#407 – Hip-Hip-Hypocrosy

Hip-Hip-Hypocrisy

I’ve been having problems putting together yet another post-election Letter.

I started with the following….

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I may have mentioned that, for some very obscure reasons, I am putting ALL my Letters from Israel into one file. I have no idea what to do with the subsequent file, which will have at least 1,000 pages…But in the meantime, it is almost fun to re-read some of them – and to see how, when referring to Israel’s politics etc., I was usually right!!

For instance, # 270, dated December 5, 2014, included the following –

Oh, don’t ask me. This is the umpteenth time in modern Israel history there will be elections (March 17, 2015), an average of about 1 every 2 years, and they usually end up in stalemate.

As usual, and it’s one of my main beefs about ‘democracy today’, no party will be given a mandate to do what it promises/hopes to do if elected. The coalition parties will see to that.

Will Netanyahu survive? Who knows? The election run-up will be as interesting (dirty) as usual. Yesterday’s friends will become today’s enemies, but with just a little love in reserve in case they become tomorrow’s partners. Some of the religious bloc will be expecting to get back into the government, subject to receiving their specific demands. And the ultra-Zionists will want to grab more of what is rightfully theirs, but politically very unpopular, and totally opposed by the international community. 

No, elections are not good for us.

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I kept delaying and delaying completion of the letter…

But today is the start of the World Cup. FIFA’s president’s outburst finally gave me the perfect title for this letter….Hip-hip-hypocrisy. His words are ridiculous, but so is the whole event, and the fact that we’ll all be putting our disgust behind us and shall look forward to a much-desired Brazil-England final

I won’t bore you with further football-related bits, except one –

Qatar is one of the World’s main supporters of terrorism. It is specifically and openly the main backer of Hamas, whose leader lives in Qatar.  

In another letter of mine some years back, I suggested that, instead of employing and killing (sorry, not doing enough to prevent the deaths of so many) workers from the sub-continent, why not help their Arab brothers? Specifically, the Gazans. Instead of 8 fantastic stadiums almost within walking distance of each other, how about 1 in Gaza. 2 millions brothers are there, desperate for work, desperate for entertainment (they are fanatic football fans).

What a fantastic P.R. coup it would be – brushing aside the Israeli/Egyptian blockade of Gaza, forcing Israel to allow the movement of fans. I know that Qatar has special plans for their stadiums after the event – they have the money for that. But they only benefit the approx 1/2 million Qataris, and no one else. 

So……

We had what to some appears to have been a disastrous election in Israel. I’ve described myself as ’swinging centre’, trying to avoid the potentially blind views of extremists. Like in ice-skating or ski-jumping, the first and last votes of the judges are removed in order to prevent bias. That did not happen here. Israel is now in danger of being over-influenced by extremists.

Candidates for high government positions are being bombarded by their supporters to stand by their electoral promises, ignoring the fact that this is almost impossible in ‘democratic societies’ (waiting for the definitive definition) where compromise/coalition is the norm.

I shall not go into ’specifics’ in this letter. Far too complicated – and therefore boring.

Stephen