He’s dead. No joy, no sadness, just relief. He will no longer harm anyone ever again. The following are two Facebook posts I made after being rather infuriated by gushing lovey dovey “We Love Shimon Peres” posts.
Post #1
Alright Facebook. Another politician dead and here come the deep meaningful posts about what we can all learn from his life. The gushing, the love, and even the people who didn’t like him at all saying things like “Say what you want about Shimon Something, but he positive positive blah blah. He may have destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of people and worse, but at least he was a great blah blah blah.”
The aura of thought police is exuding, totally exuding today. I’m not interrupting or trolling comment threads about this Peres guy, except I will say this on my own.
There are many, many people who hate the guy’s guts, and justifiably so. It should be legitimate for them to have their own catharsis of relief that he’s gone.
That’s how it is in politics. You take from one group you give to the other. Those that were taken from have a right to resent it, and resent it intensely. Those that gained from it will likely love him, but only they are allowed to post things because they liked him? No.
Me personally, I don’t care. The world is not better or worse off now that he’s dead, because he’s been inactive for a while. But the people whose lives have been destroyed by him should not feel embarrassed or afraid to call him every bad name in the book and if their life or their home was destroyed by him, they should feel that it’s OK to cry in relief that this man is no longer breathing the same air that they are.
It’s OK to say bad things about dead politicians. It’s not pasul. You can do it, and it’s legitimate.
Post #2
Here’s a follow up on the lovey dovey Peres posts. As expected the Jewish thought police rang the alarm on me defending those who do not mourn the passing of Shimon Peres. I am one of those people and there are many many others.
There were the hysterical types calling me names, but they are more entertaining than annoying. Then there are the sagacious types who respond with counterpoints that sound reasonable but actually are not reasonable at all.
One case in point is a friend of mine who responded to me by saying something along the lines that Jewish etiquette encourages seeing the good side of people that just died, even politiciians, and that after the shiva we can all engage in a “dispassionate” debate about the merits and failures of the politicians.
Dispassionate? Dispassionate? If you have something critical to say you have to be DISpassionate and wait, while everyone else gushing over an evil man gets to be as passionate as they please, immediately upon hearing of the death?
No. Double standard.
Think about it this way. Imagine you are a person whose son committed suicide in the aftermath of the expulsion from Gush Katif. Your family is ruined, you livelihood gone, you live in a caravan and your marriage is a shell. You hate this man with a PASSION and you have to watch everyone else say great things about him while implying that anyone who says bad things about him now is doing something illegitimate.
You, the victim of Peres, on the other hand, even though your life was destroyed by this man, YOU have to wait, and you can only be DISpassionate even if you are allowed to criticize, eventually, after a certain buffer zone invented by the other side.
So I say no. We call the emperor nude when we see it. We do not praise him and then when nobody cares anymore, only then point out his nudity DISpassionately in retrospect, when it’s not in the news anymore and nobody is paying attention.
So I’m turning the tables. I say, if you have anything good to say about Shimon Peres, be quiet now, let his direct victims have their say first, PASSIONATELY, and then one week from now after shiva, anyone who wants to praise his legacy do so DISpassionately, when nobody gives anymore.
Otherwise, you are grievously insulting everyone whose lives this man destroyed.
And keep in mind, anyone he ever helped, by definition, he did it by taking money by force from others.
Farber out.
The Jewish Libertarian 