School starts tomorrow
No problem getting the girls to go to bed tonight!

Excerpts from Nahum Barne’a, Yediot Aharonot, Shabbat Supplement, 8/30/02:
“Haled put the plate of knafeh on the table, to put something sweet into the bitter, and said simply: Our little brother, Issa, did the terrorist attack in Rishon Letzion, in the pedestrian mall.

Two new immigrants were killed in the terrorist attack in the pedestrian mall on 23rd May this year.(it was actually on the 22nd, Barne’a doesn’t mention that one of those killed was a 16 year-old) The Tanzim, the military wing of Fatah took responsibility. Issa, the murderer, was 17 when he died, a high school student.

“Ahmad El-Mugrabi from the Tanzim enlisted my brother,” said Haled. “El-Mugrabi has a brother, Ali, who studied at the same school as our brother. He filled his head. That’s how he enlisted the girl who committed suicide in Kiryat Yovel (the supermarket in Jerusalem), as well.

“At the beginning of the Intifada our father called us, the three boys, for a talk. You’re not part of this story, he said”.

“I was closest to Issa”, says Haleed (Haled’s brother). “He used to tell me everything. He even told me that he had begun to smoke, a big secret at his age. But he didn’t tell me about the enlistment.

"On the day of the terrorist attack he threw a party at a friend’s house. With music. Then he told Mom, I’m going to play football. At 11 that night we started to look for him. Three days later I turn on the television, here, at work and I see a photo of my brother and message of the Al-Aqsa Brigades. My brother had suddenly become a Shaheed.

“He’s not a human being, this El-Mugrabi. Why did he send my brother to commit suicide and not his own? If I had seen him in the street I would have done something bad to him. The brothers of the girl from Kiryat Yovel looked for him for a long time. They wanted to kill him”.

But El-Mugrabi is not to be found. He’s in an Israeli prison.

“Last week,” Haleed said, “They came to us from the army. They said if you work with us we won’t do anything to you. I said I’m not working with anyone. Then you’ll sleep in the street like a dog, the soldier said”.

“Then the army came a second time,” Haled said. “You’ve got half an hour to take out your things, they said. My father is a lawyer. He asked if they had a warrant. They said, you’ve already wasted five minutes of your time. Yallah, terrorists. Get out.

“After the soldiers had laid the explosives, they all stood for a souvenir photograph, like a soccer team. Then came the explosion. We had a palace, a 375 square meter house and every thing is gone. We didn’t have time to take out half of the things”.

“The Palestinian Authority came”, Said Haleed, the younger brother. “They said we’ll give you a monthly allowance of a thousand shekels. My Mom said I don’t want it. Is that the price of my son’s life? They took him to die at an age they don’t take boys to war”.

“If I had known what he was going to do, I would have cut off both his feet”, says Haled, the older one.

“I watch Arafat on TV”, says Haleed, ”And he’s shouting Shaheed, Shaheed, Shaheed. And I say to him collaborator, collaborator, collaborator. Ahmed Yassin is better than him. At least, Yassin doesn’t lie. Doesn’t talk of peace and make war”.

[…]

Abu Zooz says, “When the IDF entered Bethlehem a lot of people were pleased. Beforehand, every five people here, every ten people, would take weapons and become their own government. They would come into the restaurant and say: Give us all the money. Or they would phone me up and say: Give us 40 thousand dollars, or else we will kill you.

"But now you’re coming in, going out, and coming in, and going out. 90% of people in Bethlehem say it’s better that Israel stay”.

“It’s true”, says Haleed.

“When Arafat first came I said he’s bringing bad luck with him,” said Abu Zooz. “No good will come of him”.

“And now my father cries”, says Haled, “he cries all the time. They won’t give us back the body. They say they’ve buried him in Beer Sheva, but they won’t tell us anything”.

“We have a question,” Haleed says. “Are we allowed to rebuild our house? And if we do, will they destroy it again?”

Why is the house important? I ask.

“We can’t bring back my brother to life. At least we can get the house back. I am just thinking about the house all the time. I have decided to save enough every day for one brick, till we have enough for a whole house.”

[…]

The next morning I told their story to Muhammad Dahlan, Arafat’s close aide. …
“…I know the Palestinian people. You’re right, they are angry with Arafat. They say to me that he %!$#ed everything up. I tell them not to be heroes with me. We’ll come to him. I will attack him and you will just say Dahlan is right.

"And then they come to Arafat, and Arafat kisses them, and they start to tell him how great he is””.

My translation.

Comment about comments.
I’ve found that answering comments can be time consuming so I’ve decided to keep my reactions to them to a minimum. After all, I get my day in court all day and every day in my regular postings.

Comment about e-mails.
Most of my free time, today, was spent answering an e-mail, and now I’m too tired to blog, which isn’t very fair at all, is it?
So I think what I will have to do in future is publicly answer e-mails that I find interesting enough to spend whole days answering. By that I mean here on the blog. Don't worry, I won't divulge any private info.

I have tried to adapt today's e-mail for posting but it just isn't working so I've dropped it.

Update: This is not intended to discourage commenters or e-mailers.

The end is not nigh.
Fred says GedankenPundit has a posting that leads to this poll of Palestinian public opinion. My verdict: Don’t expect it to be “all over by Hannuka”, to rephrase a popular British saying from WWI (I think).

I know you weren’t expecting that, it’s a joke, haha.

From my mail box (I’ve seen this before. I think Our Sis sent it to me last time, but I can’t ask her because she’s abroad. Anyway, it’s just as good the second time):

Story With A MORAL

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally he decided the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway. It just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement, he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well and was astonished at what he saw. With every shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing.

He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and trotted off!

Now, the Moral of the Story:

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a stepping stone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up!

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

P.S. - The donkey later came back and kicked the #%!$ out of the man that tried to bury him.

This time, a teenage girl.
The Palestinians have executed Rajah Ibrahim, the 18 year-old niece of 35 year-old Ikhlas Khouli, that poor mother of seven they killed last week.

An example of a country that managed to beat terrorism, with international help.
This evening, on Israeli TV channel two news, Ehud Yaari brought the Sri Lankan example of beating suicide terrorism. He explained why the Tamil Tigers gave up their twenty year struggle that had claimed 80,000 lives. When they lost international support, and had funding from abroad blocked, they realized that they had no chance of reaching their political goals. When they saw they had no choice, they signed a peace agreement with the Sri Lanka government.

So what does that mean for us? It means that European support for the Palestinians, both in spirit and in cash, is egging them on. They murder hundreds and the Europeans and the leftist lobbies in the US and in Israel say, “Oh, those poor Palestinians, it’s the Israelis pushing them to despair that forces them to do it, they’re not to blame”. This serves to strengthen them. If this uncritical international (and Israeli) support would cease, and they would be recognized internationally as the murderous menaces they are, they would be forced to accept a peace plan, and keep to it. We know this, this is nothing new. But the Sri Lanka example is proof that this is a feasible idea.

Now is not the time for dialogue
Now is the time for fighting and winning.

But the time for dialogue will come, hopefully. Fred Lapides sent me this, which started made me thinking about the effectiveness of dialogue projects.

I used to think projects like this one could be effective in creating understanding between Palestinians and Israelis. The rationale is right. Just get both sides to meet, talk and listen, getting to know each other and things will look different. But what are they really worth?

I worry that, since the war started, my daughters don’t have the opportunity to meet Arabs. This and the fear of terrorist attacks, open the way for stereotyping and generalizing. Before the war, I could always remind them of M’hammad or Isma’il or someone else, whom we had met on our last trip to Sinai and who had carried them round on their back, helped them climb on to the camel or just laughed with them. Now the memory of these friends grows dim.

Nearly two years ago, my eldest daughter should have participated in a project of meeting school children from Arab Yaffo, first in our school and then in theirs. But the meetings were to take place just a few months after the Arabs of Israel had initiated violent protest demonstrations and during which thirteen were killed. The meetings were cancelled, and the children missed a rare opportunity to meet and get to know each other.

I grew up in Haifa, a mixed city. I had two Arab boys in my class at school. One was my friend. We sat together for two years. I helped him with his English and he helped me with my Arabic. He used to joke that my Arabic writing looked like a six-year-old wrote it. The Arabs from the nearby village waited with me at the same bus stop. At night the two buses going to the village and to my neighborhood were unified and I got to ride through the village on the way home. We often visited Arab villages on scouts trips and school trips, in Israel proper and in the territories, regardless (I wasn’t even aware of the difference, in those days). There was no danger. I remember one trip in the mountains of Judea, walking in the Wadi, and looking up to see tens of school children, in an Arab village schoolyard, looking down at us, waving and smiling. It’s hard to believe it ever happened. We used to hike freely in Judea and Samaria. I well remember trips to Herodion and the Haritun cave, where two Jewish schoolboys, Koby Mandell and Yossi Ishran, who lived in a nearby settlement, were slaughtered, in May 2001. A school trip to these places has been unthinkable for years.

In those days, before the first Intifada, Arabs from the territories worked freely in Israeli cities. When I first moved to Tel Aviv, in my twenties, I got to know quite a lot of them. Bish had worked his way through university as a waiter and knew Arabs from the territories who had worked with him in the restaurant. Arabs from the territories renovated the building we were living in, taught me how to make them the Turkish coffee they liked and had free use of our bathroom. We gave them a kitten when our cat had a litter. Arabs from the territories were very much part of every day life in the city.

The forced separation between Palestinians from the territories and Jews has nothing to do with any racist sentiments or apartheid, which is what they’re trying to pin on us. It’s a direct result of the Palestinians’ violence and nothing else. The principle being that if we can’t trust them not to stab us (that’s how it was during the first Intifada -stabbings in the street) or shoot us or blow us up, then they can’t be in our streets. At first, the younger, single men were prevented from coming, but then older men with families started doing pigu’im (terrorist attacks) and the profile system proved useless.

On one of his trips to Sinai, Bish made friends with the cook at the camp place he was staying at. He was a young student of Islam from near Isma’iliya in Egypt, and the work in Sinai was a summer job. Being the cook, and purposefully sticking to the kitchen, he never actually got to meet any of the many Israelis he fed. This was his choice. But Bish was there on his own and sat with the workers and talked to them for hours. Bish found common grounds especially with the intelligent young cook, the student from Isma’iliya, who had only ever been fed with stereotypes about Jews and Israelis and was amazed by this Israeli who was the complete opposite of everything he had expected an Israeli and a Jew to be, and to top it all, impressively knowledgeable about Arab and Egyptian politics. A few weeks later, Bish returned there with the girls and me, and I was able to witness the relationship that had developed between them. It was obvious to me that the young man felt a deep bond with Bish, and he promised to take his revelations about Jews and Israelis back with him to his university. I often wonder how today’s situation has affected him.

Dialogue projects, such as are suggested in this article have been quite commonplace in Israel for years. Their main disadvantage, the thing that makes them completely ineffective, to my mind, is the fact that they usually bring together people who already believe in compromise, in dialogue, in peace. In short, these projects go to great lengths and spend a lot of money, trying to persuade the already persuaded, to convince the convinced. They don’t seem to reach the people who really need them. The people filled with hate, the people set on killing and destroying.

I don’t know how we can go about educating for dialogue. It’s obvious that the PA has been going to great lengths to educate for hate. The generation that worked in Israel, and knew Israelis, is growing old. The younger generation is made up of people many of whom have never met Israelis besides soldiers in full combat gear, pointing guns at them, and settlers, some of whom are full of hate themselves, and just as incapable of dialogue.



But talking about dialogue,
Fred also pointed out this article by David Newman, chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in today’s NYTimes. Some people are completely deaf to what’s being shouted loud and clear. This person completely misses the point in his blindness and futile and ridiculous attempt at fair-handedness. In trying to explain why most of Israel’s left moved to the center and to the right he says, “When Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat failed to reach an agreement at Camp David in 2000, any remaining trust between the two sides fell away, terrorism returned to the streets of Israel and outright war to the alleyways and refugee camps of the West Bank.” Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat FAILED TO REACH AN AGREEMENT??? How about “Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak offered Yassir Arafat the best offer he’ll ever get if he lives to be a thousand, and he turned it down”?

“…terrorism returned to the streets of Israel and outright war to the alleyways and refugee camps of the West Bank”???? How about “Arafat and the PA declared war on Israel and proceeded with the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of innocent citizens, until Israel was left no choice but to reoccupy most of the areas of Palestinian self-rule”?

From his office in Ben Gurion University he knows for sure that, “Most Israelis were skeptical of the (Oslo) process and needed to be convinced that it was possible to reach an agreement with the people who, until yesterday, hated them and refused even to recognize their existential legitimacy”. Is that so? Well how do you explain, Mr. Bigshot-Article-in-the-New-York-Times, how come many extremely right wing friends of mine where convinced to vote for Ehud Barak in 1999, following Netanyahu’s unsuccessful premiership and were very hopeful about peace? Was I dreaming? Did it never happen? Were only intelligent, educated, university professors swept up in the optimism? Were intelligent, educated, university professors magically turned into a majority in Israeli society so as to elect Barak into office?

He goes on to blabber that “Few resources were invested in peace education or the creation of a language of peace that would have been meaningful to large sectors of both populations”. Both populations??? How dare he say such a thing? That the Israeli Media spoke of nothing else but the merits of Oslo, completely ignoring the problems - not a mention; that children in Israeli schools sang songs of peace and drew doves and olive branches and pictures of Arabs and Jews holding hands (and still do) – obviously irrelevant; that half the country broke down and cried openly when Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by an opposer of peace and that every year no expense was saved to commemorate his way – what’s that got to do with peace education? Oh, yes, it’s definitely both sides that were lax with regard to peace education.

So now we have the real reason for the mass flight from the leftist peace organizations. They, like Arafat, have become irrelevant. They’ve lost their grasp on reality. If they ever had it in the first place.

Saudi aches and pains
The Saudis just can’t keep Israeli goods out. They’re in a particular predicament about a certain Israeli “medicament” finding its way in, incognito, specifically, Pyroxicam, a drug used to soothe joint and muscle pains. I say, let them ache. I bet you the royal family will get some if they’re aching and paining.

Care of Fred Lapides.

Another good one
Yahoo this time: "dance depicted from fish movement". I'm #3.

Thank you, thank you. I owe it all to my Dad, who taught me to waltz to Johann Strauss' "Viennese Blood", a very fishy piece.

What am I talking about? Must be time for bed.

Hizbullah attacks IDF on Mount Dov on Lebanese border
with anti-tank missiles and mortars, wounding three soldiers.

The land is a national resource and is not the private property of the kibbutzim and the moshavim.
In July I wrote quite extensively about Hakeshet Hademokratit Hamizrahit, which
is a far left movement established by Jews originating from Arab countries. Among other things, I mentioned their involvement in opposing the kibbutzim and moshavim making money by realizing the lands they received from the state for agricultural purposes. Well, yesterday, they won their case.

“The High Court ruled … that the decision by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) to rezone kibbutz and moshav agricultural land for real estate development was null and void on the grounds that it contradicted the principle of equality.

The court ruled that the share of the revenues, in the form of compensation, that would accrue to the kibbutzim and moshavim as a result of the building - on what is state-owned land - was excessive.

The expanded seven-judge panel, which ruled unanimously, ordered the ILA to review its decision as soon as possible. In the meantime, the court determined, all deals linked to the freeing up of agricultural land for real estate development are to be frozen.”

If you read my posting about Hakeshet Hademokratit Hamizrahit, the movement responsible for submitting the petition to the high court, you know I’m not crazy about them. But I think this High Court ruling is just and I’m happy about it.

Thank you R.T.
R.T. came over today to help us move my computer from what was up till now the study, but is soon to become my younger daughter’s bedroom, into the living room. Our computers are wired in a network so we needed help to move things round. It’s a relief to get to spend my evenings with Bish again. He sits in the living room with his laptop, alternating between the net and the TV, and I have been busy of late, blogging in the study, so we were getting quite lonely. Now that’s fixed. The computer even looks quite nice in the living room. I didn’t think it would, but it does.

Separating the girls rooms has become necessary, because my eldest is beginning to need her space. The only thing is we’re going through all this trouble, rewiring, rearranging furniture, and so on, and our lease on the apartment is up in March. We will probably renew the lease, though, if the landlords don’t get too greedy.

I'm seventh on google for "horrible fish dead picture".
And me a vegetarian! I tell you, there are some very weird people out there.

Oh, look. Arabic News.com have Francofied British foreign office minister, "Jacque" Straw.
The French will love that. They should have gone all the way and called him Jacques Streaux.

Streaux said "that Britain encourages the Syrian government to work for the sake of peace, and to use its influence with the Lebanese Hizbullah party in order to prevent the escalation of the situation on the Lebanese - Israeli borders". Hah! Good one.

My old pal Fred Lapides thinks Streaux should maybe mention to the Syrians that they "get out of occupied Lebanon".

It looks like the Yaalon interview is the token pro-Israeli article of the current Haaretz weekend magazine (printed version).
The rest of it is full of horrified letters protesting Israel Air Force commander, Dan Halutz' interview of last week; Gideon Levi's stories of dead and amputated Palestinian children; an article trying to figure out why Israel should refuse entry to a group of 52 French "Peace" activists, many of them Muslims, who just wanted to "get to know both sides better", and so on, and so forth. I feel sick.

The most annoying thing about it is what I think is the reason for this dive even further left. For a few weeks now, The radio has been full of happy, smug advertisements that Haaretz is "not what you thought", which gleefully inform listeners that according to the latest TGI survey, exposure to Haaretz has actually gone up! I could scream. (Neither Bish nor I have been able to find a link to this, for some reason, besides this from Maariv, which obviously isn't very objective). Of course, as a result, Haaretz must now feel free to swing right on back as far left as possible, having made an effort to be a wee bit more even handed for a month or two. I can't wait for the letters in response to Yaalon's interview, due next week.

And this time, the children
Another article in the Haaretz series about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among survivors of terrorist attacks. A Jerusalem family tells of life following the Sbarro pigua.

I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable among all these multi-lingual Israeli bloggers.
Fortunately I have Voltaire's Candide in Hebrew, and chapter 23 is very short. Here's the English, for people who, horror of horror's, know neither Hebrew nor French!

I think I’ll cut it out of the paper and have it framed
and go back and read it every time I have to listen to Dr. Yossi Beilin and other people, stuck in mistaken conceptions, for reassurance that not everyone in this country is a complete and utter idiot.

I’m talking, of course, about Israeli Chief of Staff, Moshe Yaalon’s interview in Haaretz weekend magazine.

Every word is a gem. I tried to choose a sample passage, but they’re all so good I couldn’t decide. Go read it all. I know it’s long, but it’s worth it. Yes, you too, Dad.

By the way, having said that, I notice that quite a lot of the original print version of the interview has been omitted in the translation. At least two whole arguments have disappeared. One points to the mistake many Israelis make in demanding “now” solutions instead of focusing on long term conflict management, and the other one is about some people’s refusal to be parted with “the conception”, the same conception he maintains the Israeli Media had a large part in creating. Now, why on Earth should they cut those particular arguments, I ask.

Judaism's universal identity
Yair Sheleg from Haaretz says that “settlement theology” (as he calls it) is adjusting itself to the seemingly insoluble crisis the settlement movement finds itself in, by promoting the interesting and unusual philosophical ideas of Elijah Benamozegh, a 19th century rabbi of Livorno, Italy.

Follow up on Terminal Patient bill.
Professor Mordechai Ravid, director of the internal medicine ward at Meir Hospital, Kfar Sava, claims, in today’s Haaretz, that the Steinberg committee, appointed by former health minister Shlomo Benizri to legislate guidelines on the medical approach to a dying patient, determined principles that do not add to existing laws, but just complicated matters. To base this claim he complains that the Steinberg committee was made up of dozens of members who were split into four sub-committees. He contrasts this with the committee that dealt with reforms in the health services and headed by Judge Shoshana Netanyahu that consisted of just four members. I’m glad he mentioned this, because now I know why the health services reform was such a mess! The reform was, and remains, extremely unpopular. While the new health system substantially improves the situation of the very poor and the very sick, it seems to me that the great majority of the population pay a great deal more for their health services and receive a great deal less. For instance, I had my first child before the new system was initiated and my second child after. The result was that many of the routine pregnancy checkups that I was entitled to during my first pregnancy through my sick fund, I had to pay for privately, during my second. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford this (just about), but this is surely not the case for most women. Does this not raise the likelihood of babies being born with avoidable deficiencies? What does this mean for the future health of our population?

But the article is not about that. Professor Ravid makes some interesting remarks about the difference, morally, (if any) between active euthanasia or assisted suicide and refraining from giving life support treatment, in accordance with a patient’s wishes. He maintains that the innovative idea of a timing machine that will periodically stop a respirator and allow a doctor to refrain from turning it on again (you may remember my writing about this, a few days ago) is an absurd attempt at forcing religious values on secular patients. This is all very well, but we’re not living in a perfect world and I view this idea as a realistic solution to a political difficulty.

“The main issue the committee should have dealt with” he goes on to say, ”is living wills. It is necessary to establish rules regulating on what terms such a will is valid and how it should be phrased, what restrictions must be taken into consideration in implementing it and most important, for how long it is valid. A healthy person writing a will like this is not equipped to know how he will feel when ill. If an agreed document of principles could be put together on this issue, that would suffice”.

Just pour some more money on them.
Israeli Guy, Gil, has some interesting comments on the Marshall style peace plan being suggested by Stef Wertheimer, Israeli industrialist millionaire. Gil correctly points out, among other things, that the Germans and the Japanese had the decency to surrender before the dough started raining from heaven. Wertheimer apparently doesn't think this is necessary in the Palestinians' case.

A few days ago Shoshana, from The News, Uncensored and I had a discussion about another proposed MidEast Marshall Plan (Or maybe the same one. Shlomo Meital, who did the proposing, in this case, could very well be in cahoots with Wertheimer who, I understand, is busy organizing a powerful following for his plan). Our discussion focussed mainly on the economic state the previous version of a MidEast Marshall Plan (Oslo) left the Palestinians in (and that's before they really plunged themselves into dire economic straits by initiating war with their peace partners).

Update: Some very interesting comments have been posted in reaction to this matter on Gil's page.

Something I missed before about the Temple Mount possible disaster.
Nadav Shragai says in Haaretz that Jerusalem District archaeologist Gon Zeligman, does not believe the renovations of the "Solomon Stables" are connected to the current problem, but thinks it is the result of faulty construction. The wall is part of shoddy building additions from the 19th century. In this respect his view differs from that of Dr. Eilat Mazar from the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities. Another possibility cited in Haaretz' printed edition but not in the online translation, suggests that the Waqf works changed the way the (rain?) water trickles into the mountain, causing the bulge.

This photo clearly shows the bulge:


Here is another really good photo and a sketch explaining exactly where the bulge is. Unfortunately the explanations are in Hebrew but it will help you get the picture. The bulge is on the lower right side, denoted by a little black frame with white writing and an arrow pointing at the wall. The nearby mosque with the silver dome is Al-Aqsa (The Golden Dome of the Rock, is not Al-Aqsa, contrary to popular Western belief, but a marking of the place where Muslims believe the prophet Muhammed landed when he flew to Jerusalem on his winged horse, one night). The Western Wall is on the lower left side.

Yet another Update: Tal G. has something better - a very clear aerial photo and a translation from Yediot Aharonot, which gives some different information about when the wall was built than Haaretz. Nice to see everyone agreeing about the facts.

Go read more Temple Mount disaster stuff
Ribbity Frog has been reading the official Palestinian stand on the Temple Mount south wall collapse danger in the Palestinian Authority's official newspaper Al-Ayyam. And he's summarized it specially for us in English. Isn't he a dear?

This could end in a terrible, terrible disaster
I’m very worried about the warnings that the southern wall of the Temple Mount is in very serious danger of collapsing, possibly as a result of renovations that have been going on in "Solomon's Stables" for a few years now, in order to turn the stables into a mosque. According to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, it’s not a matter of if it will collapse, but of when. They say it just won’t hold. The renovations are actually illegal, and have been going on without the required archeological and engineering supervision, for political reasons.

I have this mental image of it all coming down and bringing tens of thousands of Ramadan prayers with it (like the walls of Jericho or the Philistines in the Samson story).

Also scary is why the Waqf, the Muslim religious trust that has defacto control of the Temple Mount, and has been conducting the renovations, is so adamant that everything is all right and refuses to let any experts in to make sure. If someone told me my house was about to fall down, I’d have someone in to check it double quick, even if I thought it was nonsense. The Waqf is insisting that there has been no change in the size of what’s being called a growing "bulge". But how can they know this, when they can only see one side? Not only are they refusing to let experts check their side of the bulge, they are even going so far as to blame Israel for endangering the Temple Mount by encircling it with the army, and with archeological excavations and contend that Israel is actually planning the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

I dislike conspiracy theories, and usually try to refrain from linking to articles about Islam’s inherent evil, and that sort of stuff, which make me feel very uncomfortable. But something very fishy is going on here, which demands attention. It seems very likely, given their extremely suspicious behavior, that the Waqf is busy purposefully doing serious damage to antiquities from biblical times, so as to disprove the Jews’ rights to the area. The claims to this effect are nothing new, but now it looks like it could very well cause a calamity. It's quite logical that the Waqf can’t allow anyone in to witness what they’ve been up too, under the circumstances, even if it will cost thousands of lives. In preparation, they are brainwashing the people, so if it does happen, Israel and the Jews will automatically be blamed. That must have been why they had that big rally there, a few days ago. Besides the cost in lives, in the event of a collapse, which could be horrific, the effect on the masses all over the Muslim world, will probably be unprecedented.

Update: Nadav Shragai says in Haaretz that Jerusalem District archaeologist Gon Zeligman, does not believe the renovations of the "Solomon Stables" are connected to the current problem, but thinks it is the result of faulty construction. The wall is part of shoddy building additions from the 19th century. In this respect his view differs from that of Dr. Eilat Mazar from the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities. Another possibility cited in Haaretz' printed edition but not in the online translation, suggests that the Waqf works changed the way the (rain?) water trickles into the mountain, causing the bulge.

This would be good for one of James Taranto's "You Don't Say" passages:
"Police believe couple found stabbed in Carmiel apartment were murdered". Haaretz updates, 10:56.

We went to Lilo and Stitch

Great fun! I thought it was hilarious. My youngest thought it was the saddest movie she’d ever seen and cried her eyes out.

Aaaaaaaaaah!
I've been sweating over adding a "comments" option for HOURS. I've finally managed to get it right. All sorts of horrible things were happening on the way. The posts were going all skewy and that wasn't even the worst of it. My heart still hasn't completely recovered! But as they say, all's well that ends well. (Isn't that a silly saying? What about PTSD???)

Now I've got to rush to get the girls and me ready on time for the movie we're going to.

“As you are aware, we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

M to 007

The World Is Not Enough (1999).

Buy Israel Bonds
It's apparently a good deal. Read all about it in Haaretz.

All the truth about the myth of "The cease-fire that was missed because of Shehadeh’s elimination"
By my main man, Ehud Yaari.

It looks like the fun has begun
See, it even rhymes.

Fred Lapides is back!

OK, so maybe my previous posting
made me seem overly positive about equality between men and women in Israel. So things aren’t perfect. So maybe it is more difficult for women to “succeed” in Israel, than for men. But look how many wonderful new laws that help women, the relatively few women MK’s have managed to pass in the Knesset, in recent years. Maybe it’s not the quantity of representation that matters, but the quality.

Oh, and by the way, Justin, I hope you haven't taken my argument personally. We're on the same side, after all. Let's just agree to disagree in this matter.

I forgot to point out that those Likud MK’s I mentioned before, are also Government members.
Naomi Blumenthal is Deputy Minister of Infrastructure; Limor Livnat is Minister of Education; and Tzipi Livni is Minister Without Portfolio.

Disenfranchised? Maybe disenchanted.
Justin Weitz, the original American Keiser (yikes!), has made some rather strange comments on Israeli Politics. Lynn B., always In Context, threw down the gauntlet, which I will now proceed to take up.

I hadn’t even bothered to read the original Haaretz article on the subject of the lack of a reasonable percentage of women Knesset members. Quite frankly, I find the issue extremely tedious. One thing struck me as particularly ridiculous in the article and that is the argument that “even China has more female politicians than Israel”. Well, duuuh! Last time I checked, China was a communist entity with tough affirmative action. And would it not be an understatement to point out that China is not exactly the same sort of democracy as Israel? I once saw a TV program about a Chinese family (in China), with two career-orientated parents (the mother was a successful radio presenter). They happily pointed out that they had put their solitary daughter, who was about 4 years old, if I remember correctly, in a 24 hour, 7 day a week, state funded kindergarten, so they could get on with their careers! Give me 17 women MK’s any day, if that’s the alternative.

Furthermore, it was interesting to see that (in the printed version of the article - cut in the translation for some reason) MK Marina Solodkin (from Yisrael Ba’aliyah, Natan Sharansky’s party) explains her opposition to reserving seats for women in the Knesset by reminding us that in the communist party of the USSR there was a 30% quota for women.

Coming back to our American Keiser, he writes that the relatively few women in Israeli politics, “tells of a great problem in Israeli politics”. He fails to point out that the percentage of women parliamentarians in Israel is actually higher than in the USA, according to the article in Haaretz.

He goes on to point out that the secular-religious “divide (in Israel) prevents Israel from enacting any true feminist legislation.” And that, “Israeli women have been largely disenfranchised because, the ultra-Orthodox aside, they are socially liberal”. I have no idea what “socially liberal” means as a generalization about women, or what that has to do with the price of fish, for that matter. I haven’t noticed that Likud MK’s, Limor Livnat, Naomi Blumental or Tzippi Livni, are more inclined to being socially liberal than male Likud MK’s, besides being more likely to promote women’s issues, for obvious reasons. But as to feminist legislation, as far as I know, the laws in Israel in this respect are very advanced by any standard, as are laws with regard to homosexuals rights, for instance (rather surprising, considering that “the religious parties control over a quarter of the Knesset”, isn’t it?).

Here are some examples of so-called “feminist” laws passed in Israel in recent years:
(* Denotes a Hebrew link).

“The 1992 Single parents Law has ameliorated (Hmmm, that’s a good word) the situation of single parent families. The law strengthens the protection for single-parent families with low income by increasing the level of means-tested benefits and awarding day care and child-education grants and priority in vocational training. Thus, almost all single-parent families - both official and unofficial - are eligible for income-support benefit at the increased rate”.


“In 1996, the Equal Pay (Male and Female Employees) Law was passed. Although previous legislation had intended to provide equal pay, the many loopholes had allowed for significant gendered wage gaps to develop; the current legislation will eliminate these loopholes. At this time, on the average, women earn 30% less than men who are employed in comparable positions do”.

In 1998 a law specifically forbidding sexual harassment* in the work place was passed, denoting a suggestion or a reference as enough to be regarded as harassment.

In 2000 the Knesset passed a law granting equal rights to women* in the workplace, the military and in other spheres of society. The law also lays out the rights of women over their bodies and protects women from violence and sexual exploitation. This law is in addition to a general equal rights law already in effect since 1951, which wasn’t specifically about women’s equal rights.

Another law protects pregnant women from being fired as a result of their pregnancy, and from what I understand, women get a far better deal in Israel, with regard to childbirth leave, than in the US.

So much for the secular-religious divide preventing Israel from enacting any true feminist legislation, which, as you can see, is completely without factual basis. I think the real problem in Israel, in this regard, is actually enforcing these laws. The police are busy chasing after Palestinian mass murderers, as you well know.

So, once again, back to Mr. Weitz, this time to his claim that “Israeli women have been largely disenfranchised”. Whatever could he mean? Where did he get this idea? Could he really mean that Israeli women have largely lost the right to vote and be voted into office? That, after all, is the meaning of the word “disenfranchised”, according to all my dictionaries. I have checked and rechecked, just to make sure. Could this be some sociology term I am not aware of? A term equivalent to, say, the “glass ceiling”?

If I’m right to understand the word “disenfranchised” literally, well, as I said recently, I haven’t missed a national or municipal election since 1983 and for most of that time I think I was what Mr. Weitz would call moderately “socially liberal”. However, I don’t remember anyone stopping me at the door on the way in to vote. And if we’re just talking about the right to be voted into office, there are still 17 female MK’s out there. It might not be much, and they must have had to work really hard to get there, but no one’s stopping them at the door either, although many of them are at least “socially liberal” (I can think of one, off hand, if not more, that is much further left than that). I’d also say they are, nearly all, really loud and pushy. They’d be screaming to high heaven if anyone were blocking their entrance. I assure you, we’d have heard about it. So I’ll just assume “disenfranchised” is a sociology term that is beyond me and leave it at that. I confess having taken sociology for one year in university but I was really terrible. I just didn’t get it. I’m still traumatized from discovering “mentality” was a dirty word, and to this day I continue to scramble for suitably PC alternatives, when I wish to convey an idea that necessitates the use of that particular word.

Having said all that, there are still only 17 female MK’s out of 120. Why is that? We mustn’t forget to take into account the ultra-orthodox, whose women are far too busy bringing up, not to mention working to support, double-digit sized families, and doing their portion of good deeds for their communities, to have time to be active in politics. That is, even if their rabbis and husbands allowed them to.

That aside, Lynn says her “feeling was always that there just weren't that many women who wanted to lower themselves into the slime pit that is Israeli politics”. I whole-heartily agree with this assessment. This goes for men too. In my view, that’s the root of the “lack of leadership” in Israel everyone whines about all the time. The most talented won’t go anywhere near politics. I actually see it as a sign of Israeli women’s wisdom and common sense.

I could suggest another reason. Politics demand much more personal sacrifice of women than of men, as do all demanding, powerful jobs. In Israel, family values are very highly regarded. This is probably why I was so horrified with that Chinese couple sticking their infant child into what ultimately is an orphanage type institute with a polite name. By the way, when I say “family” I don’t necessarily mean traditional families. What I mean is putting family before self. A lot of Israeli women wouldn’t dream of compromising their families for what is ultimately (in my view, anyway) a greed for power.

But this doesn’t explain women’s impressive representation in other areas, such as the judicial system. Compared to their under-representation in the Knesset, women fulfill a prominent role in the State Attorney and the District Attorney offices and in the Justice Ministry, and there are a quite impressive amount of female judges (including three high court judges).

So I’d definitely go for the slime pit theory.

This lovely letter came on Naomi Ragen's mailing list just now:
“Cathy and I just returned from a 2-week vacation in Israel. It was great. Yes there was terrorism. Yes, many of our family and friends thought we should not go at this time. However, it had been 20 years since either of us had been. We talked about going this year a long time ago and we decided not to change our plan. We wanted a special vacation, to spend time with family and friends, to revisit the country from the perspective of adult parents, and to enjoy the Mediterranean.

Although "The Situation", as viewed in the media, was scary- we realized that the chances of us being in the wrong place during an attack were extremely remote. (WE did stay off buses and stayed away from some areas.) We could be the victims of a random tragedy anywhere on this earth. We could not let the hatred of Jews and the State of Israel influence our decision to go anymore than choosing to go to our synagogue or JCC. Given our history how can any Jew be afraid to go to Israel?

The whole trip was awesome. I'm glad we insisted on flying El Al. That way we were in Israel as soon as we boarded the plane. We loved staying with and being with family and friends. We enjoyed revisiting many of the tourist attractions and historical sites. It was special just being in Jerusalem, around the Sea of Galilee, and in biblical mountain ranges. The bond that we had with the land years ago was still there. It felt so good driving through the kibbutz farmlands of the Hula valley and swimming in the Sea of Galilee. We were proud to stand in flourishing settlements created by Jewish immigrants of the 1st and 2nd aliot. We marveled at advanced Israeli technology with the launch of an Ofek satellite. It was amazing to see the development of infrastructure and business despite the constant need to invest in a strong defense. We loved being with and talking with Israelis.

We never felt in danger despite two terrorist attacks while we were there.
Security was extraordinary. Guards were stationed at all the banks, in front of grocery stores, post offices, and restaurants. Cars were searched before entering parking lots to the malls. Soldiers were patrolling the Old City of Jerusalem. All of this simply made us feel safe, even good that we were being watched over by Jewish security. It did sadden us that these measures were necessary, but we never felt threatened by it.

Israelis are sad, frustrated and somewhat depressed. They are not sure that everything is going to be ok. The world is boycotting them; people and business are staying away. Only President Bush (Thank G-d) and the Americans are with them. They understand that their control of the Palestinian population is demeaning but they feel there is no alternative. They do not see anyone on the other side who is willing, capable or has the power to implement an enforceable peace. The other side is not preparing for a harmonious relationship. There is no Palestinian who is willing to stand up and take any responsibility for their people's predicament. No infrastructure has been built or planned to improve the lives of the Palestinian. They are not transforming their refugee camps into modern cities. They are not building education facilities or curriculum designed to promote peaceful coexistence with Israelis as neighbors. They are not creating jobs by supporting business growth. Instead, they promote hatred and war. Their resources are used to buy weapons and teach suicide
Bombers how to build bombs. Leaders have become rich while the people suffer.
Israelis will have to live with the consequences for a long time.

Our trip was everything anyone would want to get out of a vacation. We did not start out on a mission of solidarity. We just wanted to go to Israel. Many American Jews thought we were nuts, Israelis thought we were special and told us so. They were delighted to see us. People would approach us to see if we were tourists (the lack of tourists was so obvious by deserted tourist sites and near empty restaurants and shops), asked if we were afraid to be here - obviously not- and then thanked us for coming. Sometimes they chatted with us, other times they just wanted to say we are glad you are here. In nearly every restaurant we were treated like royalty. Management gave us free drinks and desserts. One manager insisted we take several desserts home with us. Can you imagine how we felt? We were in Israel for our benefit but everywhere we visited we made others feel good that we were there. We thought we were going to have a nice vacation and we did. We never imagined that our mere presence would make some Israelis feel better simply because we came. That is the memory that we will cherish from this trip. We will return soon.

To our friends and family. Thank you for your concern and prayers while we were there. We appreciate your heightened awareness during our two weeks in Israel.

Lanny and Cathy Plotkin
PlotkinL@aol.com”

The situation is not good, but let’s not make generalizations about Israeli Arabs.
The Israeli Air Force magazine (via Ynet) has the story of two Israeli Arab brothers who both serve as adjutancy N.C.O.’s in the Air Force, one in an F-16 squadron and the other in a Sikorsky CH 53 (“Yas’oor”) helicopter squadron. One of them has even tattooed his squadron emblem on his shoulder. They have seen operational action in the Gaza strip (one of them was an infantryman before changing to Air Force) and in South Lebanon. The one who works in the F-16 squadron waited for four months for his security clearance. He never believed an Arab would be accepted to a combat squadron and he was delighted to find he had been wrong. The brothers, who are Christian Arabs, say there are other young boys from their village who plan to enlist.

Seven more Arab Israeli citizens arrested for terrorism.
This time for taking part in the murderous attack on the bus at the Meiron Junction in the north of Israel.

In case you don't recognise him, the poodle on the right ... er, I mean on the left, at the bottom is none other than our very own Dr. Yossi Beilin.

This is courtesy of an Israeli blog (Hebrew) I've been reading for quite a while now, written by a thirteen year-old. This blog kind of takes me back to a time in life I do not miss.

And since you ask, the Beilin poodle thing is part of Israeli folklore, by now. Once, in ancient times, Rabin called Beilin Shimon Peres' poodle.

Ribbity Frog Blog
New Israeli blog by Arabic-reading blogger. Definitely a welcome addition and worth keeping an eye on. What is it with those frogs that makes them so irresistable?

Ribbit.

Ah, Bjorn Lomborg!
The original reformed environmentalist strikes again! This time in the NYtimes.

His main claim to fame is having the audacity to say that the dire warnings by environmentalists of an approaching environmental calamity on Planet Earth are greatly exaggerated. (I'm actually surprised Denmark hasn't revoked his citizenship).

Here's the article about him published in the UK Spectator in February 2002.

So here we have it: "Follow the Money: Where Do International Contributions to the Palestinian Authority Really Go?"
This is the full 40 page IDF report, including “an explanation of captured original Arabic documents (with their English translations)” detailing “the mechanism of this multi-million dollar money-laundering operation that has turned international humanitarian aid into support for terror and suicide bombing.”

According to the report, “by keeping a double set of books, the Palestinian Authority has systemically channeled at least 14% of its public budget, as stated to the IMF and donor states, to Fatah, other terrorist organizations, and various covert destinations”.

“Analysis of the documents captured shows that double-accounting practices enable the PA to redirect funding to PLO and Fatah apparatuses that were supposed to have been disbanded after the PA was established. Some of the documents described in this report prove the connection between PA financing of the Fatah/Tanzim, and suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks carried out against Israeli civilians”.

Care of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (which was originally pointed out to me by Nikita).

“The brutal truth is that this will be Israel's war as much as America's.”
Neill Lochery, director of the Center for Israeli Studies at University College, London, suggests, in this United Press commentary, that the US should involve Israel in the war against Iraq.

Proposed Israeli law - The Terminal Patient 2002, based on five principles:
“* Absolute ban on active termination of a patient's life

* Conferral of permission to refrain from providing life-prolonging treatment, when three basic conditions are met: the patient has a terminal condition; the patient suffers greatly; the patient doesn't not want to defer his or her death. This permission authorizes a decision not to put a patient on a respirator, should the three conditions apply

* For the first time, doctors in Israel will have a legal duty to provide medication to relieve suffering of terminally ill patients

* There is an obligation to conduct a clear, candid discussion with the patient, or his or her delegates

* Authorities can comply to written instructions provided by a patient, so long as the conditions noted above are in force.”

This is a tough issue in Israel because of Jewish beliefs about the sanctity of life and the unbending religious stand on suicide. They seem to have found an innovative solution to the problem of taking someone off a respirator: The respirator will stop after a set period, and it will be possible not to turn it on again.

This is a link to "Lilach - The Israeli Society to Live and Die with Dignity", a non-profit organization that helps Israelis who wish to sign a living will. It’s a Hebrew site, but it does offer some English articles here.

More about Israeli Chief of Staff Yaalon’s speech to the Rabbis from Haaretz:
“The chief of staff claimed that the Palestinians launched a war against Israel in 2000 when they grasped that the dispute was headed toward a diplomatic resolution – and rather than choosing compromise, they initiated terror and violence. The intifada is not a popular uprising, as some would have Israel and the world believe, Ya'alon stressed. Rather, it is a war controlled by the PA leadership, with PA officials determining the tactics and norms in the war”.

The Jerusalem Post has more:
“In an attempt to maintain terrorism as a tool with which to pressure the State of Israel, this leadership thought that the State of Israel would break much sooner.

It did not believe that the State of Israel could absorb [611] dead, could absorb the kind of economic damage we have been absorbing over the past two years, and they thought that there would be demonstrations much sooner which would direct the political echelon to reach decisions, whether it be a unilateral withdrawal or anything else that is essentially surrendering to terror."

Underscoring this point, Ya'alon said that "All the Arab circles chose what they saw as Israel's weak spot: Israeli society's inability to stand up [to terrorism], and it was no accident that they chose terrorism, which strikes at civilians, and the use of missiles which overcome all of Israel's abilities [to defend itself] and strike at the home front.

"They do this out of the belief that striking at Israeli society and its civilians will set off internal processes similar to the withdrawal from Lebanon. A society which projects an inability to stand up to losses puts pressure from the lower echelons to the higher ones, and this leads to demonstrations, etc., which ultimately leads to the political echelon making decisions based on the Arab side's interests," he said.

"The Arabs look at the past 20 years, from our first pullbacks in Lebanon made while counting those killed and the Jibril agreement, and I say these two things brought about the 1987 intifada. The Palestinians' understanding that Israel cannot stand up to losses the intifada brought upon us, and when we look upon what has happened since the intifada the current conflict is not an intifada and the processes that have taken place since, their belief that the State of Israel is not prepared to fight any more, to sacrifice for its defense, was strengthened, and therefore they believed it was right to press it at its weakest link with steadfastness."

There is no way of coming to an understanding with the present Palestinian leadership, Ya'alon said, adding that to show any weakness in this regard would put Israel into a tailspin.”

The JP also details some of Yaalon’s views on the threats Israel faces from her neighbors.

Ilana of Inner Balance says, “I'm sure a lot of Israelis were shaken by his (Chief of Staff Yaalon’s) words, reading the speech felt like a bomb dropping on your head. As much as it's difficult to face the reality of the situation, Ya'alon's speech is something we needed to hear, trust its truthfulness and extend our support”.

What Yaalon says is more or less what Ehud Yaari says. I’m glad someone with authority has said it out loud, in public (sort of – the speech was meant to be closed to the press but someone sneaked a tape machine in. Very naughty. Or maybe a sneaky way of making his views known without getting into trouble with his bosses).

The Spoons Experience tells his story.
A must if you’re a sucker for stories with happy endings.

Israeli Chief of Staff reveals his outlook on issues of security in a conference of Rabbis today .
"Chief of Staff Major General Moshe Ya'alon said today that Israel must emerge victorious in the current armed conflict, so the Palestinians understand that they may gain nothing through terror". According to Ynet (the (Hebrew) online version of Yediot Aharonot) he also said that the present Palestinian leadership does not recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and is trying to implement the "Stages Plan". He also said that the withdrawal from Lebanon was a mistake, and that we must not withdraw unilaterally from the territories. There's more, Syria, Iran, Iraq, the works. I'm too lazy to translate it all, knowing it'll probably be all over the place in English tomorrow.

Good.
And good riddance.

About the Muslim rally in Jerusalem - info on Tal G.
Judith Weiss also has some interesting things to say about this on Kesher. I can only say that the pictures of this rally on Israeli TV were not pleasant. They made me very angry.

I was always one of those prepared for compromise with regard to Jerusalem. I still am I suppose. But those guys have to recognize and accept our stake in the Temple Mount, or it's no go. No way.

I would like to say some stronger things, but I'm afraid of getting swept away. Rebecca Blood in her Weblog Handbook advises against writing when angry. I'll take her advice, in this case, for fear of saying things I will later regret.

Fire near the northern border.
From Ha'aretz updates:
“13:28: Hezbollah anti-aircraft shells fired near Lebanese border cause fire to break out near Kfar Yovel, no injuries.” (I can't find a Kfar Yovel in my atlas, but there's a place called Yuval, right on the border, a little west of Maayan Baruch and the Snir (Hatzbani) River).

From the updates in the Hebrew Haaretz website: “15:53 a fire is raging in the Hatzbani (Snir) River Nature Reserve. Fire fighters and Nature Authority rangers are trying to overcome the blaze”.

The two fires may be connected. I was in that very Reserve just four days ago. Remember those booms I heard?

It's so beautiful there, I hope the fire isn't doing too much damage.

I see the Jerusalem Post has something about it, too.

Hey, look!
It got hotter than 31 centigrade and my weather pixie (on the left) got short clothes! Wonders never cease! (Don't be too upset if this is gone before you saw it, I know most of you read me when it's night in Israel. Just come back over on the next heat wave.)

Aha! A newish Ehud Yaari article!
Finding one of these always makes my day.

This time he informs us that the two new anti-Semitic books in Arabic, we’ve all been waiting for, are out. He also helps us find information* about Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement’s online campaign to boycott U.S. companies connected to Israel (while simultaneously “complaining daily about Israeli restrictions on Palestinian trade with Israel”). The Fatah's popular website www.yafa-news.com also refers the mindful Arab consumer to a nice site that helps us see which goods carry the kosher sign, thus helping us avoid them. (A reminder: Yaffa is the Arabic for Jaffa or Yaffo, the city adjacent to, and nowadays part of, Tel Aviv). Last but not least, he tells us where* we can find a rare interview with one of Bin Ladens’ lieutenants.

*Arabic links. Oops! Jihadonline.com seems to have disappeared (I swear I had nothing to do with that – I wish I knew how).

I really love reading Judith Weiss over on Kesher.

The joy of an Israeli elementary education
The girls should be starting school again on Sunday. I can’t believe the summer vacation is nearly over. It just flew by.

Of course, Israeli parents are used to expecting a teachers’ strike at the beginning of each year. Israeli teachers are notoriously underworked. They work eight months a year, what with all the religious holidays, which reach their peek with three weeks (!) at Passover . Why three weeks? Well, I’ve yet to understand it. The best I can do is to assume that the predominantly female teacher community needs more time than the rest of us for the traditional pre-Passover cleaning). Of course, on the top of all the religious holidays we mustn’t forget the full two months of the Summer vacation (two months and ten days for junior high and high schools). When they do work, they have a twenty-four hour week, nearly half of the working week of most Israelis. (You'll notice I'm not even mentioning the sabbaticals).

Now I don’t want to sound jealous. I do not envy the teachers for having to spend their mornings in classes overflowing with 37 to 41 nasty, noisy, undisciplined brats (My daughters, of course, are perfectly behaved, and are no trouble at all for their teachers, besides asking intelligent and thought-provoking questions, and thus enriching the studious atmosphere in their respective classrooms). But after all they only have to do it for four or five hours a day, five days a week (luckily for our kids).

Anyway, back to the annual first of September teachers’strike. Now that my girls are old enough to stay at home without me, I couldn’t care less. Let them strike! I’ve paid my debt to society. All those stressful years, having hysterics all summer trying to arrange solutions for my kids, while I worked, and then being hit with a strike just when I thought the summer vacation nightmare was over. So strike away! See if I care! They probably learn more at home, anyway.

Last year, the biggest teachers' organization suffered a severe blow. The militant head of the organization, a professional unionist and the bane of all parents, was arrested for fraudulently purchasing a university degree, assignments, examinations and all, from the Israeli branch of Latvia University. I’m afraid I stooped to a particularly malicious joy at this unpleasant creature’s downfall.

Hopefully, until they find a villainous enough replacement for the infamous Ben-Shabbat, they’ll be less audacious and unscrupulous with their strikes.

Update: Janice, who knows all about where to buy Israeli goods, says, "We can relate to teacher's unions. They are lefty, hell-holes in the USA, too. It sounds even worse in Israel, but you were once and maybe still are a quasi-socialist state".

Article in Haaretz about a P.T.S.D. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) victim of the Passover Park Hotel terrorist attack.


Letter to the editor in Haaretz
“You advertise “Haaretz” newspaper as a newspaper “for people who think”. It’s very nice that the newspaper publishes such serious articles that we children don’t always understand, but we think children should also understand what is happening in the State of Israel. Just as there are supplements for literature, sport, economy and arts and entertainment, you should also publish a supplement for children and young people.

Talia Tentzer, Orr Ariel, ten-and-half-years-old, Jerusalem.”

Here! Here!

Although my daughters will probably still prefer Yediot Aharonot.

Ha'aretz’ Doron Rosenblum doesn’t think the polls are anything to go by.
According to him, the real reason people aren’t out demonstrating against the government is “a kind of spiritual curfew”. He maintains that, “As in a time of plague, the majority cloisters itself behind closed curtains”. He sums up that “this is how life looks after the total, sweeping victory of the pessimists, brutes, low-brows, and thoughtless louts from the two sides”. It’s always very effective to insult those you mean to persuade. This pessimistic, low-brow brute is full of gratitude to Mr. Rosenblum. My eyes are opened! I will cease from being a thoughtless lout, from this moment on, and will immediately go join those seven brave demonstrators in front of the Defense Ministry!

The UK Sunday Telegraph claims to have the real reason for Abu Nidal’s death.
“Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist, was murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein after refusing to train al-Qa'eda fighters based in Iraq”. The source? Reports by Iraqi opposition groups and “a US official who has studied the reports”. The article goes on to inform us, “American intelligence officials revealed that several high-ranking al-Qa'eda members had moved to northern Iraq where they had linked up with Iraqi intelligence officials”.

I woke up to the sound of an ambulance siren this morning. What happens is you hear one ambulance and you wait to see if there are more. If there are, you go and put on the radio. That is if you haven’t heard a big boom beforehand. In that case, you go and put on the radio with the first ambulance.

Latest funny Google hit: gay + male + photos. Oh, you’ve definitely come to the right place! (Forget it, I’m not posting the link).

Another interesting search engine hit - from someone looking for israeli + soldier + blogs. Amusing. If an Israeli soldier has time to blog then he’s not a combat soldier, and not what you’re looking for. What do you think this is the Danish army, for goodness sake?

Jen’s new blog What's Brewing is looking good.

IMAO
Great blog.

This is good:
Ilana of Inner Balance links to “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web” on her Hebrew blog. I love reading tips about writing. (Probably because I'm a struggling amateur and a new one at that).

Seen on Facts Of Israel. I know it's nothing new, but I couldn't resist that little choochy face on the right.

(I've no idea what choochy is, it just came out. Obviously some ancient baby talk memory. All mothers know what utter drivel comes out when we talk to our babies. Who knows where it comes from?).

Update: "Just to remind you that when you were a baby your Mum used to call you Choochy face (and your brother and sister) so that's where you remember it from.
Luv Mum"

It's always helpful when your parents are the first to read your blog.

If only this were true!
An Irish peace activist with the unlikely name of Sallah Afifi says, in a letter he writes from Ramle prison (awaiting deportation): “Despite the exclusive media coverage of aggressive Palestinian actions, the majority of people I have met in the West Bank are crying out for a peaceful solution to the occupation”.

Why do I only ever read this in sites written by Western or Israeli pro-Palestinian activists, many of whom speak no Arabic and therefore don’t know what’s really being said around them in Palestinian circles? Why is there no sign of this yearning for a peaceful solution on Palestinian television? Why is it not reflected in Palestinian newspapers? (Besides a solitary petition that was apparently widely mocked?) Or in Palestinian opinion polls?

Gaza and Jericho are still under self rule, why are there no demonstrations in those cities calling for a cessation of Palestinian hostilities and a demand for a return to negotiations?

He also says “Many soldiers I have encountered have the shame of their actions etched on their faces. They go as far as to motion me to one side, away from superiors and admit they realise they are committing senseless acts of harassment and worse. […] Soldiers claim they have no choice. One whispered, “I just want to go home.” It is not the short prison sentence they seem to fear for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories but being ostracized from family and friends. At times I felt they demanded forgiveness from me to help them absolve themselves from the crimes they commit. I found it impossible to respond as they carry out their orders with deadly accuracy”.

Sorry, don’t believe it. He’s wishful thinking here, trying to read into it things that aren’t there. Of course, the soldier would rather go home. What the soldier meant was I’m just doing my job quit bugging me. He felt they were “demanding forgiveness”, they were probably just treating him politely. “Deadly accuracy”? Like the terrorists? That “deadly”?

A few months ago, in the middle of “Defensive Shield”, which was a very stressful period for Israelis, you’ll remember, I happened to watch some young combat soldiers who were guarding an army facility for a special event. I was tremendously impressed by their dedication, responsibility and discipline. They knew why they were there and they believed in what they were doing.

I’d say the great majority of soldiers and policemen in roadblocks know that they are protecting their loved ones from indiscriminate mass murderers. They know their being there gives the terrorists a hard time by making it much more difficult to get perpetrators and explosives through to Jewish areas. They know the inconvenience they are causing civilians will probably save Israeli lives.

"Peace" activists will just have to keep on fantasizing that they see widespread dissent where it just isn't to be found.

Nazism from a young German’s 1939 point of view.
Sebastian Haffner’s bestseller “Defying Hitler”, written in 1939 and published posthumously in 1999 has been translated into English. Gabriel Schonfeld reviews it for the New York Times Book Review.

Haffner tells of the rise of Nazism in Germany from the viewpoint of a young German coming of age in Berlin. The book, which was never meant to be published, appears to challenge present-day historians’ claims regarding what the Nazis had in store for the Jews. “Nazi anti-Semitism was something else; if anything, it tended to alarm rather than attract the masses. This is hardly to say that it was not central to the Nazi program. It was. And it came complete with a determination, fully visible to Haffner already in the late 1930's, to ''exterminate'' the Jews, ''an intention they made no secret of.'' These words are all the more remarkable when one considers how many historians continue to insist today that the Nazi genocide was conceived only after the experience of total war had ''radicalized'' Hitler and his henchmen”.

Is the U.S. in on this?
Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram suggests that Saddam Hussein plans to flee to Russia in the event of the U.S. toppling his regime. Gala Nasser also has the latest on Iraqi preparation for the war.

As with executed Nazis.
This letter in the Washington Post suggests how to deal with the 9/11 perpetrators’ remains.

Arab terrorism – any excuse will do.
Nissan Ratzlav-Katz on National Review Online reminds us that Arab terrorism against the Jews really started in 1921, 27 years before 1948, 46 years before the 1967 six-day-war. Yesterday was the anniversary of the commencement of the 1929 massacres that claimed 133 Jewish lives and injured over 333.

Hee hee.
“Someone has estimated that half a million tons of carbon dioxide will be produced by the 60,000 delegates flying into Johannesburg for the great summit on our environment and kindred matters which opens on Monday,” according to this London Telegraph editorial

South Africa does not have a good record on world summits. Maybe they should stop having them.

Israel Air force commander – 1; Nitpicking journalist – 0
Haaretz journalist, Vered Halevi-Barzilai, tries to pick on Israel Air Force chief, Major General Dan Halutz. He puts things straight, decisively, with regard to killing Shehadeh, leftist activists, nitpicking journalists and more. In short, one hell of a guy.

Nitpicking journalist: "If you had known in advance that there were 15 or 17 people in the building (Shehadeh was in), including children, would you still have ordered the bombing to go ahead?"

Major General Dan Halutz: "I am not willing to answer a question like that, and certainly not to cite numbers. I am ready to discuss the question of principle: Is there a situation in which it is legitimate to strike at a terrorist when you know that the operation will exact a price in the form of casualties among civilians and uninvolved people?"

Nitpicking journalist: "And what is your reply?"

Major General Dan Halutz: "I have no doubt about it. The reply is positive. Against a person who has perpetrated, or who is known for certain to have a plan for what is called mega-terrorism, my reply is categorical: yes. How many people? I don't know. I will be able to give that answer at the moment of truth. Let's go back, to the suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in Netanya on the eve of Passover. Let's say we would have known about this terrorist in advance and would have trapped him in his house - would it have been legitimate to strike at him even if there were other people there? My answer is yes. How many people? I don't know and I am not ready to state a number. I repeat again that I am very sorry about innocent children who are killed. But anyone who sets out to murder children in Israel has to take into account that children are liable to be killed in his surroundings.

"And to those who jump up and judge us, I say: I feel that I am the moral compass and conscience of the nation of Israel no less and perhaps even more than those who purport to be that. Because on the basis of what criteria, exactly, do they have the temerity to point an accusing finger at me? The criteria of which army? The French? The German? The Russian? The Syrian? The Chinese? The American? OK, let's examine them one by one and place ourselves in a test of moral armies. I can give you hundreds and thousands of examples. There is no more moral army than the IDF."

(My emphasis).

This British embargo is a laugh.
R.T., who commanded a centurion tank for a while in the early 80's, says it was a standing joke that the centurions were so completely modified by the IDF that it would be very difficult to find any British parts in them, besides maybe a bolt or two.

If the British don't sell us ejection seats for airplanes, I guess we'll just have to do what we often had to do in the past in similar situations -- make our own. We might even end up making them better, and take over the market!

Here's some of the info about the Dahaf Institute (Mina Tzemach) poll I couldn't be bothered to translate from Yediot Aharonot.

More about not knowing squat about Israeli politics.
I live in Israel and I have the vote. I have never missed a national or municipal election since 1983. In my daily life, I am surrounded by people who also live in Israel, and also have the vote. I even sometimes talk to them, on the rare occasions I leave my computer. Oh, and I regularly read Israeli newspapers. I even understand them quite well, up to a point. I admit I get stuck when it gets too technical on the business pages. That’s it. I don’t claim to know squat about Israeli politics. What I write are my personal views and feelings, and sometimes views and feelings of people I know. I am in no way a political commentator. If you want quality political commentary go read Haaretz.

Just don’t be surprised when the results of the elections aren’t quite what reading Haaretz led you to expect.

Shabbat Shalom.

It has been suggested that I might not know squat about Israeli politics. This is very true. Beware what you read on the net! Make sure to warn your children about me!

So, especially for all the clever clogs that think they see a leftward swing among Israeli electorate (or that such a swing is just waiting for the right candidate):
Today’s Yediot Aharonot has the latest poll conducted by the Dahaf Institute and Dr. Mina Tzemach. Sever Plotzker writes that “even under a powerful electronic microscope you won’t find signs of a dovish swing in Israeli public opinion. Quite the contrary. The hawkishness is hardening, the distrust of Palestinians is sweeping. According to the poll, about two thirds of Israelis today negate the “Clinton Outline” laid on Barak and Arafat’s tables in Camp David as a basis for political talks with the Palestinians. With hindsight, 67% think the Oslo Accords have harmed the State of Israel; 54% are willing for fewer concessions than in the past.

The move towards hawkish views is strategic, not tactic. The Israeli public’s trust in the Palestinian side’s willingness to live with us in peace has collapsed, with any agreement, in any border. The causes of this were the failure of the Camp David and Taba talks and two years of terrorism. Before Camp David at least 66% of Israeli Jews believed that it was possible to end the conflict by negotiation and an agreement. Today, it’s doubtful that a fifth of the Jewish public would put its trust in agreements.

From here stems the fatalistic approach to the continuation of the conflict. Although the majority feels positively about the “Gaza and Bethlehem” understandings, the majority doesn’t see them as very important. 63% of Israelis don’t see them as a meaningful step towards the end of the Intifada. Only 27% of Israelis expect to see a dwindling of the terror and any binding agreement in the coming six months; all the others expect the “situation” to stay as it is or worsen. Only a third care which Palestinians the Israelis engage in talks with, two thirds of Israelis are just as inclined not to believe Arafat, his heirs and any alternative Palestinian leadership, whoever they may be. Therefore, the great majority says to the government: Please, leave Arafat where he is and don’t exile him to faraway Sudan. With Arafat in his Ramallah offices or in a tent in an African desert, nothing will change for the better, anyway.

[…]

Based on the findings, a new definition of political “left” and “right” is necessary. The division between the camps is no longer about the future of the territories. The division is about the future of the relations. Few Israelis still believe in the vision of “the entire Land of Israel”, or even of the land of Israel including most of the settlements. But even less Israelis believe in the possibility of good neighborly relations, or at least reasonable “live and let live” relations, with the Palestinians.

[…]

The Israeli disappointment in the Palestinians will not pass without an immense Palestinian effort. The ball is in their pitch: Israeli public opinion is waiting for a ruling of Palestinian civilian society against terrorism and for peaceful coexistence. The great majority of Israelis feel that the Palestinians are just holding steadfastly to negating Israel and supporting terrorism. Therefore, there is no one to talk to and nothing to talk about. We will do just what is good for us; if we decide to withdraw and separate, we will do it because of us, and not because of them.

What will cause the Israelis to change their views towards the Palestinians? The answer exists, and it is given. We want to see the Palestinian “Kikar Malkhei Yisrael” (now renamed Kikar Rabin, Kikar Malkhei Yisrael is the main square in Tel Aviv, where large demonstrations are held. This is where many demonstrations opposing government policy have been held over the years, such as the famous demonstration calling for a commission of inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacres, committed by Christian Falangists in 1982, during the Lebanon war): Following a bloody terrorist attack in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem, we expect tens of thousands of Palestinians to demonstrate against the Hamas and the (Islamic) Jihad. We expect the Palestinian Authority to arrest the terror activists, even if it means civil war, because there is no other way to destroy this affliction and extend an arm towards us (in peace). We are waiting to find any expression of a dovish-compromising stand in the Palestinian Media: Fiery articles against the policy of terrorism, against the Intifada in its present incarnation, against the murder of Jews and for compromise, peace and relinquishing the aspiration of “return”.

Without all these things, and given the terrorism, the Israeli public will remain hostile to any agreement and any movement towards the Palestinians that will be perceived as weakness.”

My translation.

At last it's official!

What is your Alter-Ego
Personality?

Hits
Miki B suggests "Maybe the reason your hits didn't drop much ... is we were all checking you out *just in case* you wrote something new." Isn't that nice? She suggests I add a "comments" capacity. I'll probably get round to it sometime. I have it in mind.

Haaretz says Lebanon is planning to increase pumping from Hatzbani River source springs.
Hatzbani is the Arabic name of the Snir River, which we visited on Wednesday. It apparently supplies about one-quarter of the water that flows into the Jordan River.

This shows me up for saying yesterday that the Snir was one of the rivers the Syrians attempted to divert. It seems I was mistaken. Sorry.

Actually, now I think about it, it was rather a silly thing to write. I was tired. Never blog when you're tired.

Never blog when you're tired??? I might as well write: Never blog! We-ell, I'm exaggerating. Maybe: Hardly ever blog or Occasionally blog. OK, you get the gist. I'm only joking Mum, I always sleep at least eight hours a night.

Jerusalem Post says that according to Al-Hiyyat Abu Nidal was behind the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie.

Plans to demolish homes of the Jerusalem terrorists and strip them of their Israeli citizenship.

Look at these gorgeous kids in their little suits.

These are the first new immigrants from Yemen to Israel this year. The story says (Hebrew link) they came, with their parents and younger brother on a special flight from a country neighboring on Israel. It also says they've already been here on visits a few times, staying with relatives.

As I was saying, heaven.
My friend, A., and I spent most of Tuesday morning in a wayside cafe, trying to keep our four kids amused, while our husbands returned back home. Our friends’ car was heating up, so they went to change cars. Needless to say, we didn’t reach Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) that day. It had to wait for today, on the way back.

The late start only made the the place we were staying seem even more heavenly when we finally got there. The photos in this link don’t do it any justice. The bushes and trees surrounding the seven little villas this place offers have grown, since the photos were taken. The villas are now hiding among dense vegetation. There are little winding paths between the villas and a bubbling stream runs throughout. The villas are situated in a plum orchard and delicious ripe plums were literally falling into our hands. As is often the case in Israel, the proprietor turned out to have been a school friend of A.’s.

Wednesday found us in the waters of the nearby Snir River. This is one of the sources of the Jordan River that the Syrians tried to divert in the Sixties. The little river’s ice cold water and strong flow are very refreshing on a hot summer’s day. We went down the river to where it meets the Dan River. At the meeting point there is an overlooking fish restaurant. We just got out of the river, with our backpacks and wet clothes and sat down for a delicious meal (we’re vegetarians but A. and D. said the fish was very good).

In the afternoon, after a rest, we took the kids to ride horses in nearby moshav She’ar Yeshuv, where seventy-three army officers and soldiers were killed, five years ago, when two air force helicopters collided in the worst military accident Israel has ever seen. One of those killed had been in my year at school.

A funny thing happened while we were in the waters of the Snir. Bish and I both heard two booms. They were barely audible over the sound of the water. A. and her husband, D., didn’t seem to hear anything, and we didn’t tell them so as not to frighten them. We weren’t sure what it was. Maybe ant-aircraft. The Hizbullah sometimes target Israeli civilian planes in the area. It could also have been Israel firing on the Hizbullah. Whatever it was, it sounded quite far away. If Bish hadn’t heard it, too, I would have thought I’d imagined it.

But it didn’t bother us, or any of the many other people having a lovely time in the beautifully clear, cold water, surrounded by the green river vegetation, that fresh, watery smell in the air. It didn’t feel like it had anything to do with us at all.

I’m back from three days in heaven
More about it when I’ve rested.

I must just say that I was surprised to see my hits hadn’t dropped as much as I’d expected, probably because Renata at Balagan linked to me. She has recently made Aliyah (immigrated to Israel) from Brazil, and her blog is a pleasure to read. It’s so fresh and full of enthusiasm. I hope she will be very happy here. We need sunny people like her.

Well, goodbye.
Everyone will be up soon, and we'll be on our way up north to Beit Hillel. We're planning to stop off at the Sea of Galilee on the way.

I haven't packed yet (I hear my mother gasping in shock), so I'll just go and throw a few things in a bag. By the way, in case you were worried about the fuel strike, it seems there's not a problem in the north of the country because they get their fuel directly from the oil refinery in Haifa (or something to that effect).

I'll probably be back and posting on Thursday. See you all then.

"He who controls the past controls the present." George Orwell, 1984.
GedankenPundit points out “the emergence of a new device on the modern battlefield: the repeal of history used as a weapon of war”.

“Most people believe Israel started the many wars it has fought with its neighbors”, he explains, “Few know that Israelis have been victims of terror attacks since long before 1967, or that Israel accepted the original 1948 UN Partition Plan while the Arab nations rejected it, or that the Palestinian refugees were displaced by wars started by Arabs, not expelled from their homes by Israel. Perhaps these myths are perpetuated by the ready access to information that the modern age has brought us; it has become so easy to obtain information that most people don't bother checking for corroborating reports from multiple sources. On the other hand, many people who should know better, such as university professors, also have fallen for the revisionist view of history”.

Another chance, yet again.
So we’re out of Bethlehem, encircling the town. Hamas and Islamic Jihad both pledge to continue the carnage. The PA is getting yet another chance to put things in order. Let’s hope they do it, this time.

Don’t laugh. I really hope they will.

Foreign press - still busy, lowering the numbers of Israeli dead. Reuters has it at 588. I think they’re loath to see it pass 600. Here are the true statistics, again.

Haaretz update: "Four people killed near Yeruham after vehicles they were travelling in crashed into a camel (Israel Radio)".

This sounds like a joke, but it isn't funny. Yeruham is near Dimona, in the Negev desert in the South of Israel. You know how often we travel down to Mitzpe Ramon, which is a bit further South. We're always amused by the signposts warning us of camels and sometimes deer (they have cute drawings of a camel or a deer. At one place, literally in the middle of nowhere, desert all around, there is a signpost warning of camel crossing and immediately afterwards, children crossing). But apparently there have been seven road accidents this year, caused by camels wandering into the road at night.

Like crazy Israeli drivers aren't enough!

Look what I just found!
Don't miss the amazing photos in the gallery. Needless to say, Bish, the girls and me will not be doing this up north tomorrow!

It's all song and dance and racist thuggery around here
according to an anti-Israel 15 minute cartoon-musical that will be shown at the Edinburgh international film festival. Made by an Israeli, of course, who else?

Strange statistics.
Get a load of this International Herald Tribune report. Suicide bombers are giving the Palestinians an edge, they say. The most potent weapon, they say. Keep up the good work, they sa… well, they don’t actually say that, but I got the feeling.

And get this: they say between 1,400 and 1,705 Palestinians have been estimated killed in the last 23 months (funny number, where did those 5 come from if it’s an estimate?) and between 563 and 610 Israelis have been killed. Even funnier (and I don't mean funny ha ha). Where did they get the Israeli numbers? We know exactly how many Israelis have been killed. Where does this 563 come from? Who aren’t they counting??? The soldiers? The settlers? The under-sevens? What is this? They say their estimates come from human rights organizations, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (those are the ones who smuggle arms in their ambulances) and the Israeli government. I don’t know that human rights organizations ever gave a damn about our dead, so maybe they’re getting the numbers of Israeli dead from the Red Crescent.

Here are the official Israeli statistics on Israeli casualties from 9/29/00 till the present day (it was updated yesterday).

An interview with Herbert Lom in the Guardian
About his part in the Ladykillers. (Have I mentioned it's one of my favorites?) Did someone die? Why are they talking about this movie all the time?

Some nicer stuff than dead terrorists:
According to today’s Haaretz “The United Jewish Communities (UJC) umbrella organization has donated $20 million to bolster security at educational institutions in Israel.” That’s nice. Thank you.

Also in Haaretz: Israel is sending aid to the Czech Republic to help the country deal with the recent severe flooding there.

Body of top Palestinian Nasty Abu Nidal
has apparently been found in a Baghdad apartment. He has been suffering from a severe illness for a few years now and it seems he shot himself. Here are a few of the many links to this guy enlightening us about his and his organization’s extreme nastiness. No one seems to have liked him, not even the Palestinians. I can't think why. People can be so mean. Oh, I’m sure IndyMedia Israel will have something nice to say in his memory.

I'll just have a look at the Arab media sites online to see if they're blaming his death on the Mossad yet. Nope, can't see anything yet.

Surprise, surprise! Reuters is calling him a Guerilla Chief!

Update: It has been reported that there were more than one gun wound. How did he manage that??? Israel TV channel one Arab affairs expert, Oded Granot, says Abu Nidal has been pronounced dead a few times before. I actually saw as much when I was googling. However, Granot commented that this time Abu Nidal seems more dead than on the previous occasions.

Haganah arms cache discovered after 54 years.
Another article Haaretz didn’t think would interest its English speaking readers:
A 15-year-old boy dug a flowerbed in Kibbutz Sdot Yam – and discovered a Haganah arms cache (which was called a slik) from the end of the British mandate. He was planning to turn a desolate corner at the back of the house dedicated to Hannah Senesh (Jewish poet and fighter. She made her home in the fledgling Kibbutz Sdot Yam before returning to her native Hungary to help Jews escape the Nazis, who captured and killed her) into a flowering garden. He hadn’t dug very far when he hit metal.

A Police sapper brought up an elaborate cache made out of two barrels, professionally galvanized against rust, 3m down. It contained some handguns, some Sten machine guns; some German “MG 34” machine guns (state of the art at the time); and some Tommy guns. Most of the weapons were in good shape and serviceable. At the time, the “sliks” were necessary, because the British would not allow the Jews in Palestine to arm themselves, besides the very minimum provided to Jewish policemen and Jewish British army soldiers, but without weapons they couldn’t protect themselves effectively against the Arabs.

Someone remembered Yehuda Michaeli, who was the “sliker” (responsible for concealing weapons), who was rather sad to see his slik had been discovered. He was asked if he knew about it and he said angrily “Of course!” Later, he explained that there where a few “sliks” that he and his partner Adi Zilberg (who has since passed away) prepared in their metal workshop and concealed, but refused to say how many. There were no maps, and they were the only ones who knew were they were. This particular “slik” was buried right before the establishment of the State of Israel, as a reserve to be used in an emergency, during the War of Independence.

Michaeli told no one of where the “sliks” where, not his wife, nor his children, fighters in elite army units. When asked why he never breathed a word, for 54 years, he said, “I am a “sliker”, I was sworn to secrecy, how could I tell?”


I was very taken with Hannah Senesh's story when I was growing up, and I read her diaries, stories and poems over and over again. I still get a bit choked up thinking about her. You can read more about her here.

The Hatzavim (Squill) are late to flower this year
Here are two of the first, photographed yesterday near Hadera.

The blooming should continue until the end of September.

Why does Haaretz only translate the boring stuff, and not things like this?

Another update on Israel Shamir
IB writes that "Israel Shamir's books are popular enough in Russia and he's a correspondent of "Pravda" in Israel."

About my claim that "the Russian community in Israel is mostly extremely right wing" he comments:

"The "Russian" community is extremely right-wing only in comparison with secular peace loving Israeli born Jews, and a lot of members of "Russian" community are ethnic Slavs (up to 20%) who simply have bought documents and hate Jews and Israel." Two good points.

I would like to thank IB for this information about Israel Shamir (I had been meaning to ask a Russian-born friend but hadn't got round to it) and about the "Russian" community (the inverted commas are in order because these people are now Israelis. I stand corrected).

I would also like to point out that I think the very large "Aliyah" (immigration) from the countries of the former Soviet Union has for the most part brought into Israel an influx of educated, hard-working, cultured people, and Israeli society is the better for it. When I point out their tendency to being right-wing it is in comparison to Israeli-born intellectuals, who have a strong tendency towards the left.

As is the way of the world, the "Russian" Aliyah has brought its share of problems, such as a certain amount of (particularly violent) criminals and a relatively large percentage of non-Jews. I am optimistic that, with the help of the community of Russian-born Israelis, we will be able to deal with these challenges.

I think it's rather scary that Israel Shamir's books are popular in Russia.

Update update: IB has requested to correct his former message. "I think I've exaggerated : there are up to 20%-30% non-Jews in the last aliya, but of course, not everybody of them has bought documents: Most of them have repatriated under the Law of Return, as grandchildren of Jews, children of Jewish fathers, or as spouses of lawful repatriants".

I'm really enjoying my new weather pixie (see left-side column). The wind seems to have change direction about four times today!

A reader reveals herself!
miki b says, "After the eighties and nineties come the "noughties". From the word "nought", a British version of zero".

So there we have it. The noughties. The naughty noughties?

Somehow, I'm not convinced. I guess it will have to do.

miki b also motivated me to widen the page a little. I've been wanting to do this for a while but hadn't dared for fear of mucking up the whole page and not being able to put it right.

I know you liked it the way it was before, Dad. Sorry. Maybe you'll get used to this, as well.

We wouldn’t want to offend Mr. Hussein after all, would we?
The UK Observer informs its readers about the plight of the Kurds under Saddam, but heaven forbid anyone do anything to help these people out, besides asking Saddam nicely if he could possibly be so good as to please refrain from causing them any discomfort (and I’m not sure if anyone in the British left has even bothered to do that).

Bibi or Sharon?
The Likud’s recent voter registration drive has apparently been a phenomenal success, making the Likud the largest party in Israeli history with 311,884 members. It’s obvious that most of the 200,000 new members joined not out of love of the party or its platform, but to have a say in the results of the future primary showdown between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. I’ve not seen any polls about this (and I don’t suppose I will, either), so I don’t know which one of them managed to pull more voters. I know one or two traditional left wing voters who were planning to register specifically so they could vote for Sharon, for fear of getting Netanyahu back (no one has any illusions about the Labor Party). I suppose a lot of right wing voters have done the same, in order to vote for Netanyahu.

Last week, an Israeli crime boss
was gunned down in the alley behind his casino in Prague.

Yesterday, a friend showed me the weekend edition of the local newspaper of his hometown Netanya. He was eulogized for eight gushing pages. You’d have thought he was the Mother Theresa and not a murderous extortionist. Seven pages were given over completely to enormous mourning ads paid for mainly by Netanya restaurant, hotels and “Simcha” (happy occasions) halls.

My friend told me that on the day of his funeral, the whole of the Netanya center closed down in mourning. The funeral procession went down the main street of the town. The newspaper states that the municipality even opened the gates that keep cars from going into the square, to let the procession pass, a very rare event indeed.

Reading about this “charming” bully, and the honor paid him by those who were very likely subject to his extortion and terror tactics (and don’t think for a minute that they’re relieved to see him go, I assure you the new boss came round to collect, before the body was cold), reminded me of some bigger bullies we have to deal with in this part of the world.

It takes a lot of courage to go to the police if you’re a victim of a protection racket or any other form of extortion. You’re taking a great risk. You could be harmed, your family could be harmed, you’re very likely to lose your business to fire, or some other calamity. There is a limit to the protection the police can give you (if at all).

But if you don’t take that risk, you’re finished. The pressure will become worse and worse until you eventually find yourself standing outside of your business, built with your sweat and your tears and your hard earned money, looking in, with nothing to show for it, besides your debts and your bad heart.

Maybe this is why the less educated, more streetwise Israelis understood years ago, what many Israeli intellectuals still refuse to accept. Arafat is not in the business of being a fair partner. And neither are the other serious contenders bidding for power in the jungle of Palestinian society. We can talk to them and negotiate with them till we’re blue in the face. Extortionists and loan sharks are always happy to negotiate spreading out the payments (with compound interest, of course), but the only way to get them to give up their tactics is to show them that there’s a bigger boss in town.

That’s why Israelis voted en masse for Arik Sharon, and will do so again, even though we ultimately believe in making compromises for peace. Spectators of Israeli politics probably think that Sharon’s decreasing popularity in the polls reflects a yearning for a “political horizon”. I’d say it is just as likely to be dissatisfaction by those who would rather see tougher action.

By the way, the same goes for Saddam and Al Qaeda.



via Spleenville


Fresh off the boat
Stephen Den Beste has some interesting things to say about immigration. You have to scroll down a bit to get to the stuff about immigration.

Follow-up on the Nuri Said quote:
I’ve been reading in a few places about the Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, who wrote, in his book "The Arabs", "This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country." (Pg. 183)

This link also brings these references from what seems to be reliable sources of the time:

"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948.

"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."
Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949.

"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948.

And this is an interesting one:
"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones. The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable".
by Abu Mazen, from the article titled: "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do", published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976.

I could go on and on. If you want to read more, and there’s plenty of it, you can check it all out here.

Strange how Benny Morris couldn’t find any of this. Maybe he wasn’t looking very hard.


So what’s interesting Israelis right now?
Mainly the fuel strike. We’re all filled up. I hope it ends before we go up North on Tuesday, though.


Wow.

Seen on Civax


We’re afraid of chemicals dropping from above
This German town could be getting chemicals from the floodwaters.


Die Zeit on EU complicity in Palestinian terrorism (II)
This is Stefan Sharkansky’s translation of the Die Zeit sequel to ”Arafat Bombs, Europe Pays” by Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff from June 2002.

Important
I’ve been thinking some more about that Israel Shamir article. I told you he wrote that the Brits and the Yankees bombed the Germans and the French, for offending Jews. I don’t think I stressed this enough.

He wrote that the Brits and the Yankees bombed the Germans and the French, for offending Jews.

There, that’s better.

Larry Mulligan sent me this link to a story about Israel Shamir: “Do you know that
Israel Shamir tried to sell Nazi memorabilia items, that the Russians
captured when they took over Berlin in 1945. Shamir got his hands of all of
these Nazi items in 1998 and wanted to sell them to Holocaust Denier David
Irving.
Ironically, even the odious Irving, ultimately refused to deal with Shamir”.

Here is the full story.

After the eighties, came the nineties.
After the nineties came the… what? The zeroes? The nothings? The one-to-tens? The pre-teens?

What did they call the beginning of the last century, the twentieth? If I'm not mistaken it was “the turn of the century”, wasn’t it? Heavy. Meaningful. Not fun. Actually, quite suitable for the times we’re living in.


Benny Morris was not telling the truth???
Sylvana Foa writes a Letter From Gaza in the latest Village Voice. It’s all about the Palestinian suffering in Gaza. It tells about two American women who married Palestinian men (one of them, although widowed, decided to stay on because she works with deaf children) and what their life is like these days. But this column has a surprising twist. Foa very subtly weaves in an historic fact that colors the plight of the Palestinian refugees a little differently.

” In 1948, 106,000 people, heeding the call of Arab leaders like Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, fled to Gaza as invading Arab armies entered the new state of Israel.

“We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter,” Said promised. “The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.”

Most of those 1948 refugees expected to be back in their homes within a week. They are still waiting. Their numbers have swollen to 800,000. More than half live in the eight camps that UNRWA, the UN agency charged with caring for Palestinian refugees, runs in Gaza”.

Notice if you will, the Nuri Said quotation. I wonder where she got it. I also wonder why Benny Morris never found it when he was meticulously searching all the Arab Media of 1948 for his research. He claimed he could find no trace of calls made by Arabs for Arabs living in Palestine to leave their homes, while their Arab brethren got rid of the Jews.(I never read his book but I clearly remember hearing him say this in a TV interview).

But this, of course wouldn’t be the first glimmer of disproof of Morris’ work. Efraim Karsh wrote ”Fabricating Israeli History: The `New Historians'” about this issue. Here is an excerpt of Haaretz’ review of the book by the late Yoram Bronowski (whose daily television review I miss very much).

"Karsh proves over and over that the leading new historians - Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim, in particular... are not historians at all. At best, they are propagandists. And not only that: Karsh brings heaps of evidence, after a careful examination of the documents, that these historians, and especially Morris and Shlaim, are conniving forgers who falsify the facts and will stoop to anything. He shows that the volumes they have published, such as 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949', and 'Collusion Across the Jordan' (Shlaim's book in English about a plot allegedly hatched during a meeting between Golda Meir and King Abdullah of Jordan, whose purpose was to keep a Palestinian state from being established after implementation of the UN partition plan) are crude and malicious fakes...
The impact of Norman Cohn's 'Warrant for Genocide', which exposes the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' forgery, is dwarfed in comparison to Karsh's book, which rips the veneer off certain respectable-looking scholars... Not only are they empty vessels, Karsh shows in this astonishing book, but they are something much worse: vessels overflowing with deadly dynamite".


The Israeli Noam Chomsky? (I don’t think so!)
Bish and I had a romantic evening yesterday watching the riveting 1970 documentary ”Elvis: That's the Way It Is”, and reading James’ farewell column together. James is off on holiday for a fortnight. It shouldn’t be allowed.

But who is this Israel Shamir he links to? ArabNews.com, where the article is published says he’s an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa. I have a few questions, with regard to his article: Does saying that the Brits and the Yankees bombed the Germans and the French, for offending Jews, count as Holocaust denial? Is there a law against Holocaust denial in Israel? Is a Jewish anti-Semite an oxymoron? What’s going on here? I smell a rat.

According to Israel Shamir’s website he is a leading Russian-Israeli intellectual, writer, translator and journalist. He claims to have worked for Haaretz but sadly “was sacked for publishing an article calling to the return the Palestinian refugees and the rebuilding of their ruined villages.” He is apparently a prolific writer and has published many books. The bio doesn’t state in which language, but it can’t be in Hebrew or in English because a search in a major online Israeli Bookstore was fruitless, as was a search in Amazon.com. Maybe in Russian. It says he’s translated many Hebrew books into Russian.

“His most popular work, the Pine and the Olive, the story of Palestine/Israel, was published in 1988. Its cover carried a painting by the Ramallah painter, Nabil Anani”. I can’t see how this could have been very popular. If it was in Russian, well, the Russian community in Israel is mostly extremely right wing, if in English or in Hebrew, why can’t I find anything about it?

And why have neither Bish nor I ever heard of this person. We are both relatively well read, and have been diligently reading Haaretz for about fifteen years. I have many friends who are peace activists (and not the radicals who think peace activism entails being human shields for Arafat and other murderers, but real ones, who try to educate for coexistence and tolerance, and getting to know each other, and listening to each other’s grievances). But still not a word about this Israel Shamir person.

So, when in doubt Google!

Nigel Parry, of all people (not to be suspected of being anything but seriously pro-Palestinian), leads a group of pro-Palestinian activists who started wondering about Israel Shamir in 2001. Parry has a whole page of his website given over to this issue, which he calls “The Israel Shamir Case”.

He says: “In late 2000/early 2001, in the period following the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada, articles began appearing on the Internet by a previously unknown Israeli-Russian writer called "Israel Shamir". With a powerful command of the English language, compelling anecdotes, dramatic metaphors, and a spirited opposition to the Israel's military occupation, Shamir was rapidly and warmly accepted into the pro-Palestinian activist scene, and by Spring 2001 had embarked on a speaking tour of the United States, speaking at many public events alongside leading lights of the Palestinian scene.

As his articles kept coming, however, an increasing amount of the tone and content was observed by more than a few to fall into what could -- if this hadn't been an Israeli Jew writing it -- best be described as a classic anti-Semitic repertoire. Shamir's identity as a Jew initially enabled people to excuse this, until the whole mess began to unravel as more and more questions were asked. Eventually, these questions began to be answered, and the issue errupted into a controversy”.

He also links to some of the stuff written about this issue, including an e-mail by Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish, that I saw in a few sites when searching about this Shamir person, it’s headed “Serious concerns about Israel Shamir”. There is also a link to an e-mail by Parry himself called ”The enemy of our enemy is not our friend”.

I suddenly remembered seeing a letter by Israel Shamir in the Spectator a few months ago, in response to this article by Melanie Phillips.

23rd Febuary 2002
“From Mr Israel Shamir

Sir: As an Israeli writer living in Jaffa, I witness the other side of Jewish-Christian relations carefully omitted by Miss Phillips. While the Hebrew Bible is respected in Europe, in Israel the New Testament is burned. While in Europe synagogues are lovingly restored and protected, in the Jewish state, churches are violated, ruined, shot at. While in order to avoid a hint of anti-Semitism, European society was thoroughly de-Christianised, in Jewish communities there is a strong triumphalist tendency. Recently, a mediaeval anti-Christian pamphlet Toledoth Yeshu was reprinted again in Israel, with the introduction stating, ‘The Jewish people always deeply disdained Christian faith, considered Christian dogma as a collection of incongruous foolishness and Christian morals as hypocritical lies.’

It is not a fringe lunacy: a great new hotel in Eilat was given the infamous name of King Herod, while the road leading to it was unambiguously called Zeevi Promenade, after the assassinated Israeli racist and self-avowed enemy of Christianity. Posters on the walls present pictures of Christian preachers, and call for their physical elimination. The immigrants of Jewish origin are deported if their belief in Christ is found out.

In the Holy Land, Christianity is very much on the defensive. The Palestinian Christian community shrinks daily in the iron grip of General Sharon. The believers cannot reach their shrines. Even President Arafat was not allowed to attend the Christmas Mass.

Miss Phillips, regrettably, does not mind generalisations and victimisation per se, as long as it is Muslims and Christians who are stereotyped and blamed: ‘Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, the director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, has been addressing Christian groups up and down the country on the implications of 11 September. When he suggests that there was a problem with aspects of Islam, he provokes uproar.’ Well, if he suggested there is a problem with aspects of Judaism, would she quote him with such empathy?

We Jews must take care of the beam in our eye before addressing the mote in our neighbour’s.

Israel Shamir
Jaffa, Israel”

This weird letter provoked two reactions:

2nd March 2002
“Book-burning

From J Peleg

Sir: Israel Shamir from Jaffa states that the New Testament is burnt in Israel (Letters, 23 February). This reads as though it is a regular occurrence in Israel. If I understand Mr Shamir correctly, he is referring to a single incident of New Testaments being distributed to young pupils in a Jewish religious school by Christian missionaries. The books were burnt by outraged school officials. The incident was widely publicised and criticised.

Although I live about 15 minutes away from Mr Shamir, I have not heard of the anti-Christian pamphlet he mentions, as I suppose most Jewish Israelis haven’t. It has probably been distributed only in certain ultra-religious communities. Nor have I ever seen posters depicting Christian preachers and calling for their physical elimination. Maybe Mr Shamir could direct me to these posters, so that I could see for myself.

[…]

J Peleg
Israel”

16th March 2002
“Christians in Israel

From Mr Bret Stephens

Sir: What an astonishing piece of writing you have published in the form of a letter (23 February) from Israel Shamir, Israel’s very own Noam Chomsky.

In Mr Shamir’s telling, Israel is a country in which Christians suffer routine and vicious persecution at the hands of Jews. For this, he cites as evidence the recent burning of a Hebrew-language version of the New Testament, the reissue of a mediaeval anti-Christian Jewish tract, the naming of a beach resort after King Herod, and so on.

All this is true enough: Israel has its share of kooks, quacks, bigots and other politically incorrect folk. Yet the plural of anecdote is not data; to draw the conclusions Mr Shamir does from these incidents is akin to suggesting that the US is a country where every homosexual lives in mortal peril because one gay man was murdered two years back in the Wyoming hinterland.

What Mr Shamir fails to mention is that during the past five years there have been no more than five violent anti-Christian incidents, all carried out by fringe elements within the ultra-Orthodox community. Mr Shamir also neglects the phenomenal popularity of Israel as a tourist destination among Christians. Last year, almost twice as many Christians as Jews visited Israel —not the statistic one would expect if Israel were the Middle East’s version of, say, Sudan.

The fact is that, by and large, Israel treats its 138,000-strong Christian minority tolerantly and equitably. No restrictions on freedom of worship are placed on the 30 or so Christian denominations represented here; Christian worship services are advertised in the Israeli press; US televangelist Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network is piped in via satellite. True, as a small minority, Christians have little political clout in an ultra-political country, and those Israeli Christians who are also Arab have suffered discrimination on account of their ethnic identity. But this only puts Israel on a par with most other Western countries in its treatment of ethnic and religious minorities.

Contrast that with the status of Christians who live in Palestinian areas. Missionary activity is unheard of. There have been anti-Christian riots in Nazareth and quite recently in Ramallah. And the increasingly anti-secularist, pro-Islamic tone of Palestinian politics only makes matters more dangerous for Palestinian Christians. For Mr Shamir to suggest that ‘the iron grip of Sharon’ is what is causing Palestinian Christians to flee the Holy Land ignores the little elephant in the room known as Islamic Jihad.

To judge by the piece of puffery that is his website (www.israelshamir.net), Mr Shamir has made a fine career for himself as Israel’s most vitriolic critic this side of Baghdad. That Israel tolerates him is evidence enough of the country’s liberal credentials.

Bret Stephens
Jerusalem, Israel
Mr Stephens will be editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post from 1 April.”

So, there we have it. We’ve solved the weird and mysterious case of the elusive Israel Shamir. The verdict: A kook.

Carraig Daire has some interesting data about the Middle East and US patents. Via Occam’s Toothbrush.

Iraq
Ehud Ya’ari, top Israeli expert on the Arab world, just said something interesting on Israel TV’s Channel Two news. He pointed out that Saddam has not made one attempt to threaten Israel.

Of course! Why didn’t I notice this before? In 1990 and 1991 right up to the end of the ultimatum and the beginning of the offensive, Iraq threatened Israel over and over again. This time - not a peep.

While we're on the subject, here's an update on Saddam's dear son Uday.

You have to know me to believe this
I told you I was going on a three-day holiday to Beit Hillel on the Northern border on Sunday. I have known this for a fact for over a month. Bish has made plans, told his clients, and given his secretary time off. I took time off work. Yesterday I rang the friends we’re going with and who made the reservations in order to make last minute plans. Surprise, surprise! We’re going on Tuesday not Sunday!

Shabbat Shalom.

To give or not to give
Last summer I went on a guided tour of Yaffo at night. I grew up in Haifa, and I know a lot of stories and quite a bit of local history of that area from school and Scouts. But I only had very basic knowledge of life in Yaffo in the pre-Zionist era. At one point, the guide, in order to explain what the tourist, or Jewish pioneer met with when he got off the boat in Yaffo Port in days of old, he asked me, being the best English reader available, to read out loud a passage from the introduction to Thomas Cook’s tour book to the Holy Land, written in the 1870’s. In those days, apparently, sending your kids to beg from the foreign tourists was a major income source. Foreigners were literally pounced on by dirty urchins at every turn. If they gave them anything, they were likely to attract tens more.

It’s nothing like that nowadays, anywhere in Israel, but some things don’t change. If you encounter people begging in Israel, in areas frequented by tourists, I’d say they’re likely to be pros. I suppose times are tough for them at the moment, as they are for all those who make their living from tourists. Remember, however, that beggars in Jerusalem will be East Jerusalem dwellers, who are Israeli citizens and entitled to all the welfare that that entails. The idea suggested by this naive tourist, that a Palestinian beggar wouldn’t want to take money from Jews is quite amusing. Money has no smell, after all. Janice (from Where to by Israeli Products) sent me this, along with a similar story I had already read on Middle East Realities, suggesting it was the same woman and maybe a con job.

That’s the eternal question isn’t it? Are beggars for real?

I know there are hungry Palestinians, although the army insists enough food is getting through to areas that we’re holding. Of course, you have to have money to buy the food, and the rich corrupt Palestinian Authority isn’t sharing. It probably is worst for women who have no male provider, in the fiercely patriarchal Muslim society. The main problem seems to be in Gaza, where people have always been especially dependant on work in Israel, and now they just can’t get out.

Are the ones you see begging on the street in East Jerusalem, the worst off? I doubt it. And I wouldn’t necessarily believe anything they tell you. Am I right, Tal?

But who knows? I am not in their shoes, and I don’t feel I can judge them. I often give money to beggars, and regularly to street musicians (who I don’t see as beggars but as old-fashioned entertainers). However, I live in a Jewish area with no tourists and I rarely see Arab beggars.

Am I doing the right thing? Am I not encouraging them?

One woman who regularly begs near where I live is particularly aggressive and has been known to scare children into giving her their allowance. Needless to say, she never sees a penny from me, and I have nearly called the Police, a few times. She has an endless repertoire of hard luck stories, and no memory for faces.

I also refuse to give anything to the emaciated men who regularly beg at traffic lights. A. Because they are endangering themselves and the drivers, and B. Because they scare the hell out of me. I always imagine one of them sticking his hand into the car and strangling me.

So why do I give? I don’t know, guilt maybe, and compassion; maybe the hope that some of it will go to people who really need it, who really aren’t able to work and who are not entitled to any welfare, for some reason. It’s not as if I can’t do without the small amounts I give, after all. I suppose the fear that one day I will be in their shoes, plays a large part in it.

Elana, I don’t think you need to worry about the few shekels you give going to finance terrorists. I doubt if this could be a serious source of finance for a terrorist organization.


Ali Salem
LGF mentions a humorous article by Egyptian playwright Ali Salem, translated by MEMRI. Ali Salem visited Israel in 1994, bravely violating a boycott by Egyptian intellectuals and writers and wrote a book about his visit. I read the Hebrew translation of this book (which doesn’t seem to be available online) while in hospital after giving birth to my younger daughter in 1995 (I remember this because one of the doctors seemed more interested in the book than in my welfare). I found it exciting to read an account of what Israel looks like through Arab (non-Palestinian) eyes.

Explaining
This Chicago Sun Times’ editorial helps its readers understand why Israel is doing what it is doing. It helps put things in perspective for someone who isn’t here.

The Spoons Experience spotted it first.

Shooting at cars
“Tomorrow, or the next day, it will happen again, bet on it. After the many bullet-riddled cars we have seen, … seats covered with blood, … drivers and passengers killed or wounded … , it was apparently time for us to be on this side of the bullet, in the first person, first-hand”.

This is not what you think. I know it sounds like a first hand experience of a pigua (terrorist attack) on the roads of the West Bank. It could be. It sounds like it. But I’ve omitted some words. This is how it was written before my omissions:

“Tomorrow, or the next day, it will happen again, bet on it. After the many bullet-riddled cars we have seen, their seats covered with blood, their Palestinian drivers and passengers killed or wounded by soldiers for no reason, it was apparently time for us to be on this side of the bullet, in the first person, first-hand”.

This is Gideon Levi’s account of the incident in which he was shot at, while riding in an Israeli taxi in the West Bank town of Tul Karem.

Now, I’m not justifying the soldiers, although the car they were shooting at was driving in a “sterile” road in the middle of a wartime curfew. Levi did have a permit to be there. The army says there was a coordination failure and was apparently very apologetic. Putting myself in a soldier’s position, the situation does sound suspicious. After all, what would an Israeli taxi be doing there, in the middle of what Levi himself describes as “a curfew the likes of which we have never seen”? Levi says that he travels like this regularly. It’s actually a wonder it hasn’t happened before.

But this is still no justification. I think the army should check this, and all the other similar incidents, fix whatever needs fixing and do the utmost to keep these incidents to a minimum. I’ve never been under curfew, and I’m sure it’s scary as hell. I do feel sorry for ordinary Palestinians, even if they only have themselves to blame.

This is not my point here. My point is that he writes as if the opposite is not possible, that the opposite has never, ever happened. No Israelis have ever been shot driving along the road. Ayelet Dikstein was just making up the murder of her parents and little brother. And all the others too. There have never been “bullet-riddled” Israeli “cars, their seats covered with blood, their” Israeli “drivers and passengers killed or wounded by” Palestinian freedom fighters.

What am I doing? I’m writing as if it’s at all comparable; as if soldiers shooting at suspicious curfew violators, who could very well be up to no good, is the same as the coldblooded slaughter of whole families, with the sole intention of spreading terror and dread.

Levi sums up the article by asking some questions, among them: “Do the soldiers give any thought to the people on whom they fire, with the intent to kill, without prior warning, and thus offhandedly seal their fate? Maybe they are Israelis? Maybe they are Palestinians who got lost? Maybe the car is carrying a dying child to a hospital? Maybe there is a woman in labor in the car? Are they all to be condemned to automatic death?” My answer is: A lot of them probably do, especially the older ones, the reservists, the ones who have pregnant wives and little children waitng for them, worrying about them, at home.

And I ask: Do the Palestinian terrorists give any thought to the people on whom they fire, with the intent to kill, without prior warning, and thus offhandedly seal their fate? Maybe they are Israelis? Maybe they are Palestinians who got lost? Maybe the car is carrying a dying child to a hospital? Maybe there is a woman in labor in the car? Are they all to be condemned to automatic death?

No need to answer.

Bring on the windmills
Lynn B links to Michael Freund who ruminates on one of my favorite subjects: the Israeli left’s inability to see what's staring them in the face (and admit they may have been a teeny weeny bit wrong).

“Seemingly oblivious to their impending political obsolescence, (groups such as Peace Now and Gush Shalom) continue to soldier on, issuing press releases, preparing reports, and organizing demonstrations, all in the hopes of compelling Israel to make a deal with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority”.

French Jews holiday in Eilat
Nikita found me the links to this wonderful show of solidarity. Where but in Blogistan would you see such give and take?


A hypothetical story
A woman, let’s say she’s Swedish, calls her husband on his cell phone, one morning. A strange man answers, she can’t quite place his accent. The woman assumes it’s a wrong number, it happens all the time, but she asks anyway, “Can I speak to Jorgen, please?” The man answers, “Jorgen? I just killed Jorgen.”

Sound familiar? Ah, but it wasn’t in Sweden, was it? And it wasn’t Jorgen, it was Yossi.

This story haunts me.

The Ramallah lynching was a turnng point for a lot of people. Naomi Ragen sent this on her e-mail list:

“We Are People Too

By Moshe Sheskin ( moshes7@netvision.net.il)

A number of years ago, during a stint in the Israel army reserves, I was
posted at one of the bridges over the Jordan River. It was my unit’s
responsibility to examine the travelers, coming from Jordan, prior to their
entry into Israel and the disputed territories in order to prevent
contraband from entering the country, especially detonators,. As our
commanding officer remarked, “Remember, if a bomb goes off due to your
negligence, it may also mean the life of your wife and children.” His
comments had an instantaneous effect upon us and although the temperature in
the Jordan Valley in August hovered around the 50 degree mark and hordes of
flies added to our discomfort, we meticulously examined each and every
traveler, their documents, baggage, personal effects and a body search when
necessary.

At one point, while going through the process, a young lady
shouted at me.

“We are people too you know”.

Her anger and discomfort were apparent but the words were penetrating so
that for many years, during my more liberal period, I couldn’t shake her cry
and my feeling at that time echoed her frustration and agony. Peace was a
necessity and I was convinced that it was within the realms of possibility,
at least within the next few years..

I firmly believed that we had reached a point in our
relationship with our Arab cousins where we no longer would control their
destiny but could live side by side, two separate people sharing a common
land and history. I felt that the agreements reached by the Palestinian
Authority through Arafat would finally bear fruit and that we really had a
partner for peace.

The cry of that young woman melted into nothingness in October
2000 when two of our soldiers, who had lost their way, were brutally
lynched. The elation by the populace and those who had actually perpetrated
this sadistic act has been permanently etched in my mind.

Thus the intafadah was born and with it, a change in my
attitude. No more did I hear that young women crying to me, “We are people
too”. Slowly but surely, after many months of increased conflict and with it
the increased loss of life in the civilian population, my liberalism and
socialist thinking gave way to a distinct hard line. I can no longer believe
in the ability of Arafat to make peace. I no longer believe in Arafat’s
commitment to peace evident by his refusal to honour signed agreements.
Arafat’s rhetoric only proves once more that the goal is not only that of a
Palestinian State but the complete destruction of Israel.

I lost faith in the Israeli Arabs, the majority of whom not only approve of
the intafadah but support it in many other ways. This is borne out by the
numerous articles and polls that were carried out over the last few years.
As citizens of Israel, I had expected a certain degree of loyalty, while
understanding their feelings and their frustration with respect to our
problem with their kinsmen. The action of our Arab members of the Knesset
only showed me that we had a ‘fifth column’ in our midst. Yes, it’s now my
turn to cry out,

“WE ARE PEOPLE TOO, YOU KNOW”

We don’t educate our children to hate.

We don’t revel in the death of innocent civilians.

We don’t shoot our guns in the air to celebrate an Arab death.

We don’t march in the streets to celebrate massacres.

We don’t have support of a United Nations with a built in Arab majority.

We don’t have the support of the Europeans and their anti-Semitic attitudes.

We don’t use humans with bombs attached to commit suicide and kill innocent
people.


What we do have is the will to survive and the will to live in peace. What
we want is to take our place in the Middle East as a recognized partner for
the sake of all. What we want is a democratic region where social and
economic conditions will be the right of every individual. When will this
happen? When Arabs will begin to live in peace with each other and recognize
the rights of the individual. Until then, we have no choice but to defend
ourselves and remain strong, not only against our immediate neighbors, but
if need be, against the world.

WE ARE PEOPLE TOO, YOU KNOW.”



More scary stuff
Ze’ev Schiff on the danger of a biological attack and Israel’s nuclear reaction; iodine capsules for those living near nuclear reactors; Israel will get Patriot missiles, if necessary (no offense, we’re very grateful, but they weren’t much good last time, were they? And there’s more about inoculation.

Don't worry, I know it's psychological warfare. That's why I'm not talking about it too much. Just linking.

Breaking news! or Update update:
They've unlocked the security room. It's empty and clean.

I can now bask in the glory of achievement. We've done it!

Now what will I write about?

Security room update
The house committee chairman is puzzled by our request of the key to the security room. "Does it seem logical to you", he asks (in writing), "to supply apartment occupants with the keys to the security rooms??"
Well, duh! I'm sure the cockroaches will appreciate the safe rooms when Saddam sends his missiles! Oh, and I can sure see Mr. Chairman rushing up and down 16 floors, opening all the security rooms, washing their floors and schlepping chairs to sit on, all with the sirens going.

Actually, I can see his point. He's worried they'll become store-rooms again. But if it wasn't for us, they'd still be store-rooms, right now, anyway. I get the feeling he doesn't like us very much. Well that's just too bad, isn't it?

The Jenin Massacre
And now the book (in three langauges, no less).
Order your copy now - Read all about the "ethnic cleansing" that was Jenin.

Thanks to Fred.

This time - Finland
Another Nordic sympatico.

Also care of Fred.

I thought there was peace in Northern Ireland
Oh, well. We thought there was peace here, too.

Thank you, Fred Lapides, for reminding me we're not the only place in the world!

I really have to get to bed or I'll be useless tomorrow
But I just have to say that Haaretz was so idiotic today (besides Ze'ev Schiff) that at one point I found myself pulling out my hair in disbelief and exasperation (luckily I've got quite a lot of it, hair that is). Part of it the "good" stuff isn't in the English online version. For instance, a student named Eli Shmueli who states that "the left (in Israel) is alive and kicking, but the media are seperating it from the citizens and preventing it's message from reaching the desperate, expectant public". Who gave this bozo a column? I say: Send him back to radical leftie university rags, where he obviously belongs (and throw away the key)!

Not as dramatic, but no less ludicrous is Gideon Samet, talking about "the blitz" Amram Mitzna created (there was a blitz and I missed it?) when he anounced his candidacy for Labor Party chairman. He thinks Mitzna was very wise to call for giving "another chance to negotiations with the Palestinians, without preconditions...".

I could continue, there's more, much more. But I really need some sleep.

I know, I know
Scandinavians expect more of us because they like us, blah, blah, blah.

Seriously though, I think there are some Scandinavians sympathetic to our cause. Remember the SiD/Radix thing, with Denmark a few months back? Well. Bish sent SiD a very nice letter, which went on their website, along with all the other 4000 or so letters they got, protesting the politically motivated cancelling of their Radix order. Amazingly, considering, he got quite a few lovely, warm e-mails from sympathetic Danes, reassuring him that Denmark is our friend and that SiD doesn't represent the Danish people and so on.

And let us not forget brave one-in-a-million Norwegian blogger Bjorn Staerk. (Sorry Bjorn, my keyboard doesn't seem to allow for the correct spelling of your name).

Israeli Guy seems to dislike northern Europeans
"...some countries, especially the Scandinavian ones, are so self-righteous its absurd. From their safe and civilized location in northern Europe they lecture us on what and how to do things. They consider themselves to be the most enlightened people on earth..."

Who said it won't make a difference?
From Haaretz: "At the same time, the Israel Defense Forces have information indicating that potential suicide bombers have refrained from carrying out their attacks for fear that their family's home will be destroyed, (the head of Military Intelligence, Major General Aharon) Ze'evi said. Five suicide bombings are known to have been prevented recently for this reason, he said.

In order to keep the identity of the families secret, there has also recently been a trend not to set up mourning tents outside the home of the family of a suicide bomber. The fear that the family will be banished from the West Bank to Gaza is a further deterrent, he said."

This doesn't bother NG and her brave gang of crusaders for "peace" at all costs, who, according to this Israeli (Hebrew) forum, are holed up in the home of the murderer that killed little Sinai Keinan and her grandmother, Ruth Peled, in Petach Tikva in May.


You probably won't be surprised to hear that some frequenters of the said forum think the army should go ahead and demolish the house anyway.

The media here is obsessing about the bio threat
Here are some articles and reports on the subject. I think the pressure is growing to innoculate for smallpox. Health Ministry workers have apparently already innoculated themselves, they say to produce antibodies for more innoculations, but we all know the real reason! (I bet they've innoculated their kids too).

I don't want to get into it, right now. Too stressful.

Barghouti in court
I heard him on the radio. What I heard was: in Hebrew he shouted (to the Press) "Only peace will bring security" over and over and in English he shouted "Two states for two peoples" a few times (I think "peoples" was the term he used). This was not all he said, but this was what he repeated, to make sure it was heard.

Different slogans for different listeners.

Holiday in the Galilee.

(This is a view of the Hermon in the winter)

Next week we're going to stay for two nights at guest rooms in Moshav Beit Hillel, which is in the northern part of the Hula Valley, near Kiryat Shmona. It's very near the Northern border, and I hope it keeps quiet. I don't really fancy sleeping in an air-raid shelter while on holiday!

But I'm pleased we're going. It's so lovely up North. The tourist industry is having a hard time up there, like everywhere else, and it's nice to be able to support them.

We're going on Sunday. I'll remind you before we go.

That's my James
Yesterday's Taranto is the greatest, as usual.

Life After Cal is back!
I'm so pleased. He's one of the first blogs I read regularly, when I started to understand this blog business, a few months back (is that all? It seems like forever!).

He adds about Dennis Ross (don't look for it on his blog, he e-mailed it to me): "We ... had Dennis Ross speak last month at a
conference we put on for college student activists. He
was very, very harsh when speaking about Arafat. But
at this point who cares? Like you said, this is a war.
There is no more "peace process" than there is a
"peace process" between the US and Al-Qaeda."

You’ll notice I have absolutely nothing to say about
which terrorist organization is prepared to stop blowing up which Jews under which conditions.

At this point, I just couldn’t care less.

ZionBlog puts me right
"mahi mahi and dolphin are the same thing - it is a fish not a
mammal. It is not the same thing as a porpoise.

Dolphin is/was the east coast name. Because of the confusion,
the west coast/Hawaiian name - mahi mahi has been taking over.

Here is a picture

This is a male with a square head. the females have a round
head. They are very good to eat."

Lets see if I'm getting this right. The male with the square head and the white T-shirt?

Erm, doesn't sound very kosher to me.

I think I'll pass. I'm feeling a bit queasy, as it is.

Dennis Ross – More hero worship
No American is identified with Oslo, in my mind, more than Dennis Ross (even more than Clinton, somehow). I think Mr. Ross’ ability to step back and look at the way the conflict has developed, as he has been doing, with such understanding and clarity, is truly admirable, amazing even.

In stark contrast, certain Israeli politicians (naming no names, but one of them doesn’t let anyone forget his PhD and wears glasses) refuse to move on and admit that the Oslo concept hasn’t been a success (this is a gross understatement. I should be sued for criminal misinformation, or something like that).

Although, Mr. Ross has a remarkable ability for seeing things as they are, he is a very practical person and can’t help looking for feasible solutions (rather annoying, really, when you're trying to win a war and not look for solutions right now). I suppose old habits die hard. This is what he was paid to do in the Clinton administration, after all. Actually this is admirable, as well.

I haven’t been blessed with this gift, sadly. I often get very fuzzy when I am called on to think up a clever solution to a many-faceted situation, a sort of cotton-wool-for-brains state of mind. So I can’t help but admire more analytic types (Bish is my true hero).

Hey, you! Yes, you! I heard that! No point in denying it. You were thinking “typical woman”, weren’t you? Well, watch it! I’ll have you know, this fuzzy brained female does regular target practice. And I’m a damn good shot!

Legal Statement: The last two sentences were definitely not intended as a threat of any kind. My client is simply stating a well-known fact.

A real breakthrough vis a vis the security room!
It's now locked! The house committee claims it's been cleared and demand their money. We want the key.

What can I say? A nudnik's work is never done.

Bernard Lewis
This caught Fred’s eye on Winds of Change. It’s a Financial Times (UK) interview with Bernard Lewis.

Being a vegetarian, I was rather shocked by his choice of lunch: “grilled mahi-mahi - a kind of dolphin - in a coconut, lime and lychee sauce”. I thought dolphins were endangered. Besides, isn’t eating a dolphin a form of cannibalism?

Lewis’ views are more to my liking, although Michael Steinberger manages to keep the interview light, and no serious discussion on Lewis’ field of expertise develops. What a waste.

Some interesting reflections, nevertheless: "As a specialist on Islam, I find myself disturbed by all the nonsense being talked, by both Muslims and non-Muslims. On the one hand, you have people who would have you believe that Islam is a bloodthirsty religion bent on world destruction. On the other hand, you have people telling us Islam is a religion of love and peace - rather like the Quakers, but less aggressive. The truth is in its usual place."

"There is a certain melancholy pleasure in having been right when so many people were wrong. I obviously didn't predict an atrocity like this, but I had been saying for a long time that something had gone radically wrong in the Arab world and that there was a growing hostility to the west that was likely to express itself violently."

"Asking Arafat to give up terrorism is like asking Tiger Woods to give up golf,"

"Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation obtained total control of Texas and had at its disposal all the oil revenues, and used this money to establish a network of well-endowed schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their particular brand of Christianity. This is what the Saudis have done with Wahhabism. The oil money has enabled them to spread this fanatical, destructive form of Islam all over the Muslim world and among Muslims in the west. Without oil and the creation of the Saudi kingdom, Wahhabism would have remained a lunatic fringe in a marginal country."

Steinberger comments on Lewis’ latest book "What Went Wrong?": “Lewis presents a number of plausible explanations - including the lack of a secular politics and the cultural chauvinism (the conviction there was nothing to learn from the infidels)…”

Steinberger also says that Lewis “allows that it is the subjugation of women that is probably the single biggest cause of the problems besetting the Arabs”. Lewis explains: “You suppress one half of the population and you bring up the other half in this autocratic, hierarchical household. It is a culture of command and obedience.”


Not interesting
Today, Haifa Mayor and former general, Amram Mitzna, announced his intention to run against Ben Eliezer and Haim Ramon for the chair of the Labor Party.

He looks like a very nice man, but when you listen to what he has to say, it’s obvious he’s just Yossi Beilin with a beard and a military history.

The media have been making a big deal out of his candidacy because polls show he is much more popular than other Labor leaders (which doesn’t say much).

His candidacy is being backed by some business bigwigs. This won’t make him very popular with ordinary people, who are more likely to see “Fouad” Ben Eliezer as one of them. Both will lose in the elections, anyway, regardless.


Eilat instead of Riviera
I can’t find this anywhere (I admit I haven’t looked very far, I’m not feeling very well), but Israel Radio (Reshet Bet) reported today that 6000 French Jews have decided to spend their summer vacation in Eilat. The trip is being heavily subsidized by the Jewish Community in France. In Eilat, they’ve dubbed this sudden influx of foreign tourists “The French Revolution”, according to Reshet Bet.

We were thinking of going to Prague this summer
We probably would have been there around now, just in time for the floods. Sometimes Bish's dislike of flying can be a good thing.

It's up to nine
I don't know if anyone outside Israel has noticed that the number of fatalities in the Hebrew University massacre is up to nine.

Look what Fred sent me

A Jewish fishy picture or a fishy Jewish picture. I have just one question: where have all the women gone?

It goes quite nicely with my color scheme, don't you think?

I hope Sharon reads this.
Top Israeli expert on Arab affairs, Ehud Ya'ari, says Israel should not only keep up the pressure on the PA, but increase it. Read why.

Bret Stephens for Jerusalem Post on how the foreign media refuse to accept just how marginal the left has become in Israel.

A former militant smoker admits his mistake in this New York Times column, which appeared in Haaretz' printed edition today, translated into Hebrew. It's about "Hollywood's Responsibility for Smoking Deaths" and it's written by Joe Eszterhas, who wrote "Basic Instinct" and other movies. It's very sad.

Haaretz columnist Gideon Levi nearly got shot by mistake yesterday
By soldiers in the West Bank. Gideon Levi writes solely about Palestinian suffering.

“They used to hate us because we didn't have a state, Now they hate us because we have one” - Shimon Peres.
Yair Sheleg discusses European anti-Semitism in yesterday’s Haaretz. There are two views propagated in the article:

a. Anti-Israeli sentiment held by European leaders is not anti-Semitism and saying it is can be harmful to Israel.
b. The opposite (explained by none other than, surprise surprise, Dr. Yossi Beilin and our very own Foreign Minister Shimon Peres).

Some excerpts:

“Dr. Yossi Beilin, known for his close relations with Europe, surprisingly says that anti-Semitism exists there as a nearly permanent phenomenon. "Anti-Semitism in Europe is illegitimate in all European countries, but it exists beneath the surface everywhere. What makes me a passionate Zionist is, among other things, the fact regrettably that anti-Semitism has not passed from the world and is stronger than those who deny it exists. European leaders claim the last thing they think is anti-Semitic, and I believe them. But I don't rule out the possibility that people who grew up in a certain cultural climate are influenced by certain things even without wanting to be. The Durban Conference Against Racism obviously had expressions of anti-Semitism."

[…]

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres does not rule out the element of anti-Semitism as one factor in European attitudes toward Israel, but he is careful to ascribe it more to public opinion than to politicians…”


More on the same subject
Fred Lapides kindly sent me this delightful article about the anti-Semitism of the British left, which appeared in The City.


A horrible thought
He might very well live into his nineties and beyond (Arafat that is). That’s another twenty years, at least.

I don’t necessary agree with all Zvi Bar’el had to say in yesterday’s Haaretz (you’ll notice I’m a day late here. It’s because I worked late yesterday) but it’s an interesting analysis nonetheless.

This quote, from an Egyptian commentator, shows how the Arabs misjudge Israel, using their own values:
"Just imagine that tomorrow President Bush would call on the Israeli people to replace Sharon because he did not live up to his promises. He did not bring either peace or security, your economic situation is very bad and the social situation is wobbly. The entire Israeli society, including those who do not like Sharon, would mobilize against the American demand".
You just have to look at Gush Shalom’s antics to see that this is nonsense.

The same commentator also says:
“In our modern history there has never yet been a case in which an Arab leader of one country removed the Arab leader of another country, other than by war”. Which means Israel is on the right path.

In contrast
I always enjoy reading (and hearing) Dennis Ross, talking about the Middle East. He really knows the ins and outs of the conflict. Most important, maybe because he experienced it himself, being so deeply involved, he really seems to understand what has happened to the Israeli moderate left (myself included) since the summer of 2000. It’s very likely that he also experienced a great disappointment, as we did, when Camp David II failed. The disappointment grew into a deep collective depression, when we started to grasp that the Palestinian violence that began in September 2000 was not a popular uprising, but a planned and orchestrated military attack on Israel, using some particularly horrifying weapons. That depression has since given way to tremendous anger, on one hand, and a steely determination, on the other.

In view of this, I think Mr. Ross understands what many leaders and commentators outside Israel (and quite a few inside Israel, marginal as they may have become) seem to find negligible – that for the Israeli public to accept any sort of peace plan, the Palestinians will have to go to great lengths to prove that they are trustworthy.

This is a great essay of his, published in Foreign Affairs, and provided by Fred Lapides. In this essay, he refutes some assumptions, popularly cited when discussing the Middle East.

Thoughtless, selfish greed
The Histadrut, which is a sort of mutation of a trade union we have here (actually, it is, in effect, the only trade union we have here) held a three hour “warning” strike today, encompassing the public sector and parts of the private sector that have powerful worker organizations, like the banks. They want a cost-of-living wage adjustment for the workers.

They’re such horrid, grasping little politicians.

At this point in time, most people are grateful if they have jobs. If the Histadrut gets its way, a lot more people could lose theirs. Hundreds of teachers are being fired this year, as it is, which of course means it will be impossible for young teachers, fresh out of teachers’ seminars to get positions and that’s just in one area of the public sector. The private sector is much worse. Thousands have been fired from hi-tech companies, and they’re not getting rehired; factories and small enterprises are folding all the time. The government will have to finance these cost-of-living raises somehow. The workers aren’t stupid. They know this. They can see what’s happening. They can see their friends losing their jobs. They also are quite capable of making the connection between the economic situation and this war we’re in the middle of.

I work in the public sector, myself. I don’t think my salary has lost very much in value due to inflation, certainly not enough to justify a demand for a cost-of-living adjustment, at a time of national crisis, like this.

So what is this, if not nasty, conniving little politicians, who know they won’t get re-elected if they don’t make a fuss, every now and again, (and what better time than when the government is trying to get an unpopular budget through) and don’t care if they take the whole country down on the way?

We have a young girl at work, who has decided that she’s not happy, needs a change, and has given in her notice. No one can understand why she doesn't try to change position inside our large organization. I’m rather worried about her. This is not the time to give up a secure job. She could have something lined up, she’s not telling about, but good jobs are hard to come by these days. I know what you’re thinking – but working as a security guard pays very badly.


Talking about security guards
I worked till 10pm last night, and coming out of work, I walked passed a nearby bar. The entrance to this place was completely blocked by this enormous guy, wearing a bright yellow T-shirt and sitting on a high bar chair. By blocked, I mean blocked. In order to let anyone in, he would have had to get up and move his chair. And he was really big.

I would have liked to see a terrorist try to get round this guy! Well, maybe not.

More about Alex Averbukh, Israeli pole vaulter who won the gold medal at European Championships in Munich.

"Coming a day before a memorial service for the victims of the September 5 attack by Palestinians at the 1972 Olympics that resulted in the death of 11 Israeli athletes, Averbukh's triumph was highly emotional, and the 27-year-old athlete, draped in the Israeli flag, fought back the tears as the national anthem was played to a packed house."

Haaretz says "PA won't facilitate West Bank expulsions". Ah, shucks! What a disappointment! Just when we were depending on them! I guess we'll have to go ahead and do it without their help.

Fair enough. I want that too, if humanly possible, as do most Israelis.

By the way, Mr. Jewish, Palestinians killing Jews doesn't bother you?

"Not in my name"
Letter in today’s Haaretz English internet edition:

"It is with great astonishment that I viewed a whole group of politically correct Jews acting like morons on television tonight. On the local news here in Chicago I saw a group calling themselves Not In My Name (www.nimn.org) stating that Israelis were dying because of Ariel Sharon's own policies.

I am quite certain they feel they are taking a brave stand with this controversial view. The reality, however, is that they are apologists opposed to Israel's acting in self-defense in the face of murderous attacks by an enemy that does not recognize its right to exist.

They get on television and state that Israel brings murder on itself by being too tough. By that same logic, the Holocaust could be blamed on the Jews for not assimilating properly. The same reasoning has fallen on deaf ears when people have criticized United States foreign policy for bringing on the 9/11 attacks. Sheer idiocy. Their organization does not speak in my name. It is certainly not a mainstream view here.

I am a Chicago Jew and I am appalled by the short-sightedness of this criticism. The whole argument, indeed the whole organization, is predicated on the false argument that Israel is acting in their name. Israel never said it was acting in anyone's name except Israel's.

They took it upon themselves to issue a policy position that gives aid and comfort to the enemy of a country that is not theirs. If these Not In My Name Jews were really brave they would renounce their ancestral right to become Israeli citizens. The fact that they don't, but instead choose to take cheap shots from the safety of their suburban Chicago perches speaks volumes.

Steven Pollack

Glencoe, IL"

Maybe we could put them in touch with the British chapter, who could explain how to go about it (renouncing... and so on).

Actually, I took a peek at their website. They really do believe they're helping everyone out, Israel as much as the Palestinians. My best advice to them: Go read Ehud Ya'ari. I can't emphasize enough that this guy knows what he's talking about.

Don’t want to be Israeli! Go figure.
The Jerusalem Post has picked up the story about those 45 British Jews who would rather not be Israelis and has the reaction of Neville Nagler, director-general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who hopes “that they never have cause to regret the renunciation of their right to live in Israel.”

You know, I wonder about these people. They seem to be living in a time warp. Maybe they’re right to “disagree with the notion that Zionist emigration to Israel is any kind of 'solution' for Diaspora Jews, anti-Semitism, or racism.” After all, Jews were doing just great beforehand, especially in the wonderfully enlightened Western Europe. But that’s all water under the bridge.

Right now there are over five million Jewish “victims” of that mistaken notion, living in Israel, seeing it as their home, many of them third and fourth generation Israelis, many of them speaking no other language but Hebrew. A large percentage of these “victims” of that mistaken notion were forced to escape their homes in Arab countries. Together these “victims” of that mistaken notion, no matter which country they were forced out of (call me strange but I also see Holocaust survivors as having been forced out), have built a home and a life, without having to apologize for being different, for the first time in two thousand years (and you know, whatever they say, Jews in Arab countries had to keep their heads down too).

So what next? Oops, sorry! Mistaken notion! It’s back to Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Poland (Poland??? Motti, what did you do with that Polish dictionary, your Great-Great-Uncle Yankel gave your father?) and so on, for you lot. Oh, and girls, make sure to exchange that belly-button ring for a nice big piece of black material, covering everything but your eyes (it could prove helpful if you’re lucky enough to miss the massacre at Teheran Airport).

About Western Europe's courting of fundementalist Islam
The current issue of the Partisan Review has an informative essay about ”Tolerating Intolerance: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe” by Bruce Bawer.

Some “amusing” passages:
“In 1999, for example, the Guardian described a student conference on "Islamophobia" at King’s College, London, at which a speaker began by announcing politely, "I am a gay Muslim." That effectively ended his presentation: "For members of the majority Muslim audience, the expression was enough to ignite the most passionate opposition. Some people began to shout, while others came raging down to confront the speaker. Security was called and the conference came to a premature end."

[…]

Then, in October 1999, the Shari’ah Court of the U.K. declared a fatwa against Terence McNally, who in his play Corpus Christi had depicted Jesus Christ as gay. (In Islam, Jesus is counted among the prophets.) Signing the death order, judge Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed emphasized the concept of honor, charging that the Church of England, by failing to take action against McNally, had "neglected the honour of the Virgin Mary and Jesus." The Daily Telegraph reported that according to the sheikh, "Islamic law states that Mr. McNally can only escape the fatwa by becoming a Muslim. . . . If he simply repents he would still be executed, but his family would be cared for by the Islamic state carrying out the sentence and he could be buried in a Muslim graveyard."

[…]

Among Muslims in Europe, it’s quite common for young people to be compelled by their parents to accept spouses they don’t want. Some women manage to escape these situations and seek protection in women’s shelters. In 1999 the Guardian published an article by Faisal Bodi, a British Muslim who complained about these shelters … "Refuges tear apart our families. Once a girl has walked in through their door, they do their best to stop her ever returning home. That is at odds with the Islamic impulse to maintain the integrity of the family."

[…]

Then, in September 2001 (only five days, in fact, before the destruction of the World Trade Center), the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that 65 percent of rapes of Norwegian women were performed by "non-Western" immigrants–a category that, in Norway, consists mostly of Muslims. The article quoted a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo (who was described as having "lived for many years in Muslim countries") as saying that "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. One reason for the high number of rapes by Muslims, explained the professor, was that in their native countries "rape is scarcely punished," since Muslims "believe that it is women who are responsible for rape." The professor’s conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: "Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it."”

Fred Lapides noticed this one too. Doesn't the girl read anything by herself?

Not a healthy society
Michael Oren, in WSJ, looks at Palestinians’ reactions to Israeli losses in comparison to Israelis’ reactions to Palestinian losses.

Not a Fish
A Frankenfish. Brrrr.

Fred has found an amusing site called “Jews for Allah”
“I had always been aware of Jews for Jesus but this is a new angle!” He says.

The site offers Islam as the divine completion of Judaism and explains why Israel is not a Jewish state. Their motto is “Ethnically Jewish + Religiously Muslim = Jews for Allah” and (this is especially sagacious) “Shalom + Salam = Peace”.

If you understand Hebrew go see the Hebrew page. They translated it with a translation program and it is hilarious.

Hmmm.
According to this (supplied by the ever faithful Fred (ah, but is he?)), China has been financing military acquisitions, by selling nasty stuff to the Arabs. Seeing as Israel seems to have been selling military equipment to China, this creates a rather awkward situation, whereby China has been biting the hand that sells it weapons. Maybe they don't realize that they won't get any spare parts if their supplier is gassed.

Oy! The people we have to do business with to make a living!

More about Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish sect called the Essenes, who lived in the area

Care of Fred Lapides.

Terrorist attack in Jordan Valley
One woman was murdered in Moshav Mechora, and two were wounded. One terrorist has been killed but there is at least one more still at large.

“Peace” activists actions backfire.
Pro-Palestinian activists attempted to forcibly enter Bethlehem today. Of course, Haaretz managed to turn it around and claim that they were forcibly prevented from entering Bethlehem.

Their efforts caused unnecessary suffering to residents of Bethlehem who had the curfew reimposed, according to arabia.com, probably for fear of the provocation having repercussions.

Fred Lapides helped me with this.

This is very sad
Posted by an Egyptian woman on a forum on Arabia.com:
"What I miss most when I return to Egypt…
Forget about the shops or the food, what I miss most are the silly little things that westerners might take for granted. What do I miss when I’m back here? I miss the freedom to walk without getting catcalls, I miss being able to reach up for something without worrying if a centimeter of my tummy will be visible, I miss seeing PDA’s that show me that the world is not such a harsh place with no feelings. I miss the friendly waiters and salespeople who don’t envy you for having money while they serve you. I miss the polite drivers who don’t feel that they have a right to run over anyone poor enough to not own a car. I miss being able to walk with my brother at night without getting accusatory looks that make me wanna pull out my ID to show them we’re related. I do love my country but I just wanted to tell everyone to enjoy the little things in life that they might not think twice about. Just like I’m thankful that I can live in a country where I can get an education, get a job and be my own person. Enjoy your life whatever and wherever it is."

Dead Sea Scrolls
Michael Handelzalts edits the excellent weekly Haaretz book supplement. It's evident that he's a real bibliophile and his weekly editorial is always a pleasure to read.

This week he talks about "A new book in Hebrew by Prof. Zeev Gries, "The Book as an Agent of Culture, 1700-1900,"" that "strives - and succeeds - to show that Jewish bibliography, considered by many to be a subject devoid of excitement and fit only for most ardent and boredom-proof librarians, is in fact a narrative full of suspense and colorful details, a story of the Jewish spirit, of the awakening of the Jewish "intelligentsia" that turned the book into a "motherland in a suitcase.""

He says that the forward to the book opens with a quote from the diaries of Ben Gurion, which leads Handelzaltz to discuss the way the Dead Sea Scrolls were acquired by the State of Israel.

Israeli pole vaulter is European gold medalist.



Update: some really great photos of Averbukh's vault and receiving the medal (sorry about the quality).

Good guys and bad guys
Marcus Gee from the Canadian Globe and Mail wishes to remind us that it's Iraq that is breaking the law, not the US. "saying that it would be illegal to act against Mr. Hussein without a new mandate from the UN ... is like saying it would be illegal to arrest Bonnie and Clyde without passing a new law against bank robbery".

But who's saying it would be illegal? The Guardian for a start (Surprise, surprise). They actually have the gall to talk about the casualties! Saddam torturing and killing off his own countrymen? Oh, isn't it just awful, what those poor Iraqis have to go through! Absolutely! It's all horrible and abhorrent. How about we do something about it? Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. Think about the casualties.

By the way, they're soooo worried about the effects of bio/chemo war. They must have forgotten who's on the receiving end. It's OK, chaps, it's only those nasty Israelis.

Fred Lapides has been giving me all the gossip on someone I mentioned earlier (not Irma). What fun. I know I'm being cruel, but I'm not telling.

Everyone's probably met Irma (the virtual Jewish mother)
But in case you haven't...

Hebrew University victims
There are a lot of e-mails circling with personal stories about the American victims. There's just too much to post here, but here are two links. One is about Benjamin Blutstein and the other about Janis Coulter. Judith Weiss sent me both.

If you would like to receive some of the other personal e-mails, please contact me and I'll forward them to you.

More my style - Food!
Also from New York Times Book Review: Betty Fussell reviews ''Near a Thousand Tables'' by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. The book looks at the history of mankind through the history of human food. Fussell says that although there is a bit of finger wagging at mankind's irresponsibility ecology-wise, it is "with grace and wit".

And this is all very relevant for me, because I've got all my in-laws from Bish's side, including kids, coming for lunch. I'll just go and have a quick shower and then pop the lasagna in the oven.

More about “meek Jews”.
Maybe she called them “ugly Russians” because of their slightly slanted eyes, which today seem attractively exotic but in the olden days just made them look strange and different in her eyes.

It is sad isn’t it, that the most prominent thing that she sees about European Jews of the time was their meekness (at least it wasn’t their noses!). Their meekness didn’t really help them much, in the long run, did it?

And if we’re on that subject, New York Times Book Review has interviewed Iain Pears about his latest book “The Dream of Scipio”, which looks much too heavy for my liking (more Bish’s sort of thing - I wonder if it’s been translated into Hebrew yet). It’s a philosophical novel that among other things discusses anti-Semitism, through the ages.

“Anti-Semitism is like alcoholism,” says Pears, “You can go for 25 years without a drink, but if things go bad and you find yourself with a vodka in your hand, you can’t get rid of it. It’s an emotional inheritance, a social inheritance.”

British Jewry helps Netanya victims
Apparently those 45 British Jews who would rather not have any connections with Israel represent no one but themselves.
Here's a nice initiative by British Jews to help victims of terrorist attacks who are new immigrants and therefore find it difficult to get help, because of the language barrier.

Fred Lapides noticed this.

Why I'm happy I live in Israel (Well, one reason anyway).
My daughter must have read Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" (in Hebrew) fifteen times or more. Today she comes to me and asks me what "meek" means (in Hebrew "shiflai ruach"). Then she shows me this passage in chapter 37: "Many nations are represented, many languages spoken, many costumes worn, and on a sunny day the spectacle is as gay and brilliant as a carnival. Haughty English, lively French, sober Germans, handsome Spaniards, ugly Russians, meek Jews, free-and-easy Americans..."

I had to explain to her what this meant. Nothing in her day-to-day experience could have given her an understanding of why Jews should be described as meek. Isn't that wonderful?

I wonder why she never noticed this before.

By the way, we have an abundance of Russians in Israel, many mixed (Jewish and..) or Christian (married to Jews) and I think they're far from ugly.

Shabbat Shalom.

Painting by Lily Delissa Joseph (1863-1940)

Up yours, BMW.
You know, up till a few years ago, BMW's used to be the status symbols of drug dealers in Israel. Even today, when I see a BMW, I half expect the (male) driver to be wearing a tight black silk shirt, matching pants, a lot of heavy gold chains and have beautifully blown-dry hair. (No offense to people who prefer to dress like this but happen not to be drug dealers).

I forgot to tell you
I'm site of the day on Right Wing News.

Right wing? Moi?

The Best online test ever: Try to find Israel (care of BMW):
Just click on the map and join the fun. Free BMW for those who find Israel.

Contact BMW to claim your prize (or to share your innermost thoughts).

(Link care of Ynet - Yediot Aharonot online)

Also seen on LGF and my James.

Update: BMW have obviously been inundated by people wanting their free BMW's. Instead of forking out, they've removed the map! The cheek of those people! Thank you, R.T. for pointing this out. I think you should sue.

Egyptian intellectuals are disappointed at low turnout for anti-Israel demonstrations.
They blame the weather.

Noticed by Fred Lapides.

My country preparing to protect me from Saddam:
"Israel is deploying a second battery of Arrow anti-missile missiles in the center of the country."

They're back!
Gunfighters killed in Afghanistan identified as Al-Qaeda.

Ehud Ya'ari tells of Dr. Ahmed Abd al-Razaq, a Syrian scholar residing in Iraq. In his new book, Abd al-Razaq explains how the Jews forged the holy scriptures and that Hitler was doing the Jews a favor.

Reformed New Historian Benny Morris writes about Michael Oren's Six Day War book.

Richard Perle in the UK Telegraph

"For the critics, erring by pre-emption assumes things will go badly, either during the course of the fighting or afterwards. Opponents of pre-emption, like those who argued against liberating Kuwait in 1991, tend to overestimate Saddam's support in Iraq and the region, as well as the competence, morale and ultimate loyalty of his army.

Here, too, there can be no certainty. But the frequency with which he rotates, murders or surgically mutilates his own officers hardly reflects confidence. As for their competence, the Iraqi force today is a third of what it was in 1991, and it is the same third, 11 years closer to obsolescence."

The UK Telegraph has a rather belated critique of "the LadyKillers" (1955)

This is one of my all-time favorites.

Some Buddhist, huh?

My James has the ultimate George Orwell quote (From Orwell's May 1945 essay "Notes on Nationalism"):

"It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool."

Tonecluster says it's already started.

"Onward Muslim soldiers..."



This doesn't come over very well here, but on the printed version of today's Haaretz these Iraqi women look so miserable.

Up to no-good again
Fred said that Charles said that Yahoo said that Adam Shapiro has been leading Pro-Palestinians into mischief again. If they hadn’t been stopped, they had intended to “encourage (Nablus) residents to break an Israeli-imposed curfew.” I think that’s awful. If the Palestinians had broken curfew and been shot, wouldn’t that be his responsibility? Luckily most Palestinians aren’t stupid. They probably wouldn’t have listened to him and his irresponsible excitement-seeking friends.

An Israeli Arab voices a different view
A refreshing commentary, by Billal Shalata, Master of Communications and Journalism, Hebrew University:

(I apologize for the translation. This was very difficult to translate, for some reason. Maybe it was originally written in Arabic, because it doesn’t come over very well in Hebrew)

“Another Leadership is Necessary

The terrorist attack on the Hebrew University cafeteria made me furious. The bodies strewn on the floor, hugs of Arab and Jewish students, while worried voices in the background asked after their friends. Meanwhile the Arab Media are transmitting messages and substance that have become a part of the Palestinian resistance, but have forgotten about human value and honor. They are waging a communications war that is feeding on bloody human bodies, strewn among the wreckage and alongside the tanks. … The Media coverage has made me doubt the true aims of the new Arab television stations that presented themselves at the outset as intending to bring values of openness against the fortified regimes in their palaces.

And where do we, the Arab Palestinians in Israel, stand? The leadership of this community has, in my view, been stricken with symptoms of a mental illness, with a propensity to losing the community it represents. When Knesset Members appear on satellite channels, what they say sounds like it was coordinated with the Palestinian Authority’s public relations and spokesmen’s layout. This leadership has forgotten that it is meant to represent the collective suffering of the minority that elected it, and to work towards a solution to its hardship. Its leaders repeat, over and over again that “only resistance will bring freedom”. A person like Azmi Bishara makes me angry: In his words there is no search for a rationale that will allow us to live here. Now, more than ever, there is a need for an Arab leadership that will appear on the television screens, and be unequivocal. It must lead a social campaign that will demand a cessation of terrorist attacks, in order to focus more on the deepening social problems. We would rather see an Arab Palestinian leadership in Israel that would look for a new horizon, in partnership with Jewish colleagues who believe in a real coexistence.”

I knew it!





(This is part of my brave attempts to break the silly tests habit).

Aren't these Iraqi soldiers looking snazzy in their suicide bomber outfits?

Oops! Wrong address! Silly us.
A group of confused British Jews sent the Guardian a letter informing the newspaper that they wish to "renounce their right to Israeli residence and citizenship" because it is "morally wrong" and because they do not wish to identify themselves with Israel's "barbaric policies". This is very kind of you, we can do without your sort here. But you've made a mistake. The address you're looking for is the Israeli Ministry of the Interior. I'm sure Minister Eli Yishai will be quite happy to make it official.

The far-left continues to show its true colors
This time its activists are spraying them on Israeli Air Force officer's private cars.

It's ironic that the Israeli left has always patronized the "violent" right. I do hope the Shin Bet are keeping tabs on these people. They seem to be getting more and more disconnected and dangerous.

More wriggling by Tony Blair
I would suggest this was disinformation, but knowing the British Labour Party, this is doubtful.

While we're on the subject of disinformation, here are two Canadian articles (the first by an appeasing diplomat, the other pro-heavy war) that suggest that the very public disagreements of policy makers in Washington could be disinformation. Ah, but that politicians would be so devious when dealing with matters of state and not just with matters of self. (You'll excuse me if I see top military officials as politicians too. I'm a realist).

Tone Cluster links to this about a PA execution.


My interest in the Iraq offensive is more than academic.
It's more of a survival instinct thing.

Research following the Gulf War indicated that the 20 somethings in Israel took it hardest, for some reason. I think our age group had never experienced this feeling of insecurity in our own homes. People who were older remembered the Six Day War, and the fear that preceded it, but we were too young. Bish and I were a young couple in 1991 without kids. My eldest is actually a “war baby”. I now realize it’s easier having missiles blowing up around you without having to worry about the kids.

I don’t think it will be anywhere nearly as bad for me this time around, psychologically. Personal security is no longer taken for granted like it was back then. We're more accustomed to living with danger.

I've just been remembering the “silent channel” we had during the Gulf War. Most of the missile attacks were at night, whether to prevent the launchers being detected or so they'd be in time for the evening news in the US. We used to sleep with a special silent radio channel on, so we could hear the emergency code broadcast to the people operating the air-raid sirens. This way we had another second to get ready before the air-raid sirens started.

There are such a lot of articles about Iraq today. This is the one I enjoyed the most. Tim Hames in the UK Times is amused by the lack of any catchy anti-war slogans. Cute. But it improves:

“There are but five relevant questions to consider when it comes to Iraq now. Do you believe that Saddam is actively pursuing weapons of mass destruction? Do you think he is doing so for the purpose of battle or blackmail rather than more benign reasons? Do you think this is a seriously negative development for world order? Do you consider it plausible that he will refrain from this activity of his own accord? Do you believe that external military action would put an end to his ambitions?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, it is perfectly reasonable for the individual concerned to sign petitions, march in demonstrations, or simply oppose the war in a more private fashion. The “and then what?” camp, on the other hand, appears to be willing to say “yes” to all five questions but then refrain from endorsing pre-emptive action. To do so for fear of “regional instability” is utterly bizarre. Where is the stability associated with a man who invaded one neighbour within a year of becoming President, had a shot at another one a decade later, and has spent the ten years since then attempting to acquire biological, chemical and nuclear weapons?”

Peace later



Maariv’s business supplement interviewed Hebrew University Professor Yisrael (Robert) Aumann, Professor of Game Theory and Operations Research. The article says that according to Sylvia Nassar’s “A beautiful Mind” about John Nash, this guy was nominated for the Nobel Prize with Nash. Aumann says he has no idea about that because he never read the book, and because they don’t notify the nominees only the recipients.

Anyway, he gives some cool examples for game theory application:
For instance, the gas masks in the Gulf War: “In retrospect”, he says, “everyone said ‘those masks were foolish’ and that the millions invested in them were wasted. But I say that this is a basic thought mistake, because it could very well be that they didn’t launch missiles with gas because they knew we were protected. We later discovered that the masks weren’t good enough, but Saddam Hussein didn’t know that. He could have reckoned that the harm he would cause himself by launching missiles with gas would be very great, because it would deeply shock the world, but the benefit would be insignificant because Israelis were protected. Had we not been protected he just might have launched missiles with gas… You often invest in things not in order to use them, but in order to avoid using them. Here’s another example: For instance, everyone is crying about how much the Arabs are suffering at the roadblocks in the territories, and some are claiming that they are useless, because they’re causing the Arabs suffering and no (terrorists) are being caught at the roadblocks. Therefore they aren’t effective. But again, this is distorted thinking. Why aren’t terrorists and car bombs passing through the roadblocks? Because the roadblocks are there. So it’s obvious that when you put up roadblocks you prevent terrorists from entering. Some people make this mistake, even though it’s elementary. Nuclear weapons are also developed in order not to use, but as a deterrent”.

When asked if the political conflict can also be explained with game theory he replied, “Yes. You have to imagine that there are two people in the arena, who want to divide a cake between them. Meanwhile, time passes and no one can eat the cake, and it starts to become dry. One of the debating sides says, “I want two thirds of the cake and you can have a third. You don’t want a third? You don’t have to take it. I’ll see you later.” The other one says, “Listen, that’s not fair. Why should you take two thirds instead of dividing it half and half? Let’s divide it evenly, already, and eat the cake.” In the end the one asking for the two thirds gets what he wants and the one who wants half – gets a third. Why? Because according to the theory, someone who has a lower interest level (the one with two thirds, because he’s less pressured, time wise) will get the larger part in the bargaining. The one who pushes to finish the deal will get the smaller part. We all want a settlement, peace, we don’t want war, but this slogan of “Peace Now”? Let us say “Peace”, but not “Now”. They have patience. We should also have patience.”

I'm Not a Fish
I'm a bigfoot!



And here's my new e-mail: imshin@bigfoot.com

Rumsfeld
As posted first on Amish Tech Support.

Why do they do the things that they do?
Yesterday I listed three basic assumptions of the Israeli left:

1. Israeli occupation is the root of the conflict.
2. There is no existential danger to the State of Israel (from the Palestinians).
3. There is no military solution to the conflict.

And a conclusion:
There is no moral justification whatsoever for any Israeli military action against the Palestinians.

I would like to point out that these assumptions are only relevant to the Zionist left. I’m not sure at what point on the left-lefter-leftest continuum people stop being Zionists.

I was never very far left. I was what you would call moderate left. The conclusion above was never acceptable to me, but the three assumptions were the basis of my support of the Oslo Accords.

This ICT analysis of the statistics of fatalities on both sides of the current Palestinian/Israeli conflict is dedicated to a gentle Israeli lady I know, who feels so bad about the Palestinians’ suffering that she believes that we deserve the terrorist attacks. She thinks the numbers of the dead should be more even.

Please don’t feel angry with this lady, even if you think she is wrong. When she said what she said I felt very angry indeed. But she is not a fanatic and this discernment of hers made her very sad. She said she was afraid to say it out loud.

I don’t know how many Palestinians are capable of such compassion. I would like her to know that things are more even than she realizes.

I’ve linked to this before. I think it is important enough to bring up again.

If you take in account the three assumptions and the conclusion, people like this lady are reacting quite logically to the situation. The only difference between them and me is that I changed my mind about the three assumptions, based on what I perceive to be quite concrete evidence that all three are erroneous.

They, on the other hand, seem to experience no real change in the situation (maybe just more of the same) so there really is no reason for them to change their views.

If you accept the three assumptions then clearly you don’t interpret the current hostilities as a war, but as a popular uprising caused by Israel’s misguided policies (If you haven’t read the Ehud Ya’ari article I linked to yet, go read it). In this case, you don’t consider your activities as anything like treason, but as legitimate pressure on your government to change these policies. Any attempt by the government to curb these activities of yours, will be regarded by you as oppression.

Because of assumption #2, the left sees nothing wrong with violently opposing Israeli police and armed forces; breaking Israeli laws; encouraging foreign intervention; researching and publicizing Israel’s “crimes” worldwide and so on. Thus the left has become the tool of the Palestinian propaganda machine.

The question is when do we decide that they’ve gone too far and put them in prison?

The worst of it is the effect they have on the Palestinians. They claim that the government’s policies are increasing hatred and causing the escalation in violence (I like this increasing hatred assertion. So before we did such and such, they hated us 85% much and now they hate us 87% much. That certainly makes a big difference).

But I think they are the ones causing the escalation. For one thing, they are actively encouraging the Palestinians by giving them the false impression that Israeli society is split, and that there is a sizeable opposition to the governments policies, and therefore the violence is doing the job.

Left wing movements and publications regularly present Israeli opinion poll results in a misleading fashion. Take the polls showing that a large majority of Israelis is willing to give up the territories and evacuate settlements, for instance. Talk about taking things out of context! Of course the Israeli public is ready for generous concessions. This is not new, for goodness sake. But not now, not till we’ve won the war, not till the Palestinians have proved themselves, above all doubt, to be a reliable partner.

The fact is that Jewish society in Israel is unified, as it hasn’t been for many years, in the determination to fight this war, and win it.

Unfortunately, although they’re a small minority, the stuck-in-old-concepts left are very loud and well connected in the media.

Fred Lapides, this is all your fault, you know. You sent me those statistics, and now I've gone and bored my poor readers half to death.

From the guy who gave us "Get ready! There will be missiles." (continuously, commencing from round about September 1990 till we started to hear them exploding around our Tel Aviv apartment) while all the learned experts on TV were saying no way will there be missiles:

"It's near".

There you have it. The Bish has spoken.

Gary Kasparov on the war on terror
This guy knows about winning wars, even if his soldiers ar two inches high and made of wood.

"As in World War II, the war waged by terrorists began with attacks on Jews. Any attempt to separate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the war on terror is futile. Once again momentum is building toward a Middle East peace push, but I'm convinced it is hopeless to look for a separate solution to the Middle East crisis before we achieve victory in the war on terror.

[...] America's allies have yet to recognize the urgency of the situation; they are still questioning the need for tough measures to counter the most serious challenge to our civilization for the past half-century. It is customary in Europe to allow suicide bombers the luxury of a "political" cause. EU countries and banks are working on underwriting Iranian government bonds. Multilateralism and multiculturalism, not to mention anti-Semitism, exert too strong an influence for Europe to play a constructive role."

One Ron Norman from San Francisco, responding to the article says: "The Jews are our canaries in the mine."

Our Sis called my bluff by offering me "the March of Folly" in English. Thank you, Our Sis, I'll stick to the Hebrew.

Vacation
So what are my girls doing this summer besides "Chiquititas"?
Two little words: The Sims.

At last! Ehud Ya'ari - The whole picture.
I've been looking for this - Ehud Ya'ari, top Israeli expert on Arab affairs, shares his views on the current hostilities and the Oslo accord.

And I found it all by myself!

"The chaotic situation today [in the West Bank and Gaza] was consciously, deliberately, and intentionally introduced by Chairman Arafat, though it has extended beyond the time frame he originally conceived. I describe his actions as a willing suspension of control, first exercised on the night of September 28, 2000, when he issued the orders and instructions to his political leadership and the different commanders of the security agencies to embark upon this endeavour. The order for the formal security forces was to stick to the sidelines and allow the irregulars – what later came to be known as the national and Islamic forces, an alliance of Tanzim, Hamas, Jihad, and the Fronts – to do the job.

[...] The main fault in the Oslo Agreement was not the concept of seeing Israel’s strategic interest, as I do, in the creation of a Palestinian state. The main fault of Oslo was in assuming it was indispensable, as they thought at the time, to start the process by bringing in seven brigades of the Fatah and the PA Liberation Army and having Arafat on the scene right from the start.

[...] Arafat does not see Hamas as a rival or as an adversary. He never did. For Arafat, Hamas is a partner, which he keeps as a junior partner. Arafat’s legacy is the combined structure that he allowed to emerge during the intifada, an informal alliance, and now formal, among his own Fatah faction, Hamas, and the rest.

[...] The Palestinian "right of return" is the central issue. A mini-state is not the central issue and it never was. You will not find a Palestinian leadership that will be willing to accept any of the formulas currently being discussed as a solution to this problem. The Palestinian national movement is about the right of return; it is not about the West Bank and Gaza.

[...] This war is only about one issue. It is not about settlements. It was never about occupation. It is about whether the Palestinian state is going to be born in peace and for peace, or whether it will be some sort of runaway state that is allowed to come into being without resolving the conflict with Israel, in order to maintain a state of fluctuating hostility."

Janice Coulter HY”D.
By her teacher
Judith Weiss sent me this:

“By Jay Berkovits

Janis Coulter HY"D

The horrible events of this past week, especially Wednesday's bombing
at the Hebrew University, have been difficult and trying. Because I
work daily at the Hebrew University, though at a different campus,
and have had connections to the University for almost 30 years, this
attack felt frightfully close. Young people, mostly Americans,
including two who had just completed post-graduate Jewish studies at
Pardes, perished that day. But it is because of my connection to one
of the victims, Janis Coulter, that I feel compelled to share some
thoughts.

Janis was my student at UMass about thirteen years ago. She studied
in our department, and was also a History major. She was a lovely
person, applied herself diligently to her studies, and accomplished
quite a lot. Because of her intelligence and excellent record, she
assisted me in grading exams in our department's introductory survey
of Jewish civilization. But the most striking thing I remember about
Janis was the uncommon warmth with which she approached the history
of the Jews. She wasn't Jewish, but she certainly had a yiddishe
neshomoh. After finishing UMass, she went to the Univ. of Denver to
get a graduate degree in Judaic Studies, then attended the Hebrew
University. From time to time I would see her at the Association for
Jewish Studies meetings, and at some point she decided to work with
students, to encourage them to study in Israel. She met with
students at campuses throughout the U.S., and eventually became the
deputy director of the New York office of the American Friends of the
Hebrew University.

It therefore was not a complete surprise when Janis told me that she
had converted to Judaism. I could never have predicted it when we
first met, but it seemed so obvious. When I think about the Talmud's
description of what is expected of a prospective convert (Yevamot
47a), I think of Janis. The gemara says that when a person comes
before the beit din with the intention of converting to Judaism, that
person is asked why s/he would want to join the Jewish people.
"Don't you know that the Jewish people are despised and persecuted?"
the beit din asks. If the ger answers, "I know and I am not worthy",
s/he is accepted immediately, and only then is instructed in the
commandments. Rav Soloveitchik, zz"l, explained that first the ger
enters the covenant of fate (physical) -- "brit goral" -- and after
this enters the covenant of destiny (the Torah) -- "brit ye'ud."
What this teaches, continued the Rov, is that the first thing we
demand of the ger is not a leap of faith, but a leap of empathy for
the Jewish people. This is what we learn from converts about being
Jewish.

With the empathy she displayed for the Jewish people, Janis taught us
all a great deal. Her personal journey became intertwined with the
destiny of the Jewish people she loved so much, but ended tragically,
on a trip accompanying students to Israel from the U.S.

By converting to Judaism, Janis embraced the Jewish people as her
family. At this sorrowful time, the Jewish community must show its
support for this wonderful young woman, a genuine woman of valor, and
for the others who perished in the same attack. This is a time to
stand together with one of our own, and with the people of Israel. I
can't think of a better expression of Kiddush Hashem than to attend
her funeral and mourn her loss "betokh avelei Tzion vi-Yerushalayim".

I was told this morning that the funeral will be on Sunday at 10:00
am at Cong. Hillel B'nai Torah in W. Roxbury.

Please feel free to share this letter as you see fit.

B'tikvah shenishma besorot tovot, ve-Shabbat Shalom,

Jay”

About Israel and the Bio and Chemical threat
Update on security room: Well, we got the mover to come and take our neighbors' old furniture out of the security room for charity. Problem is he keeps not showing. Everyday he says tomorrow. Hmmph!

Fred Lapides' link, by the way.

"Going grocery shopping here—deciphering the Hebrew labels and delighting in all of the kosher products..."
Marla Bennett, an American from San Diego killed in the Hebrew University terrorist attack, wrote about living in Israel.

Thank you, Fred Lapides.

I wonder if the Sharkman is aware of this:
"Anti-obesity chemical found in shark liver".
Sharks everywhere, run and hide! This will probably have dire consequences.

Assumptions of the Israeli far-left
1. Israeli occupation is the root of the conflict.

2. There is no existential danger to the State of Israel.

3. There is no military solution to the conflict.

These assumptions lead to the following determination:

There is no moral justification whatsoever for any Israeli military action against the Palestinians.

Why am I stating the obvious, you ask. Well, in view of my previous leftie-ness Im trying to work some things out. Hold with me. I'll embellish at my leisure. This might take some time, so don't hold your breath.

Victor Davis Hanson says that everyone hates the US
but wants to live there so they can freely express that hatred.

Inventing indifference
“What has happened to us?” Asks Anat Maidan in today’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper. And then goes on to protest life going on as usual. People have become apathetic, obtuse to the death and to the suffering, she claims. She wonders why they didn’t even put sad songs on the radio. I don’t know which channel she’s been listening to, but I don’t think she’s caught the mood at all. Maybe she’s describing her own state of mind. I object to her claim that people here have become indifferent.

People may have adopted a fatalistic way of thinking, and that’s OK. I think that’s a good way of dealing with the uncertainty. After all, statistically, Israelis are still more likely to die in traffic accidents.

There was a heavy feeling in the street this morning, when people woke up to the news of a fifth murderous attack, last night, that killed two young parents and badly wounded their three year old son, while they drove to their home in the West Bank.

So good for you, Anat Meidan! You’re column was on the front-page of the most widely read newspaper in Israel the day after a pigua. But it apparently doesn’t mean you had anything worthwhile to say.

I was too soft on them yesterday.
I’m really disgusted with Gush Shalom (so called “Peace Bloc”) and their threatening letters. This Jerusalem Post columnist suggests Gush Shalom activists “should not hide behind their institutional anonymity. They should identify themselves by name, so that the rest of us can show them what we really think of them.”

Well, we don’t have to wait for them to reveal themselves. This is their website and this is how to contact them. Go visit them and share your feelings with them.

I must request that you write nice, polite letters and e-mails (and make sure you’re not angry when you sit down to do this). I really mean it. I’m not being cynical. They probably get piles of hate mail already. If you start off pleasantly and positively, they might just read through the whole thing. Hate mail rarely gets read and serves to feed the recipients feelings of self-righteousness. These guys already see themselves as crusaders for justice. They don’t need our help.

Maybe we could all do what my Dad does (I hope you don’t mind my sharing your secret ploy, Dad). When he’s having a disagreement or a misunderstanding with people he’s doing business with but doesn’t necessarily know personally, he sends them an amusing little poem explaining his side of the predicament. Sometimes he writes it in the form of a limerick, which he’s especially good at. His doggerels are usually hits on the receiving end, and he often gets amusing replies. He always gets the recipient’s attention and his message through.

Using humor could be a good idea especially when dealing with earnest, ideological activists. They could probably use some loosening up.

The Palestinians are celebrating as usual

A shark is also Not a Fish
Even if he's got his own blog.

Four murderous terrorist attacks in Israel today.
I'll just pop into Indymedia Israel and see the unbiased version.

Well, according to the unbiased version either Israeli dead aren't news or it just didn't happen. On the other hand "Ala" had some soldiers visit him this morning and he feels like he was raped. Was he raped? Well, not actually raped exactly, no. But he had "to sit on the chair and keep silent" which is definitely a near rape situation.

"Ala"'s story is much more newsworthy than murdered Israelis.

After all, they had it coming, didn't they?

Sometimes all these terrorist attacks get me down.
Someone asked if a comment I wrote on LGF was a bitter joke. It gave me a jolt and made me aware of just how bitter and angry I was feeling.

It’s hard to accept that there are no miracle solutions. All we can do is be strong and determined and patient.

And most important – enjoy the good things.

Milton Friedman birthday anecdote
By Dr. Weevil

Near Tul Karem (West Bank). 3 wounded. 2 seriously.

East Jerusalem. 2 dead. 14 wounded.

Imshin cracking up
"Some things in life are bad,
They can really make you mad,
Other things just make you swear and curse,
When you're chewing your life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle,
And this'll help things turn out for the best,
And.....

Always look on the bright side of life.
[whistling]
Always look on the light side of life.
[whistling]

If life seems jolly rotten,
There's something you've forgotten,
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps,
Don't be silly chumps.
Just purse your lips and whistle. That's the thing.
And...

Always look on the bright side of life.
[whistling]
Always look on the right side of life,
[whistling]

For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word.
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin.
Give the audience a grin.
Enjoy it. It's your last chance, anyhow.
So,...

Always look on the bright side of death,
[whistling]
Just before you draw your terminal breath.
[whistling]

Life's a piece of shit,
When you look at it.
Life's a laugh and death's a joke. It's true.
You'll see it's all a show.
Keep 'em laughing as you go.
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And...

Always look on the bright side of life.
[whistling]
Always look on the right side of life.
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]
Always look on the bright side of life!
[whistling]"

Thank you , Eric Idle.

Bitter
The more I read, the more I write, the more bitter and angry I become.
I wish I could go back to being a Buddhist, sitting on my cushion, eyes closed, breathing in and out.

It's up to 9, according to Haaretz.

Mount Meron
We had a memorable family holiday here exactly a year ago. We stayed at the field school, which is right up the mountain, and beautifully cool. We enjoyed the wonderful mountain air and got to see a whole family of wild boar.

Meron, near Safed (Tzfat), Upper Galilee. 7 dead. Approximately 40 wounded.

Palestinian Legislative Council member explains PA corruption
Guess who's behind it?

Is Blair trying to wriggle his way out of Iraq?

Israeli "Peace" movement "Gush Shalom"'s new refusenik recruiting method:
Threats and extortion.
That's the ticket!
I'll just check the refusenik's website ... no, sorry, it hasn't worked. The number is still 474.

I've got it bad

43.75 %

My weblog owns 43.75 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

Impassioned plea to all Americans based on Silflay Hraka's ideas
Please, please, please take the Palestinians. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please take the Palestinians.

Please.

Please.

Update: Don Lovelady suggests this place.

Hi, we’re home.
Mitzpe Ramon was much emptier of Israeli tourists this time. We had a very hot week and a lot of people were probably afraid it would be too hot down there. They don’t realize that Mitzpe Ramon is higher up than Jerusalem and is therefore much cooler than Beer Sheva or Eilat. Anyway, the heat wave ended during the weekend. Yesterday evening was cool and today was quite pleasant too. We did see quite a few foreign tourists, which was nice.

We also got to see quite a lot of wild deer this time, down in the crater. We usually see wild ibex, which, being mountain animals, come right up to the town.

(These are ibex, not deer)

Last night, a twelve-year-old boy from the town got lost in the crater, but he was found today. He was probably lucky it wasn’t as hot last night and today.


Barbara Tuchman as cooked in the desert (before it cooled down).
This time I didn’t take any newspapers at all to Mitzpe Ramon. Not even old ones. Bish took the Haaretz weekend magazine but I didn’t even open it.

What I did take was Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly”, quoted from so often by Bish that I never bothered to read it myself. Unfortunately, I’m reading it in Hebrew so I can’t bring any illuminating quotes (Do I hear sighs of relief? Hey, this isn’t a home assignment, you know! All six* of you (I told you my readership was growing) can go read someone else, right now. Don’t you worry about me, I’m narcissistic enough to enjoy reading my blog over and over to myself).

For those of you who haven’t read this (not even the back cover?), Ms. Tuchman describes a recurring historical phenomenon of governments implementing policies detrimental to their own interests. One of the reasons she gives for this is plain folly or blind stubbornness. She explains this in a very readable way, with lots of interesting historical examples. I’ve only read a chapter and a half so far so I can’t talk about the whole book. (Why is it Bish read over a hundred pages of his book while we were in Mitzpe and I only read 50 something? I can’t even console myself that I read slower but better. Bish can usually quote books he’s read recently by heart. I can hardly remember what I just read before I went to the bathroom. This is probably why I need Fred Lapides to help me with my reading. Thank you Fred, I am forever grateful).
___________________________________________

*This could be seen as unabashed plagiarism. Dan Ben Amotz, famous Israeli writer, celebrity, columnist and pedophile, regularly referred to his “six readers” in his weekly column in the long gone “Hadashot” newspaper (this was Haaretz’ attempt at publishing a tabloid. But however hard they tried it just wasn’t a tabloid and therefore only Bish and I read it. Oh, and Dan Ben Amotz’ four other readers, of course).


Thoughts that arose while reading the first chapter (of “The March of Folly, not “Hadashot”):
Is the Palestinian people’s behavior during the last sixty-odd years an example of the folly Ms. Tuchman is discussing? I’m talking about their refusal to accept any compromise with the Jews and their continual use of violence and terrorism, although it has never got them what they wanted (which is us out). Ms. Tuchman says that there must be three conditions for a historical event or process to be suitably foolish: 1. The results of the folly must be clear at the time of happening, and not just with hindsight. 2. There has to be an alternative policy that could have been implemented, and 3. It has to be the policy of a group and not of one leader.

It seems to me that the Palestinians fit the description. You may claim that the Palestinians never had a sovereign state or a proper government. True, but they always had recognized leaders with popular support and an ability to lead their people in a different direction.

Bish says we can’t say (if the Palestinians are suitably foolish), because we’re still in the middle of the process and they might still get what they want (Oy, vey! Not a pleasant thought).

Another scary thought, besides the thought that they may win, is that the joke’s on us, that we’re the foolish ones, and that our foolishness will bring to our downfall, this way or the other. Both sides of the political spectrum in Israel regularly claim that the other side’s policies will drive us into the sea.

In the desert midday July heat, this was not something I could work out. So I left it at that.

Another thing Tuchman says, which seems relevant, is that turning to outside powers for military assistance against an enemy at home always ends up with the foreign power invited in staying and taking over. This looks like what happened to the Palestinians in 1948, when their Arab brethren came to save them from the Zionist menace. The Egyptians and the Jordanians stayed on at the end of the war and the Palestinians, still waiting for the Arab countries to conquer the whole of Palestine for them, never got their state.

The Palestinians haven’t learnt, though. They’re still trying to get the Arabs to help them militarily and are deeply insulted that no one will. On second thoughts, I don’t think they need fear that the Arabs countries will take over again. They proved such a handful to rule last time, no one really wants to be bothered with them a second time.

Thinking over this assertion of Tuchman’s (about the dangers of inviting foreign powers to fight your wars for you) fills me with admiration for the United State’s benevolence, and amazed at the Europeans’ inability to appreciate it. The French, for instance, should be everlastingly thankful to the U.S. that they are still allowed to speak French in public. I think they should even learn English in order to express their gratitude (maybe that would be asking too much of them).

I admit that the U.S. has used its superiority to have a cultural and economic affect on most of the world. This has managed to annoy the Muslim World so much that they’ve announced a holy war against the U.S., no less. No normal person would think that these “crimes” of the generally well meaning U.S. are anywhere as bad as enslavement and forced conversion which is what the Muslims have in store for those lucky enough to survive slaughter, mayhem, gang rape and so on, if the tables are turned (that’s if you believe the rhetoric of their esteemed and revered religious leaders).

The Palestinians’ pals, the Anti-Globalists, contend that the economic World Order imposed by the U.S. is an intentional and wicked exploitation of poorer areas of the world. It seems to me that without this World Order, these poorer areas would be even poorer and even more miserable, as would we all. But then, Anti-Globalists, obviously not being normal people, would probably prefer enslavement and conversion by the Muslims. Go figure.


Thoughts that arose while reading the second chapter:
The second chapter discusses the foolishness of the Trojans in allowing the wooden horse into their besieged city. Were the Oslo Accords our Trojan horse? We let in Arafat and his cronies, who promised that they had given up the path of violence, accepted the State of Israel’s right to exist and would make do with sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza and cease all demands for the “Historical Palestine” from Jordan River to sea. It took us a while to discover that they had no intention of making peace, or of giving up their former strategy, and Oslo was just another phase in their “plan of phases” of ridding the Middle East of the Zionists. They finally jumped out of that horse, swinging their swords, in September 2000, although we got a quite a few glimpses of what was inside the horse, all along, and chose to ignore them.

But what was our alternative option? The local Palestinian leaders refused to make a deal with us. Arafat was their only accepted leader. The international and internal pressure was immense. Inertia could have brought upon us tough international sanctions, which would have been unbearable coming with Israeli society split down the middle between growing numbers of the electorate calling for an end to the occupation and the large percentage still opposed, at that time, to any deal that entailed any withdrawal. We didn’t have a feasible alternative. Therefore our acceptance of Oslo does not comply with the conditions Ms. Tuchman lists that make for a foolish decision.


Phew!
Now I’ve got all that down, I’ll go see what’s been happening in the world since we’ve been gone.

We're off to Mitzpe Ramon for the weekend.



See you all Saturday.

Some stories about yesterday's non-Israeli victims.

Touching
Chirac called Arafat to express his "support and solidarity with the Palestinian Authority and people" and to discuss "efforts made to halt the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and reviving the peace process". Great timing, Jacques dear.

Fred also sent me something about gefilte fish. I faintly remember the taste of Grandma's gefilte fish.

Now, as a proud vegetarian, I will fight for all fishes right to self determination. This is very noble of me, seeing as I'm Not a Fish, myself.

But was it sweet or peppery, my Grandma's gefilte fish? I can't remember. Oy vey! Now I'll never be able to trace my roots!

Ehud Ya'ari, top Israeli expert for Arab affairs, talks about: Security reform; a new explanation for suicide bombings; Hamas' questioning the Torah; and Egyptian Islamic terrorists in prison changing their tune.

Fred knows I value what this guy has to say. This means he's reading me carefully. Listen and learn, Our Sis.

Oh, dear.
I don't like the sound of this.

From f-f-frightening Fred.

Oh, look! They've heard of us in china.
What are you reading, Fred?

BBC says UN report found no evidence of massacre in Jenin and no evidence of war crimes.
This even though it was "compiled using information from UN officials, the Palestinians, private relief organisations and foreign governments", without any Israeli contribution.

Fred fished this out for me, too.

Yad Vashem answers the Nazi question ("why can't the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be compared to the Holocaust?")
Fred sent me the Yad Vashem site. I clicked the link into this FAQ all by myself!
Yad Vashem is the main Israeli Authority working to to perpetuate the legacy of the Holocaust through commemoration and documentation, in case you didn't know.

Summer in the city
You know those kids who stuff themselves with candy and refuse to budge from the Barbie dolls or the cable TV when they visit your offspring? You’ve got it, the ones who don’t have those things at home because they’re unfortunate enough to have (shudder) ideological parents. I must admit I started off like that. Luckily, it didn’t last long. Reality was against me. But I can’t help admiring the determination of those who are lasting it out, against all odds (and logic).

Children are continually bombarded with advertising that encourages them to help their parents’ part with their hard-earned cash. It also often manages to persuade them to consume products that are less than healthy, while offering them a distorted picture of life in the process.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to try and shield your kids from this (though I’m still not linking to Fred Lapides’ site). Trying to completely prevent their exposure to the colorful temptations around doesn’t really prepare them for the challenges of modern life (such as visits to their friends’ less educational homes). Anyway, my girls have reached the age that they can just go and buy whatever they want themselves, if their allowance allows it (Oh, an unintentional pun!). I’m not sure what the idealists do at this point. Probably what I did when my eldest was two – give up.

If pointed out, children are quite capable of understanding when they’re being manipulated by the Media, sometimes even better than adults.

The latest rage among Israeli girls, and mine are no exception, is an Argentinean soap opera for kids called “Chiquititas”. It’s about something quite irresistible for young girls (I do remember, young lady, I was also young once, even if it was in ancient times), orphans in an orphanage. If this is not enough, they also sing and dance!

I console myself that they’re learning a bit of Spanish (it's got subtitles, it's not dubbed); the little one is practicing her reading on the show’s Hebrew website; and they are getting very savvy downloading related movie clips and games. A positive feature about this show is that the same actors change parts from season to season, unlike adult soaps, and my kids discuss this fact exhaustively. So I know they’re not confusing the story with reality.

My eldest (not yet 11) read a newspaper article in Maariv (which she found through google, no less) critical of the effect this program is having on youngsters. She regarded the article with the utmost contempt (I’ll make a blogger out of her yet), but ever since, she’s expressed an interest in reading newspapers on a regular basis (Not Haaretz, Ima, it’s boring. Buy me Yediot, please).

I really can’t complain, can I?

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), chapter 1.

The still Great Goldberg
On European peace.

Fred Lapides found me a fishy poster



That looks just like me. Notice, if you will, that I am standing on the fish. This is to emphasize that, contrary to popular belief, I am Not a Fish.

Our Sis asked me why I don't link to Fred's page. She thus showed herself up for not reading my blog carefully. Shame on you, Our Sis! But this showed me that, in view of my growing non-family readership, a rerun of the explanation is in place.

By now I see Fred as a silent partner in my blog. Having more reading time than I do, he regularly sends me an abundance of interesting links. I read them all, but only post the ones that take my fancy. Fred does have a blog, but, as I've said before, not of a nature I'd like my girls to read. Seeing as my eldest daughter has expressed an interest in reading Not a Fish (I don't think her English is good enough, yet, but this may help to improve it), I have told Fred I won't link to his page. You can find it though, if you're very determined, by reading the comments on LGF, Shark and others.

Looking in from the outside.
My Dad used to say that being at a distance from the center of activities can be an advantage when trying to clearly assess a situation. He was talking about the U.S. stock market. It holds true for understanding our situation here, as well. The majority of credible analysis of the situation that I've read in the last few months was written abroad. Here's another good analysis.

On one people's collective insanity.
And here's more insanity, different continent.

7 dead. 2 Israelis, 4 U.S. nationals, 1 French.
Haaretz; Jerusalem Post.

My dad suggests that
"Silence after the blast could be due to temporary deafness while the ears
recover." I hadn't thought of that. I see it as a sort of stunned nothingness before pain and terror take over.

Enough. Getting too gruesome.

You're up early, Dad.

Jewish Cemetery in Rome

Two Peacemakers meet.