Usually I read Akiva Eldar with some apprehension, but I simply had to quote the following hilarious** paragraphs from this article in Ha’aretz:

Olmert’s refusal to talk with the Syrians made Labor MK Matan Vilnai reminisce about his mother. On Tuesday, during a discussion in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Vilnai said Assad’s peace efforts should not be ignored. The retired general said that before the Yom Kippur War, “My Egyptian mother used to say we have to compromise with the Arabs. I was a young officer full of strength, and I thought we need not rush to respond to the Egyptians.”

MK Yossi Beilin asked if that was also how his father, Prof. Ze’ev Vilnai, a Greater Land of Israel proponent, felt. “The smart one in the family was Mom, and Mom was always right,” Vilnai answered with a smile.

Committee chairman Tzachi Hanegbi intervened: “What would happen if my mother were also always right?” said the Knesset member who forewent the right-wing doctrines of his mother, Geula Cohen, in favor of the center. It would be even more interesting if Hanegbi’s Kadima colleagues, and primarily Olmert, were to start listening to Tzipi Livni’s mother. The foreign minister has come a long way from the house of her father, Eitan Livni, the operations officer of the Irgun, to Condoleezza Rice’s apartment in Washington.

** Please note that I had some port earlier.

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themiddle

6 Comments

  • Here’s a mom who got it right when applying it to her own children. Maybe some or all of those quoted above deserve an equivalent comment:

    “Sometimes when I look at all my children, I say to myself, “Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.””
    – Lillian Carter, Jimmeh and Billeh’s Momma

  • Hey Middle the blowhard said that you don’t have a ‘moral compass’.

  • lol, only in Israel could you have a leadership discussion, where people invoke their parents for anecdotal evidence, and everyone is able to rebut their points with expert knowledge of each others parent’s political philosophies. 🙂

  • HEY Middle, better watch it, he will ban you. That is what he does.

    Now he called you an enabler.

    That is another thing he does, labels all day long.

  • He won’t ban me, he’s too busy calling me names. He sure takes it hard when he’s challenged, but if he wants to call me names, he can do it here.