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In long run, Israel will have to compromise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In its first 60 years of existence, the modern state of Israel has faced several moments when its survival seemed less than assured. And with the exception of those Jews who are certain of God’s protection, most Israelis understand that they will face more such difficult moments in the future.
As a birthday reminder of that fact, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week renewed his anti-Israeli rhetoric with a diatribe made more threatening by his nation’s apparent pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken,” Ahmadinejad said, warning that “this regime is on its way to annihilation.”
We can sit here in America and note that the religious mullahs, not Ahmadinejad, hold the real power in Iran, and that Israel’s own nuclear arsenal should provide more than enough deterrent against an attack. Even if Iran does acquire a nuclear weapon, the logic against it ever being used against Israel is almost overwhelming.
However, many Americans are also old enough to remember the anxiety created in this country by the even more unlikely prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. That fear would be compounded many times over for a country the size of Israel and a people with the history of the Jews.
Living in a neighborhood like the Middle East doesn’t help matters any, not with a civil war simmering in Lebanon and Qassam missiles being launched at Israeli targets from Gaza.
However, it is their inability to make peace with their Palestinian neighbors —- a failing for which the Israelis and Palestinians are both to blame —- that causes the greatest anxiety. In a new poll, 75 percent of Israelis said they expect to fight another war with their Arab neighbors in the next five years.
Transfixed by knowledge that a mistake could be fatal, trapped by history in an embrace with the Palestinians that they cannot break, the Israelis seem uncertain of how to change course.
“First we lost our belief in the power of peace to solve our problems,” Bradley Burston, an Israeli journalist, wrote recently in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, recalling events of the past few years. “Then we lost our faith in the power of war to do the same. Israelis and Palestinians both, we are in a state of unaccustomed loss of ideals … nothing has worked.”
That frustration is understandable. In its 60 years of existence, modern Israel has accomplished wonderful things for its people. Under harsh conditions, they have built a technologically advanced democracy and a strong Western economy. But the fragility of that accomplishment is impossible to ignore.
Besieged by terrorists, the Israelis built a wall to protect themselves against infiltration. While the wall all but eliminated suicide bombers, it has proved ineffective against missiles and mortar shells.
To counter such threats, Israel has tried to create a buffer zone, trying to push those missiles out of range, but that too is a temporary strategy. In time the range of those missiles will increase, their accuracy will improve, their payloads will get bigger.
For all its power, the Israeli military cannot change that situation. Nor can it alter a demographic trend in which Jews are becoming the minority in Israel and the occupied territories.
“The day will come when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned last year. “As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”
For all those reasons, time is an enemy at least as threatening as Iran. Without fundamental change, things can continue in Israel as they have for many years or decades, but long term its odds of surviving a multigenerational war of attrition would be slim.
An American government that does not press both the Israelis and Palestinians to change course —- that does not prod from the outside to force true compromise upon both —- is not a true ally of Israel.
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Is McCain a Bush clone?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columnist Arianna Huffington writes that Sen. John McCain - who told her he did not even vote for George Bush in 2000 has now “morphed into an older and crankier version of the he couldn’t stand voting for in 2000.”
Writes Huffington: “The John McCain the media fell in love with in 2000 isn’t on the ballot in 2008. And the proof has all but jumped up and grabbed the media by the throat: the ring-kiss of “agents of intolerance” Falwell and Robertson; the decision to make permanent tax cuts he twice voted against, saying he could not “in good conscience support” them; the campaign finance reformer replaced with a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and fueled by loophole rides on his wife’s jet; the hard-line stance against torture replaced by a vote allowing waterboarding; the guarded-by-a-battalion stroll through the “safe” neighborhoods of Baghdad; the use of Karl Rove as an advisor … and the embracing of the disastrous policies of a man he so abhorred he would not vote for him.”
Has McCain become a Bush clone?
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How do you handle cellphone louts?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“What do you do when you’re forced to listen to someone blabbing away on a cellphone? Do you suffer in silence? Do you walk away? Do you say angry words aimed at blaming and shaming?” writes columnist Babs Bell Hajdusiewicz.
Her solution is to hand the offender a “Peace Note” that says: “When you talk loudly on your phone, I feel frustrated and annoyed and angry because I have a need for peace and quiet while waiting for this delayed flight. So would you be willing to make this your last call or go elsewhere to talk? Thanks, Babs.”
How do you deal with people who talk loudly on cellphones?
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Why do metro legislators let state ignore our issues?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Not that long ago, accepted wisdom held that suburban Atlanta commuters would never abandon their cars and commute by a form of transportation as lowly as a bus. Now they’re doing it by the thousands, with standing room only on express buses between downtown and the suburbs.
The program has become so popular that this year, the Georgia Regional Transportation Agency requested $13.3 million from the state Legislature to buy another 28 coaches to expand service.
Of course, the request was denied.
Legislators did appropriate $7.3 million to build a horse barn and practice ring in Houston County, home of Gov. Sonny Perdue. They approved $4 million for a building at the Paulding County Regional Airport, in the home district of House Speaker Glenn Richardson, and $8 million to re-create the office of the late House Speaker Tom Murphy at the University of West Georgia.
But $13 million for new buses to ease the commuting crunch in metro Atlanta? Nah, waste of money.
Of course, that slight to the metro area pales in importance to the Legislature’s last-minute rejection of a regional transportation-funding mechanism. That proposal, if approved by voters statewide, would have given metro Atlanta the means to tax itself to provide the funding it needs and that the state refuses to provide. All this raises a question: How long will metro-area legislators put up with such treatment of their constituents? More importantly, how long will metro-area voters put up with metro-area legislators who put up with such treatment?
MARTA remains the only major transit system in the country forced to survive without financial aid from state government. State officials have also refused to move on a commuter rail line from Lovejoy to Atlanta, even with federal money already committed. The so-called Brain Train, a commuter line linking Athens and the University of Georgia to downtown Atlanta and its universities at Emory, Georgia Tech and the Atlanta University schools, has also been kept on the back burners.
But if our predicament has gone largely unnoticed at the state Capitol, it is making news elsewhere. In a recent ranking, Forbes magazine listed Atlanta congestion as the worst in the country.
As Forbes described Atlanta to its nationwide, business-oriented readership, “more people flood the roadways than the infrastructure can handle. Commuters spend 60 hours a year stuck in traffic, second only to those in Los Angeles. If that weren’t bad enough, Atlanta is so spread out that only 29 percent of drivers get to and from work in less than 20 minutes, the third-worst rate in the country, and 13 percent spend more than an hour getting to work, the fourth-worst rate in the country. The local train system doesn’t service the entire city, and thus fails to relieve the pressure.”
If you’re a business leader contemplating a relocation or expansion, would Atlanta still be on your site list after reading that?
Now, with $4 gasoline looming, the situation gets even more difficult. Atlanta already had one of the most expensive commutes in the country —- now, with a doubling of the price of gasoline, the impact on our economy doubles as well. And as Forbes points out, our lack of a rail infrastructure makes it hard to turn to alternatives.
A similar crunch is hitting the nation’s freight industry. Eighteen-wheelers run on diesel, which has risen in price even faster than gasoline, and congestion in cities such as Atlanta has made moving freight by road more and more expensive and time-consuming.
As a result, freight movers are turning to rail, which can move three times as much freight as a truck on the same amount of diesel. Rail-industry profits have doubled since 2003, pushing stock values up as well. The price of Union Pacific stock has risen 19 percent in the last two months, while CSX stock has risen 36 percent.
Of course, the factors that are driving freight traffic off the highways and onto rail —- congestion and high fuel prices —- apply to moving people as well, as the popularity of express buses demonstrates. But Georgia’s leadership lacks the vision to recognize that fact.
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Jimmy Carter: Palestinians treated cruelly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former President Jimmy Carter, just back from the Middle East, writes, “The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air or land. An entire population is being brutally punished.
“This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. “
Carter concludes: “It is one thing for other leaders to defer to the U.S. on the crucial peace negotiations, but the world must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly. It is time for strong voices in Europe, the U.S., Israel and elsewhere to speak out and condemn this human rights tragedy among the Palestinian people.”
What is your reaction to Carter’s opinion column? Read full column here:
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Where does the idea that anyone views Isreal as a bunch of nice guys and can do not wrong country? Sure they have killed innocent people when they strike back but that is part of combat. They are fighting a war to survive and when your enemy hides in... read the full comment by gwarfan | Comment on In long run, Israel will have to compromise Read In long run, Israel will have to compromise
Anyone who wants to nuke another country is insane and has no regard for innocent life. Go watch some documentary on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then come back and say you want to nuke another country. Ignorant people scare me.... read the full comment by what? | Comment on In long run, Israel will have to compromise Read In long run, Israel will have to compromise
Sickfan… Sick is right. Are you sick of yourself, sick of the truth, sick of facts? You apparently do not know history, except for some twisted revision you have been fed. Quick history lesson. Jews have lived, continuously in Israel... read the full comment by Tilli | Comment on In long run, Israel will have to compromise Read In long run, Israel will have to compromise
Israel has compromised some (land-for-peace treaty with Egypt, for example). But how do you negotiate with a party that vows to kill you. You just can’t have a good faith negotiation in those circumstances. Consider the compromise in Gaza.... read the full comment by GS | Comment on In long run, Israel will have to compromise Read In long run, Israel will have to compromise