God Bless America (I'll say anything to get your attention)
In the deep silence of early afternoon in our desert home away from home (two minutes walk away from one of the most breathtaking views in Israel) I sat reading the article in Haaretz (it’s from Thursday, the article’s no longer on their site and their archives aren’t working, sorry) about the Amnesty International report.

You know, the desert has a pace of it’s own, and even when you come for a short while, the sleepiness soon becomes a part of you. All the bad things seemed so far away. This place is probably too far away from anywhere to be interesting to any terrorists. Even at rush hour in the middle of town, seven people on the street at one time is a crowd. A large scale massacre would therefore be difficult.

So there I was sitting reading the paper in the kitchen. Bish was asleep, the girls playing, and we’d all forgotten that we’d planned to go on a hike in the crater. Everything was so peaceful and I’m reading that even Amnesty International has come to their senses…
I felt a surge of amazement and gratitude. I know everyone’s so cynical about this, and why it took them so long, but at that moment I just felt very moved that this should happen.

It’s quite a surprise when out of the blue, an organization we thought was totally against us suddenly notices that what we’ve been going through is wrong, and that we don’t have it coming to us.

Bish says all these changes in the attitude towards us of late are because of the Bush speech. Isn’t that strange? Everyone ridicules George Bush and America, but he just has to say “boo!” and everyone jumps to attention!

Well, I’ll drink to that.



However…
Soon out – two Amnesty reports being prepared about IDF activities in Nablus and Jenin during “Defensive Shield” (according to the same Haaretz missing link).