Israel is much more effective when the Israelis are convinced that we are on the moral high ground: that we are acting not just out of might, but also out of right.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of moral integrity alongside power in leadership and decision-making.
Ehud Barak's quote underscores the belief that true effectiveness for Israel, or any nation, lies in the perception of moral righteousness as well as physical might. When a nation acts with conviction that its actions are morally justifiable, it gains not only internal unity but also international support, making its efforts more credible and legitimate in the eyes of others.
In practice
During a speech on national security, to emphasize the need for ethical grounding in military actions.
In Israel, there is a peace camp that can convene 200,000 people in central square of this city, on very short notice, and there is a major movement among academics, politicians, thinkers, and public leaders for peace, even at a painful price. On the Palestinian side, you can find them individually here and there, but there is no public movement.
If Israel does not find the way to disengage from the Palestinians, its future might resemble the experience of Belfast or Bosnia - two communities bleeding each other to death for generations.
There is a thin line between peace of the brave and peace of the hostage... between compromise - even calculated risk - and irresponsibility and capitulation.
As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.
I cannot penetrate the soul of Arafat. I cannot know in advance whether, behind all the masks, he's the kind of leader who can reach an agreement or whether he wants to be the Moses of the Palestinians, staying in front of the river and not crossing into the promised land.
To think that you can - as a Zionist, Jewish independent state at the end of the 20th century - rule over another people for generations without having any consequences - it's ridiculous.
A strong human spirit with control over appetites of the flesh is master over emotions and passions and not a slave to them. That kind of freedom is as vital to the spirit as oxygen is to the body! Freedom from self-slavery is true liberation!
maybe she had become tired of being the girlfriend of a condemned man. It also occured to me that maybe she was sick, or dead. These things happen. [...] Anyway, after that, remembering Marie meant nothing to me. That seemed perfectly normal to me, since I understood very well that people would forget me when I was dead.
There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.
As if they were our own handiwork we place a high value on our characters.
It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.
It is necessary to posit something which is necessary of itself, and has no cause of its necessity outside of itself but is the cause of necessity in other things. And all people call this thing God.
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