> Consistent with this popular refusal of mystical religious and secular
> maximilism Israel's current national policy is to shake off, by whatever
> means possible, the 50 -100 year heritage of political, social, and
> religious Zionism and to get on with the business of business and the
> enjoyment of its returns.
This is intriguing but not wholly convincing, at least from a distance. If Israel just wants to be another advanced (post-) industrial country (ie, a Levantine Switzerland or Singapore), why the silly land grabs and egregious military adventurism? Methinks reports of the death of "Eretz Israel" are premature.
> The extreme military reaction of Israel to the
> linked kidnappings of IDF soldiers in North and South by forces emanating
> from regions from which Israel relinquished military control represents in
> part the deep frustration of nearly all sectors of Israeli society with the
> continued commitment of some of its neighbors to a state of war with it,
> even after Israel has demonstrated a willingness to negotiate and even to
> unilaterally give up occupied territories.
How does this avowed "willingness to negotiate" square with Israel's treatment of Hamas, PLO, and Hizbollah over the years? Israel gives every evidence of preferring to destroy potential negotiating partners, rather than, ahem, negotiate with them. And Israel's "giving up" Gaza certainly does not imply that the latter's occupants can likewise "get on with the business of business and the enjoyment of its returns", or this an option available only to Jews and not Arabs? Whether or not Israel maintains "military control" of the strip (whatever that implies), it remains, by all accounts, fundamentally an open-air prison.
> Another related reason for the sharpness of Israel's response to what in
> the past was treated by her leaders as a nuisance act of irresponsible local
> high spirits
Wow. Palestinian resistance to the occupation are just "irresponsible local high spirits". You make them sound like a bunch of restless teenagers with too little to do on Saturday night.
> is that an Israel committed to developing a fully capitalist
> industrial society is far more vulnerable to even the small irregular
> disruptions of non-accountable private armies. The crisis of popular
> confidence in the government produced by the delivery of mostly harmless
> homemade rockets from Gaza is instructive in this regard.
If these "homemade rockets" are "mostly harmless" how can they possibly disrupt Israel's economy? If they aren't capable of destroying bridges, factories, power plants etc (as Israel's high-tech armaments certainly are capable of doing, cf Lebanon), then what *are* they capable of beyond just irritating people? Moreover, I suspect one could just as easily argue the opposite: that an advanced industrial society has more resilence to minor distruptions than a lesser developed one as there is more natural redundancy in its infrastructure.
> The Lebanon as a fundamentally urban and much Europeanized
> commercial society, would seem to be an ideal partner for a capitalist
> industrial Israel. However, the integral disunity of the Lebanese central
> government, the volatility of the organization of its civil society, and the
> subsequent weakness of its executive branches have, at least up till now,
> made it a most unreliable "free partner" to any kind of international
> relation but one dictated by external military force (Israeli, Syrian, or
> International).
This may be the case, but I fail to see how destroying us$2 bln in civil infrastructure over the past three weeks strengthens the unity of the Lebanese government, thereby making it a more suitable partner for playing Monopoly with Israel.
You may be right in asserting that Israel is trying to move beyond vulgar Zionism, but I'd like to hear you deny that it has replaced this with good old-fashioned imperialism, hardly an improvement.
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam