About 50 years ago, Yehonatan Geffen wrote a song with the above title (except that it was in Hebrew, of course). In the song, he says that life was 'beautiful' before he was born: he is writing about the period before the state of Israel was declared, primarily the years 1910-35 (approximately). In those days, there was so much to do: virgin land to be cultivated, marshes to be dried and a state to build. Geffen bemoans the fact that 'now' there seems to be nothing big left to do. 50 years later, whilst there may not have been so many 'big things' done in that period, the state has definitely grown and prospered.
There's a line in the song that doesn't translate well into English that was one of the rallying cries of the 'original' immigrants in 1910-20: we came to build and to be built. Even though I emigrated at a much later stage when such cries were embarrassing, I appreciate the sentiment: I too came to build and to be built (i.e. develop my personality).
<Hereon a rant>
And I (and I am not alone in this) feel now that everything that has happened to Israel and to me personally is about to be taken away by the extremist government that is in the process of being formed as I write these words. The juidicial system, the education system, the police ... everything that screams 'democracy' is now considered to be 'undemocratic' and has to be replaced. "We have a clear majority", the extremists claim, and whilst they have a clear parliamentary majority, these parties received only 30,000 more votes; in other words, allocating parliamentary seats by a straight allocation of the popular vote (instead of the complicated system in use) would have resulted in a much smaller majority.
The irony is that the non-democratic factors are suddenly the bastions of democracy and redefining what it means. I am reminded of Orwell's 1984 and the claim that 'we have always been at war with Eurasia' is replaced with 'we have always been at war with Eastasia'. What will happen to the "people's army" in which will serve only the sons and daughters of the new "anti-democrats", whilst the new "democrats" sit at home and get rich on the taxes paid by the "anti-democrats"?
Maybe Robert Heinlein had it right in 'Starship troopers', where only those who performed some kind of national service became franchised to vote. I never liked this approach - not socialist or equal enough for my tastes - but maybe that's what we need now.
As much as I have never liked Bibi Netanyahu, unfortunately Israel's longest serving prime minister, I have always recognised his intelligence. But in the agreements made with the extremist parties in order to form a coalition (and quite possibly to save his skin from being sentenced to jail because of bribery and misconduct, etc), he seems to have signed away his - and my - birthright. Finally members of his own party are waking up to discover that the ministerial posts that are being offered to them have been gutted of content: the education ministry appears to be have been divided into four, as has the defence ministry. Who wants to be minister of education when one is barely responsible for anything?
My only hope is that the Likud back-benchers (or equivalent) will stage a mini-revolution, Netanyahu won't be able to present a government, there will be new elections, and in these, enough people will change their votes such that the resulting government will be far more moderate.
I have barely been able to watch the evening news for the past month because it so angers me. Yes, I think that it's over, and that we are going to enter four or five black years that will set Israel back at least 50 years because of the damage that these "democrats" will wreak.
| Blog # | Date | Title | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| 434 | 11/12/2011 | 50 words for snow - Kate Bush | Kate Bush |
| 991 | 11/12/2016 | Repairing the Kindle | Kindle |
| 1098 | More on Delphi 7/Hebrew/Win 10 | Programming, Delphi, Unicode | |
| 1446 | 11/12/2021 | Mike Nesmith, RIP | Obituary |
No comments:
Post a Comment