Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of IMRA, Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict. imra@netvision.net.il
I have no other country, despite disengagement
By Dr. Aaron Lerner
May 13, 2005 I have no other country
Even if my land is burning
Just a word in Hebrew penetrates my veins
into my soul
Into a hurting body, a starving heart
Here is my home.
I won't be silent, because my country changed its face.
I won't give up on reminding her.
And I will sing here in her ears
Until she opens her eyes.
The late songwriter Ehud Manor wrote these words in reaction to the war in Lebanon. The same song was later embraced by opponents of Oslo as an expression of their commitment to a nation they felt had gone mad.
This Israel Independence Day, perhaps more than any time in the past decades, these words ring true.
With each passing day Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his team shed another justification for their plan to retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria -- while at the same time proclaiming that Israel will retreat come-what-may.
Bring security? No.
Allow for the formation of a Hamas run terror state? Don't care.
The world is mobilizing to pressure Israel for additional withdrawals? Doesn't matter.
What does the Sharon team really think will happen after the retreat? Clueless -- but so what?
No one is really sure what got Ariel Sharon up on the ledge in the first place: fear of criminal prosecution or a burning desire to get favorable mention in the history books.
Either way, he is up there on the ledge and insisting he is going to jump -- even if it means splattering the nation on the pavement below.
Yes, the polls indicate that a majority of the public still wants him to jump (though the figures are steadily declining) - but as bizarre as it sounds, the same polls shows that Israelis are fully aware that disengagement will worsen rather than improve our situation.
I would like to hope that something will stop the retreat juggernaut before we hit the pavement.
But... Either way...
I have no other country.
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