Listening to Prime Minister Netanyahu speak at the UN last night was very difficult. While not a great fan of Netanyahu last night was the first time I truly felt like I wanted to throw something at the TV to shut him up. I felt embarrassed to be an Israeli. Netanyahu no doubt spoke many truths about Iran, and many need to be said, but as he droned on and on about Iran for almost 40 minutes, I felt embarrassed. Why, because at the moment the world and even Israel is facing more immediate problems. The world is worried about the fighting in Syria, the refugees from Syria, the spread of ISIS, that is what the world is worried about, and those things are equally as worrisome to us. Instead he spoke once again about the holocaust and the fact that we will never again be defenseless, but spoke about it from a place of fear and powerlessness.
I have reflected on what made me so angry, and have decided beyond the inappropriate timing of the speech, and the fact that he spent almost all of it discussing Iran something that is clearly a done deal, and certainly does not work to repair our relations with Washington, it was once again his depiction of us as this poor embattled state. What were the terrible things that happened to us this past year. I certainly did not come back here to live in a poor embattled state. It was telling looking at the Facebook pages of some American Jewish friends- there was appreciation for the speech- ” We have to stand by Israel since no one else will”.
I am sorry that is not the country that I know or the country that I want to live in. We are a strong country with probably the most advanced (technologically) army and air force in the world. According to foreign sources we have had nuclear weapons now for almost 50 years and we have missiles that not only launch satellites in orbit, but can actually do it in the wrong direction. ( Most satellite launches are West to East to make use of the spin of the earth, but so as not to worry our neighbors we launch over the Med) . We have a high tech sector second only to Silicon Valley. It is time to end the hand-wringing the fear mongering. Yes, it’s good for the Netanyahu politically, and its good for some American Jewish organization to raise money, however, it’s not true and it ultimately undermines our very security that we are worried about. What country is more likely to be a victim of aggression, the one that depicts itself as poor isolated and almost defenseless, or the one with friends and with an army no one want to start up with? What country is going to get its kids to stay as oppose to emigrate to find greener pastures? What country is likely to get greater and greater foreign investments? It’s time to stop our crying- it’s time to stop talking about poor isolated Israel- it’s time for the chief spokesman for that point of view convert his 45 seconds of silence to permanent silence on the matter.
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