Netanyahu, Obama at the White House: talking the 'talk'

Israel's 'Penalty For Early Withdrawal' - in U.S. Terms...

Israeli editorial cartoonist and veteran American immigrant, Yaakov Kirschen's Dry Bones series has faithfully chronicled Israeli history, life and foibles for nearly 40 years.

For the upcoming tete a tete between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American President Barack Obama, he revised a classic Dry Bones cartoon "that, more than 30 years ago, back in 1977, gave Jimmy Carter an accurate history lesson in Occupied Territories."

"If the reports leaking out of Washington are accurate, the new President seems stuck with the old misconceptions that withdrawing from territory will placate those who lust for our destruction and that America can help by negotiating on behalf of the Arab states that refuse to negotiate directly with the Jewish State of Israel."

Many fans think this profound parody of Jewish observance, tradition and cockeyed optimism about the future, in the face of missile attacks during the 1991 Gulf War is one of his best.

The Apology That Will Never Come

"We Have Love And It Will Win/Gush Katif and Samaria." (Photo: Dave Bender)

The sticker in the photo above was put out by opponents of Israel's Disengagement from the Gaza Strip and parts of Samaria in the summer of 2005. Jewish residents of the aforementioned areas tried to "market" their opposition to the traumatic national step not with anger and rancor, but via a message of faith, trust, hope and love. So much for that in a world ruled by money, guns and realpolitic.

By the way, go on and guess where and when I shot that photo. Go on, I'll wait...

It's the door of an shrapnel-riddled civilian apartment building in a poverty-stricken area of Israel's northern coastal city of Nahariya, just south of Lebanon.

The holes in the wall are from an exploded Katyusha rocket that Hizbullah fired at the town. A dozen feet away from the building is a synagogue that also sustained damage in the barrage - one of some 4,000 that hit the city in the summer of 2006.

I'm reminded of that photo by what Nadav Shragai, writing in Haaretz. He gives vent to what I, and I am certain many others, are feeling more and more deeply these last few weeks: 
Now, after the war and just before the election whirlwind sucks in our politicians once again, it would be appropriate for many of them to go out of their way and visit the mobile-home sites where those uprooted from Gush Katif live. This way they can tell them one small thing: I'm sorry.  

Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert, Shaul Mofaz and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel Defense Forces and the police should do this - they, their agents and everyone else who initiated, implemented and aided in using force to uproot 10,000 people from their homes in Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, maliciously and without any real purpose.

Everyone who saw some good in the evil of the disengagement and evil in the good of Gush Katif has turned light into darkness and darkness into light. At the very least, they are obligated to make this small apology. 
Read the rest.

And I add my own mea culpa for placing my trust in all the military, academic and media "experts" I've interviewed over the years, leading up to and following the expulsion in the summer of '05 that confused black with white. Truth with lies, and honor, love, valor and elemental human decency, with squalid greed, fear and baseless hatred.

And you, dear reader?

Netanyahu on British boycotts: the slapdown

And in a similar vein, here's Ben-Dror Yemini at Haaretz:

How is it that, once again, the Jews - excuse me, citizens of the
Jewish collective - are again deserving of boycotts even though they did not perpetrate any crime against humanity then, seventy or eighty years ago, or now, if we compare what other countries have done, including Britain, to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Why? Why are we witnessing an astounding, recurrent and disturbing historical phenomenon of a different law for Jews - a unique and racist law - than for all others?

Read it all.