Another Tack: Stan Laurel’s Smile, by Sarah Honig
Excerpts;
Israel’s Diaspora-born founding fathers ironically knew how to stand up to the world’s highest and mightiest. They could – and often did – send foreign potentates and their emissaries packing. But not so the progeny they reared, ostensibly unconstrained by degrading complexes. Pragmatic Sabras endlessly calculate the odds and are serially overwhelmed by them.
Pressurable and pliable Rabin, Barak, Sharon and Olmert – all products of our local insular upbringing – don’t remotely measure up to the stick-to-itiveness of Ben-Gurion, Golda, Begin or Shamir. Sabras may swagger but they’re fretful. They posture as tough unsentimental moral relativists, but they lack resolve, conviction and – pardon the untrendy term – pride.
