Showing posts with label Naftali Bennet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Naftali Bennet. Show all posts

Monday, June 17, 2013

A Pain in the Butt

Naftali Bennett was a guest speaker at the Yesha Council annual Public Diplomacy conference:




and the Times of Israel headline is:


Senior minister compares conflict to ‘shrapnel in the rear end,’ says entire Land of Israel ‘belongs to the Jewish people’

and explained:


"Bennett also suggested that the conflict with the Palestinians was analogous to bomb fragments that could not be dislodged from the Land of Israel; a two-state solution would permanently hobble the country, making annexation the lesser of two evils, he indicated."


The Jerusalem Post didn't mention it.

Here is Haaretz:


Idea of a two-state solution has reached 'dead end,' Bennett says

Economy minister says Israel must stop trying to solve the problem and 'live with it;' likens Palestinian problem to shrapnel injury in the backside;

Since I was present, I think a bit of clarification is required regarding this.

What he actually said [and now, here's the video, in Hebrew] was that many ask 'what can be done to solve the conflict? and there are some conflicts that are nigh impossible, if at all to solve.  but still people press us Israelis and in this situation one has to make a choice'.


He then drew the comparison as noted above this way:


his friend was wounded in the posterior near the spine where a piece of shrapnel lodged during a military action and was told, if operated on, he might become paralyzed and if not, he would suffer pain during seasonal change and he chose the second option.  So, too, Israel is faced with a 50% chance of serious security danger or to get along with the current situation.









and friends Debbie Rosen (l) and Yehudit Tayar (r):





Sometimes, journalists are a pain in the butt.

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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

The Dulling of Israel's Sense of Justness

The former director of the Yesha Council, Naftali Bennet, was invited to a panel discussion at the Presidents' Conference Convention here in Israel.

He sent me a clip of his presentation remarks (I don't have the discussion portion) and here it is:



The poem that Naftali quoted from is written by Natan Alterman and here is one translation:

Satan then said:
How do I overcome
This besieged one?
He has courage
And talent,
And implements of war
And resourcefulness.
…only this shall I do,
I’ll dull his mind
And cause him to forget
The justness of his cause.


“Then said Satan: This besieged one, how shall I overcome him? / He has courage and ability, he has weapons and imagination. / So he said: I shall not take his strength, nor muzzle nor bridle him. / Nor soften nor weaken his hands, only one thing I shall do; / I shall dull his brain and he will forget that he is in the right.”


By the way, there is an earlier, unedited version in Hebrew that was found by his daughter among his papers following his death:

כה אמר השטן

" …אז אמר השטן: הנצור הזה

איך אוכל לו.

איתו האומץ וכשרון המעשה

וכלי מלחמה ותושיה עצה לו.

ואמר: לא אטול את כוחו

ולא רסן אשים ומתג

ולא מורך אביא בתוכו

ולא ידיו ארפה כמקדם,

רק זאת אעשה: אכהה מוחו

ושכח שאיתו הצדק.

כה דיבר השטן וכמו

חוורו שמים מאימה

בראותם את השטן בקומו

לבצע המזימה" .

In any case, if you want more information on those NGOs and on the New Israel Fund, start here.

^

Sunday, November 06, 2011

BBC Takes Another Look At YESHA

From a BBC special report by Tim Franks with whom I am acquainted:-

A short distance north from Tel Aviv lives a man who embodies both those contradictions. Naftali Bennett is the CEO of the Yesha Council - the Settlers' Council, which represents the ideologically motivated Jews who have set up home in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But Mr Bennett does not live in the territories. Rather, this young hi-tech millionaire has just moved into a large house in Israel's expensive central plain.

He says the protests are a sign of maturity and health: "What we saw over the summer was, look, there ain't going to be peace any time soon with the Arabs. So let's fix Israel."

Naftali Bennett predicts that the next Israeli general election (in just under two years' time) will be the first in Israel's history where domestic, internal politics - rather than "the conflict" - will be what the parties scrap over.

The CEO of the Settlers' Council also sees a symbolic significance in him living, not in the West Bank, but close to Tel Aviv. The settlers are moving in to the mainstream of Israel.

Rising influence

Take the conscript army - one of the founding institutions of the state. It is not simply that there are growing numbers of the religious and the settlers performing their national service, and then rising up the professional ranks.

Amiad Cohen, the head of security at the West Bank settlement of Eli, 40km outside Jerusalem, is one of those teaching at the growing number of pre-army schools. He travels regularly to one such school, in Tel Aviv, to lead discussions, with secular teenagers.

As we walk the perimeter of his settlement, Mr Cohen gestures to the hills around. "This is our country. We will live here. The question is: 'will it be with peace, or will they force us to fight?'. So yes I'm happy that we influence. The army is a mirror of who we are. And I'm happy that the army is changing."

I guess democracy does have advantages.

What is left, though, are the other elites: the media and the cultural and academic 'those-who-are-to-be-obeyed'.

Oops. I mean what is left to be changed.


^