Segacs’s World I Know

I’ve been loath to comment on prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah which saw over 400 terrorists released from Israeli custody in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the dead bodies of three IDF soldiers.

The main reason I’ve been so reluctant to post is that I’d just be re-stating what virtually everyone else has already said. How it’s a bargain with the devil. How these deals will just lead to more kidnapping of Israelis. How it’s a mistake that Israel will pay for dearly. How Hezbollah is claiming a major victory for this deal. How it will serve as an example to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. And so on. And so forth.

I agree with all of it. And then some. It would take hours to round up the abundance of op-eds, news items, commentaries, and letters decrying this move as nothing short of a catastrophe. Not only will the 400+ terrorists released surely kill again, but they will also serve as inspirational icons for thousands of others who may take up the cause. It bolsters Hezbollah’s position and gives the organization a legitimacy that it should never have. Plus, it firmly establishes the principle that one Israeli life is worth hundreds of Arab terrorists, by agreeing to such a lopsided exchange. In the meantime, the terrorists are learning that suicide bombings work, but kidnappings work too – and maybe even better. In one fell swoop, Israel is introducing a new terror tactic into the mix. And it will probably have to spend the next fifty years trying to undo that move and eradicate the tactic.

That’s easy for me to say, of course. I’m not a parent of one of the murdered IDF soldiers hoping for the chance to bury my son. I’m not a relative of Elhanan Tannenbaum (who, I understand, is being questioned by the Israeli police for possible shady practices… without details I won’t jump to any conclusions on that one). Not only that, but this is hardly the first time Israel has negotiated with terrorists. I’d go so far as to argue that the entire Oslo process was a negotiation with a terrorist organization: the PLO. We all saw how well that turned out, of course. But this Hezbollah swap isn’t setting the precedent that many claim it is.

None of that changes the fact that rewarding terrorism is always a mistake – especially here. I find it hard to believe that the government would be so cavalier about the lives of its citizens. And it pains me to face that things will probably get worse before they get better.

This was Imshin‘s chillingly prophetic observation, just yesterday:

It was not that they were such good liars

It was not that they were such good liars, they actually weren’t at all coy about their true aims, even if they neglected to share them with us in English and in Hebrew, keeping it for their own audiences, in Arabic, it was more that we wanted to believe them so very much. We wanted peace so desperately that we didn’t want to see that the Palestinian leadership was taking us for a royal ride.

[ . . . ]

I can clearly remember watching Arafat, freshly arrived in Gaza, standing on a balcony and saying horrible, hateful, inciting things to a cheering crowd, and I remember feeling very humiliated and worried at the time. Don’t worry, everyone said, the Palestinian people will soon be having such a ball, they’ll just love their independence and newfound affluence so much, that it will have to work. So I didn’t worry. More fool me.

Because it didn’t work, did it? Those bastards stole all the money and what they didn’t they spent on arms and on teaching hatred. Terrorist organizations flourished. No independence for the Palestinians. No affluence. (And no peace for us). Conned by their leaders. Again. And so were we.

The crazy thing is that we’re still the bad guys at the end of it all. It’s us that are the Zionazi hate mongers. It’s us that are the danger to World Peace.

Even some Israelis still don’t get it.

How can we possibly make people understand, when we ourselves, couldn’t, wouldn’t see it for so long? We only saw it when it came crashing down on us, literally.

How can we possibly make people understand, when these are people who don’t have access to the facts that we did have access to; when these are people who, on the most part, only have access to the clever lies, to the devious disinformation, to the unabashed distortion of history.

With little chance of persuading the world that we are the underdog here, that we are the endangered species, that we’re not paranoid, they really are after us, what choice do we have but to be strong and tough, stronger and tougher, strongest and toughest? We have no choice, and that’s the sad truth.

There’s no peace on the horizon.

Imshin wrote that yesterday evening. Less than 24 hours later, a dozen more innocent people were dead in Jerusalem. With every one of these attacks, a few more people come to the same realization: that there’s no peace on the horizon, not with this gang of liars. Not with people who claim to condemn terrorism out of one side of their mouth, and cheer it on and enable it out of the other side.

How many more innocent people will have to die before the rest of the world gets it too?

Woke up this morning to the news of more terror in Jerusalem, and I found myself wishing I could go back to sleep and pretend it was a bad dream. But it was all too real:

Ten people were murdered and 50 wounded when a suicide bomber exploded inside a bus on the corners of Gaza and Arlozorov streets, near the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood at about 8:45 Thursday morning.

CNN is reporting that the terrorist was a Palestinian police officer, which should only serve to reinforce the absurdity of that contradiction in terms. How exactly are we supposed to take the Palestinian leadership seriously when they claim to be doing everything in their power to fight (read: encourage) terrorism?

For most, this is yet another in a long line of horrible, disgusting attacks designed to inflict the maximum civilian casualties. It’s hard to even be horrified anymore. More than anything else, I think people are sick and tired of the whole thing.

But to those killed and injured and to their families, today wasn’t just another attack. It was the one that claimed their loved ones, their limbs, or their lives, for no reason besides having boarded a bus.

It makes me sick.

Why I love the Onion:

Bush 2004 Campaign Pledges To Restore Honor And Dignity To White House

Addressing guests at a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser, George W. Bush pledged Monday that, if re-elected in November, he and running mate Dick Cheney will “restore honor and dignity to the White House.”

Too busy to blog at the moment. Back as soon as possible.

Not cool, Dennis:

Dennis Miller has usually been happy to spray his acerbic wit across the political spectrum, but things will be different on his new CNBC talk program. President Bush is in a mock-free zone.

“I like him,” Miller explained. “I’m going to give him a pass. I take care of my friends.”

I’m a big fan of Dennis Miller, though I won’t actually be able to watch his new show because I don’t get CNBC. And my problem with him isn’t that he likes Bush, or that he’s seemingly become more conservative of late. As many fans have pointed out, his liberal stand on social issues – abortion, gay rights, religion – hasn’t changed; he just takes a position on security issues that’s more in line with the right-wingers lately, because the left-wingers are too busy saying “why do they hate us?” to bother worrying about security. Or, to quote Dennis himself:

“If two gay guys want to get married, I couldn’t care less,” he said. “It’s their business. If some foreigner wants to blow their wedding up, I want my government to eliminate him.”

Damned straight. (No pun intended).

But Dennis, Dennis, Dennis… Giving Bush a free pass??? Agreeing not to criticize him at all? That’s not politics, that’s blind allegiance!

As far as I’m concerned, all politicians are fair game for attack, whether they’re on your “side” or not. And people ought to be even more critical of the people in their party. It’ll never happen – it goes against human nature. But there’s something to be said for the fact that a free society is free and open to self-criticism. That’s why editorials in Canada, the United States, Britain, and Israel attack the government daily… and the societies are stronger for it. While countries like Syria, Iran, and North Korea are totalitarian in nature and people who question the government go to prison – and they’re all the much weaker for it.

Everyone’s open to criticism. Especially President Bush. He’s not Satan, as much of the overseas world seems to think … but he’s certainly not perfect. Far from it. Legitimate political criticism is an important part of the democratic process. Do your show – and your credibility – a favour and forget the free pass, Dennis.

This is my first experiment with realtime blogging. Mostly because, now that I’ve moved, I actually have the computer in the same room as the TV, so I can comment as things go along, exciting, huh?

So far the Globes are about as boring and predictable as you’d expect. Way too many women in chandelier earrings. WAY too many dresses without adequate breast-coverage. WAY too many dumb quotes. (Case in point: Mary-Louise Parker, accepting her award for Angels in America, says “Janel Moloney said she’d pay me a thousand bucks if I thanked my newborn baby for my boobs looking so amazing in this dress”.)

Commercial break, and a preview for the movie Miracle leaves me thinking how could they? I mean, “greatest hockey moment in history”??? Hel-lo? What about the Canada-Russia goal in 1972? But to those South of the Border, us Canadians don’t exist… even in a movie about our national passtime. *Sigh*…

Back to the Globes. Wondering why, in a show where just about every presenter is an actor – and usually an award-winning actor at that – everyone sounds stiff as a board while reading off the teleprompter.

Touching tribute to Michael Douglas. Extremely touching considering he’s not usually the “touching” type of actor. (Well, except in The American President, where he had the advantage of an Aaron Sorkin script, in the precursor to The West Wing.) I always find these lifetime achievement awards amusing, though. I mean, they make them sound like Nobel Prizes. Guy number one brokered a peace deal. Guy number two played someone in a movie who brokered a peace deal. Let’s honour ’em both. Sure.

Michael Douglas’s speech. Zzzzzzzz.

Brittany Murphy is wearing one of the only nice dresses of the evening so far. A bit too glittery but at least it doesn’t look like it’s falling off her. The dress doesn’t seem to be helping her speaking ability though.

What’s with all the nominated movies about sex changes? Is everyone trying to be the next Hilary Swank?

It’s clearly Angels in America’s night. Hmmm, I guess I should’ve watched it while I still got HBO.

I’m starting to wonder how much longer I can blog like this about an awards show, of all things. Is there much of anything that’s more boring? Well, maybe the State of the Union address… I think I’ll go do the dishes while Al Pacino tries to get the frog out of his throat.

That does it. Awards shows are just too boring for real-time blogging. I was going to persevere out of sheer will, but what the hell, I’m not raising money for a good cause with this so I quit. And don’t look for a repeat at the Grammys cause I don’t watch ’em.

Ouch!

Blogger, the tool I use to publish this site, just announced that they now have an Atom feed capability for all weblogs on the system. So I, naturally, went and immediately activated the setting for it. I even published a dandy little link to the file that the feeder generates on the side of this page.

But here’s the kicker: I’m not sure I understand what it does. Actually, I have no clue, aside from the fact that it’s got something to do with aggregating for a news reader or… ok, see, lost already. I dutifully read the description that Blogger provided, but I’m no less lost than when I started out.

Before this posting generates a long technical reply, please do me a favour and spell it out like I’m in kindergarten. I’m not too swift when you start talking tech-ese.

And if you do understand what it means and you want to do something or other with it, it’s up and running.