As I left the house today a woman slowed down in her car and slowly edged forward while drifting to the wrong side of the road. She appeared to be looking for a particular house or apartment building.
After a few seconds she started off more quickly again, but of course she was on the wrong side of the road. Meanwhile a car had come up close behind her and started to pass. When the woman in front set off and started to drift to the correct side of the road, the other driver blasted his horn long and loud, and swerved around her.
Which got me thinking about the psychology of interpersonal behaviour in the context of driving.
In a country where the vast majority of drivers ’stick to the rules’ and drive in a predictable way, any deviation from that behaviour immediately sends signals to other drivers, who ’sit up’, ‘pay attention’ and act accordingly. If they are skilled (and in the main, drivers are skilled) they will hold back a little and allow the incident to develop. They will not rush forward, come what may.
But in Israel, where the number of drivers who drive in unpredictable ways is much higher than in the United Kingdom, Western Europe or the U.S.A., the result is that skilled drivers are most apt to see erratic behaviour as ‘normal’.
And what is ‘normal’ does not rise into consciousness and does not attract a driver’s attention. Of course they could remain on ‘high alert’ all the time, but that is not a realistic response. The toll on the psyche would be too much. Each journey would stretch them to breaking point. So instead of being on ‘high alert’ all the time, they do what anyone does in a given situation - they get used to it.
And so, in the case of the incident today, the driver who came up behind the wandering driver, did not see anything unusual in the fact that the wanderer was on the wrong side of the road and edging forward. He saw no reason to slow down or hang back to see what might evolve.
On the contrary, he did what most Israelis do when there is a slow car in front of them. He came as close as he could without actually hitting the car in front, and then continued past it.
So when the car in front speeded up and started to drift to the correct side of the road, the driver behind was not prepared for that to happen and could not react ‘properly’.
Now the definition of ‘properly’ in my opinion, is to drive with caution, allowing space for things to unfold. In Israel the definition of driving properly to avoid incidents is to drive through the incident as quickly as possible.
And what happens if someone does hold back and take a more conservative or rational view of how best to deal with bad driving? Every car around will blast its horn at the the poor slob who failed to maintain forward momentum.
And what can we think about what will happen in the longer term in a country with such driving behaviour?
As each incident succeeds the last, the general spiral downward is to a country of people who are prepared to see almost any driving behaviour as normal, and thus become less and less able to react properly when things happen that threaten them.
Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the large number of accidents in this country, for as often as not, it involves more than one car.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Hear O Israel
Israeli mentality
If the behaviour of Israeli drivers and 'plane passengers indicates anything about the population at large, it is that Israelis are not natural followers of rules. Which is interesting, given that the 'rules' of behaviour in Judaism cover every moment of the day from waking until sleeping and affect what and how a person should think as well as what a person should and should not do.
Perhaps it is precisely because of the religious rules, (not that everyone follows them) that anything that does not fall in that category is subject to the question - 'why?' and to the attitude that the rules do not apply to me. Or that there are rules, but that those rules are intended to provide a general framework, but they are not meant to apply automatically to me or to any particular instance or person, unless a specific case can be made out to show that they do.
And perhaps it is because Jews have been negotiating with G-d since Abraham's plea on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, that they know every side of an argument and how to make it.
Israel today
Any statements made to describe Israel today and to explain how Israel came to be as it is, are bound to be the subject of debate.
Some questions are more intractable than others. The resurgence in religious observance is perhaps intractable without taking a metaphysical dimension into account.
But perhaps aspects of social and economic life can be looked at and their origins pried from history.
I have been disturbed by some of the statistics concerning povery in Israel. I wonder how and why this situation arose. First though let us look at some of the statistics and see what they tell us about Israel today.
The Gini Index measures how skewed a country is in terms of who 'has' and who 'has-not' in terms of income. A figure of 0 means the country enjoys total equality of earnings and a figure of 100 means a country suffers from total inequality of earnings - neither of which can be found in the real world.
The limits of the real-world figures are between 20 and 70. A figure of 70 would reflect a substantial number of 'haves' and a substantial number of 'have-nots' and a big gap in the standard of living between the two groups.
The Scandinavian countries have Gini figures of around 25. The South American countries have figures in the 55 to 60 range, and the majority of the countries of Africa have figures in the 60 to 70 range. The U.S. has a Gini figure of 41. The U.K. has a figure of 36, which figure is typical for Western Europe. The Gini figure for Israel is 39.2.
So on the face of those figures, Israel is not doing too badly, particularly bearing in mind how young a country it is.
A very small number of 'haves' and a large number of 'have-nots' would however still produce quite a low Gini figure, so of itself, the Gini figure can mask a country of a few wealthy people and a mass of much poorer people.
And that is precisely the allegation that is made about the trend in Israeli society from its socialist syndicalist utopian origins to the country it is today. Instead of that utopia it is said by some to be controlled lock, stock and barrel by a very, very few. A few who control assets of such dimensions that the merchant navy did not approach the shores of Northern Israel during the 2006 Lebanon conflict because that navy is owned by one small group, who did not want to expose their assets to damage.
The gap between the rich and the poor in Israel has increased by nearly a quarter in the last twenty years and Israel now has the second-worst level of inequality ― in terms of income, property, capital, education and spending ― in the Western world. The wealthiest 10% of Israelis own nearly three quarters of the country's private capital, and earn more than 12 times as much as the poorest 10%.
The State is sixty years old, and has to meet huge demands from the increase in its population. It has to maintain a war-readiness and has had to do so throughout its history. But this does not serve to explain in terms that satisfy, the inequality from which Israeli society suffers.
According to The Ministry of Social Affairs, about one in five of Israel’s population lives under the poverty line ― defined as a $900 monthly income for a family of four, with food and cost of living in Israel comparable to costs in the U.S.A.
Further, one in three of Israel's children suffer poverty, an increase of 20 percent in the last five years. And one in eight children suffer from malnutrition.
The origins of the modern State of Israel
Jewish nationalism and the will to realise a Jewish homeland, arose in the late 1800s. It arose among Jews in Europe at a time that similar feelings of national self-determination arose in the populations of countries in Europe and further abroad.
When the vision of Zionism was created in the late 1800s, it was not inspired by the Biblical prophets, or by religious vision. It was a secular vision.
And as it matured and emerged into the 20th century it showed more than one strand of that dream.
The Zionist dream was of a homeland for the Jews. The socialist dream was of a country founded on a network of cooperating communities and nationhood was not its principal aim; for in accordance with socialist principles, that State would fall away and wither with the coming of active socialism. The Revisionist Zionist dream that emerged in the 1920s was of a State, defended as a State.
In terms of numbers, and the role it played in the identity and values of the people, the greatest dream was the socialist dream. That dream was to found a society that did not simply support social justice and social harmony but which was just through to its core.
That identity would be forged by the pride of men and women making the new homeland through their own physical efforts. They did not want to be middlemen. They did not want to win in the game of acquiring wealth at the expense of others or of living life off the backs of others.
They were motivated by a desire to distance themselves from the 'old' Jewish identity. To them, that old identity existed in Eastern Europe, and was ghetto-ized, suspicious, inward-looking, looking back into history, and removed from the land.
The new identity would be forged in working the land, and it would be inclusive, socialist, and forward-looking.
As history played out in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Jews who wanted to immigrate would make ties in their various counties or origin, with a local political party or with an organization with ties to a political party. In the nature of political parties, they would have an agenda, and aspirations in regard to the society they sought to found. The immigrant tied himself to the agenda and ideals of the party and his immigration would be supported financially by the party. His first port of call on arriving at Haifa, would usually be local party headquarters.
The kibbutz movement is a well-known face of the wider socialist movement.
The later immigrants who came in the 1930s and all the way through to the fateful date of October 1941 when Germany closed its doors to Jewish emigration, came to escape, but is not so obvious that they had clear ideals of what they expected or wanted Jewish society to be in British-Mandate Palestine.
So when the Second World War ended and the 1947 UN declaration to found the State of Israel was made, the model of the organization and values of the future society was already well-established. It was a socialist enterprise. It did not embrace religious Judaism, and the religious groups had to fight for influence in the new society. An uneasy truce ensued.
When the State became a reality in 1948, it was already established along socialist principles that dug deep into the psyche of the population.
And so when Israel faced attacks from neighboring countries in 1948, it was a rude awakening for many who expected they would build a new society without the added problem of defending their very existence.
What the body of the Jewish population did not grasp or did not want to grasp was that there was an Arab population living in the land who were also feeling the awakening of nationalist feelings. Nothing less than self-government would do for them. At the same time, the surrounding countries had a vision of a greater pan-Arab region, and the sliver of land that comprised a newly formed Jewish country physically dividing and splitting the region east from west, stood in the way of that vision.
The State of Israel was attacked as soon as it was established. At the end of the conflict, the Arabs had fled or left or gone - to integrate into other societies or to refugee camps.
There are arguments about how many Arabs were within the borders of the new State of Israel at the start of the 1948 war, and how many fled (and why) when the 1948 war erupted; and how long those Arabs had been living where they were before they fled. And there are arguments about who those Arabs were and are. There are arguments about what makes a Palestinian, and whether they have any characteristics that distinguish them from other Arabs in the region at large.
Facts and numbers have been put forward and in turn they have been attacked and discredited. Each side is accused of having its agenda in promoting its calculation of the correct figures.
All of which paled into insignificance with the outcome of the 1967 war. At the end of that war, Israel had made territorial gains. Within that territory were somewhere between one and a half and two and a half million Palestinians. Suddenly Israel was an occupying power.
Israel, land of the Jews; land of the people who had been dispossessed of their land for two thousand years. Israel, land of the people who had been subjected to scorn, discrimination, segregation, and organized murder on an immense scale. What were they going to do about the Palestinians over whom they now had the power to respect or to scorn; to embrace or discriminate against; to form a society with or to keep apart; to work with or to fight?
And with the best of intentions, how could years of hatred be quieted?
Israel was founded by 'western' Jews. Jews from the 'east' arrived when they were expelled from the Arab countries in which they lived, following the 1948 war and the 1956 war. For twenty or thirty years they squeezed themselves into a society that did not value their culture or their expertise, but which demanded of them allegiance to a socialist ideal that was as far removed from their cultural knowledge as can be imagined.
The Labour parties won victory after victory in the first thirty years of the existence of the State. And then in 1977 the center-right party won the national elections based upon the support of the eastern Jews. Then began the dismantling of the socialist machine.
These two major events - the Palestinians within the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and the revolution in the nature of society from socialist to free market - have transformed Israel in the last thirty years.
Time after time I have heard people complain of the disintegration of the best aspects of Israeil society.
Part 2 to follow in the coming weeks.
If the behaviour of Israeli drivers and 'plane passengers indicates anything about the population at large, it is that Israelis are not natural followers of rules. Which is interesting, given that the 'rules' of behaviour in Judaism cover every moment of the day from waking until sleeping and affect what and how a person should think as well as what a person should and should not do.
Perhaps it is precisely because of the religious rules, (not that everyone follows them) that anything that does not fall in that category is subject to the question - 'why?' and to the attitude that the rules do not apply to me. Or that there are rules, but that those rules are intended to provide a general framework, but they are not meant to apply automatically to me or to any particular instance or person, unless a specific case can be made out to show that they do.
And perhaps it is because Jews have been negotiating with G-d since Abraham's plea on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, that they know every side of an argument and how to make it.
Israel today
Any statements made to describe Israel today and to explain how Israel came to be as it is, are bound to be the subject of debate.
Some questions are more intractable than others. The resurgence in religious observance is perhaps intractable without taking a metaphysical dimension into account.
But perhaps aspects of social and economic life can be looked at and their origins pried from history.
I have been disturbed by some of the statistics concerning povery in Israel. I wonder how and why this situation arose. First though let us look at some of the statistics and see what they tell us about Israel today.
The Gini Index measures how skewed a country is in terms of who 'has' and who 'has-not' in terms of income. A figure of 0 means the country enjoys total equality of earnings and a figure of 100 means a country suffers from total inequality of earnings - neither of which can be found in the real world.
The limits of the real-world figures are between 20 and 70. A figure of 70 would reflect a substantial number of 'haves' and a substantial number of 'have-nots' and a big gap in the standard of living between the two groups.
The Scandinavian countries have Gini figures of around 25. The South American countries have figures in the 55 to 60 range, and the majority of the countries of Africa have figures in the 60 to 70 range. The U.S. has a Gini figure of 41. The U.K. has a figure of 36, which figure is typical for Western Europe. The Gini figure for Israel is 39.2.
So on the face of those figures, Israel is not doing too badly, particularly bearing in mind how young a country it is.
A very small number of 'haves' and a large number of 'have-nots' would however still produce quite a low Gini figure, so of itself, the Gini figure can mask a country of a few wealthy people and a mass of much poorer people.
And that is precisely the allegation that is made about the trend in Israeli society from its socialist syndicalist utopian origins to the country it is today. Instead of that utopia it is said by some to be controlled lock, stock and barrel by a very, very few. A few who control assets of such dimensions that the merchant navy did not approach the shores of Northern Israel during the 2006 Lebanon conflict because that navy is owned by one small group, who did not want to expose their assets to damage.
The gap between the rich and the poor in Israel has increased by nearly a quarter in the last twenty years and Israel now has the second-worst level of inequality ― in terms of income, property, capital, education and spending ― in the Western world. The wealthiest 10% of Israelis own nearly three quarters of the country's private capital, and earn more than 12 times as much as the poorest 10%.
The State is sixty years old, and has to meet huge demands from the increase in its population. It has to maintain a war-readiness and has had to do so throughout its history. But this does not serve to explain in terms that satisfy, the inequality from which Israeli society suffers.
According to The Ministry of Social Affairs, about one in five of Israel’s population lives under the poverty line ― defined as a $900 monthly income for a family of four, with food and cost of living in Israel comparable to costs in the U.S.A.
Further, one in three of Israel's children suffer poverty, an increase of 20 percent in the last five years. And one in eight children suffer from malnutrition.
The origins of the modern State of Israel
Jewish nationalism and the will to realise a Jewish homeland, arose in the late 1800s. It arose among Jews in Europe at a time that similar feelings of national self-determination arose in the populations of countries in Europe and further abroad.
When the vision of Zionism was created in the late 1800s, it was not inspired by the Biblical prophets, or by religious vision. It was a secular vision.
And as it matured and emerged into the 20th century it showed more than one strand of that dream.
The Zionist dream was of a homeland for the Jews. The socialist dream was of a country founded on a network of cooperating communities and nationhood was not its principal aim; for in accordance with socialist principles, that State would fall away and wither with the coming of active socialism. The Revisionist Zionist dream that emerged in the 1920s was of a State, defended as a State.
In terms of numbers, and the role it played in the identity and values of the people, the greatest dream was the socialist dream. That dream was to found a society that did not simply support social justice and social harmony but which was just through to its core.
That identity would be forged by the pride of men and women making the new homeland through their own physical efforts. They did not want to be middlemen. They did not want to win in the game of acquiring wealth at the expense of others or of living life off the backs of others.
They were motivated by a desire to distance themselves from the 'old' Jewish identity. To them, that old identity existed in Eastern Europe, and was ghetto-ized, suspicious, inward-looking, looking back into history, and removed from the land.
The new identity would be forged in working the land, and it would be inclusive, socialist, and forward-looking.
As history played out in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Jews who wanted to immigrate would make ties in their various counties or origin, with a local political party or with an organization with ties to a political party. In the nature of political parties, they would have an agenda, and aspirations in regard to the society they sought to found. The immigrant tied himself to the agenda and ideals of the party and his immigration would be supported financially by the party. His first port of call on arriving at Haifa, would usually be local party headquarters.
The kibbutz movement is a well-known face of the wider socialist movement.
The later immigrants who came in the 1930s and all the way through to the fateful date of October 1941 when Germany closed its doors to Jewish emigration, came to escape, but is not so obvious that they had clear ideals of what they expected or wanted Jewish society to be in British-Mandate Palestine.
So when the Second World War ended and the 1947 UN declaration to found the State of Israel was made, the model of the organization and values of the future society was already well-established. It was a socialist enterprise. It did not embrace religious Judaism, and the religious groups had to fight for influence in the new society. An uneasy truce ensued.
When the State became a reality in 1948, it was already established along socialist principles that dug deep into the psyche of the population.
And so when Israel faced attacks from neighboring countries in 1948, it was a rude awakening for many who expected they would build a new society without the added problem of defending their very existence.
What the body of the Jewish population did not grasp or did not want to grasp was that there was an Arab population living in the land who were also feeling the awakening of nationalist feelings. Nothing less than self-government would do for them. At the same time, the surrounding countries had a vision of a greater pan-Arab region, and the sliver of land that comprised a newly formed Jewish country physically dividing and splitting the region east from west, stood in the way of that vision.
The State of Israel was attacked as soon as it was established. At the end of the conflict, the Arabs had fled or left or gone - to integrate into other societies or to refugee camps.
There are arguments about how many Arabs were within the borders of the new State of Israel at the start of the 1948 war, and how many fled (and why) when the 1948 war erupted; and how long those Arabs had been living where they were before they fled. And there are arguments about who those Arabs were and are. There are arguments about what makes a Palestinian, and whether they have any characteristics that distinguish them from other Arabs in the region at large.
Facts and numbers have been put forward and in turn they have been attacked and discredited. Each side is accused of having its agenda in promoting its calculation of the correct figures.
All of which paled into insignificance with the outcome of the 1967 war. At the end of that war, Israel had made territorial gains. Within that territory were somewhere between one and a half and two and a half million Palestinians. Suddenly Israel was an occupying power.
Israel, land of the Jews; land of the people who had been dispossessed of their land for two thousand years. Israel, land of the people who had been subjected to scorn, discrimination, segregation, and organized murder on an immense scale. What were they going to do about the Palestinians over whom they now had the power to respect or to scorn; to embrace or discriminate against; to form a society with or to keep apart; to work with or to fight?
And with the best of intentions, how could years of hatred be quieted?
Israel was founded by 'western' Jews. Jews from the 'east' arrived when they were expelled from the Arab countries in which they lived, following the 1948 war and the 1956 war. For twenty or thirty years they squeezed themselves into a society that did not value their culture or their expertise, but which demanded of them allegiance to a socialist ideal that was as far removed from their cultural knowledge as can be imagined.
The Labour parties won victory after victory in the first thirty years of the existence of the State. And then in 1977 the center-right party won the national elections based upon the support of the eastern Jews. Then began the dismantling of the socialist machine.
These two major events - the Palestinians within the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and the revolution in the nature of society from socialist to free market - have transformed Israel in the last thirty years.
Time after time I have heard people complain of the disintegration of the best aspects of Israeil society.
Part 2 to follow in the coming weeks.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
The Temple Mount visits
Hitherto, rabbinic authorities have forbidden Jews from visiting the Temple Mount because the exact location of the Temple and the Holy of Holies on the Mount is unknown.
Consequently, the rabbis feared that Jews would enter the area without having first immersed in a mikva - which they should do in recognition of the holiness of the site - or would unwittingly set foot in the forbidden area where only the Kohen Gadol would ever enter.
On the 14th May 2007, a number of Ashkenazi, religious-Zionist rabbis visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, intending to encourage others to do the same.
Presumably the rabbis who entered were able to agree an area they could enter that definitely did not risk being the forbidden area.
Since the rabbis went onto the Temple Mount, other groups of religious Jews have done so.
These events stand in contrast to the experience of Sir Moses Montefiore in the 1860s, who, so some chroniclers record, was carried onto the Mount in a sedan chair (so his feet would not touch the holy ground) and whose visit led to a call by some Jerusalem rabbis for him to be excommunicated. It is recorded that he later expressed regret that he had breached the prohibition upon entering.
As background, Sir Moses Montefiore made a major contribution towards financing the establishment and developement of Jewish settlements in Palestine in the 1800s and this was important in the formation of Israeli society. For already, when the State of Israel became a reality in 1948, there was a network of communities, with their social and political ideals and systems, that were in place partly because of his financial assistance.
Consequently, the rabbis feared that Jews would enter the area without having first immersed in a mikva - which they should do in recognition of the holiness of the site - or would unwittingly set foot in the forbidden area where only the Kohen Gadol would ever enter.
On the 14th May 2007, a number of Ashkenazi, religious-Zionist rabbis visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, intending to encourage others to do the same.
Presumably the rabbis who entered were able to agree an area they could enter that definitely did not risk being the forbidden area.
Since the rabbis went onto the Temple Mount, other groups of religious Jews have done so.
These events stand in contrast to the experience of Sir Moses Montefiore in the 1860s, who, so some chroniclers record, was carried onto the Mount in a sedan chair (so his feet would not touch the holy ground) and whose visit led to a call by some Jerusalem rabbis for him to be excommunicated. It is recorded that he later expressed regret that he had breached the prohibition upon entering.
As background, Sir Moses Montefiore made a major contribution towards financing the establishment and developement of Jewish settlements in Palestine in the 1800s and this was important in the formation of Israeli society. For already, when the State of Israel became a reality in 1948, there was a network of communities, with their social and political ideals and systems, that were in place partly because of his financial assistance.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Palm Leaves
As the palm leaves grow and unfurl, thin fibrous strips from the edges of the leaves peel back and curl and twist around.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
.. as one who was born in Jerusalem
IN honour of the coming week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, there is this quote.
Shmuel Yoseph Agnon, in his acceptance speech on receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, said " through an historical catastrophe - the destruction of Jerusalem by the Emperor of Rome - I was born in one of the cities of the Diaspora. But I always deemed myself as one who was born in Jerusalem."
Shmuel Yoseph Agnon, in his acceptance speech on receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, said " through an historical catastrophe - the destruction of Jerusalem by the Emperor of Rome - I was born in one of the cities of the Diaspora. But I always deemed myself as one who was born in Jerusalem."
Saturday, May 12, 2007
The hole in the city wall by Jaffa Gate
There is a wide entrance just by Jaffa Gate breached through the 16th century city walls that surround the Old City.
I read today that this section of the wall was knocked down and the opening made on the order of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II, so that his visitor, Kaiser Wilhelm II could arrive in style with his retinue without having to dismount from their horses and carriages
Although that article does not mention when he visited, a Lutheran website mentions the Kaizer 'building' the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer (which stands in the Christian Quarter of the Old City) in the late 1800s and dedicating it in 1898.
The breach in the walls would have made it convenient for General Allenby to enter on his horse when he entered the Old City in 1917, save that out of respect for the City and what it stood for, he entered on foot.
I read today that this section of the wall was knocked down and the opening made on the order of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II, so that his visitor, Kaiser Wilhelm II could arrive in style with his retinue without having to dismount from their horses and carriages
Although that article does not mention when he visited, a Lutheran website mentions the Kaizer 'building' the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer (which stands in the Christian Quarter of the Old City) in the late 1800s and dedicating it in 1898.
The breach in the walls would have made it convenient for General Allenby to enter on his horse when he entered the Old City in 1917, save that out of respect for the City and what it stood for, he entered on foot.
The lessons of History
I read that the Wingograd Committee has concluded that the army played too big a part in the decision-making at the political level during what is called the Second Lebanese War last Summer.
The Committee says this problem was compounded by the Government's lack of military experience.
It so happens that I am near the end of Amos Elon's 'The Israelis: Founders and Sons' and in Chaper 11 he writes that the external threats that make Israel a "nation in arms" make it ripe for militarism and a mentality that would ensure the supremacy of the army over the civil authorities.
And yet, he say, this is not the case. He talks about the army's comparative informality, the forced retirement of officers at an early age, the ideals of the unprofessional soldier, of the farmer who leaves his land to fight and then returns to pick up his plough.
Elon wrote this in 1972. Has the ideal been abandoned?
And a question I have. If war is defined as a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations, or tribes, or groups, then how does a conflict between the State of Israel and Hizbollah meet that definition?
Of course we use the word 'war' in other senses - such as the 'war on terror' or the 'war against poverty'. And yet it seems dangerous culturally and psychologically to describe the conflict between the State of israel and a group of terrorist/freedom fighters/guerillas (you choose your definition) as a war.
Unless one considers it a proxy war between Israel and Syria/Iran.
The Committee says this problem was compounded by the Government's lack of military experience.
It so happens that I am near the end of Amos Elon's 'The Israelis: Founders and Sons' and in Chaper 11 he writes that the external threats that make Israel a "nation in arms" make it ripe for militarism and a mentality that would ensure the supremacy of the army over the civil authorities.
And yet, he say, this is not the case. He talks about the army's comparative informality, the forced retirement of officers at an early age, the ideals of the unprofessional soldier, of the farmer who leaves his land to fight and then returns to pick up his plough.
Elon wrote this in 1972. Has the ideal been abandoned?
And a question I have. If war is defined as a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations, or tribes, or groups, then how does a conflict between the State of Israel and Hizbollah meet that definition?
Of course we use the word 'war' in other senses - such as the 'war on terror' or the 'war against poverty'. And yet it seems dangerous culturally and psychologically to describe the conflict between the State of israel and a group of terrorist/freedom fighters/guerillas (you choose your definition) as a war.
Unless one considers it a proxy war between Israel and Syria/Iran.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
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