of Resurrection?
Of course, Sweden is so far away from those pre-67 borders and completely out of range and out of harm’s way no matter how many primitive rockets may be fired from Gaza or even the more advanced missiles from Hezbollah’s impressive Stockpile may be fired from Lebanon. So, the kind of empathy that could come from those more directly exposed to a kindred terrorist threat is missing or may be a too little abstract, because of distance especially for those whose hearts are not to the left of their chest….
Meanwhile, in spite of all that courtesying and bowing by Obama the Saudis are less impressed than Hon.Carl Bildt, and they refer to Obama’s speech as MEANINGLESS DRIVEL !
I still haven’t gone beyond the first five paragraphs and when I do, I will read very carefully, the parts of Obama’s speech in which he talks about Israel…
It so happens that almost everyone is busy telling Mr. Netanyahu what he should be telling Obama and the American people
Fortunately, on Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu has the opportunity of addressing both houses of the US Congress, and I’m sure that he’ll succeed in conveying the understanding that Israel’s existence is threatened .
But Barack Obama has already done a lot of great work. His appeal from Cairo University inspired the Arab Spring.
His latest policy statements may continue to inspire the democratization of the region, which is all to the good of the region. With Democracy, peace and love, the whole region would prosper far beyond our dreaming….
I will soon read and listen to the speech he made yesterday. I haven’t done so yet beyond paragraph 5, because I’m afraid of reading what could be “ the bad parts.” So I’ll do that on Sunday and hope that I will still like Brother Barack Obama as much as I have liked him up to now…..
For some who are giddy with excitement : Obama vs. Netanyahu ?
I still haven’t got past paragraph five of Obama’s address. I’ve heard about the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and about the $6 Billion Obama has slotted for Egypt and Tunisia. That’s OK , even in these hard times for many Americans. Hopefully, none will be slotted for Hamas.
Just as the question is so crudely posed :
Obama vs. Netanyahu : let’s see who wins
Jerusalem will still be the capital of Israel, long after Obama is gone and buried.
There must be all the excitement of partisan cheerleaders who thrive on such excitement , but I for one am not a pessimist. Lets be cool and calculated about this:: even ADL applauds President Obama’s Strong Outline Of Principles For U.S. Policy In Middle East
The question as phrased will not have an outcome that will make Obama the winner.
Like Jerusalem, the Israel of our hearts is of a more permanent reality. This is where the word glory applies now, in the past and in the future: the light will shine and spread from Jerusalem.
A Palestinian State occupying pre-1967 borders is never going to happen, but it is the grand opening / beginning of a process that will have to be negotiated. You start by asking for heaven ( Hamas doesn’t merely want pre-’67 borders, they want the whole cake & the 72 virgins) and there’s some meaning to the dreaming in that line by Robert Browning, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
It’s not Barack Hussein Obama the president of the United States versus Binyamin Netanyahu the Prime Minister of Israel. Nor is it a war between the good people of the US and the people of Israel – such a war cannot take place even with Obama as the commander-in-Chief of the US forces.
Hopefully, this will become a little more clear after Obama addresses AIPAC
We must realise that what you call “ the West bank” is also the Judea and Samaria which like Jerusalem, are essential components of the land of Israel.
Israel will continue to prosper long after the Messiah declares his presence among us.
WHAT WILL PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU SAY TO THE US GOVERNMENT?
It’s 11.45, Friday 20th May, 2011 and I’ve just zapped through the first five paragraphs of Obama’s maiden speech on his New US Middle East Policy..
The news of Obama’s starting point of the ‘67 borders preceding any acquaintance with the rest of his speech, on first reading it, this is how it struck me, and no guile here, I’m just plucking out the plums in the pudding:
He says that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mileage clocked on her Golgotha travels is “approaching a new landmark”. Is Obama punning here? Ama thinking of his “ ‘67 borders as his chosen new “landmark” – the starting point and final borders of negotiation and this very disturbing factual reality about defensible and indefensible borders which is a most important consideration. It’s a question of post-Holocaust survival and continuation of the precious Jewish species; please check it out, the first item reported on Daily Alert of 3rd January, 2011, headlined WikiLeaks: Israel Has Only 12-Minute Warning If Iran Attacks
“And though these
countries may be a great distance from our
shores, we know that our own future is bound to
this region by the forces of economics and
security; history and faith. “
By the forces of economics he means the rule of oil of course and re-wording him in simple, less pompous parlance, America’s future is bound to the Arab League region by America’s insatiable thirst for oil.
And Israel’s future?
And security? Fear of terrorism (911 etc.) and the prevention of terrorism = security…..
But what is this about “our future” being bound to this region by history – AND FAITH? This reminds me of Prince Charles’ redefinition of his title which he has changed from “defender of The Faith” ( a very British Monarchical title) to the more general title of defender of Faith ( in this more inclusive day and age which incorporates al-Islam – as one of the new Faiths of the new British realm and as implied by the first Hussein of America, President Barack Hussein Obama, in the spirit of Cairo 2, al -Islam is also truly one of USA’s religions/ faiths.
In talking about “change” in the region and “the forces that are driving it” , Mr. Obama will sooner or later realise that in due course of time Islam is bound to be the driving force – the ideological and moral source – not the Westminster or US presidential model – and this is because it is Islam that is intrinsic to that region, Islam that is both immanent and the cultural background, Islam that is the Alam-e-Batin ( inner) and the Alam-i-Zahir ( outer) reality of the aspiring Muslim, spiritually, socially, economically and politically speaking – and that radical Islam may be militant Islam, but after dictatorships have been sucessfully overthrown it is the one Islam that will survive as the major source of inspiration and future direction.
That being the case let us pray that much of £6 Billion does not go into the acquisition of weapons that will aid Islam’s self-defence and expansion. Because dar al-harb and dar al-Islam are political categories that cannot be erased so easily, not even by peaceful dawah/Islamic proselytism – or evangelicalism…
President Obama says that
“Bin Laden was no martyr. He was a mass murderer
who offered a message of hate – an insistence
that Muslims had to take up arms against the
West, and that violence against men, women and
children was the only path to change. He rejected
democracy and individual rights for Muslims in
favor of violent extremism; his agenda focused on
what he could destroy – not what he could build.
Bin Laden and his murderous vision won some
adherents. But even before his death, al Qaeda
was losing its struggle for relevance, as the
overwhelming majority of people saw that the
slaughter of innocents did not answer their cries
for a better life. By the time we found bin
Laden, al Qaeda’s agenda had come to be seen by
the vast majority of the region as a dead end,
and the people of the Middle East and North
Africa had taken their future into their own
hands. “
All the words above are well taken, indeed, ”Bin Laden and his murderous vision won some
adherents” and this is the reality about those with whom Israel has to deal, that Hamas is still mourning their terrorist hero Osama bin Ladin – and Brother Obama is aware of this. Can that awareness be compromised by rewarding terrorism?
The above are brief comments on Obama’s first five paragraphs.
He hasn’t mentioned the name Israel yet……
( to be continued)
Haven’t read the full transcript or listened to the speech yet, only heard him beaming about ‘67 borders…..
So I’m going to bed right now.
I’m sure that sleep won’t come easy for Bibi tonight having heard that which we do not want to hear and tomorrow he’ll have to start ironing it out with the first Black President of the Human race. A flat and uncompromising refusal will have to be maintained throughout any “negotiations”. Ain’t giving up a single inch of holy territory should be a good and Godly policy. Tell the powers that be – whosoever they may be to go > to hell.
Netanyahu: Israel will NOT go back to 1967 lines
The Almighty gave Israel all of Israel ( the Jewish Nation) to the Jews, not to Hamas or Fatah or Islamic Jihad or al-Qaeda or the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.
If I remember rightly Brother Netanyahu had always said that the PLO had a three stage strategy, by which ( God forbid) to take over Israel.
Today, the Majority of Israeli Arabs Oppose Existence of Jewish State
And Fatah’s sidekick Hamas does not “recognise” Israel’s existence or Israel’s right to exist.
Hamas came into official existence in 1987. Question is will they ever abandon terrorism & their Hamas Charter and go for a permanent peace?
Fatah Agrees With Hamas: Palestinian State Will Be At War With Israel
Does Hamas really want to negotiate and if so with whom? Surely not with the Iranian “ Zionist entity” that they do not recognise?
This too deserves some looking into….
( to be continued after a careful reading of and listening to Obama’s speech….
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