Welcome, Bernie

Bernard Avishai's name is familiar to anybody familiar with Zionism and Israel. He has been writing on the subject for years, and if I may say so, he is one of the best. This is no small compliment, coming from somebody who is on Bernie's left, and who abandoned his sort of liberal Zionism after thirty years of Peace Now rallys. So it is with great pleasure that I welcome him to the list of liberal Zionist bloggers. And, anyway, he lives a few blocks from away from me, on the other side of Emek Refaim.

The nice thing about the blogging business is that when one blogger gets weary, there is another one ready to jump in fresh as a daisy. I have been morose lately --the Gaza madness wears heavy on my soul -- and I have found it difficult to put fingers to keyboard. I am also en route to the galut of Washington, DC -- from one mad capital to another. So if you got here and are still reading this, please check out Bernie's analyses here

Gideon Levy wrote last week about the Israeli -- the human -- need to "do something" whenever the other side strikes. The Israeli reaction resembles an elephant trying to swat his backside with his trunk; the move is reflexive, not well-thought out, and always futile. The image works for both Lebanese wars and both intifadas. If we Israelis don't "do something" then we let the bad guys get away with murder, or kidnapping, or random shelling. But our response is always dispropotionate, ill-considered, and counter-productive. After Nasrallah's speech about willing to trade Israeli body parts, the minister of justice Meir Shitrit, one of the most moronic men in Israeli politics, announced that the proper response to Nasrallah is targeted assassination. Forget the question of morality and law, Shitrit's elephantine response is understandable but dumb. OK, so Meir Shitrit is not the Israei government. But we are condemned to repeat the same process every time this happens.

And why must we "do something"? It is not to solve the problem, or to stop the other side. It is always to make our side feel better. It wounds our national pride that these guys can hit us using Davidkas, sorry, Kassam launchers. So we hit back hard. Then we can say, "Sure they are shelling us, but look how many of them we are killing. Hey, we could wipe them out, but we are civilized, so we don't see things like that." So the real purpose of the exercise is Le-shahrer lahatz; to let off steam. The rightwing is at our back, etc., etc.

All this happens all over the world. But in a country which has been in a perpetual state of war for all its existence, which is run either by military men, or by civilians who usually defer to the military, then this is the pattern of our existence. Afghanistan and Iraq-like reactions aren't inevitable in the US; had there been another president, history would have been different. But they are inevitable, or nearly inevitable in Israel.

And that should lead us to ask more fundamental questions why this so. I have my answers.

I look forward to hearing Bernie's