Latest Parries
April 2012
From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S
Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
A couple of weeks ago gentle Saul Singer, editor of the Jerusalem Post opinion section, wrote the following manifesto in ‘Interesting Times: Three Races’:
Jews and Israel are worried that being out front may transform Iran into a “Jewish issue,” which would detract from the international impetus to act. Yet while the entire free world is deeply threatened by mullahs with nukes, Israel is most threatened.
Jewish action is therefore a critical litmus test. If Jews are not visibly concerned by a clear and present threat to Israel’s existence, why should others be more concerned over lesser threats to themselves?
The world, consciously or not, is looking for the Jews to lead.
Exciting, no? What would it look like, this leadership?
But first, is he right? My instinct is to believe he is, if only for the authority of Natan Sharansky, who also believes it. Acording to the article, Sharansky wants a march on Washington to create momentum. And other statesmen are reportedly doing something independently: Binyamin Netanyahu, Moshe Ya’alon, Dan Naveh and Dore Gold are or were working to have Ahmadinejad indicted under the Genocide Convention. Tip-ex’s Eurovision Song Contest entry is called “Push the Button”.
There is of course wisdom in the current policy. In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin one of the major lessons the author wishes to impart is that when proposing new initiatives it’s best to stay in the background because people are jealous and are far more likely to enthusiastically come aboard a new project if it seems to come from themselves or from the ether.
Singer et al are saying that it’s one thing to persuade fellow citizens to contribute time and expense to the building of a public lending library, and another to persuade fellow nations to contribute blood and treasure to preventing the genocidal and hegemonic onslaughts of a fanatical bully. You’re not creating a newfangled improvement to communal life but preventing your very slaughter. Under such circumstances, by staying in the background you are less Benjamin Franklin than Jonah, acting as if you have less of a right to live than others in your community. Israel’s dream was to be a nation like other nations, and implicit in that formulation is that Israel be a nation, as Netanyahu writes, among the nations. True, her sense of belonging to the family is understandably a little warped, not only by memories of the Holocaust but by having lived since her founding under an unprecedented movement by her Arab neighbours to prevent her from living normally alongside others. But we should be striving towards normalcy nonetheless.
Occasionally Israel has spoken out with normal healthy self-esteem. Ariel Sharon famously warned the West that “we will not be another Czechoslovakia,” referring to the pawning of the nation to Nazi Germany. Sharon said it just once, forcefully, to friends, and for that it was shocking and effective (he did the same thing domestically using the word “kibush” — occupation). Conventional wisdom used to be that this was enough: speak softly and carry a big stick. Nowadays one must speak often and carry a megaphone.
What harm can it do? If Israel does conduct a PR campaign about its concerns about Iran, and if this actually does increase support for Iran, then we were on our own anyway in a world gone mad, and nobody was going to do anything no matter how much we tried to stay in the background. At least we can try. At least we’d know.
Perhaps we could couple it with taking a real lead on the Darfur terror as well. If we’re going around preventing genocides while everyone else stands and watches, the least they can do is merely stand and watch and not interfere while we go about preventing our own.
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