Even The Stones Laugh At Amos Oz

The New York Times' favorite Israeli author, Amos Oz (or is he David Grossman? or, perhaps, AB Yehoshua? no difference, actually, as they are all Leftist and belong to the exclusive "Admor Clique" of Israel 'peace camp', a religiously messianic sect), sat down with Roger Cohen, another type of "favorite" of the NYTimes).

From their conversation:-

“Most Israelis,” he suggested, “would wave goodbye to the West Bank but they don’t want to be suckers, they don’t want the Gaza scenario to repeat itself.

Absolutely as for the second part; not so true of the first.  

Academic-sponsored polls indicate supporters of Judea & Samaria retention, and for sure in major swaths of territories, is above 50% (even this last Knesset vote proved that).  And as for being suckers, Oz is the epitome.  Hamas continues - just this week again - to deny Israel at all: as a state, the Jews as a national community, our right to any land anywhere in Eretz-Yisrael.  Abbas won't and can't and doesn't want to commit to any negotiation result.  Pal. Authority incitement continues, low-level violence continues, Syria breaks up, chemical weapons may move, Iran provides Hezbollah, Iran continues going nuclear, Obama appoints less-then-enthusiastic supporters of Israel to crucial cabinet posts and Oz and Cohen play around in cloud-cuckoo-land.

Oh, and when do right-of-center and even national camp representatives get interviewed, with or without coffee or lunch by a NYTimes columnist?  Where's your liberal pluralism ideology?  Fairness?  Freedom of expression?

Oz continues:-

First and foremost, these elections were about internal affairs, the middle class, state and synagogue, the draft, with a silent consensus that the occupied territories do not matter that much. Israelis are no longer interested. 

True, yes, but now we have Syrian chemical weapons to worry about.  Iran goes for space.  This was a temporary aberration just because Israelis accept the reality in Judea and Samaria, not because they oppose.

And this:

His credo as a novelist is that humankind is open-ended: People are capable of surprising not only others but themselves. He calls this “the single most promising phenomenon in history.”

Not in the Middle East.  Not that Arabs aren't human.  They are, but devilishly so, for the most part.  And add to that their Islamist ideology, and the weakness of their own "intellectuals" as opposed to Oz-Grossman-Yehoshua, well, there is all the diffrrence.

Another snippet:

...he does not hide his own disappointments. “Building settlements in occupied territories was the single most grave error and sin in the history of modern Zionism, because it was based on a refusal to accept the simple fact that we are not alone in this country,” he told me. “The Palestinians for decades also refused the fact that they are not alone in this country. Now, with clenched teeth, both sides have recognized this reality and that is a good basis.” 

For sure we very well knew and know we are not alone and that's why the security aspect of our presence in Judea and Samaria is a crucial aspect of our support but the idea of a Jew settling in the Land of Israel is the basis for our state.  Without that, Oz's parent wouldn't have come - and when they did there was no Green Line.

He went on...[and] Oz concludes, “The disappointment is not in the nature of Israel, it is in the nature of dreams.” Here is his political credo. There cannot be one state because Israelis and Palestinians cannot become one happy family...Two states, absolutely, are the only answer...Reality now compels a compromise — “and compromises are unhappy, there is no such thing as a happy compromise.” 

Cohen at least asks the begged question:

And what of Hamas? “At least what we can do is solve the conflict with the Palestine Liberation Organization and reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an Israel-Gaza conflict. This will be a big step forward. Then we will see. Hamas may change as the P.L.O. did. 

Sure, yeah, right.

And then the clunker:

And the Palestinian right of return? “The right of return is a euphemism for the liquidation of Israel. Even for a dove like myself this is out of the question. Refugees must be resettled in the future state of Palestine, not Israel.”

Well, at least, Oz finally has come to our aid.  Even if that is his final line, it'll be enough.  The Arabs won't accept it.

At the end, Oz reveals:

“I live in the desert at Arad. Every morning at 5 a.m. I start my day by taking a walk before sunrise. I inhale the silence. I take in the breeze, the silhouettes of the hills. I walk for about 40 minutes. When I come back home I turn on the radio and sometimes I hear a politicians using words like ‘never’ or ‘forever’ or ‘for eternity’ — and I know that the stones out in the desert are laughing at him.” 

Well, since I think we'd all prefer to be a tree, those stones are laughing at Oz's thinking and logic.

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* Admor is the term for a Hassidic Grand Rabbi, the venerable Tzaddik 

who can do/say no wrong.  That's what they're called here in Israel.

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UPDATE

My comment at the NYT piece is here.

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