I came to Israel when I was 7 years old from the once mighty Soviet Empire. I am 19 years old now, and I am growing weary of watching the nation I came to love so much disintegrate.
What I am about to lay is my understanding regarding the processes which are leading to the inevitable destruction of the State of Israel.
Although many of you would consider me at the least slightly non-objective, I cannot do much about this, since this is how I came to understand the events that my short life led me to witness.
Israel came to existance due to hard work of determined individuals who saw no other alternatives. The prophets of the late 19th century Zionist Movement were intellectually joined by the millions that survived and witnessed the holocaust, whether from overseas, or from within Europe.
The jewish race\nation, the definition of which was a subject of countless flamewars even before the Internet came to exist was united by a powerful common denominator - religion. But time had a say in it, and traditions started to differ, affected by the cultures in which jews lived in diaspora.
Europe was amongs those places where this process of disintegration was most rapid in the first half of the 20th century, due to the simple fact that it was the world's cultural center of gravity at the time. Many did not see the danger coming, or chose to ignore it, and were slaughtered. They were busy feeling good belonging to prosperous nations, culturally and materially.
The need for a homeland grew stronger, and the drops of revolutionary pioneers who settled barren land in Palestine turned into a rain of ships carrying living-dead, who were disowned of everything as their world collapsed upon them during the war and some time before.
The people who were molding the soon-to-be-state were full of good intentions. Their motive was the love of fellow jews, steming from the fact that they were killed for being ones. They were the purest, bravest and most willing to sacrifice generation ever, but they were far from being pacifists - they simply witnessed too many horrors during their lives. Whether it was Hitler's gas chambers or the arab onslaughts of the late 20's and thirties, they have certainly seen the worst sides of life.
They spared no efforts, and won their first war, which looked almost like WW1, with machine guns and trenches, leaving one percent of the population (6,500) dead.
Then the building started. Hundreds of thousands from all over the world continued to flow to Israel, whether it was determination to help or lack of choice. The people who won the war went on to build a nation. The place was full of ambition as newcomers were settled in cities of tents and tin-barracks.
Time passed and Israel established itself in a series of succesful wars, which made the new generation take their well-being for granted. As I already mentioned, the founders were good people, and so they managed to raise their children with their hearts full of good. In fact, they were terribly succesful in just that, which is exactly the subject of this node.
I came to Israel from a place with a radical leadership. The people at the top were willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of their subjects just to make themselves look good, and not harm the nation's prestige. "That's absurd!", I hear you say. Offcourse it is, but most of your politicians share much of the same attitude. America would have attacked someone in response to September 11 even if no one would have a clue about who is responsible, because the people on top wish to keep their seats and that means "restoring the nation's prestige" or anything of the sort that would make the voters happy.
The situation here is different. The people here are so certain of their invulnerability and of the good of everyone else's intentions (you always judge according to yourself) that they're willing to compromise on and believe in absolutely insane ideas, such as the one that
Arafat wants peace.
I am not going to expand much on that issue, I am sure others already have.
This pacifist horde is responsible for the biggest mistakes in the last three decades, including the leaving of the so called Palestinian population in its place after the victory of 1967, the giving away of the Sinai Penninsula and the retreat from Lebanon.
The recent mistake the consequences of which we are starting to experience are the Oslo Accords, which gave Yasser Arafat and his bunch of bandits a foothold in arab-dominated territories which were taken by Israel in the Six-Day War, in June 1967.
I am very much afraid of the future, which is going to be influenced by two main factors: The speed at which the arabs are going to take advantage of the current situation, which is very unfavorable to Israel, versus the pace at which the Jews are going to recouperate from their daydaydream about living in a Scandinavia or a New Zealand.