IRBUVEI DEVARIM

[Muddled words]


"Ki seitzei l'milchama al oyveicha, u-nesana Hashem Eloheicha b'yadeicha ve-shavisa shivyo" (When you will go out to battle against your enemies, and HaShem your God will deliver them into your hand, and you will take them captive as prisoners - Devarim 21:10).


POLITICAL LANGUAGE

Israel, a democracy located in a region where you would least expect such a thing, has Arab parliamentarians. Who fairly consistently speak ill of the state that gives them their bully-pulpit. Someone once said that wild exaggerations and rhetorical flourishes mark Arab discourse, and I've also heard the terms 'lyrical' and 'eloquent' used to describe their political speech.

The word, in the Arab world, is the mother of the fact.

[This may explain why every war against Israel is celebrated as a glorious victory, and why so few people believe that the 'Mother Of All Battles' during the First Gulf War ended badly for Saddam Hussein.]

Arabs speak with passion.

As can be seen below.




MK (Member of Knesset) Honeh Soueid (Hadash): People were killed and you want to be accurate...?

Deputy Defense Minister (Labor) Ephraim Sneh: You think that if you interrupt me, I won't say what I want to say? ... I can promise you one thing: You won't like 90% of what I have to say... Why did we start the military offensive in Beit Hanoun? To protect the citizens of Israel, to attack those who fire Kassams and who store up war material to use it against us. This was the objective; there is nothing more legitimate than that.

MK Muhammed Barakeh: Little children are terrorists?!
[screaming wildly] It's a shame and a disgrace! [continues to scream at Sneh]

MK Moshe Sharoni [Pensioners Party]: You just want to get your picture in Al Jazeera!

Barakeh: Shut your mouth, stupid!

[more screaming, Barakeh is finally ordered to leave by Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik]

Barakeh [to Sharoni]: Shut your mouth!

Sharoni [in Arabic, apparently a bit taken aback by Barakeh's furious hostility]: Out! Out!

[This exchange is repeated several times, until finally Barakeh is taken out, while continuing to yell]

Speaker Itzik [with a sigh]: Then they talk about the 'image of the Knesset' and that we 'have to come towards...' You heard, MK Gal'on?

MK Gal'on: I didn't see you 'come towards' when Barakeh was talking...

Itzik: Oh, really? OK, OK... Deputy Minister Sneh, please continue.

[Arab MK Ahmed Tibi starts screaming...]

Deputy Minister Sneh: On Nov. 7, from an orchard on the outskirts of Beit Hanoun, rockets were fired towards Ashkelon. On the next morning, we received warning that it would happen again, and therefore two artillery volleys were fired to that spot. As a result of a technical fault in the second volley, tens of innocent people were hit. We see this as a grave issue, a catastrophe, and a failure. I assume that those who fired the rocket on Ashkelon, if they would have hit dozens of innocent people, they would have seen it as a success.

MK Tibi: [screams] You're just clearing yourself! [unintelligible]

Sneh: No, no, Tibi - that's the difference of our cultures; that's the whole thing; that's the difference in our values.

[Tibi and other Arab MKs start yelling wildly]

Sneh: I promised you that you wouldn't like what I had to say. ... You cannot evade the point that when we hit civilians, we see it as a failure, but those who shoot at us see it as a success; that's the difference, you cannot evade that!

[more screaming]

Sneh: I came to speak here in order to respond and there is a limit to what we are willing to hear.

[Tibi and others keep screaming]

Sneh: ...After the extent of the catastrophe became known, we enacted a series of urgent humanitarian measures. The worst of the injured were taken to hospitals in Israel, and even though it was a battle zone, we allowed in trucks of medical supplies, we opened the Rafah crossing, and we did whatever possible to alleviate the unjustified suffering of these people.

Tibi: And then these Palestinians didn't even say thank you, what nerve of them!

Sneh: We didn't expect a thank you, we did what we thought we had to do.

[more interruptions]

Sneh: We didn't expect a thank you, I don't think we even deserved it. I think that we were responsible militarily, and we did what we had to do.

[Tibi continues screaming, Speaker Itzik threatens to remove him]

Sneh: Now that I have said what I wanted to say regarding military responsibility, I will discuss the moral responsibility. [raising his voice] Those who turned Gaza into a launching ground of Kassam rockets against a civilian populace, are responsible for those who were killed. Last September, we left Gaza, and we didn't leave a single thing - not a house or even a guard booth. What justification is there for what you are doing?! [Quiet] Why are the Rafah and Karni crossings half-closed?! Because the people sent by the terror organizations always want to blow up these places, the arteries that provide life to Gaza! They build a 600-meter tunnel - what are they thinking when they dig them?! Who will benefit if they blow up the Karni Crossing and Israelis and Palestinians are killed? And then later they'll complain that there's no milk or flour... What are they thinking? [Quiet] Who destroyed Erez (Industrial Zone), where 5,000 Palestinians worked and made a living? Who destroyed it? The terrorists!

Tibi: And that's why you fire at Beit Hanoun?

Sneh: We fire at Beit Hanoun, Tibi, because they turned it into a base of rockets and missiles against Ashkelon and Sderot. There is no country in the world that would tolerate such a thing! Take this account to Islamic Jihad and to Hamas, and tell them this - give your ethical speeches to them, not to us.


[source: Arutz Sheva: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/ this article: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=115469 ]


"Maves ve chayim b'yad ha lashon" (death and life are in the grasp of the tongue - Mishlei 18:21).