I have my share of angst about the medina, too. Any Jew must. Where we seem to differ is that I simply think that it was the least bad solution, given the situation.

In Lord of the Rings, Frodo said “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish that none of this had ever happened”. But he was stuck with the Ring, no matter what he wanted.

That’s really how I feel about Israel. If I had a choice between turning the clock back and having all of the six million back alive or having Israel without the six million, I would choose the people without batting an eye.

But that’s not how things worked out. As much as he didnt want it, Frodo was stuck with the Ring, and we’re stuck with what happened. Wishing things were different doesn’t help anything.

I don’t like orange tee-shirts and acapella boy bands either, so I guess we agree on something else too.

“The Zionist Entity is a dry brush that will be wiped away by the next storm.”

And there was one like, “The Zionist Entity is a sinister and artificial regime that cannot live normally.”

Look, Ephraim — the Right-Wing Modern Orthodox put on orange t-shirts and listen to all boy acappella bands and parade up and down 5th avenue — that’s how they deal with this. I don’t like to do that, okay? I deal with my fear, worry, angst about Israel’s predicament in my own way. I pace, and call it the Zionist Entity among friends. And most people don’t mind, unless they are flaming right-wing Zionists. You can’t expect non-Zionists to handle and process this stuff the same way Zionists do. The same way you do. It’s absurd.

So you don’t like it fine, but stop pretending I’m hostile to Israel. I’m not. Here’s a couple of links for you to read that wrote about anti-Zionism that I think you will like, and hopefully calm you down just a wee bit. Jesus. Don’t go calling the ADL n’ shit.

jewschool.com/...

jewschool.com/...

I don’t know whether he’s anti-Israel. I think he’s on the fence. He should make a trip and live there for a few months, preferably on a moshav with some hard core secular Zionists. Girls among them.

The main thing I get from BG is that pretty much every organized expression of Jewish solidarity is somehow wrong. Trying to find a way to commeorate our martyrs is tacky victim-mongering; Israel is the “Zionist Entity”, etc. Haas anyone heard BG make a positive comment about the place? I haven’t.

I know he calls himself The Kvetcher. So he’s a farbissener. Great.

Zie gezunt, but include me out.

But since you can’t be bothered to call Israel by its real name, I’ll return the favor.

Can anybody help me choose a suitable name for Kelsey? You know, not the one he chose for himself, but the only one he really needs, one that expresses our view of him?

How about I start it off: Instead of DK, I’ll just call him BG (short for the “Big Galut”) from now on.

Galut=Galoot, get it?

Yeah, running with it, worrying a lot, but hoping for the best.

What else can a Jew do?

Other than calling the place by its proper name, I mean.

“So all of this “Zionist entity” shit is your idea of humor?”

Ephraim, I prefer to capitalize the e in Entity. Anything less is disrespectful.

“Yes, we will see whether Israel was a mistake. However, since every other solution was worse, I’ll go with it.”

Well, I think we’re mostly all running with it, worrying a lot, but hoping for the best. I know I am.

Yes, we will see whether Israel was a mistake. However, since every other solution was worse, I’ll go with it.

I do not advocate pacifism in the face of violence. And I am not saying Israel was a mistake. I’m saying it might have been.

We will see.

We’ve been over this before, but to repeat: I agree about the museums.

I don’t see how Israel is counterproductive, though.

Anyway, we’ve seen how well your “keep your head down, don’t make trouble, don’t make the anti-Semites mad, maybe they won’t kill us” approach works. It works until they decide to, well, kill us.

If and when, G-d forbid, it should ever happen again, I want to go down swinging and take as many of the bastards with me as I can. I don’t want to go down on my knees begging for my life or shuffling along hoping something will work out.

BTW, people lose teeth by telling black people to calm down and be thankful that the white man freed them so they should shut up and stop being so pissed off. But if you want to eat oatmeal for the rest of your life, go ahead and try it.

Ck, Mobi is right about the auto-refresh that causes comments that are in mid-writing to be lost.

There’s a difference between saying that Israel is in trouble and not acknowledging its achievements. The parade was held to acknowledge its achievements.

The economic system which you so abhor in Israel is still socialized, although to a much lesser degree. To remind you, it was socialized and provided kibbutz-like ideals to large segments of its population, namely those families with over 3 kids, for decades. Also, don’t forget Israel’s socialized medicine, state-subsidized education, state-assisted immigration and other benefits intended for all of the people.

These benefits leveled the playing field for most Israelis, allowed upward mobility, enabled people who chose to not work to still feed their families, and ensured that health care was available to all. The cost to Israel was growth, a heavy tax on incomes and imports which made life quite challenging especially for those who were in the middle – workers. Worst of all, the government continued to accrue debts because its budget always had a significant deficit. Israel’s national debt is around 86% of its GDP. This is down from about 105% a couple of years ago before many reforms came into place. This is a very large burden and one that makes managing a country almost impossible. haaretz.com/ha...

Whether or not one agrees with Netanyahu’s economic reforms, it is hard to ignore their success. 6% GDP growth rate is pretty significant, especially while the national debt is pared by 15-20%. Israel’s budget is far better managed now than when it subsidized every family with more than a couple of kids. This is critical for its long term sustenance especially considering the need to constantly upgrade and maintain the army. If poverty has increased, it is because the government has begun the process of letting go these vestiges of a welfare state which it couldn’t afford anyway. It does take time for people who are not in the workforce to enter it or to receive the education they need to enter it. Also, as you know, the poverty numbers are heavily influenced by Ultra-Orthodox families whose numbers are large but whose traditions have enabled gazillions to survive in Israel without working (or perhaps getting the wife to work between child-bearing stints).

I’m not understating the harshness of the situation for many families or saying that it’s okay to have a huge discrepancy between the have and have-nots. However, if poverty is measured by the per capita income of an ultra-Orthodox family where nobody works for a living versus a family that has sent its kids to university and who make money doing computer science or biotech for a serious technology company or VC funded startup, then I have to tell you that it’s not beneficial to Israel to have too many of those non-workers while the contribution of those who got an education is significant.

Finally, a free press is the foundation of a free and healthy society.

Update: this post went into the spam filter.

“Just curious: would you tell a black man not to get pissed off at the fact that his people had been enslaved for hundreds of years, beaten, murdered, raped and bought and sold like animals and that the effects of racism in America were still wreaking havoc on the black community?”

I would tell him that staying pissed may be counter-productive, and note that though white people enslaved him, white people also freed him.

Jews get so excited that a couple of Jews died in Civil Rights marches. How many people died (including some Jews, by the way) in the Civil War to stop the enslavement of others? Yes, there were other issues, yes it was processed through the issue of The Union, but the core issue was absolutely slavery.

Do I have anger? Sure. Fear? More still. But I do not know of a public policy or program that I see as helpful. Remember, as a shtetl galus Jew, I am concerned about loud policies if they aren’t working or helpful, especially if they are too loud. So I see the museums, and I become concerned at how we are presenting ourselves to others, and how we are presenting Jewish identity to young Jews.

I don’t think being The People of the Gas Chambers is a good step up from being The People of the Book.

My point is that “doing something” is not better than doing nothing if the something is counter-productive.

btw… don’t know why it went into moderation – maybe one of the words you used was in our suspicious list. But we define suspicious based on spam, not based on ideologies.