(This was supposed to be a comment reply, but as usual, it grew too long and even acquired a quote from the Vulgate that i saw on a painting in my doctor's office).
Dear N.,
First of all, thanks for teaching me the word tightfisted. I wholeheartedly appreciate it.
The "Dear N." part was directed at you, of course, the rest was mostly a response to my new crazy fan MeahevServi. At first i thought that he is one of my linguist-friends playing a joke at me, but he convinced me that he really is a Serbian guy who learns Hebrew and listens to Esther Ofarim, Zehava Ben and Sarit Hadad for the fun of it. Weird, but true.
I liked the SPITE/DAVKA thing. Identified the SPITE immediately as a Seinfeld reference. I used to write a "Seinfeld dictionary" once, with words such as spongeworthy, ribbonbully, doubledipper etc...
Anyway, about ninety years ago a bunch of pioneers ("halutzim") learned Hebrew for the fun of it and came to live in this crazy Land of Israel in the midst of Arab population. (Were your grandparents among them, by any chance?) For them SPITE was a very good reason. We still live here - hardly 6 million Jews in the midst of 600 million Arabs. In spite. Hæc dicit Dominus Deus: Iſta eſt Ieruſalem! In medio gentium poſui eam et in circuitu eius terras (Ezechielis V). I have a choice - i can go to the USA and be a VMS sysadmin there for a very good salary. But i don't. (It also proves that i am not tightfisted).
By the way, to the best of my knowledge, a significant part of E. Olmert's family made the other choice and lives abroad. I know that i sound like all those religious fanatics that call the radio to tell how they hate Olmert (Galey Tzahal - "Yesh im mi ledaber" etc.), but i just state a fact - there are a few differences between me and Olmert's children and this is one of those differences. I don't mind that his daughter is an outspoken lesbian radical left activist, but when a Prime Minister's sons live abroad, it's a bit too much. Which reminds me, that Y. Rabin's mamramnik son Yuval lives abroad too. And so does Y. Arafat's family. Hmmmm, i see a pattern here ...
Gush-Katif settlers were tightfisted? Too much taxes were spent on them? Maybe. But people who did buy land 20 km's to the north are now shelled with Kassams, so what's the difference? Should they move further to the North, to Tel Aviv? Or maybe back to Poland, Russia, France, Morocco, Argentina? That's what the terrorists want, and they are becoming better than ever at getting it.
Currently the most moral and reasonable and the least violent way to stop them and to make the world take us seriously is to rebuild Gush-Katif. The best argument that the supporters of the Disengagement kept repeating was that Israeli troops won't die in Gaza anymore. Then i would always respond - they won't die in Gaza, but they will die outside Gaza and then they will go back to Gaza too. I can't tell that i'm happy about it, but turns out that i was right. So why did we have to destroy 25 villages and deport 10000 people - our own people?
We can fix this damage by rebuilding Gush-Katif just as it was a year ago. Kfar Darom existed in the time of Mishna, and abandoned some time later; the land was bought from the Arabs in the first years of Zionism and resettled by Jews, until the Arabs drew them away by force in 1948; than it was rebuilt again in 1970 and destroyed in 2005. It can be rebuilt again.
Bring the boys back home? I feel very cruel to tell it, but the last time that we brought the boys back home by releasing hundreds of terrorists, everyone knew that it's a matter of time until Hizballah captures some more of our boys. Now they are rolling on the floor laughing at us. I'm terribly cynical here, but the way we're dealing with it now, there won't be a shortage of boys to bring back home any time soon.
I wish women ruled the world. Or at least more women than today. If i could, i would reserve 60 seats in the Knesset for women. Seriously. (But not Kipi Livni or Limor Livnat, please - they make me sick.) There's a nice song that goes:
Women of the world,
Take over,
'Cause if you don't, the world
Will come to an end,
It won't take long.
P.S. Did you read Allen Ginsberg's Howl? It's a little hard to understand at first, but when you just ignore the intentional grammar errors and let it flow, it's quite powerful. My favorite part:
we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep