Israel’s bigger battle ahead

[DogPoundPup]

The war, for now, is over. Israel, eager to strike back against thousands of frightening, but largely ineffective, rockets, and apparently sensitive to the blunders made against Hezbollah in 2006, may have very well “won.”

Ultimately, however, Israel loses by focusing, once more, on external threats rather than internal
failures.

Such failures have gone largely unaddressed for decades and are sending Israel to a tipping point that will prove more dangerous to its existence than any threat Hamas, Hezbollah, or even Iran could ever pose.

Democracy means universal suffrage, an independent judiciary, and a culture that values expression. Israel’s democracy is ethnic. Israel lacks an identity that transcends sub-national units of ethnicity and religion, which can unify all citizens as equal members of a shared state with a shared destiny reached through common goals.

Normally, a country’s internal instabilities are its own business. In Israel’s case, however, huge decisions demanding national consensus are looming that will affect the future composition of Israel, peace in the region, and security around the world. In question is not only the relationship between Israel’s Jews and Arabs, but also between religious and secular, Sabra (native-born Jew) and immigrant, and the immigrant communities themselves.

For Israel to be at peace with its neighbours, it must first be at peace with itself. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last year that Arab enlistment in the army reached an all-time high (still only in the hundreds), and the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is considering making civil service compulsory for Arabs as it has been for Jews. No one should expect any substantial number of Israeli Arabs to join an army that is sometimes called upon to fight their families in the occupied territories and neighbouring countries. However, serving one’s own community in Israel through civil service makes sense.

more ... http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullstory.asp?filename=aEUata0sgqzpla7Ra1ua.axamal&folder=aEUaiFaoaraiaaal&Name=Editorial&sImageFileName=&dtSiteDate=20090123

[barslater]

1. democracy and survival

this is a head scratcher fer sure
israeli society in ways resembles
western cultural assemblages pure
while the past action seemed more
biblical retribution or big stick
carrots grown on the kibbutz
to see clear the schmutz