Comments on: Haaretz’s Burston: Pain of the Liberal Zionist

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:25:07 +0000

I misstated. I meant to say that I’d hope he would’ve continued the Gaza withdrawal with a West Bank withdrawal which he’d intimated was next in his plans.

As for “dead,” you’re right, he’s not.

By: mary

mary — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:16:10 +0000

Sharon is not dead unless being in a permanent coma counts as death. It works for me. I have nothing good to say about him or about any Israeli leader.

By: Gene Schulman

Gene Schulman — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:09:28 +0000

I like your subtlety, substituting your “pro settler fanatic” for my “Nazi.” Guess I’m not as PC as you are.

“….continued withdrawal fr the W bank”? When was that? Yes, hypocritical withdrawal from Gaza, but the W Bank? I didn’t know he died. Thought he was still in a coma. RIP

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:33:48 +0000

I don’t agree, as you noted, about Sharon. I always hated Sharon and never trusted him. But at the end he was turning on those who made him what he was. It was a fascinating political transformation. I didn’t know what it would lead to. It might’ve led to something not much better than he was when he was an unreconstructed pro settler fanatic. Or it might have led to somewhere near Rabin was heading. As I said, I never trusted him, but I thought something important & interesting might happen if he’d continued the withdrawal fr the W Bank. Alas, he died & we got Olmert & we all know where that led.

By: Gene Schulman

Gene Schulman — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:12:26 +0000

Thanks, Richard, for confirming my opinion of Rabin. Of course he was not perfect – remember his “break their bones” attitude during the first intifada. But he was the only one on the scene who had a sense of humanity and was willing to change his mind and attitude. On the other hand, I can’t agree with you about Sharon. His limitations were that he was an unreconstructed “Nazi”, like Begin.

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:10:38 +0000

No Israeli leader is worthy of unalloyed adulation. But Yitzhak Rabin is the one, if any, who could’ve negotiated a compromise settlement of the conflict. It might not have been perfect, & Rabin certainly wasn’t. But he was head & shoulders above the rest & had the ability to step back fr. the political game to understand strategically where Israel needed to end up in order to protect its future. Every other Israeli PM has been only able to think in tactical terms, except possibly Sharon, who had even more limitations than Rabin.

By: mary

mary — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:32:43 +0000

Yes, precisely. Palestinian unity is the one thing that would end the occupation, that cannot be imposed from the outside.

By: mary

mary — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:21:42 +0000

I never saw anything particularly appealing about Rabin, although many people believe that had he lived, there would have been an independent Palestinian state today.

Israel’s mistake has not been in its choices of leaders but in its blind adherence to the zionist ideology that is destroying it as well as the Palestinians. Occupation, subjugation and inhumanity are not good for the occupier or the occupied, and this festering cancer has gone on for much too long.