Dear Robert,

Dear Richard, Thanks for your note. This response is being written under the influence of the Jerusalem bombing this morning. But yes, you are right, perhaps I have been going on a bit much about the buffoonery of Bibi -- and American politicians in general.

I agree that living here is, and in my 30 years or so, always has been a matter of nerves and nerve (otherwise known as faith that this is the right place to be whatever happens). I don't think Bibi a buffoon whatever else he may be, and I think that dismissive language and --worse--approach dismisses any attempt to consider what and who he represents, legitimately and if you will, like all humanity, illegitimately.

I also admit that I believe Shimon Peres is far closer to the ideal of Zionism than the settlement movement, which I have long regarded as the most serious anti-Zionist threat to the State of Israel, because they drained resources both political and spiritual from the Modernist Post-Industrial State that Herzl so eloquently described in his vision.

I dont know if I'd put him as my ideal. I have enormous respect for his having saved this country, together with Moda'i, from becoming a repeat of Weimar Republic, at the jeopardy of his political base in Mapai or Maarach or whatever one calls itself today. I was for Rabin also because of his political courage in NOT joining the pack during the Lebanon War AND because of his years of pragmatic experience in Army and Security. I, like most people I know, trusted him not to give away the shop, not to float away on waves of rhetoric. We felt at Bar Ilan and elsewhere, a lot of us, that this had to be tried, he was the best, perhaps the only man we trusted to try it. And that's why we were so appalled at the fact that a young man from our University did what he did, and with such apparent cold bloodedness, too. I won't go into the smears we've gotten here since then; they disgust me, but don't surprise me given the general secular Zionist active anti-Judaism. Which is for another 'thread' I suppose.

And yes, in our argument with the Palestinians we have a problem -- too many of them are convinced that the Herzl's profile on the wall of the Knesset is really a secret Jewish map of a planned conquest all the way to the now polluted junction of the Tigris and Euphrates waters. They think our common grandfather tried to sacrifice Ishmael, while we think it was Isaac.

Well, at least you can't blame Likud for that map? Or can you? And who, if blame matters at all, do we blame for the PLO maps of Palestine? There's enough facts in debate without going too far into mythologies yet.

Perhaps you and I differ in that I believe the Jewish mission of spreading Torah from Zion should mean to help spread democracy through this part of the world, something the entire planet needs to happen to survive what mankind did to it in the last 150 years. Cyberspace, as a place in space, is also part of that mission. Israeli companies are pioneers in almost every technology that makes this place right now between us, common, shared, real.

I distrust the words democracy, love, peace, security, and all other generalizations. They're blank checks we are being asked to sign while the others fill in the sums.... like giving Income Tax people a free hand with your bank/living account. Israel is and is not democratic, some days I think not at all, certainly not the access to communications, even our beloved cyberspace costs ... and we who use it foot only partially the bill, and owe the taxpayers who do not have access to it, for good or ill, some concern for them too. And Torah from Zion to me means a lot more and other than words like democracy. The angels and the devils are in the details. So of course, Id have to know what you mean here... I think of myself as a 'democrat' usually, by default, knowing that in most oligarchies or aristocracies or fascisms like the Middle East (the first one includes Israel as far as I can see) I'd wind up at the bottom of the heap. And what's lower than Bar Ilan today on the Israeli stock market of democratic bulls and bears?

It is not merely the instantaneous communication that is critical to this first perpetual motion machine in history; the elimination of geography as a constraint is liberating for the human spirit -- we who live at the intersection of the three continents that describe the way so much of the human race split at birth, do have a responsibility for helping to heal that rift. And we are doing so, because in the marketplace of global communications, our strength enables us to impose our rules for many of the changes we need to take place; that the Arabs accept democracy, that the Africans unite enough to allow highways from South Africa to Europe, that the Russians eventually make it into Europe.

Much of this of course one agrees to in general; again the details are the important thing and the timing of them and their presentation and acceptance by the peoples involved. Imposing our rules doesn't sound like democracy to me... and precisely what version of democracy can each Arab community accept without destroying Islam, their general customs and cultures, families and clans, etc. And about highways from South to North Africa: I'm not against them, or for them. It's not my business. I already envisage the day when every new car brought into Haifa or Ashdod port means another one pushed off into the Eilat coral fields, to become land-fill for some multinational entertainment Disneyland. With the drivers in them, of course. I would hope cyberspace my eliminate some of the car pollution? Or we have to start taking cars off the roads for 2 days a week, so anyone can get anywhere at all.

These are very long term historical projections, but they are beginning to become possible if for no other reason than they are being discussed, in a forum accessible to anyone interested in any word in at least the title, if not the body of the message.The bombing should temper my optimism. But being a contrary person, I'd like to suggest that such bombings, no matter how tragic for the people whose lives are ruined by it, prove that the inexorable process for finding a compromise in this difficult land is still under way, if it can create such horribly fanatic opponents.

I dont know why it should. My intro to Israel was fedayeen killing schoolchildren near Gaza strip, bombing schools in Netanya, and bombing Tachanat Mercazit in Tel Aviv, 30 years ago or so. And nothing much has changed, or stopped Israel so far. Gavin Lyall said, rightly I think, that Washington said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and the price of eternal vigilance is neurosis. We got more lawyers per capita and car accidents than we got war dead. What's new? Except the "details" of which horror we have to live with today.

My optimisim regarding the peace process -- and cyberspace -- is risky, of course, leaving me open to attacks whenever such bombings take place. But it is not an optimisim born of naivete. Instead, I believe it is a hard-headed appreciation of the forces at play now in the world.

I don't think its so risky. The decision not to make a decision is also a decision, and one's morally responsible for that too... No one said the peace process itself was naive; we're all fighting over the details, and its by those we will live and die collectively and individually. And I guess I resent the demonization of the so called right wing extremists /lumping everyone who disagrees with anything you decide is right to do, all together/ that pre and post Rabin Left/center people have been doing ever since I got here as a naive socialist in 1964. This doesn't mean I dont know there are extremists; a nation can afford only one source of terror, and that's its own elected government, army, and police. So I always was against Kahane and his group's behavior; but to call Bibi a fascist or Likud one, that's irresponsible slander. And in calling him a buffoon (as they used to do with David Levy) is also slandering / delegitimizing the population that supports them quite as democratically as that which supports Meretz et al.

Those forces are lining up -- who will take part in the next century's global economy and who will not. The only way it will work is if it's as global as possible, so yes, fascism, nationalism, isolationism, all the f-ing isms seem silly most of the time because they are so self-aggrandizing when in fact, in the ocean of cyberspace, they are at best currents, if not merely little eddies in far-off lagoons more curious for their shells than their waters.

I think your terminology and view here is much too narrow; there are serious crises rising internationally -- conflicts between multinational corporations of communications, industry, and finance that make the Protocols look like Walt Disney -- and obviate nationalism, isolationism, and much else traditional as useful terms for describing whats going on.

I'd like to ask your permission to use this exchange in its entirety for an editorial thread at Ariga

No objection in principle; a lot in practise. i.e. minimally taking both or rather all sides as serious, intelligent, and rational as we expect to be considered. Thanks for answering. I appreciate what you're trying to do... and good luck.