Pubdate: Sun, 26 Mar 2006
Source: International Herald-Tribune (International)
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2006
Contact:  http://www.iht.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/212
Author: Etgar Keret
Note: Etgar Keret is the author of "The Nimrod Flip-Out." This 
article was translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston.

STUPOR IN OUR TIME

TEL AVIV - The parties my father votes for never get into Parliament.
One year he'll vote for some economist with thick glasses who promises
a revolution in tax law, the next year for an irate teacher with a
ponytail who advocates a revolution in the school system, the year
after that for a restaurateur in Jaffa who explains that only a new
culinary approach can bring peace to the Middle East.

The one thing these candidates have in common is a genuine desire for
fundamental change. That and the naivete to believe such change is
possible. My father, even at the age of 78, is naive enough to believe
this, too. It's one of his finest qualities.

In the last elections, my brother, a founder of the Legalize Marijuana
Party, asked my father for his vote. My father found himself in a
quandary. On the one hand, it's not every day that your son founds a
political party. On the other, my father, who had a taste of the
horrors of fascism during World War II, takes all his civic duties
very seriously.

"Look," he said to my brother, "It's not that I don't trust you, but
there are all these serious people who claim that grass is actually
dangerous, and as a person who's never tried it, I can't really be
sure they're wrong." And so, about a week before Election Day, my
brother rolled my father a joint. "What can I tell you, kid?" my
father said to me that evening during a slightly hallucinatory phone
conversation. "It's not half as good as Chivas - but to make it
illegal?" And so my father became the oldest voter for the coolest
party in the history of Israel's elections. From the minute he said he
would vote for it, I knew it wouldn't get into Parliament.

That's why I'm surprised that my father, an enthusiastic supporter of
underdogs, is going to vote for Kadima, the party of Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert. The polls say Kadima is a shoo-in. "This is the most
boring election campaign in the history of the country," he explained,
"and I'm telling you this as a person who's been here since it was
founded. I won't even turn on the TV on Election Day - well, maybe for
the weather forecast, but that's it. These elections are one big
sleeping pill.

"In past elections, there was always a little suspense, something to
raise your blood pressure. And it didn't matter whether it was
Menachem Begin burning up the town squares with his speeches, or the
fuss over Ehud Barak and that brilliant remark of his: 'If I'd been
born a Palestinian, I probably would have joined a terrorist group.'
This time, there's nothing. Sure, Olmert's smug. But one look at his
face and I'm already yawning. Forty years that man has been in
politics and he hasn't done a single thing anyone can remember."

"That's not exactly a reason to vote for somebody," I said, trying to
argue.

"The hell it isn't," my father replied. "Listen, we've had so many
Rabins and Pereses and Begins, people who tried to galvanize everyone
with their charisma and energy. None of them ever really managed to
bring us peace. I'm telling you, what this region needs is Olmert -
someone who'll bore us and the Palestinians so much that we fall into
a kind of stupor. A stupor that's a kind of co-existence. A co-
existence that's a kind of peace.

"Forget all that 'peace of the courageous' stuff Barak and Arafat
tried to sell us. Even a child knows that courageous people go into
battle, they don't make peace. What this region needs is a peace of
the tired, and Olmert's the man to put us all to sleep."

On the way home from my parents' house, I began to think that maybe my
father was right. And that it wasn't exactly good news. If, after all
the hopes and disappointments, all the accords and intifadas, the best
a country can wish for is a politician so nondescript that the pundits
are still arguing over whether he's on the left or the right - if we
want a non-event on Election Day - then we really must be exhausted.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake