Israel: Some tongue in cheek introspection

From an op-ed piece "Three cheers for Israel's right" by Carlo Strenger in Haaretz:

"At this point the Western world is looking at Israel with a complete lack of understanding. Is it just a banana republic, something like a failed state? Or is it just behaving like a spoiled child, as Tom Friedman lately argued? Or is it an ethnocracy that, unsuccessfully, tries to hide ethnic cleansing and colonial ambitions behind protestations that it is under existential threat?

Israelis, in turn, feels misunderstood: After all, their country faces very real threats: Iran keeps calling for Israel's destruction, and may become a nuclear power. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth with rockets, and it has shown that it is willing to use them against Israel's population centers. Hamas rules Gaza, and its official position is that it will never accept Israel's existence. So why doesn't the world understand us?

The answer is, in the end, quite simple. It is the great achievement of Israel's right to have made Israel's fears utterly unbelievable to the world. Its other great achievement is that it has managed to confuse a large part of Israel's constituency. It is therefore of the essence to celebrate this immortal achievement, because Israel's right is about to score a further, valuable victory: After 62 years, Israel may soon cease to be a democracy, and finally be a Jewish state without excuses".

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