Reply #27: My Custom, Sir, Is To Take People At Their Word [View All]

[The Magistrate]

Netanyahu's faction denounced the Gaza withdrawl very strenuously. He has said, and there are others who agree, that the withdrawl from Lebanon only emboldened the opposition, by providing something that could be claimed a victory over Israel by one of the militant militias, and that the Gaza withdrawl was an echo of it in another key. Returned to power now, what other course would a man take but a triumphant "I told you so!" and the energetic reversal of damnable mistakes he denounced for years? Netanyahu is moved by as potent and poison a faith as Nasrallah and his ilk, though the precise proportions of religiousity, nationalism, and conviction of racial superiority differ somewhat, and the resultant brew is heady enough to dispell reasonable calculation as we might define it. All these people are sure they are they are right, and that accordingly their success is assured if only they hold tight, and press on hard enough and long enough.