So they’re taking back the gas masks. We’ve had them since the end of 1990, if I am not mistaken. My girls got their first ones on leaving the hospital, when they were a few days old. Every so often we would get an invitation to come have them “refreshened”. We’d go to the distribution center, which seemed to be somewhere else each time, waited in line, and eventually a young soldier girl would replace parts of the kit, and send us on our way. Just part of life, like going to the dentist. And now we don’t need them any more. Nice.

I don’t think anyone will be sorry to see them go. They’re bulky boxes, which you never wanted to bury too far back in your “boydem” (the Israeli equivalent of an attic – a storage space created by a lowered ceiling usually running along the corridor, with an opening in the bathroom, above the door), just in case you needed to get them out in a hurry.

* * * *

They’ve been feeding us horror stories about what Mordechai Vanunu has got in store for us when he gets out of prison, in two months time. A mate from inside, Yossi Harush, a shady character himself, has been telling Yediot Aharonot that Vanunu has got all sorts of new goodies to tell the world about Israel’s secrets. And that he hates Israel and celebrates every time there’s a terror attack, etc.

If you ask me, the guy’s a fruitcake (Vanunu, not Harush. Okay, maybe Harush too, how would I know?). They should have left him alone back then and it all would have fizzled out by itself. Enjoying the limelight, he would have gabbled on and on, until he finally would have tripped himself up, been caught in discrepancies and then would have swiftly been discredited and discarded (a lot of ‘dis’s for one sentence, don’t you think?). This tends to happen to fruitcakes. Everything shows he’s definitely become more of a fruitcake since he’s been inside, but from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t seem to have been too lucid beforehand, either. The real question is how he passed the personality test to get into Dimona in the first place.

So now he’s become this hero of Loonies International, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, no less. I’ve been trying to work that one out. I read on the Net that he’s Israel’s Nelson Mandela. Yeah, right. His contribution to peace has been what exactly? He certainly hasn’t contributed to peace in the hearts of Israelis, quite the contrary - he’s probably one of the most disliked people in the country.

Well, a nomination is all very well. Thich Nhat Hanh was nominated in1966, by Dr. Martin Luther King, and he didn’t get it. But these are Scandinavians on the committee, who knows what goes on in their minds? They might end up giving it to Dror Feiler; or to whatsername Jaradat.

I’m so fed up of all this double standard.

Listen to Thich Nhat Hanh read his wonderful poem "Call Me By My True Names" (click on bottom left of page). Here is a printed version of the poem. This is what peace is about.