Poor losers By Berel Wein (August 11) I have lived in Israel now for a number of years, and there is very little in the American Diaspora that I truly miss, except, naturally, family and friends. But I do miss baseball - the Major League kind. In my opinion, this sport requires the most physical skill and mental concentration, and enormous inner fortitude. The main lesson that baseball teaches is not how to win - all sports do that - but rather how to lose. For in baseball, even the best teams lose 65 to 70 times a season. The best hitters in baseball fail in their attempts two-thirds of the time. It is a sport that tests the mettle of response to failure and the ability to rebound from defeat. And over the long 162-game season, the response to failure and losing cannot be one of bitterness and whining complaints about the poor judgment and inadequacies of one's teammates or of the umpires. If it is never your fault, then you can never improve. This profound thought was brought to mind by the behavior of most of the newspapers, radio and television reporters and commentators, and the Left in general after the election of Moshe Katsav as Israel's eighth president. They had a fit! The search began immediately for the "traitors" (no softer word was used by the media experts who are continually so blatantly biased in their elitist and leftist, superior, know-it-all, non-objective reporting) who deserted Peres for Katsav. They were out to discover which Knesset members had dared not to realize that the media and other predictions of a Peres shoo-in should have made them vote for Peres. We immediately heard calls from the left for the abolition of the secret ballot for the presidential election, so that next time we will all know who is guilty of ignoring the judgment of the "experts" who know what is best for us. The day after Peres's defeat, Channel 1's political commentator stated that the president should no longer be chosen from the ranks of Israel's politicians. Too bad he didn't have that idea before the elections. In the minds of these people, democracy is a one-way street that only runs left. Too put it baldly, they are all bad losers. They are so convinced of the rectitude of their opinions that they are unable to imagine that there are others who disagree with them. On the day after President Katsav's election, the press published results of polls that "proved" that the people had really wanted Peres and not Katzav. Now, I am a firm disbeliever in polls, especially Israeli media polls. Yitzhak Mordechai based his candidacy for the premiership on polls. Last week, I heard a professor report (based on polls) that the majority of religious citizens will not obey the laws of the state. When he reported this, with serious face and professorial certainty, he was contradicted by a number of politicians - mostly secular ones. What questions did he ask in the poll? Who were the people he interviewed? How many people were in the sample? He was insulted that anyone dared ask these questions. His poll was infallible. Polls on the people's preference for president are also suspect. They may very well be biased, serving the political leanings of the newspapers that sponsored them. In any event, their publication the day after the election only confirms what bad losers and poor sports the Left breeds. I was surprised that the Prime Minister was not seen personally congratulating President Katsav. I noticed in the papers that after Katsav's election, Tommy Lapid, that noted liberal and democrat, accosted Sharansky and asked him "How will you explain to your constituency that you voted for a Sephardi?" There is no limit to the anguish of the Left in losing. We will see that the media in Israel will treat Katsav far more harshly and scrutinize him much more carefully than they did his predecessor - and all because he had the temerity to win when he was supposed to lose. One of the great talents of the Jewish people throughout history has been the ability to lose and yet persevere - thus eventually winning. We lost to Assyria, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, Christianity, Islam, paganism, Communism and all the other "majority" sure-fire faiths and beliefs. Yet we survived them all, because we knew that losing is an experience that comes to all humans, and that it is how one deals with it that truly defines one's humanity. We commemorated this past week our events of greatest loss. The Jewish attitude was to accept responsibility for these and other losses, and to continue in pursuit of our destiny. It is this resilient attitude that brought us home to Zion in our time and allowed the great events in Israel to occur. It is the deterioration of this approach, the inability to accept discomfort and loss, the search to always place the blame on others, the arrogant confidence that only I am right, that now threatens our state more than any external foe.