Jim W. Dean: Uri Avnery Attends the New Knesset!

Israel's preeminent political observer gives us a personal Knesset tour, as no one else can. Turning a new leaf, or the same old thing? We have been anxiously awaiting how the post election maneuvering might give some clues of where the 25% of the seats the Netanyahu Lieberman team ended up, for better or worse. Uri's analysis seems to be still up in the air, but that we should not hold our breath waiting for the tooth fairy to come sprinkling magic dust. I use that analogy, because when I was a kid, this was my first choice of a job when I grew up. It wasn't a cross gender thing at all, but the big stash of cash she had, and magic part being so cool, that attracted me. But mother put the kabosh on that. She threatened to kill me, if she caught me playing tooth fairy, or any other kind. Israeli politics is virtually never covered by American media, and there is good reason for that. America's opinion of Israel, and Israeli's in general would go way down. After all, a fortune has been spent propagandizing us, they are all this homogenous monolithic one mind group, forged together by 2000 years of persecution, which by the way, we are all guilty of, and anything can be done to us out of righteous retribution. You remember that part of the "schtick", I am sure. Everybody else that was persecuted during the 2000 years, sorry: you must go to the back of the bus, and stay there. We will call for you when it is time to clean up. In my early research on the wonderful world of Zionism, I ran across a delightful resolution passed by the Knesset, that listed all the nasty names that members could no longer use, when describing fellow Knesset members. The list went on and on, and on. It was astounding. It was like the Guinness World Record for the longest list of nasty things to call people. What I learned is, that if they are unhappy or upset about anything, you were going to hear a lot about it, and maybe more than you wanted to. Gentiles listening to Israeli Jews getting this treatment and think, "Gee, those are a lot of anti semitic comments I am hearing, but none of them are calling each other anti semites."