Dear Dr. Beilin,
I read about the rally planned on your behalf, in the Maariv newspaper, I believe. The truth is that I am very happy that deserving, intelligent people are those receiving popular support.
I have paused to rethink and reassess my outlook on our country and what it's going through. Similarly, many, many of my friends have taken the bold step towards reexamining the way they see our country finally achieving its goal of living in peace with it's neighbors (even though many of us are highly educated, academically oriented, rational people). Just as we have taken that step, I beg of you to please ask yourself the following questions:
Why is it that the only path to peace we are able to contemplate is by way of retreat and the casting away of everything beyond preserving our personal comfort? Can we really expect our neighbors to respect us like this? Just as a private person has things, places and people that he values , loves and cherishes, so does a body of people.
When many of my close friends cheered our swift exit from Lebanon, only a few friends of mine and myself mourned the terrible name we were earning for ourselves. It was shameless the way we left our friends in south Lebanon to be preyed upon, tortured, murdered and raped by the Hizbullah. If we actually play the part of the Christian bible?s 'Judas Iscariot' - the loathsome, ungrateful, traitorous person that only cares about himself - what future are we creating for our children, or even for ourselves? Things like this happen when we focus ourselves only upon the practical, analytical, sterile, cold, unemotional and detached pragmatic way of looking at things.
Will our next step really be ejecting 200,000 Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza? These are people who (almost without exception) serve diligently in the army; people with ideals worth dying for; who (on the most part) really do care about how our country looks, its values and the lives of its people. Is tearing people like that from their homes really a better or brighter idea than kicking out people who believe that any means towards their goals are 'kosher' - even the cold-blooded murder of women and children - people who have shown their real aims for more than 60 years?
People like that educate their children to be like them. I, for one, would never leave them to govern a country of their own even if it was on the moon, but for sure not when it is a few kilometers away from my home. How can we be so naive as to believe them and help them,
instead of lobbying in the United Nations (and anywhere else we can) to force the many other Arab countries in the area to finally naturalize and absorb their ?palestinian? brothers? Why is such an idea less rational in some peoples' eyes than tearing down thousands of their brothers? homes and relocating them, at the astronomical psychological and monetary cost that such a thing would bring upon us? Would our country recuperate from such a massive operation?
How would the ?palestinian? country take it? Do you really see them as being grateful and happy? Or, rather, feeling victorious and evermore loathsome of us, setting their eyes upon the beautiful homes just below them, near the Mediterranean seashore? Will their leaders really stop preserving and utilizing the predicament of their fellow countrymen towards their own malicious ends?
The truth is that it doesn't take a lot of education (or even an above average IQ) in order to ask the foregoing questions. What it does take, however, is the motivation and inherent bravery to temporarily loosen the mental bonds that tie down our ability to reassess our outlook and the way we live our lives. It isn't easy to watch our friends and comrades gape at us as if we've lost our minds, as we surprise them with our thoughts that deviate a bit from what they expect from us. Yet, given a few moments of sincere reflection coupled with ample social support, even the socially shored-up masses may see clearly.
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I read about the rally planned on your behalf, in the Maariv newspaper, I believe. The truth is that I am very happy that deserving, intelligent people are those receiving popular support.
I have paused to rethink and reassess my outlook on our country and what it's going through. Similarly, many, many of my friends have taken the bold step towards reexamining the way they see our country finally achieving its goal of living in peace with it's neighbors (even though many of us are highly educated, academically oriented, rational people). Just as we have taken that step, I beg of you to please ask yourself the following questions:
Why is it that the only path to peace we are able to contemplate is by way of retreat and the casting away of everything beyond preserving our personal comfort? Can we really expect our neighbors to respect us like this? Just as a private person has things, places and people that he values , loves and cherishes, so does a body of people.
When many of my close friends cheered our swift exit from Lebanon, only a few friends of mine and myself mourned the terrible name we were earning for ourselves. It was shameless the way we left our friends in south Lebanon to be preyed upon, tortured, murdered and raped by the Hizbullah. If we actually play the part of the Christian bible?s 'Judas Iscariot' - the loathsome, ungrateful, traitorous person that only cares about himself - what future are we creating for our children, or even for ourselves? Things like this happen when we focus ourselves only upon the practical, analytical, sterile, cold, unemotional and detached pragmatic way of looking at things.
Will our next step really be ejecting 200,000 Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza? These are people who (almost without exception) serve diligently in the army; people with ideals worth dying for; who (on the most part) really do care about how our country looks, its values and the lives of its people. Is tearing people like that from their homes really a better or brighter idea than kicking out people who believe that any means towards their goals are 'kosher' - even the cold-blooded murder of women and children - people who have shown their real aims for more than 60 years?
People like that educate their children to be like them. I, for one, would never leave them to govern a country of their own even if it was on the moon, but for sure not when it is a few kilometers away from my home. How can we be so naive as to believe them and help them,
instead of lobbying in the United Nations (and anywhere else we can) to force the many other Arab countries in the area to finally naturalize and absorb their ?palestinian? brothers? Why is such an idea less rational in some peoples' eyes than tearing down thousands of their brothers? homes and relocating them, at the astronomical psychological and monetary cost that such a thing would bring upon us? Would our country recuperate from such a massive operation?
How would the ?palestinian? country take it? Do you really see them as being grateful and happy? Or, rather, feeling victorious and evermore loathsome of us, setting their eyes upon the beautiful homes just below them, near the Mediterranean seashore? Will their leaders really stop preserving and utilizing the predicament of their fellow countrymen towards their own malicious ends?
The truth is that it doesn't take a lot of education (or even an above average IQ) in order to ask the foregoing questions. What it does take, however, is the motivation and inherent bravery to temporarily loosen the mental bonds that tie down our ability to reassess our outlook and the way we live our lives. It isn't easy to watch our friends and comrades gape at us as if we've lost our minds, as we surprise them with our thoughts that deviate a bit from what they expect from us. Yet, given a few moments of sincere reflection coupled with ample social support, even the socially shored-up masses may see clearly.
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