Posted on 04/03/2011 5:49:44 PM PDT by Ari Bussel
An Old-Fashioned Remedy by Ari Bussel
My sister was not very happy with our mother. “When I get sick nothing happens,” she said. “Yet, when Ari is sick, you throw a whole chicken farm into the pot to prepare chicken soup.”
I must admit, there is nothing better than my mother’s chicken soup to fight all sorts of ailments, or enjoy for no reason at all.
There is something in a dose of old-fashioned chicken soup, as in honey, that helps bolster our immune systems.
The phrase “Jewish penicillin” has been verified and was even studied by Harvard University that found the claim it can cure a cold to have merit.
At this moment Israel needs an extra dose of hearty chicken soup as she fights for her survival. Planning a Kansai-like island across the shores of Gaza, with an airport and a port are wonderful plans that indicate how mistaken, misled and misleading is Israel’s precarious position.
Diverting enormous resources to the Arab minority and enabling Palestinian unprecedented growth – measured on a global scale – will prove very harmful to Israel.
Israel must savor a chicken soup to allow her body to strengthen and heal before trying to concoct a chicken soup to take care of the “eternal refugees” who like nothing better than the status quo, or to enable an uprising from within vis-à-vis the Bedouin or Arab minorities in Israel.
After all, contrary to what my father believes, my mother’s ethereal chicken soup does not happen by throwing several chickens into a pot and letting the water boil. There is a talent to getting the best out of the chickens that comes from wisdom and practice (and ages-old recipe).
Israel has a variety of problems she faces, and she needs to prioritize them.
Israel’s security services and intelligence communities must seriously focus on the Iranian threat. That is the greatest long-term existential danger to the Jewish State.
Israel’s military must prepare for an eventuality similar to the 1947-1948 scenario when the Arabs converged en masse against the newly recognized Jewish State, except present day magnitudes are vastly greater in strength. It must be ready for an attack on multiple fronts, especially if the Jordanian regime falls and Israel finds herself surrounded.
As happened not so many decades ago and throughout the last two millennia in the same neighborhood, Israel will be completely surrounded by Egyptian, Jordanian, American-trained Palestinian and Syrian forces on her borders, an Arab contingency from within and Hamas-Hezbollah snakes hissing and threatening from the North and the South. The names of the players may have changed, but the intentions from Amalek to the Palestinians remain as potent: Destroy the Jews!
Preparations must take place quietly, internally, with constant diligence, re-evaluation and adjustments. Quite frankly, while we should be able to speculate on their scope (and hope our analysis reflects, at least in part, reality), none of these actions should be common knowledge. It is not deterrence Israel needs; it is preparedness and readiness for what the future assuredly holds.
Unquestionably, Israel has the people and the abilities to devise plans for her survival one cannot easily envision. The main question is—does she have the mindset to engage in so doing, right now and without delay?
In response of multiple simultaneous threats, Israel must prioritize. She needs to act against the Iranian threat, the geographic military threat and the threat of ongoing delegitimization and demonization attacks against her very being.
The third side of this triangle of action is the exposed one—public diplomacy. Israel must engage, and has begun to fight the currently forming country of Palestine.
Come September this year, the Palestinian Authority (“PA”) is going to present the General Assembly of the United Nations a marvelous idea, stolen—much like the rest of its presentations—directly from Zionist history books. The PA will claim it has built a state from the bottom up, and is now ready for recognition—after years of dreaming and yearning and working diligently—by the family of nations.
Several nations have already taken the initiative and recognized Palestine ex ante, in the 1967 borders with part of Jerusalem (the so-called “East Jerusalem”) as its capital. Whether spoken or not, it would be a consensus to expect the right of every Palestinian refugee to return to their lost homeland and thrive there.
In September, the rest of the world will join forces and recognize Palestine. It is a fate complete, and the notion has been engrained deeply in the collective minds. So much so that its best spokespeople are actually some misguided Israelis as well as self-hating Jews living in the Diaspora. It has become the “common sense” thing to do, the “decent thing civilized nations must do.”
In September, Israel and the world will witness a miracle. For the first time in her modern history, Israel will see embassies in Jerusalem. Alas, these embassies will not be foreign representations for Israel but for Palestine.
Israel must mobilize now rather than ex post facto—and seemingly might have started doing so during the past few weeks—all of its public relations bureaucracy. This must include the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Public Diplomacy and the Diaspora and every body in between that has some overlapping interest, as tangential as it may seem.
Israel must fight with all its will, might and mindset this certain eventuality of a Palestinian State, recognized by the Family of Nations, a family that has been critical and remorseful of ever allowing Israel into the fold at all.
There will be nothing more galvanizing and unifying than a Goliath Israel, the “Zionist Occupiers of a land not theirs,” attacking a newly born Palestine.
The World Community will unite against Israel to protect the new infant from the so-called baby killing, raping, murderers-for-organs, brutal, imperialist-colonialist-Zionist Israelis. The anti-Semitism today is palpable and ripe for slaughter. Israel will be the lamb on the altar.
The Arab World, currently in turmoil stronger than a Tsunami and a 9.0-magnitude Earthquake, will arise as an unstoppable tide. It will forget all its troubles, real or imaginary, comes this day in September, and focus on its archenemy. What a galvanizing force this will be, what a historical sight to witness.
Following the Turkish Terrorist Flotilla, Israel created a commission of inquiry into the “Maritime Incident of May 31, 2010.” Israel gathered the leading experts in warfare doctrine and practice as well as world-renowned authorities in international law. Israel should do the same this time, in reverse order: Do not wait for the events to unfold, try to anticipate, assess, present scenarios and build up a cabinet of operational plans for most eventualities.
The fate of Israel cannot rest on an OpEd piece by a Harvard professor and a Jerusalem-based journalist looking at one pitfall of an international recognition of Palestine. At the moment, other than saying “it cannot be allowed to happen,” no one seems to know what the recognition of Palestine by the Body of Nations may entail. Israel has enough expert-knowledge and brainpower to evaluate and face an uncertain future better prepared.
Just three months ago, most would have discounted the United States dropping Egypt or attacking Libya and a domino effect on the Arab World which started in Tunisia, is spreading via Jordan and Syria and will undoubtedly reach Saudi Arabia. The world, it seems, will embrace any notion it likes to hear (“Democracy for the Masses” or “Protecting the Innocent”). What will stop the world to use equally as mundane slogans as it turns against the tiny Jewish State it never really liked?
Israel will be forced into a worse position than Libya and Egypt together, with CIA agents on the ground, Western capabilities launched against her and a wall 130 foot high of hatred surrounding everyone even remotely looking Jewish (let alone Israeli) around the world.
Two sides of that protective triangle must already be humming with secret activity. The third, adjoining side must pulsate visibly and continuously.
Jointly, the intelligence community, the military and the public diplomacy fronts can form an “iron dome” to protect Israel as the situation deteriorates. Together, they are the chickens, vegetables and spices in merrily boiling water that mesh into a powerful elixir. One that within a few hours time (the last quarter of this year) will be served to a seriously ailing body enabling it to fight all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Never belittle the power of an old-fashioned remedy. But, although the recipe came from a heavenly cookbook, someone must prepare the soup here on earth, for the sake of the Chosen People, for the sake of a healthy Israel. This someone must come from within, or at the very least be related by blood, family ties or deep friendship. Israel is still blessed by all, and someone must spring to action.
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The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.
The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.
This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.
© “Postcards from America — Postcards from Israel,” April, 2011 Contact: bussel@me.com
First Published April 1, 2011
Praying for America; Praying for Israel.
Thanks for posting your article Ari Bussel.
Thanks Ari.
I could get poetic with metaphors carrying on the chicken soup theme, but it seems to me that 99% of the grief suffered by Gazans is due to Islam, impelling them into crazy hatreds for no good reason. Neuter that factor somehow, and both Gaza and Israel would be much happier. It would take a miracle, though.
Bump
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