Yes we can?

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"Lo rotzim lo tzarich" (roughly : "If you don't want to make it happen , don't do me any favours") states a pissed-off Theodore Herzl in this piece of street art shot just round the corner from the rooftop. To the uninitiated, Herzl, "the visionary of the state" , provided Zionism with a motto : "im tirzu ein zu agada" ("If you want it, it's not a fairy tale") or in the parlance of
the US primaries - "Yes we can!"


As the graffiti aptly expresses, the mood in Israel today is hardly in 'yes we can' mode. In fact it's more like: "how the *&%$@# are we going to get through all this?"
Instead of Herzl's utopian vision of a well-ordered European style state, what Israelis see around them today is a sick political system, rampant corruption, threats from Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran (nuclear) a government crisis and, right now, an agonising human drama. This revolves on whether to agree to a Hizbullah offer to receive what are almost definitely the remains of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser , abducted in 2006, in return for (live) terrorist Samir Kuntar and a few of his friends. Just seen that the cabinet approved the deal
Sure, we're also to blame for some of this but what about Herzl? Wasn't it him, after all , who got us here in the first place?

Comments

Ami Vider said…
Roland Reagan, the late US president use to say: "well... here you go again..." ~ they called him the "Teflon Don" for a good reason, somewhere along the line he learned not to say things "the hard way". I guess it's a reflection of the times and the society he represented. Lots of what you write about reminds me of what Teflon Don would say, "here you go again" ~ But it's nice to read about what is going on here in Tel Aviv.
For a little less controversial viewpoint:
http://israeltomorrow.blogspot.com
July 5, 2008 at 8:10 AM
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