Last update - 06:26 10/06/2009
Yossi Sucary / U.S. wrecking ball crushed Israel leaders' aspirations
By Yossi Sucary It seems as if the term "spirit" has never contradicted itself as it did in Jerusalem on Tuesday night: Instead of remaining an abstract concept detached from the material world, it took on a form more tangible than cast lead.
It was not the American spirit that was present in the corridors of the Foreign Ministry during U.S. envoy George Mitchell's visit, but a massive iron wrecking ball manufactured by the new U.S. administration.
Whenever it headed in his direction, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman managed to dodge the ball - some might even say skillfully. Yet to do so, he had to leave his political beliefs behind. The wrecking ball did not spare them. It crushed them time and again.
But in one respect, the American wrecking ball was merciful toward Lieberman's views: It did not leave them lying there alone. It laid them to rest in a mass grave together with the rest of Israel's traditional policies and its leaders' aspirations.
Anyone could tell from one look at Mitchell's face that the old game was up. We are at the start of a new game, in which Israel can no longer bend the rules at will; it can no longer let its players pass the ball among themselves and run out the clock indefinitely.
Rather, this is a game where the man in black now acts as a true referee, instead of as if he were a player of one of the teams.
But something else was also apparent last night: The Arabs will not be able to lounge at ease due to the new U.S. attitude toward Israel. A person who stares for too long becomes passive, and passivity is one of the new U.S. administration's biggest enemies. Arabs will therefore have to act.
They will have to get rid of the anti-Israel incitement in their schools, the Jewish stereotypes, the political passivity, the variants of anti-Semitism, the various shapes and forms of Holocaust denial.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091708.html