Related Link » We’re all thrilled by Mossad the movie: Of course we should condemn extrajudicial murder, but I still can’t help admiring Israel’s nerve
“It is an unfashionable thing to say, but I have a considerable admiration for the Israeli way of doing things. [...] They perceive someone as their deadly enemy, they kill them. They get hit, they hit back. They don’t waste time explaining or justifying or agonising; nor do they allow their detractors to enter their country, and then afford them generous welfare payments. They just act. [J]ust a rather magnificent refusal to debate anything. This absolutism, based on their history, carries its own moral weight; one that is rather electrifying in a Western world grown flabby with niceties. Clearly, the Israelis could defend their policies if they wanted to, but they quite simply can’t be bothered. It’s a waste of breath. One admires them for that, too. I’ve felt this way ever since the Entebbe raid in 1976, an occasion when the Israelis showed Hollywood a thing or two. After two Palestinians and two Germans had hijacked an aircraft on a flight that had originated in Israel, the Israeli army simply swooped in, killed the hijackers and freed all but three of the hostages. It was decisive, bloody and clever. Lieutenant-Colonel [Jonathan (in Hebrew Yonatan)] "Yoni" Netanyahu, the older brother of the present Prime Minister, Binyamin [Benjamin in English], was the only commando killed in the fighting.”
— Melanie Reid, February 18, 2010 (timesonline.co.uk)
“Operation Entebbe is unique in military history. It proved that Israel is capable of maintaining not only defensible frontiers but also a defensibly erect stature. Against a peak of terror, which was assisted by the army and president of Uganda, at a distance of over four thousand kilometers from home, in one short hour, the posture of the entire Jewish people — in fact, the posture of free and responsible men all over the world — was straightened. This operation necessitated the taking of an enormous risk, but a risk that seemed to be more justifiable than the other one that was involved — the risk of surrender to terrorists and blackmailers, the risk that is inherent in submission and capitulation. The most difficult moment of this night of heroism occurred when the bitter news arrived that a bullet had torn the young heart of one of the finest sons of Israel, one of the most courageous warriors of Israel, one of the most promising among the commanders of the Israel Defense Force — the magnificent Jonathan Netanyahu.”
— Excerpted from "Eulogy for Lt.Col. Jonathan Netanyahu, Delivered by Shimon Peres, Israel's Defense Minister, July 6, 1976" (Included in Self-Portrait of a Hero)
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| The Motherland Calls |
I'll take the real-life gallantry of the magnificent Yohanatan Netanyahu, along with the national devotion of its people for Eretz Yisrael, comparable, if proportionally-scaled by land-mass and population, to the incredible national devotion displayed by its people defending Матушка Россия at Stalingrad.
Call me crazy; I've been called worse (hopeless romantic; pessimist; old-fashioned; retro-man; reactionary; Juice boy). But I believe our modern flavor of Western culture has lost a basic goodness that flourished during the Second World War and in the aftermath of the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: a clarity of vision that recognized the fundamental difference between good and evil and the knowledge that it has existed and always will exist.
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| Uplifting or Disgusting? |
How I long for the return of sanity, and the consensus acknowledgement that what makes a normal person smile is good, and what makes a normal person cringe is bad. It's as simple as that.
Post #1,136 Of Predators, Heroes, Villains, Good, and Evil — It's as Simple as That
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