I asked Olmert about a flaw of personal concern to me: Why is Israel less physically safe for Jews than America?
He answered: “I’ll tell you something that you have to realize, and this is the most important thing and this is the most significant thing. First of all, no people are safe anywhere, okay? Let me tell you, Jews are not safer in Israel than they are in other parts of the world, but there is only one place that Jews can fight for their lives as Jews, and that is here. They can fight as Americans, they can fight as Australians—but as individuals.” He banged on his desk. “Jews were persecuted, Jews were attacked, Jews were suppressed, Jews were killed. But they could never defend themselves as Jews.”
So the success of the American Jewish community doesn’t lessen the necessity for the state of Israel? “Never, never, no way,” he said. “By the way, Jews in Germany—and I don’t draw any comparison at all—Jews in other parts of the world were very successful all their lives, and that didn’t provide them with safety.”
The prime minister of Israel should be able to muster an argument for the necessity of his country without forecasting a Holocaust in America. His was a careless and cynical statement, one that supports the notion that he is not Israel’s deepest thinker.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
'Not Israel's deepest thinker'
That was Jeffrey Goldberg's response to a comment Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave him. It appears in this month's Atlantic cover, and its good fodder for piling on:
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4 comments:
Olmert needs to be a better "quick thinker" before he can get any deeper. Hey wait! he is already up to his neck? Ooops...
Why is this so difficult?
Israel is the renewal of the Jewish national state in the eternal Jewish land, period. That is why Olmert said what he said. Olmert may be foolish, but he is not stupid. There is nothing else interesting or important about Israel that is not about it being the Jewish state, as advanced from the Torah and prophets and Talmud, despite the persistent attempts to disract and reform and redefine it. What Olmert said, reluctantly against his own policy incidentally, is that Israel validates the very concepts of nationhood and God's will on earth. A Jew in America may well resist and protest discrimination and bogotry, but not as a Jew. Israel is the eternal home base of the Jews and the Israelite nation, now and a thousand and ten thousand years from now. Anyone not up to the task like Jeffrey Goldberg is the dandruff of the Jews, irrelevant.
To be fair, Goldberg did serve in the IDF.
Deep Thinker? Olmert? Doubtful. At best this man exhibits a certain cunning for knowing how to stroke those who are paying his meal ticket, as evidenced by the latest allegations.
Re;
"...There is nothing else interesting or important about Israel that is not about it being the Jewish state, as advanced from the Torah and prophets and Talmud, despite the persistent attempts to disract and reform and redefine it."
You're confused. It is despite that pathetic adherence to the medieval superstions and xenophobia of the shtetl by a minority of parasites in Israel, that Israel is "important & interesting"
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