17 September 2008

Israel: too many prophets and no king

For the sake of brevity I have omitted the word "mad" in the headline, you might want to work out by yourself where it fits.

We are used to joke about that famous "three million presidents"* thing, about three Jooz having five opinions and more and more in the same vein. But every joke is half the truth, and the problem of our infighting is far from being a joke. United we stand, but united we are on very rare occasions, and rarely we take a breather from tearing the nation apart. I am never tired repeating this. But Ami Isseroff does it so much better in the latest piece The biggest danger to Israel.

The worst period in the early history of ancient Israel was the time of the Judges, of which the Book of Judges states more than once, In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. The gift of men like Herzl and David Ben-Gurion is that they were able to overcome the futile, petty and egotistical quarrels of Diaspora Jewish life and rabbinical Judaism, and to produce a united people, ready to undertake sovereignty.

What happens when these elements are missing?
WYSIWYG, ladies and gentlemen - What You See Is What You Get, and it's past time to stop and do something about it.

But read the whole article, please.

(*) The story goes more or less like this: in a meeting between Nixon and Ben-Gurion, the former complained about the burden of managing a country of 200 million citizens. Ben Gurion countered: "Imagine the problem of managing a country of three million presidents".

Cross-posted on Yourish.com.

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