Hanoch Daum
צילום: רפי דלויה
Leftist, rightist nonsense
Op-ed: Hanoch Daum slams latest examples of foolishness on Israel’s Left and Right
An old Jewish tale recounts a Polish woman who woke up her husband in the middle of the night. “What happened? The husband asked fearfully. “Nothing,” responded the wife. “I just don’t understand how you can sleep when you make such low salary.”
This week I woke up in the middle of the night several times. Nothing special happened; I simply couldn’t understand how we can sleep with so much stupidity around.
Foolishness on the Right: Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon, a man who I believe goes even into the shower wearing his suit, reported that he sent a provocative letter to the Turkish president via the ambassador, apologizing that Israel only killed nine people aboard the Marmara and not more, as these were terrorists.
For the benefit of those concerned by the potential effect of this letter on the ties between the two countries, I’ll recount a story: When I still worked for a settler monthly, almost a decade ago, an infuriated settler sent a harsh letter to the editor, declaring that because of some things I wrote he is cancelling his subscription.
The editor explain in his response that as this man already cancelled his subscription 20 times in the past, he needs to renew the subscription first, so it can be cancelled again.
Or in other words: MK Danon did not really wish to send a letter to Turkey; he merely wanted to make headlines. There are some Knesset members like that who disgrace parliament with their actions and are full of themselves every time their name appears in the newspaper.
The public theater can be much cleaner without their populist appearances and without their declarations. We apologize for only killing nine people? What kind of nonsense is that?
Foolishness on the Left: Kadima made a tremendous effort this past week to directly link the casualties of the Carmel blaze to government misdeeds.
The fact that the most important thing requiring a probe is the question of who sent the poor cadets to their deaths doesn’t bother Kadima officials. The fact that the firefighting services had been neglected since Kadima itself was in power is of no interests them. They prefer to close their eyes and score political points through the victims’ blood.
So here’s a reminder for those who forgot: The Kadima government, along with Tzipi Livni, embarked on a failed war on its own initiative. It was not a fire or war forced upon us, but rather, an initiative that the Kadima government chose to undertake. And when did it choose to do it? When the army and Home Front Command were unprepared.
The Kadima government initiated a war without checking what’s going on in emergency warehouses, and soldiers paid for this with their lives. The north also paid a heavy price. Olmert did not quit in the wake of this failed war, and Livni did not present an ultimatum that he do that.
And so, the people responsible for this terrible failure would do well to show a little more modesty when asking the government to quit over a 15-year-old failure that prompted an ecological disaster only (Would the bus casualties not have been killed had Israel possessed even 200 firefighting aircraft? It’s worthwhile to check this, before blaming the deaths on the state of our fire brigades.)
- Follow Ynetnews on Facebook
