|
VFR on the Gaza pullout: a selection
For historical perspective on Israel’s current military operations against Gaza, below are some VFR entries from 2005 and 2006 on various aspects of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, which was carried out by the government of Prime Minister Sharon in August and September 2005. Following each title is a summary of or quotation from that entry. A new religious/national leader in Israel [January, 5, 2005. About Moshe Feiglin, a religious Jew who opposed the Gaza withdrawal policy said all the Likud leaders ended up giving in because they didn’t believe in God and Jewish identity.] The total lie in Bush’s renewal of the “peace process” [March 16, 2005. Barbara Lerner brings home the total fraud of Bush’s present stance, in which he claims that the Palestinians have fulfilled the conditions precedent for moving forward with the “road map.”] Sharansky resigns from cabinet [May 2, 2005. Summary of how the neocons did a 180 degree reversal and supported the Gaza withdrawal, but now Sharansky, the guru of the neocons’ messiah, has turned against it.] Ehud Olmert, liberalized Likudnik [Olmert speaking in June 2005 about the then projected Gaza pull-out: “We will lead it [the disengagement] because it’s good for us. And we will lead it because it may do good to the Palestinians. And we believe that if it will be good for us and will be good for the Palestinians, then it will be good. It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity, and a lot of joy for all the people that live in the Middle East…. Everything depends on the success of this disengagement.” The neoconservative betrayal [December 5, 2005. “The neoconservatives have betrayed Israel for the same reason they have betrayed other neoconservative causes… they now believe in nothing except the promotion and expansion of American power under the rubric of President Bush’s ‘forward strategy for democracy,’ a policy that can be understood as a ‘peace process’ applied to the entire Muslim world. Thus, since the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’ has been absorbed into Bush’s ‘democratization’ policy, they now support the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’ as well, though they used to be highly skeptical of it. As part of this historic shift, they have backed the Bush administration’s push for the fraud of Palestinian ‘democracy,’ they have supported the administration’s positive sounds toward Hamas in Gaza (a logical outcome of making ‘democracy’ the One Ring to Rule Them All), and they have supported the Gaza pullout.”] The real reason for Israel’s retreat [December 15, 2005. A writer in The New York Times says Israel must withdraw from the territories because it lacks the population to control them. I disagree.] Adieu, Israel [May 15, 2006. “Joseph Farah says what I’ve felt and said for some time: He’s given up on Israel. How can one keep putting one’s energies into worrying about and defending from its evil enemies a country that seems bent on suicide?”] Did I ‘eternally’ give up on Israel? [May 20, 2006. “I never said I gave up on Israel eternally! I said that as long as the Israelis themselves are going along with their suicidal course, why should I invest energy in worrying about her? If the Israelis showed some life again, if an Israeli politics appeared aimed at survival, I’d be rooting for that again. But as of now, there’s no one there (at least no major players, and not the large majority of the populace) to root for.”] Olmert’s meaningless attack on Gaza [June 30, 2006. In a discussion of a Caroline Glick article (which is eerily similar to my discussion of another article of hers on January 3, 2009), Olmert’s incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier is dismissed as an unserious gesture. I sum up Glick’s point thus: “Olmert has not taken action against Gaza because to do so would be to admit that the Gaza withdrawal and the projected West Bank withdrawal are only strengthening the position of Israel’s enemies.”] It’s time for Olmert to go [July 13, 2006. “With the newly erupted, two-front war in and around Israel, Kadima—the party created by Ariel Sharon for the sole purpose of carrying out the unilateral withdrawal policy initiated by himself and continued by his successor Ehud Olmert—has lost its excuse for existing.”] More on Sailer and Israel [July 16, 2006. “At the very moment when Haifa was being attacked by rockets from southern Lebanon, an area Israel had voluntarily withdrawn from several years ago, that was the moment that Sailer portrayed Israel as an ‘intriguing’ foreign power that must be resisted by ‘real patriots.’”] Why liberals never learn [July 16, 2006. “I came to the conclusion last year that it was pointless to argue against the Gaza withdrawal or even to worry about it, since, given the Israelis’ peacenik mindset, only the inevitable disaster resulting from the withdrawal could wake them up again. The only thing to do was to forget about Israel for a while and wait for the disaster.”]
Email entry |