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The Warsaw Ghetto with an Internet Cafe

There are two visions for Israel now. One is the old vision, the one that the left and the right once agreed upon. A nation with agriculture and industry, its capital in Jerusalem, its army and a new generation of settlers standing watch on the frontier.

Then there's the vision of a "New Israel". Like Tony Blair's "New Britain", this technocratic plan has nothing in common with a workable country. The left's version of Israel concentrates on the Gush Dan metropolitan region as the overcrowded heart of a secular state, with a high tech economy and hardly any religion.

Tel Aviv and its dingy satellite cities would become a new Singapore. All Dot Coms and cheap labor. Judea and Samaria would go the way of Gaza. And Jerusalem would be internationalized. The Golan Heights would be given back, the Galilee would become an autonomous territory like Cyprus, so likely would the Negev. Deals might be reached to keep major cities operating under Israeli law. There would be no borders in the binational state, but international forces under UN supervision would provide security between Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Israel.

Call this vision, the Warsaw Ghetto with an Internet Cafe. The most enthusiastic proponent of it is Shimon Peres, whose insensibility has brought the country to the brink of destruction in its name.

The Socialist Left lost interest in agriculture decades ago. The Kibbutzim are still around, but they work more like commercial farms, while the experimental social system around them is fading away. The grandsons and granddaughters of the old left are much less interested in driving a tractor and would rather be executives and models. And the left's vision of Israel has shifted from the agricultural and industrial to a busy metropolis with a stock market and lots of nightclubs... and not much else.

The new paradigm is Blair by way of Lennon, "Imagine there are no borders, nothing to kill or die for, Imagine there's no heaven and no religion, Imagine there's no Arab or Jew, just fellow post-doctoral students at Hebrew U." The only thing standing in the way of that vision is some 70 percent of the country. Which has to go.

This New Israel would have no room for its growing religious majority, for the Russian Jewish immigrants who tend to be smarter and more conservative than the left's pretentious elites, for the Middle Eastern Jews who have become a political force, and for the small towns and villages on the frontier packed with all three. Cheap labor would be provided by African migrants. Some agriculture would remain packed into Gush Dan, the rest would be supplemented by imports.

The secular left would be able to secede from an Israel which has less and less use for them. But it would be a reverse secession. Rather than the left leaving Israel, it would destroy the rest of the country and then declare that their Singapore on the Mediterranean is Dudu Topaz's real Israel. Topaz helped the Labor Party commit suicide by telegraphing the left wing's contempt for Middle Eastern Jews. Recently he committed suicide himself. And the left keeps trying to force the entire country to commit suicide.

The one tricky word standing in the way of the destruction of Israel is "Security". The left could get gullible crowds to sing about peace, but they couldn't get their terrorist allies to deliver it, except briefly around election time. No government of the left has been able to deliver the type of conditions that would convince any sensible person that peace is at hand. Instead their policy has degenerated into an endless hate campaign blaming the "right", the settlers, the ethnic slurs and anyone else at hand for sabotaging "peace".

Like Noam Shalit blaming Netanyahu for keeping his son captive, the left blames the right for keeping peace captive. As if it were actually a dove in a cage, waiting for someone to spring the lock. As if the metaphors with which they have crowded their Alei Yarok minds were actually the reality. And reality was an illusion manufactured by Avigdor Lieberman.

The left has no real objection to terrorism. The sooner the whole thing melts down, the sooner the international community will step in and impose their favored settlement, and then secure the whole thing with a UN monitoring force. The rest of the country will either have to live under Rwanda/Kosovo/Zimbabwe conditions, or move inward. The settlers would be wiped out by the terrorist gangs or deported by the UN monitoring forces. The Haredim would live in a Jerusalem with the clock turned back to 1947. Prayer would be forbidden at the Western Wall.

And then the left's dream of the Warsaw Ghetto with an Internet Cafe would finally be realized. The Palestinian Authority's industrial zones would host their factories. And if the owners would sometimes get killed visiting those factories, there would be a complaint to the UN.

The smart set would be jet setters. Passports always on hand. Paris, London, New York and LA. After their great-grandparents escaped the bundle on the back, their children enthusiastically embrace the life of the postmodern peddler. The man without a country, who lives everywhere and nowhere. Who speaks six languages, collects the art of four different nations, and has an affinity for every culture, but his own.

This is the glittering Galut they have reinvented, Exile 2.0. A ghetto with a Hong Kong cityscape and the beat cop of international law keeping them safe from the Jihadist pogrom. Israel shrunk to a handful of overcrowded urban centers in the new Pale of Settlement with a hot nightlife under the protection of a blue helmeted Czar. So the Sabra stoops down to become his aged grandfather once more. The Galut Yiddele with a million miles and no future.

This was never about peace with the Palestinian Muslim terrorist gangs. The Left has been left behind by an international socialism that no longer cares about its old values of communal agriculture and nationalized industry. The New Left is post-colonial and anti-national. Its only ideology is the wrecking ball and a passionate love for terrorism. It cannot be reconciled with any state for long.

And Israel has left the Left behind as well. This is a country that is more religious and more conservative than ever. It is filled with immigrants from the USSR with an inborn suspicion of the left and immigrants from the Middle-East with an inborn suspicion of appeasing Muslims. Against all these, the left has nothing to offer but second-hand ideology from the European left.

The Israeli left has no place in a modern Israel, where privatization has created a booming economy and peace is a desert mirage. Its militant atheism is faring poorly in the midst of a growing religious awakening. Even its own areas are under siege by synagogues and emissaries of religious groups looking to bring the lost sheep back to the fold.

And the Israeli leftist has changed as well. He has become a creature of universities, not farms. His ancestors escaped from Europe, he escapes to Europe to get away from a stifling country that he no longer identifies with. The vision of a national destiny here is gone. He is mobile, plugged in, digital and virtual. Here is just where he happens to be. And mostly he would rather be somewhere else. The trek back to the Galut has begun for the left.

The European left has successfully colonized the Israeli left. It has turned it into an outpost of its own venomous hate for the Jewish state. Its activists have become enemy agents, hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers, spying on Israeli villages in Judea and Samaria and taking money under the table from foreign interests. There are no shortage of these enemy agents penning columns for the Guardian or opening their own NGO's to aid Muslim terrorists. And the recruitment is moving up the ladder to more senior Israeli officials and politicians.

There is a showdown coming. A crack between the technocratic vision of an Israeli Singapore and the majority that wants a working country with Jerusalem and safe frontiers.

The left has already politically imploded. The Labor Party that once ruled the country is a faint dream of a memory. The left's own radical parties hardly make a showing at the polls. All that remains is Kadima, a party with no identity, whose idiot figurehead expects Obama to overthrow Netanyahu and bring her to power.

But Israeli conservatives, like their American and European counterparts, are too busy being moderates to stand up and chart a new course. In two terms Netanyahu has done the best he could to try and make the left's progressive disaster into something workable. But there is nothing workable about it. The right has managed to choke down terror and put a reasonable face forward at negotiations. But those negotiations have the long term goal of dismantling Israel. And they will not end until that goal is achieved.

The left knows what it wants. The Warsaw Ghetto with an Internet Cafe. The conservatives are much less clear. Slogans like "Peace and Security" are a contradiction in terms, when the peace negotiations are also the chief cause of terror. The right has lost touch with the national vision. If it does not reconnect with it, then it will be stuck trying to make the left's Warsaw Ghetto with an Internet Cafe into a workable proposition.

Comments

  1. What can I add.. just yes indeed.

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  2. Anonymous13/7/11

    Outstanding, as always.

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  3. Nothing new under the sun. Out of the sand rises the spectre of Earnest Hemingway a true man without a country to call home. In the end, rootless, he put a shotgun to his head and ended his anomie. Hilter was partly right, it is about blood & soil. Even that still leaves the empty space that can only be filled by God.

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  4. Johnny Winter13/7/11

    Lennon's chief business confidant recalled a time where Lennon has been stressing over the anxieties of managing his empire. The confidant replied, "Imagine no possessions John," to which Lennon snarled "It's only a bloody song."

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  5. The element missing in your analysis is this: a Jewish person who has not internalized the reality that he is hated, almost universally, simply by virtue of who he is must compensate, i.e., make up reasons. One possible compensation is to identify with those who hate Jews, which is what the left does. Responding to the hatred of the world is not something a religious Jew would ever need to address, because a religious person is not ambivalent about his identity. It does not matter to him what others feel about him

    I have personally found it liberating to stand in front of a mirror and say to my reflection: 'You are one of the most hated human beings on Earth solely by virtue of your birth, of being a Jew." Recognition of reality is a good thing. Because then one can get on with the business of creating the life one seeks. And if that means that presidents, prime ministers, dictators, students, priests, mobs, revolutionaries, intellectuals, professors, et al don't like it, well then, that's their problem.

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  6. Daniel, I don't think Left and Right have ever agreed on a vision of Israel. Ben-Gurion and Begin certainly didn't agree and before them, there was a reason Jabotinsky resigned from the socialists' Zionist Organization, to found the NEW ("revisionist")Z.O.

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  7. While I agree with much of what you are saying, I am not sure this is simply a left-right split. Begin gave away Sinai; Sharon gave away Gaza; Olmert would have converged away most of Judea and Samaria in 2006 and then offered to do it again in 2008; Netanyahu has made clear he would yield most of Judea and Samaria in exchange for defensible borders. All of these prime ministers were Likud or former- Likud members, not part of the colonized-Left.

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  8. Anonymous13/7/11

    Daniel, again a great article - although incredibly sad. I know several israelis - and I understand very deeply your message here.

    I'm italian (live in the netherlands), and experience the left destructive ideology in the every day life. My native country is also on the brink of destruction - because of the left, and not because of the free minded people that voted for Berlusconi - mostly the productive small-business class in the north. In the netherlands the left is turning over the country to islam and turning the dutch people into sheep with a PhD.

    Lately I became curious to know why even among the Jews there can exist such destructive leftists - in israel and in the usa.

    "But pygmies" above has 1 good reason for this. But another reason is that leftists are bigottologists jihadists. That means that they are just islamists: their religion is the ideology. Their ideology is just like islam: a religion to which everyone on this planet must be converted. Their ideology is superior, transcendent and absolute. There is no room for a 2nd ideology, by far not for a 3rd or a 4th. Their ideology sees no nations, no borders, no differences. Is global. Everyone is the same. The same sheep. Their ideology is so superior and transcendent that any mean to enforce it on others is good. So even to destroy your own country, kill your own people, is worth - for the bigots of the ideology.

    Fed.

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  9. Anonymous13/7/11

    Hi Daniel,
    i just wanted to draw your attention (but probably you read this already) on this pile of bs written by top-favorite lefty professor in deceit and fraud Chomsky, from the 7th of July: http://www.truth-out.org/israel-tsunami-warning/1310042953

    Amazing show of Jew-hatred, ignorance, shallowness and vileness. If the leaders of the left are such bigots - the followers can be only worse.

    Fed.

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  10. Cruft, indeed

    Johnny, or Bono's taxes

    pygmies, it's an important step

    Yael, there was a certain amount of agreement on a Jewish state, albeit not its size or independence, let alone its governance

    RR, they were, aside from Begin, following a track created by the left and trying to make it work. I also wouldn't quite class Begin's actions in the same category.

    Fed. in this case unfortunately Jews in Israel are behaving no differently, the same left vs the people tension, control of media and academia, etc

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  11. Irwin Ruff13/7/11

    I agree with pygmies that it doesn't matter how we behave, we Jews will always be hated simply because we are Jews. This is why, even though I am legally an US citizen, I consider myself a Jew ONLY, and not an American. But it isn't enough to be simply a Jew; to be a totally assimilated Jew (usually leftist) is not to really be a Jew. We have to remember the statement of one of the Gaonim: "The Jews are a people only due to the Torah". If we discard the Torah and religion, we might as well say that we're of Jewish ancestry.

    For the record: I haven't written the above because I'm a hareidi. While I have always been a zionist, I came late to religion, and I'm somewhat of a mixture. My inclination, however, is clearly both toward religion and to the right.
    So - carry on Sultan!

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  12. You know about Moshe Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit, the "faith-based" (Feiglin's own way of putting it) one-Jewish-state faction within Likud, right? Their website is www.jewishisrael.org.

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  13. The refoundation of Israel is properly credited to both socialist and capitalist Jews who brought labor and money to Israel and created the opportunities for the economic growth that made Israel into the vital state it is today. The ghettoization of Israel is not the result of Jewish effort. Ghettos have never been the effort of Jews, they are the fabrication of those who unjustly persecute the Jews. Ghettos are places where Jews are licensed to live by the authorities who grant another license to everyone else to kill, rape and plunder the ghetto when the public mood suggests.

    Anyone left at peace for a sufficient period of time can get used to living in a ghetto. They can forget the dangers that loom in the future, or hope that the future holds something different. But it doesn't, and the only hope for peace for Israel is in a vital Jewish state that stands as a nation among nations, ready to defend itself and insist on being treated with respect and honesty. This takes more than religious introspection or international soliderity. It takes moral and physical courage, and no small amount of intellectual aptitude to stand up to the lies and hysteria.

    The Jews whose vision refounded Israel, did not wait for the world to change and make way for the new state, but the world changed as a consequence. Those who resist the natural consequences of the endurance of Israel must be made to realize they have no choice but to change further and reject their delusionary persecution of Jews because Israel will be no ghetto. Never. This is easy to see.

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  14. That's very true Paul. All good points.

    Ezra, yes I'm quite familiar with him.

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  15. Does anyone know why the leftist-atheists despise all other religions but embrace Islam? It seems like the atheist state that was the USSR also supported Islamonazism. Are they trying to use Islamonazism for their own ends? Do they think they can control Islamonazism and make it their own?

    It's sad that the idealism w/which Israel was founded (WRT an idealized Arab-Jewish state) has turned out to be a fantasy.

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  16. Because Islam is a destabilizing assault on a civilization they want to overthrow and that makes it an outsider religion.

    Also it's been successfully presented to them as less about the supernatural and more about social justice. The terrorism they see only reinforces that.

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  17. Anonymous13/7/11

    the liberal/socialist/erev rav jews have their plans for israel, G-d has His plan. most likely, G-d's plan will come to fruition.

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  18. Anonymous13/7/11

    cornholio asks:"Does anyone know why the leftist-atheists despise all other religions but embrace Islam? "

    1. because the enemy of your enemy is your friend. The self-declared victims of western capitalism and colonialism are therefore the protege' of the left.

    2. because in the west muslims will replenish the otherwise lost votes during election times

    3. because they both share a strong drive to impose a global ideology

    4. because if you look well enough islamic economical law is much closer to communism than western capitalism.

    I guess there could be more reasons.

    Fed.

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  19. Anonymous14/7/11

    "The right has managed to choke down terror" you'll be surprised to know that many of those who did it are supposed to be "left" according to your description.

    The analysis here misses some elements. The majority oppose the west bank settlements [not the Golan] not because they represent the "right" but because it is perceived by every government including Likud ones as dangerous in the long run.
    The arguments are not about left- right. There are about religion- who will control Israel public life, economic issues, environmental issues and so on.

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  20. You mean like the wonderful terror free years of Rabin/Peres. Or Barak's successful pullout from Lebanon.

    The public is told every day that the settlements cause their sons to risk their lives and die. That settlers are crazy religious murderous fanatics, etc etc

    How did that pullout from Gaza work out? No soldiers at risk because of that. Right. Gilad who?

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  21. pygmies--I like that mirror affirmation of your. It certainly would put Jews into a fighting stance.

    It's sad that so many look into that same mirror and go into a defeatist stance.

    I think of Shir Betar--about being proud, generous and fierce. A lot of people are in the middle, stuck on generous to a fault.

    *****
    "
    The European left has successfully colonized the Israeli left. It has turned it into an outpost of its own venomous hate for the Jewish state. Its activists have become enemy agents, hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers, spying on Israeli villages in Judea and Samaria and taking money under the table from foreign interests. There are no shortage of these enemy agents penning columns for the Guardian or opening their own NGO's to aid Muslim terrorists. And the recruitment is moving up the ladder to more senior Israeli officials and politicians."

    Powerful, true, and terrifying.

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  22. Raymond in DC14/7/11

    Corhollo writes, "Does anyone know why the leftist-atheists despise all other religions but embrace Islam?"

    They're not the only ones. The Nazis, of course, took many lessons from Islam, and utilized Islamists like the Grand Mufti in their war against the Allies. (Many Nazis who fled after the war to Egypt and Syria ultimately converted to Islam and aided them in their wars against Israel.) During the Cold War the CIA worked with the Muslim Brotherhood, attempting to make common cause with the Muslim minorities within the Soviet Union. Clearly we've learned nothing from these experiences.

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  23. Rabbi Akiva laughed as he viewed the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, because he saw in its destruction the seeds of future rebirth. The only problem is that the truth of Akiva's insights took too long and were accomplished with too much pain to be considered glorious, though they are indeed miracles.

    We live with baited breath for miracles that will be manifest with less suffering - in our time if possible; or at least for our children and grandchildren. Perhaps for our great-grandchildren. In the meantime let us just keep planting trees - literal and figurative trees!

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  24. Anonymous16/7/11

    Daniel Greenfield,

    "You mean like the wonderful terror free years of Rabin/Peres" I mean those who do the job, i.e. the army. You seem to think that the "Left" in Israel do not participate in the army or in all the other security forces. This is not true. There is no left/ right argument about the intentions, lies and terror purposes of the other side.
    The argument is whether it is good for Israel to keep these people inside Israel.
    As to the withdrawal from both Lebanon and Gaza, nobody thinks that it was a mistake. Not everything can be attributed to previous actions. The world changes and the Middle East changes faster. If Iran was less successful in their fight with the Americans both Lebanon and Gaza could have been quieter.

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  25. The left participates... at a diminishing ratio.

    There is very much a left/right argument about the intentions of the other side. You would have a point if the left called for a unilateral withdrawal, but it doesn't. It promises a negotiated withdrawal will bring peace.

    Nobody thinks pulling out of Lebanon and Gaza was a mistake? Quite a few people think that.

    But doubtlessly pulling out of Lebanon had nothing to do with Hezbollah taking over Lebanon and pulling out of Gaza had nothing to do with Hamas taking over.

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  26. Daniel, aside from stopping the rocket and missile fire from N. Lebanon into Israel wasn't Lebanon just turning into an endless morass of Islamonazi terrorism and bloodshed for Israel and the USA (e.g. in Beirut)?

    Maybe Israel should just follow a scorched earth policy for those who continue to fire: rockets, mortar rounds, anti-tank rockets or artillery into Israel?

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  27. Anonymous19/7/11

    An inspiring article.

    As I was reading I remembered a tune and then I wrote the text with the help of your article. Something for LatmaTV?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLBKOcUbHR0

    1.
    All my bags are packed I’m ready to throw
    Israel right under the bus
    For the vision of a new Israel
    We want only Tel Aviv and its satellite cities
    no borders, instead lots of International Forces
    And Jerusalem would be internationalized

    REFRAIN
    So let’s call the vision Warsaw Ghetto
    with an Internet Café
    Just Tel Aviv like a new Singapore
    We of the smart set are jet setters
    Paris, London, New York and LA
    All we want is to get rid of Israel

    2.
    The Golan heights we give away
    Galilee, Negev - autonomous like Cyprus
    Judea and Samaria would go the way of Gaza
    No small towns nor villages, No room for religious people
    The settlers left to leave or die
    And everywhere UN monitoring forces

    REFRAIN
    So let’s call the vision Warsaw Ghetto
    with an Internet Café
    Just Tel Aviv like a new Singapore
    We of the smart set are jet setters
    Paris, London, New York and LA
    All we want is to get rid of Israel

    3.
    A binominal state with no borders
    Instead lots and lots of International Forces
    Everything under UN supervision everywhere
    No more agriculture, nor industry
    All that’s left of Israel would be
    a busy metropolis with Dot.coms
    And then we’ll be leaving on a Jet plane
    passport always at hand

    REFRAIN
    So let’s call the vision Warsaw Ghetto
    Together with an Internet Café
    Only Tel Aviv like a new Singapore
    We of the smart set are jet setters
    Paris, London, New York and LA
    All we want is to get rid of Israel

    ReplyDelete

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