Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: I fear that the Zionist dream is doomed

Sono passati sei mesi dalla pubblicazione dell'articolo. In sei mesi la
situazione in israele e' peggiorata. Sharon che come berlusca dovrebbe
essere processato per corruzione... Provocazioni generate tramite i vari TK
(l'ultima e' stata la minaccia di sharon ad arafat)...
Come ho sempre affermato, gli israeliani si stanno dando la zappa sui
piedi...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1041960,00.html
I fear that the Zionist dream is doomed
By Avraham Burg
The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path
and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer.
The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on
foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the
Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance
that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a
Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly.
There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new
vision of a just society and the political will to implement it.
Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity
must pay heed and speak out.
The opposition does not exist, and the coalition, with Ariel Sharon at
its head, claims the right to remain silent. In a nation of
chatterboxes, everyone has suddenly fallen dumb, because there is
nothing left to say.
Yes, we have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvellous theatre
and a strong currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are
traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish
people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new
weaponry, computer security programs or anti-missile missiles. We were
supposed to be a light unto the nations.
It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes
down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt
lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies.
A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are
coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect
to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents'
shock, that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli
society has begun.
It is very comfortable to be a Zionist in West Bank settlements such
as Beit El and Ofra. The biblical landscape is charming. You can gaze
through the geraniums and bougainvilleas and not see the occupation.
Travelling on the fast highway that skirts barely a half-mile west of
the Palestinian roadblocks, it is hard to comprehend the humiliating
experience of the despised Arab who must creep for hours along the
pocked, blockaded roads assigned to him. One road for the occupier,
one road for the occupied.
This cannot work. Even if the Arabs lower their heads and swallow
their shame and anger for ever, it won't work. A structure built on
human callousness will inevitably collapse. Israel, having ceased to
care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised
when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centres
of Israeli escapism.
They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because
their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our
restaurants, because they have children and parents at home who are
hungry and humiliated. We could kill 1,000 ringleaders a day and
nothing will be solved, because the leaders come from below - from the
wells of hatred and anger, from the "infrastructures" of injustice and
moral corruption.
If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained, I would be silent. But
things could be different, and so crying out is a moral imperative.
Here is what the prime minister should say to the people: the time for
illusions is over. The time for decisions has arrived. We love the
entire land of our forefathers and in some other time we would have
wanted to live here alone. But that will not happen. The Arabs, too,
have dreams and needs.
Between the Jordan and the Mediterranean there is no longer a clear
Jewish majority. And so, fellow citizens, it is not possible to keep
the whole thing without paying a price. We cannot keep a Palestinian
majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves
the only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot be democracy
without equal rights for all who live here, Arab as well as Jew. We
cannot keep the territories and preserve a Jewish majority in the
world's only Jewish state - not by means that are humane and moral and
Jewish.
Do you want the greater land of Israel? No problem. Abandon democracy.
Let's institute an efficient system of racial separation here, with
prison camps and detention villages. Do you want a Jewish majority? No
problem.
Either put the Arabs on railway cars, buses, camels and donkeys and
expel them en masse - or separate ourselves from them absolutely,
without tricks and gimmicks. There is no middle path. We must remove
all the settlements - all of them - and draw an internationally
recognised border between the Jewish national home and the Palestinian
national home. The Jewish law of return will apply only within our
national home, and their right of return will apply only within the
borders of the Palestinian state.
Do you want democracy? No problem. Either abandon the greater land of
Israel, to the last settlement and outpost, or give full citizenship
and voting rights to everyone, including Arabs. The result, of course,
will be that those who did not want a Palestinian state alongside us
will have one in our midst, via the ballot box.
The prime minister should present the choices forthrightly: Jewish
racism or democracy. Settlements, or hope for both peoples. False
visions of barbed wire and suicide bombers, or a recognised
international border between two states and a shared capital in
Jerusalem.
Why, then, is the opposition so quiet? Perhaps because some would like
to join the government at any price, even the price of participating
in the sickness. But while they dither, the forces of good lose hope.
Anyone who declines to present a clear-cut position - black or white -
is collaborating in the decline. It is not a matter of Labour versus
Likud or Right versus Left, but of right versus wrong, acceptable
versus unacceptable. The law-abiding versus the lawbreakers. What is
needed is not a political replacement for the Sharon government but a
vision of hope, an alternative to the destruction of Zionism and its
values by the deaf, dumb and callous.
Israel's friends abroad - Jewish and non-Jewish alike, presidents and
prime ministers, rabbis and lay people - should choose as well. They
must reach out and help Israel to navigate toward our national destiny
as a light unto the nations and a society of peace, justice and
equality.
Avraham Burg, a Labour-Meimad party member, was Speaker from 1999 to
2003. Translation published in Forward, from an article in Yediot
Aharonot

 and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer.
Se lo dice lui... :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

 that ours will be the last Zionist generation. 
Basterebbe che i Palestinesi aspettassero ancora un po' con pazienza,
senza farsi ammazzare o apparire come terroristi: i sionisti faranno tutto
da soli, come si sono "inventati" cosě di auto distruggeranno!
                             Critico
 
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