I love reading your posts, but you always seem to have such strong feelings against the very people that I admire: Netanyahu, Dayan... I'm almost afraid to ask you, what do you think about Yoni Netanyahu? A hero, a new "maccabee", a fool? P.S. I am reading Entebbe by Iddo Netanyahu, not an easy book to read, but very interesting.
He died a hero. Heroism is a strange matter, though. I’d say that in 1948, Menachem Begin was a hero comparable to America’s George Washington. But in 1978, he was a dumbass who gave up the Sinai for promises. Moshe Dayan may have had his heroic moments, too. But in 1967, he was a dumbass. The problem with yester-year’s heroes is that the heroes live on to make expensive mistakes, banking on the stores of capital they acquired with their erstwhile heroism. As such, Yoni Netanyahu’s reputation is unasailable, because he died and went to the good place. His brother Bibi gets to be the dumbass, banking on his last name and the eloquent noises that come out of his face, belied by his actions.
My chief complaint against him is Ehud Barak and the destruction that he regularly and deliberately causes. I see it outside my window. The brave, good-hearted pioneers of Hill 18 (Mitzpe Avihai) were evacuated in the middle of the night. The ruins of their homes are still there. They are living with relatives until they can rebuild. I see it in Hevron, where the rightful purchasers of Bet Shalom and Bet Hamachpela can’t live in the homes they paid for, and the broker for the latter sale waits in a PA jail cell for a death sentence to be carried out against him. Meanwhile, the European numbskulls of the TIPH (The International Presence In Hebron) patrol in blue uniforms of the same cut as the SA brown uniforms, forever on the lookout for any violation of the rights of the poor ickle Palestinians, and studiously oblivious to the real human rights violations taking place under their noses.