User talk:Levivich

Postponing for a week

G'day, Levivich. If you don't mind, let's put on hold TP and let me postpone DRN request for a week, Monday 29. I talked to User talk:Robert McClenon today about this and I will post the request on a Monday 29 at the latest, but if I get the opportunity, it could happen earlier. Is this OK with you? ౪ Santa ౪^99° 19:53, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Santasa99: yes of course, have a good week! Levivich (talk) 20:53, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise, Lev, and see you then next week. Thanks. ౪ Santa ౪^99° 21:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How dare you

state 'Zionism is at its last gasp'. You're not at liberty to vary from what many Zionists, observing precisely what you observe, say on this topic, people like Avraham Burg. E.g.

It appears to me that it was Ben-Gurion who declared that the Zionist movement was a necessary scaffolding for the construction of our national homeland and that we would have to dismantle it as soon as we build out state’. Richard Wagman, Palestine, a Jewish Question Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2018 ISBN 978-1-527-52224-4 p.106

Burg, like also Walter Laqueur and many others, shared that view, but preferred arguing that Zionism in its confrontational politics was 'on its last legs'. You should have hewed to tradition rather than branching out on your own metaphor and upsetting the apple-cart by saying it 'was at its last gasp'. Dontcha know that shifts in language like that require some authorization? It's really shattering to see an innocuous metaphor about 'last legs' (one can sit down after all and repose) turned into an offensively necrological one, shifting the image from a lame tottering on tired pegs (inoffensive, empathetic) to to pumping out one’s last breath from exhausted lungs (eliminationist, ergo antisemitic, I guess). Shame on you! Having said that I think I'll reach for another gasper. Nishidani (talk) 21:22, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

lol :-) In fairness, Zionism is one of those things that people have been saying is almost dead for over 100 years. On the other hand, how many years does one need to try something before one realizes it's not working and tries something else? I think the recent increase in Jewish anti-Zionism is because both the diaspora and Israel are realizing like never before that what Israel has been trying is not working, and it's time to try something else. Maybe I'm naive but I still hope that "it's always darkest before dawn" and that the region is on the cusp of a breakthrough that will bring a lasting peace, as trite as that sounds. Levivich (talk) 22:14, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing trite about hoping for a lasting peace. I've never been cynical, but age makes me pessimistic, because I measure the world against the exceptional good fortune of being born and raised when the memory of WW2, and its lessons, were still fresh. Now my mind keeps recurring to Weimar, which I studied quite thoroughly when young. I hope you are right metaphorically that 'it's always darkest before dawn' - the word itself makes me think of December last year when police detained me thinking I was demented, but gave me permission to step outside just as dawn broke because I said it had been a decade since I'd had an opportunity to enjoy 'sparrows' fart', - our native word for the carolling of a dozen different species of bird, -currawongs, magpies, lorikeets, noisy miners and the like- but for a night owl like myself this report about the best and brightest youth in Israel only exacerbates a sense of sombre realism which the broader spectrum of sociological forces induces me to adopt. Still, I only dropped in to share an ironic joke, not to cry 'we all be rooned' like Hanrahan:) I pin my hopes on the diaspora, a never-ending source of inspiration, also as a model for Israel, upending the reverse tendency of recent decades. Cheers Lev Nishidani (talk) 23:03, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]