\”All of us that have kids in Israel are trying to make the best of the situation,\” said Jules Gutin, international director for USY, the youth arm of the Conservative movement, which has about 50 California teens in Israel this summer. \”We want the experience to be worthwhile and positive, as well as safe.\”
In Israel, no one wants to be a friar — a sucker, a patsy, a flunky, a tool.
It\’s the Israeli equivalent of the Chinese never wanting to lose face. And in Israel, this primary motivation explains much of the country\’s machismo — and perhaps even its political situation.
Although there are flashbacks to the massacre throughout the film, the focus shifts to a meeting between Prime Minister Golda Meir and her top military and intelligence leaders.
The column of armored SUVs waited, engines humming, as a phalanx of bodyguards ushered Prime Minister Ariel Sharon into the third truck from the end. As the convoy cleared the main gate of the Israeli government head\’s residence, a set of decoy vehicles turned north, toward Jerusalem, while the remaining units proceeded south toward the Negev, where Sharon planned to tour absorption sites being built for hundreds of Israeli families soon to be evacuated from their Gaza Strip homes.
For Sharon, the site inspections this spring were a welcome excursion beyond his Jerusalem office compound or his Negev ranch. But for officers charged with protective security, the outing rivaled an elite combat operation.
It\’ll be a heart-wrenching summer in the Gaza Strip, when Israeli forces order Jewish settlers to leave as part of the government\’s historic disengagement plan.
On the eve of elections, scheduled to begin May 29, Hezbollah is trying to retain its pose as the ultimate guardian of Lebanese interests vis-á-vis Israel, stoking a flare-up along the border with Israel last week.
Just three months after it was ushered in at a peace summit in February, there are growing signs that the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians may be on the verge of collapse.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the IDF remains the most moral army he knows, but critics suggest that the relentless terrorist war has brutalized young soldiers who frequently vent their frustrations on Palestinian civilians.
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