Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza on Seinfeld, is once again in Israel. The goal of his current trip is identical to that of his previous travels here to forge peace. President Shimon Peres cleared time from his busy schedule to talk with Costanza about his ideas. This time, it turns out that George has an original idea: do it through humor. Tell some jokes. According to this approach, if we just kept telling jokes, then the Palestinians will agree to relinquish the right of return and we in turn would give them Petach Tikva. That is one scenario. Does this seem amateurish? Indeed, it is best that we keep quiet. After all, peace initiatives that we have tried putting in practice how shall we put it lightly did not turn out to be as successful as hoped. The idea of exchanging jokes for peace is not worse than the idea of trading land for peace. There are quite a number of people who believed that if we destroyed the settlements of Gush Katif and northern Samaria while expelling their residents, there would be quiet here. One person after another took to the podium in the Knesset and promised that the Gaza disengagement would deprive Hamas of a motive to shell us. Most of those same individuals continue to preach this. The promise of quiet by way of the disengagement was also the states response to the High Court of Justice, when the latter heard the petitions filed against the pullout, giving it a legal rubber stamp. Then reality came crashing down. Without getting into too many details, let us just say that bringing peace through jokes is not quite as baseless as the disengagement. In this context, it would behoove us to refer back to the final episode of the last season of Seinfeld. This was the grand finale of the successful sitcom. Early in the episode, Costanza is sitting in the local coffee shop that has served as the backdrop of many scenes throughout the shows time on air. Suddenly, he turns to Seinfeld. When is it going to be my turn, Jerry- George said. When do I get my 15 minutes? I want my 15 minutes! This is indeed the truth of the matter. Most peace initiatives are motivated by the same force that drove George Costanza of Seinfeld: the wish to be written about in the pages of history, to be remembered as the one who succeeded in realizing the dream of every beauty pageant contestant from Ashkelon who is asked on stage, What do you hope for- before replying, I hope to bring world peace. Unfortunately, during the happy days of peace ceremonies in the Oslo era, nobody bothered to whisper into the ears of our leaders what used to be whispered in the ears of Roman generals during victory marches: Sic transit Gloria mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world). Even Seinfeld is not as big as he once was, George. *** In this regard, George Costanza is not alone. This week, Gilad Sharon took what appears to be one step closer to a political career, proclaiming that he was the one who conceived of the disengagement plan. There could be two reasons behind this declaration. First, he has no idea what most Israelis think about the success story of the disengagement plan. Secondly, it is obvious to him that his father will not wake up from his coma and ask: Excuse me- On the other hand, whoever tries to brand himself as the father of the disengagement plan prompts one to think that perhaps achieving peace through George Costanzas jokes is not the craziest idea. The claims that are being raised by Gilad Sharon, according to which the disengagement is the key to peace, have been recycled ad infinitum. Since they are often and repeatedly raised, there is no choice but to think back to that rare instance as reported in the writings of Alter Droyanov. While the story is a difficult one, it properly demonstrates the value of peace plans from the pre-Costanza era: A Jew who no longer observes religious commandments walks into a restaurant owned by a gentile and orders snails. He is then served a plate of snails. He takes one into his mouth, and immediately is beset by his old Jewish habits, prompting him to spit out the snail into his plate. He takes a second snail, and a third snail, and he spits both of them out. His Jewish stomach does not accept them. As he ponders what befell him, a gentile acquaintance walks in and sits near him. He, too, orders snails, which he subsequently swallows one by one. The Jew then says to him: My snails are odd ones, you will not be able to eat them. The gentile mocked the Jew, and swallowed his snails one by one. The Jew became envious and said to him: How remarkable. I swallowed them and then spit them out, while you
' When the gentile heard what the Jew said, he immediately spit out the snails. The Jew was reassured, saying: This is what I was saying all along, these things are odd, you cannot eat them. And another thing
Aside from the joy of waging an argument just for the sake of arguing, nothing will come of the proposal to kill terrorists before they are arrested. This is the same result of the arguments that were made in Europe. For over 1,000 years, Christians and Jews were engaged in disputes. This was part of the reality in which European Jewry lived. These arguments were aired publicly, and many prominent Jews took part. Some of these arguments were recorded for posterity, sometimes in books. Here is one excerpt: And the hegemon said: Go out and look what separates us and you. The churches are clean and glorious, while the synagogues are filthy and simple. We pray quietly and politely and you scream loudly. Our funerals are dignified, while yours are plain. The Jew replied: I will respond to these claims one by one. Your God, he has a wife, and thus his house is clean and orderly, which is not the case for our god, since he does not have a wife. Secondly, your god is young and he can hear when you pray quietly. Our god is old, and so we must scream so that he will hear us. As for the funerals? Well, I will admit the truth, even I enjoy your funerals more. In an unrelated matter
According to Ha'aretz, a group of female soldiers walked out of an officially sanctioned IDF event due to the separation between male and female conscripts. Will the IDF discipline them as they did the religious male soldiers who left a ceremony in which a female singer performed-
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