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Alan Perlman is a resident of the community of Carmel in the Hebron Hills region and a technical writer. Perlman has a master's degree in social work.
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By Alan Perlman
February 6, 2005
A classic definition of the Jewish terms schlemiel and schlimazel is that a schlemiel is a waiter in restaurant who clumsily spills soup on a customer, and a schlimazel is the customer.
I thought about this when Shimon Peres called 200,000 demonstrators schlimazels. The demonstrators protested Sharon's hijacking of the democratic process to implement his now obsessive plan to transfer the Jews of Gaza. Demonstrators objected to the schlimazel epithet, but they shouldn't have. Peres is correct.
As the definitions indicate, the schlimazel is essentially a victim of others. Through no fault of his own, bad things happen to him. He can have the most exemplary character, be the nicest guy, but fate doesn't smile kindly on him. Doesn't this apply to the settlers? Settlers have sacrificed so much, living in difficult places and circumstances, to settle and build the land of Israel, simply because they love the land and people of Israel.
Settlers have borne the brunt of the Oslo war for the last four and a half years, and many have paid the ultimate price for their dedication to the Zionist cause, but their resolve remains as strong as ever. Nevertheless, through no fault of their own, they are facing expulsion -- forced upon them by a cowardly government and cowardly fellow countrymen.
Led by a former warrior who hid his descent into a gutless post-Zionist sheep in wolf's clothing and lied his way into the position of Prime Minister, the country has surrendered to terrorism, and embarked on a process of expelling Jews. Say what you will, Shimon Peres was right, the settlers are schlimazels.
But a certain honor comes with being a schlimazel that just doesn't come with being a schlemiel, because with schlemiels, the flaw is internal -- a part of their very fabric. They are clumsy losers who always get it wrong. They are their own worst enemies.
And in this dialectic between brave, dedicated settlers and the tired, cowardly Left, there is no shortage of schlemiels.
Let's begin with a minor schlemiel that seeks to become a major player. Matan Vilnai hopes to win leadership of the Labor party and become its next candidate for Prime Minister. His strategy is to portray himself as Yitzhak Rabin's true inheritor. As Vilnai points out, he supported Oslo when Ehud Barak, as Chief of Staff, opposed it. No Johnnie-Come-Lately he, Vilnai was on the Oslo train from the beginning and never got off. Excuse me, Matan, but are you on drugs? Campaigning that you supported Oslo from the beginning would be like Christopher Columbus campaigning for votes from New World natives because he brought them venereal disease. Which reminds me of a joke I heard from my friend Phillip, but it only works verbally, not in writing, so say it out loud. Question: Why did Rabin sign such a terrible Oslo agreement? Answer (here's where you must be verbal): Because Rabin had Aides (pause); and those aides gave him bad advice.
Thankfully, in his brief stint as Defense Minister, Yitzhak Mordechai selected Shaul Mofaz over Matan Vilnai as Chief of Staff. Had Vilnai with his Oslo credentials been chief of staff at the onset of the Oslo war, Barak's infamous and rather fluid 48-hour ultimatum to Arafat might have become 48,000 hours.
The major player on the schlemiel list is Shimon Peres. This man seemingly has everything. He wields enormous power in government whether Labor or Sharon's Likud rules. No schlimazel he, Peres invested heavily in joint business ventures with the Palestinian terrorist authority, yet fortune smiled on him as successive attorneys-general did not find time to investigate a conflict of interest between his business interests and his ongoing support of the terrorist authority and its leadership.
Peres is loved and respected by anti-Semites and Israel bashers everywhere, even garnering a Nobel Prize from that organization that has a special soft spot for terrorists. Yet, Peres is the ultimate schlemiel. With his true character shining through, Shimon Peres is so thoroughly disliked by his own countrymen, and distrusted by even more of them, that of Shimon Peres it can honestly be said, "He could not win even a single election for Prime Minster through fault of his own."
Finally, on the schlemiel list, is Likud and its so-called rising stars, Netanyahu in particular. As Labor rescued Arafat from oblivion after the first Gulf war, so Likud resuscitated the once-dead Oslo process. A nation sick of Oslo and the war it wrought shifted rightward and gave Sharon and Likud an overwhelming victory. Had Likud remained a right-wing party, it could have kept that popularity and mandate. But for reasons still unclear, the Prime Minister took the electorate back to the Left, and dragged his party with him. A more rational party would have stopped their loose cannon Prime Minister, but not the schlemiels of Likud. One must wonder, does Likud really think that this strategy will give them repeat victories in subsequent elections?
Labor had lost the trust of all but the extreme left of the country when they came across as Arafat groupies and Oslo space cadets. But an emerging, young leadership in Labor, including Pines-Paz and Herzog, will do its best to regain the trust. If they succeed, the electorate that Sharon personally brought back to Left will likely return to voting for Labor, especially after Likud validated the Labor platform.
But who will vote for Likud (or Bibi, Limor Livnat, Dan Naveh, Silvan Shalom and others)? Certainly not the right, the settlers and the religious. These Likud schlemiels have exposed themselves for what they truly are -- untrustworthy political hacks totally devoid of ideology and principle. They may have their own camps and be popular with other party hacks. But most right-wingers and religious Jews I know are looking forward to Likud going down in flames in the next election like Labor did in the previous election. And I know no right-wingers that would ever again support Bibi or Likud's other so-called "rising star" sellouts.
Like the orange star, settlers should wear the label of schlimazel with pride. Perhaps they should even print it on the orange star. Far better to be a decent schlimazel than an unprincipled, self-destructing schlemiel.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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