PrintWaiting for Obama's Godot?
So where are we now, after the Netanyahu Obama meeting? Waiting for Obama's Godot to show up?.. No. We wait until one of these two things happens:
- One day ( this is the optimistic version) there will be an announcement on the radio that Iran had just tested its nuclear warhead somewhere in Iran.
- Or the radio will announce that the IAF had just bombed Iranian nuclear sites. The pessimistic version of the former is that I never hear about Iranian test -- the bomb just explodes 500 meters over my head.
We often perceive history through black and white images of documentaries seen on the TV years ago. I cannot remember when I saw what and in what country. Hitler pacing in front of the train car (same one as in Nov 1918) waiting to accept France's capitulation in June 1940 . Roosevelt delivering his Date that Will Live in Infamy speech. Robert Oppenheimer quoting Bhagavad Gita. Nehru , Lord Mountbatten and Edwina posing for cameras during the transition. Lenin speaking to the masses. Sharon's tanks crossing the Suez.
But these were events about other people, years ago, about people who are long dead, most in places I have never been to. We are now waiting for something to happen that will directly impact ME, my family, my six year old son just back from a judo lesson. This is real. It will happen. The question is only when.
What can I do about it? When the administration is staffed with people who never read a book by Ibn Warraq or Robert Spencer or the Koran or the hadiths? What can I do about it when I am by now quite embarrassed to listen to the top politicians repeat nonsense about the Middle East, about peace plans and peace processes, repeating the same failed policies which have failed a dozen times before for the very same reason . But this time it is not Leonid Brezhnev speaking about the success of the next harvest but US Secretary of State talking how the United States should try to gradually change the attitudes of Hamas members. It is not Alexei Kosygin declaring the latest jump in steel manufacturing, it is General James Jones declaring the that there are a " lot of things that you can do to diminish that existential threat [against Israel by Iran] by working hard towards achieving a two-state solution".
Since when have we permitted the level of discourse to be dominated by ignorant politicians without them being challenged? If General Jones had said that the Moon is a cube and not a sphere surely someone in the show would have protested. But surely the link between the two state solution and the Mahdi inspired reason for the elimination of Israel by the Iranian mullahs is as preposterous.
