The Sadness of the Irrational

These are the opening two line from Heinrich Heine's Die Lorelei:-

Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin;

which translates as:

I don’t know what it may signify
That I am so sad;

I think I have a reason for a certain sadness.

This op-ed which claims that "There is no rational argument against withdrawing from the West bank". It's by Zvi Bar'el from, of course, the Ha-Ha-Haaretz.

The essence of his thinking posturing:

But withdrawal from the West Bank, especially the eastern parts of Jerusalem, is a completely different story.

...The West Bank runs alongside Israel...The West Bank can be used as a launching pad for missile attacks on Tel Aviv or Ben-Gurion International Airport...But it's not the well-worn security argument that blocks Israeli withdrawal...When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows concerns about developments on the eastern front, he is referring to Iraq and Iran, not Ramallah, a West Bank town heaving with shopping centers and discotheques. There is no oil in the West Bank, which does not provide us with foreign workers. The West Bank has stopped serving as Israel's economic hinterland, a role it played in the 1970s and '80s. So no economic argument is at play here.

Nor can the danger of a collapse of the governing coalition serve as a viable excuse for not withdrawing, because even when center-left coalitions were in power and had the option of withdrawing, a pullout from the West Bank was not on the agenda. In other words, no rational argument is left to block a withdrawal.

Israel's refusal to pull out is rooted in another dimension - the dream of Greater Israel has never disappeared...a psychological complex of power and bury a dream.

This is the core of Israel's schizophrenia, the reason the country has moments of lucidity during which it sounds reasonable, amenable to direct negotiations, and even eager to engage in peace talks...But most of the time Netanyahu and his government are captive to an illusion; they are kept in thrall by the psychosis of a dream.

The Likud government and extreme right are not the only ones who suffer from this disease. Most of the public succumbs to it...

First, again, the Left permit themselves what they scream about if the Right employs the same. I am referring to the term "disease". As I pointed out recently, with the term "virus", our liberal progressive camp-to-the-left are hypocrites. And, secondly, they do not tell the truth and the truth they pervert.

He disdainfully dismisses any security threat from a possible, yea probable, Hamas-dominated Judea and Samaria in the near future if what we all know can happen will happen. Ramallah is just a hot spot for tourists for Bar'el not where Arabs torture each other on occasion or where they plan to shoot at Jews to kill them. Or a territory that will make itself available for a Jordan that itself has become subverted by its own Hamas to enter in some form of a security pact. That's a rational thought.

Any coexistence is rejected as there is no...oil in them hills. But, of course, there is olive oil and wine. So maybe agriculture can united us. That's rational.

That even left-of-center coalitions refused to yield and withdraw doesn't mean they were irrational but that there was a very good rational set of arguments not to surrender Jewish rights in its historical homeland.

Echoing James ("dream of Greater Israel") Baker, Bar'el prefers the irrational: a 'psychological complex of power' is at work, as if for 90 years the Arabs have not continuously sought Jewish deaths and the eradication of any Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, as if there were no pogroms, riots and terror, no refusal to agree to any compromise by Arabs, - all this before Israel, a la Bar'el, became an "occupier", and found itself, as a result of, again, Arab aggression, in possession of those areas of our Jewish national homeland that Jordan illegally occupied for real.

All this history, which I have telescoped, is not unknown to Bar'el. He just ignores it all. And he thinks I am part of the schizophrenia he bewails? I am in an illusion with most of the Israel public?

That is why I am sad.

Because Bar'el is sick.

And last: it is not psychotic to hold proud nationalist ideals, to seek to fulfill them, to hope you are protecting your culture, your religion, your ethos so that they will exist for centuries (well, at least until the coming of Messiah) and to believe that all of the previous works for the good, is a positive influence, can contribute to peace if only the Arabs would realize their inherent problems.


(Kippah tip: BPO)
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