Judith Weiss' obituary for her Uncle Al is worth reading.
posted by Imshin 06:46

Breaking News:
We're going to Mitzpe Ramon tomorrow morning for a short weekend break. We haven't been for two months and we're very excited to be going back, at last.

We'll be back Saturday.

Oh, look! According to this the Ramon Crater isn't a crater at all. The five (non)craters in the Negev are apparently such a unique geological phenomenon that the Hebrew name Makhtesh has actually entered the geological lexicon. So from now on - Makhtesh Ramon and not the Ramon Crater!

posted by Imshin 20:29

Today we remember our Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered seven years ago (According to the Jewish calendar).


posted by Imshin 15:01

Simpson’s “world”
I saw this program on the BBC. I confess I can’t stand to watch much BBC these days, and I didn’t see it from the beginning. John Simpson, world affairs editor for the BBC could be seen strolling along wide, impressive streets in London, round the houses of Parliament, over a bridge crossing the River Thames, while giving what appeared to be a speech, full of anti-Bush sarcasm and ridicule at the American administration’s lack of understanding of how the world really works. It was also full of subtle anti-Israel sentiment, of the spluttering “well Israel’s next, of course” sort.

I found it difficult to follow the rambling substance of what he was saying as he strolled along. The camera kept swinging about. The cameraman was probably trying to be fashionably artistic, and that didn’t help my limited concentration capacity. All I could focus on was the old-world opulence and wealth of the city he was nonchalantly sauntering through, quite oblivious of how ridiculous what he was saying sounded, with this background.

While watching this self-satisfied looking gentleman walking along, sharing his educated world-view, I couldn’t help but feel how detached from reality these well-fed British intellectuals are. They take their sedate, orderly and formidable roads and buildings and bridges and rivers completely for granted. The imaginary dangers to the Western way of life, naively perceived by those ignorant Americans, have nothing to do with them.

And what was the message Simpson was trying to convey with the setting of his speech? Was he aiming at intimidating his non-British, non-Western viewers? Or maybe he felt his words would be more credible if presented in the shadow of the monumental symbols of the great British Empire? I’m sorry I missed the beginning. Maybe he embarked on his speech by apologizing that he was forced to roam the streets, aimlessly, because the studio was being renovated, or because his doctor told him to get more exercise and fresh air.

Update: My Dad says that this perambulating is a regular feature of Simpson's show. He's been seen roaming around Afghanistan, a kibbutz and quite a number of other places while explicating his various theories and hypotheses about the world. My Dad says they don't make any more sense, wherever he roams. It's always a load of rubbish, but it's amusing to watch.

The style of his presentation reminds me of David Attenborough, except that Attenborough is usually leading somewhere with his stream of verbalizations.

posted by Imshin 14:57

Nikita (Life by) has some interesting facts about Palestine and the Palestinians in her 10/16 post. For some reason I can’t link to the precise post. Must be archive problems.

Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.

In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."

[…] The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission quotes an account of the Maritime Plain in 1913:
The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts...no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne]....Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen....The ploughs used were of wood....The yields were very poor....The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist....The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert....The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.

Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote of Palestine:
We found it inhabited by fellahin [Arab peasants] who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria....Large areas...were uncultivated....The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots...changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the Bedouin.

Surprisingly, many people who were not sympathetic to the Zionist cause believed the Jews would improve the condition of Palestinian Arabs. For example, Dawood Barakat, editor of the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram, wrote: "It is absolutely necessary that an entente be made between the Zionists and Arabs, because the war of words can only do evil. The Zionists are necessary for the country: The money which they will bring, their knowledge and intelligence, and the industriousness which characterizes them will contribute without doubt to the regeneration of the country."

posted by Imshin 14:57

Moe Friedman noticed that the Bali bombing caused a sharp rise in British support for war with Iraq. Among British men, supporters of war are actually the majority.
posted by Imshin 14:56

16 unbearable years.

Ron Arad. My heart goes out to him and his family.
posted by Imshin 23:09

Never a dull moment
My eldest daughter (11), and three of her friends (also 11) just spent the last hour stuck in the elevator. They were on their way down to the building's garden to make a movie for a Bible assignment. By the time the technician arrived to free them, it was too dark to do it outside, so they are now prancing around the living room, dressed in what they perceive to be biblical attire, shouting things like: "Take that, Son of Saul", again and again and again (or should I say take after take after take?).
posted by Imshin 18:24

On the Wazzani River crisis
by Eyal Zisser, of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.

posted by Imshin 16:35

Linkage
Judith Weiss links to this article in The Economist, which surprisingly attempts to explain to its esteemed readers the difference between Israel and Iraq with regard to UN resolutions. Not a Fish esteemed readers are requested to bear in mind that The Economist is hardly known to be a pro-Israel publication.

posted by Imshin 15:51

A bit of local history
Diane of Gotham has found a 1935 newspaper article reporting the inauguration, that year, of the pipeline the British “Iraq Petroleum Company” built, running from Iraq to Haifa (another pipeline led (leads?) to Tripoli in Lebanon). "You may recall during Gulf War I reference made to the H1, H2 and H3 oilfields. Did you ever wonder what the H stands for? Answer: Haifa. The pipelines used to run from Western Iraq to Haifa".

Having grown up in Haifa, I’ve heard this before. There are also an H4 and an H5 in Jordan. These were (are?) pumping stations. There’s a map on this site (just scroll down a bit) which shows H3 and H4, and also the part of the pipeline that goes up to Tripoli in Lebanon, which was built to serve the French and is the T pipeline (T3 and so on).

Trying to find more information I was sidetracked by this very interesting account of the British Mandate in Palestine 1917-1948, from the point of view of the British Police Force in British Mandate Palestine. It initially annoyed me because I found it impartial and biased towards the Arabs. But having read it all, I think it’s wrong to judge it in that way. The British had no intention of being impartial arbitrators between Arabs and Jews when they arrived in Palestine. They intended to do what they did in all their colonies – use it to further their own interests. Palestine was, as it always has been, a convenient passage area for the transport of goods. In this case it was oil, from the Gulf area, via Haifa, back to Britain. Those pesky Jews were a bother for them. If it hadn’t been for the national aspirations of the Jews the British wouldn’t have had any problem with the local Arabs, who were accustomed to being ruled over by an external power, from afar. The British were an interested party in British Mandate Palestine and this should be remembered, when reading this account.

Some important points: This account is a description of local events, with little effort to put the events into their international historical context. The uninitiated would fail to understand that: A. Small numbers of, mainly Sephardi, Jews had resided in Palestine for centuries. Religious Jewish centers existed in Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem (Hebron too, I think), long before the arrival of the Zionists. For centuries, some rich Jews, both Sephardi and Ashkenazi, from all over the Jewish world, would risk the hazardous roads to spend their last years in these centers, and be buried in Eretz Hakodesh (the Holy Land) ready for the arrival of the Messiah. B. The large numbers of Ashkenazi Jews were driven here in the early nineteen hundreds by atrocities in Russia and Russian dominated areas, and later, in the nineteen thirties, by the Nazis.

The account also considerably downplays the outright support of the Arabs in Palestine (and elsewhere) for the Nazis in WWII.

There is a lot to be said for the British Mandate. The Turks had neglected this land and the British did a lot to build its infrastructure. We continue to reap the benefits of it to this day. I have mentioned Tegart fortresses, before (Now I know why I couldn’t find any English links at the time. It seems I was misspelling the name). They are mentioned in this account, too. When the British arrived, the great British colony building machine moved into action and started to do its thing here, using the experience of hundreds of years.

The Jewish state continued to build up the country, but some mistakes were made. One major mistake we was canceling the train station the British wisely built in the fledgling Tel Aviv’s business area. The road is still called Rakevet (train) road, although there are no train tracks or station in sight. The customs building is still there, though, looking very strange with its raised platform, high above street level. The train is sorely needed in these days of heavy inner city traffic. Plans for an inner city light train system are finding it hard to get off the ground. I suppose the planners of Tel Aviv in the early years of the state never dreamt Tel Aviv would grow and prosper as it has done. The British didn’t need such dreams to justify the expenditure. They just did things according to long used and tested blueprints.

But I digress. I’m good at that. One of the more informative parts of this British Police account is the chapter that describes the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 (which they call “The Arab Troubles”). Few people in the West realize that the Intifada of the late nineteen eighties was not actually the first Arab uprising here.

The various gangs attacked Jewish settlements and blocked roadways and caused police to abandon small police posts which were then burned down.

In some evacuated areas so-called provisional Arab Governments were set up, imposed their own taxes and even issued their own stamps. On 8th. October, 1938 Jenin police station was attacked but the tiny police garrison managed to hold out until relieved by the Army. Jericho was evacuated and the police station was burned to the ground and while Ramallah was held, the surrounding countryside was dominated and ruled by its local gang. Jerusalem, Beersheba and Gaza came under gang rule but Nablus, Acre and Nazereth were held.

From the autumn of 1937 and through 1938 terrorist bombings increased and every day Arabs and Jews were killed and maimed indiscriminately. Railways were attacked as were Jewish settlements and the Iraq Petroleum Company's pipeline to Haifa was blown up every week. The Jewish settlements managed to defend themselves by the use of illegally obtained rifles although they were officially only allowed the use of Greener guns, a weapon useless for long distance fire. At this time there were two Divisions of the British Army in Palestine and slowly the security forces regained the initiative.

The guys who wrote the account haven’t neglected to supply that very English literary thingamabob (I know you sent me a lovely thesaurus Dad, but even with a thesaurus I need something to start with and it doesn’t list thingamabob) - the comic relief: It was decided in Damascus that for political reasons the Fez or Tarbush should not be worn as headgear and in rural areas the traditional Arab head dress of headcloth and cords or Hatta wa Aqal was worn. Anyone wearing a Fez was likely to be assaulted and this practice became known to Police as "Fez bashing."

[Thank you, Gil, for the tip on the fonts. I know it wasn't intended for me, but I have benefited, nonetheless.]

posted by Imshin 14:32

American Christian supporters of Israel.
In the months running up to December 1999, Israeli police had to deport a few quirky Christian sect members, apparently having received information that these people had plans to hurry things along with regard to certain New Testament prophecies due to fulfill themselves at the turn of the century (and not realizing that the turn of the century was actually due exactly one year later). Much less such groups arrived than anticipated and I suppose most of them just wanted to be on the spot when it happened and didn’t really mean to take part.

Recently we’ve been hearing that we shouldn’t really be putting our trust in Christian supporters of Israel in America, because their motives are suspect. I’ve been reading blogs written by American Christian supporters of Israel for a few months now and they have served to strengthen my conviction that those millenium sect members are not representative and are no more than a fringe phenomenon.

Nikita Demosthenes answers the charge that Christian supporters of Israel are hoping Armageddon is just around the corner and their support of Israel is to further this end. Here’s another post of his on the subject.

It is a “he”, I know this because he e-mailed me. It’s OK. Nikita Khrushchev was also a “he”. I’m digressing again.

Nikita complains that liberal-minded Jews are making these claims, but I think that some religious Jews have been saying this too, mainly because they are worried about Christian missionaries. This is actually quite amusing, considering the extreme and aggressive tactics implemented by some ultra-religious Jews in Israel to persuade secular Jews to become religious.

I don’t think they’d be at all amused by the comparison.

posted by Imshin 13:53

My workplace is a ten-minute leisurely saunter from the beach. In the thirteen years I have been working there, I have never once contemplated forfeiting the inedible, but free, lunch offered by my employers, for a stroll there, toes in the warm sand, wind in my hair, blah blah.

Well, yesterday I did it. I confess I didn’t actually give up my lunch. I went afterwards. (Sssssh, don’t tell on me). I reckoned it wouldn’t be too hot because it was cloudy and rain was expected.

There is something magical about the beach. Even though this strip of beach is right near a busy main road, descending towards the beach a lull fell. All was quiet. You couldn’t hear the traffic, just the wind and the sea. There weren’t a lot of people: A few stay-at-home moms with babies. Lucky them. Imagine coming to the beach with kids on weekdays when it’s empty, instead of going to work. They all seemed to know each other so this must be a regular thing; a few youngsters, maybe students, or people who worked at night; some pensioners. The pensioners were the only ones who ventured into the water, for some reason.

There were a lot of pigeons. Every so often they all flew up in the air together, like pigeons do, and I felt I was being swept up with them. I sat on the sand, wondering if I’d be able to brush it off later, so no one would see, when I went back to work. It gradually became very overcast and windy.

I sat there for nearly an hour. I just couldn’t tear myself away. Watching the water, the pigeons, and the approaching clouds. Feeling the wind on my face and body, making my hair a tangled mess (OK, Mum, a more tangled mess than usual).

When I finally left, the quiet seemed to come with me. Maybe it was the wind that gave that feeling, or the quiet before the rain. It did rain in the end, but not very much.

When I got back to work, no one had even noticed I had been gone. Things get a bit sleepy just after lunch.

Next time I’ll take something to put on the sand, to sit or lie down on. That is, if the next time isn’t in another thirteen years time.

posted by Imshin 08:14

NYC Indymedia: Mossad Bombs Kill Almost 200 in Bali Tourist Nightspot
Told you.

Among the many (less than complimentary) comments:
You are destroying the hopes of Palestinians
by A. Assad

History is littered with all those who have villified the Jewish people. Your ignorant hatred is betraying the legitimate grievances and aspirations of me and my fellow Palestinians. Shame on you.

Noticed by Bish. Oh, look, Taranto noticed it, too.

Update: The comments continue to amuse. Quite a few familiar commenters, as well (Lawrence Simon, for one). There's even one good one attributed to the author of the article. I assume it's a prankster. :-)
Just kidding
by Dean Bates

You people are so sensitive. Lighten up. I thought Jews had a sense of humor.

Diane L. came clean about that one on LGF. The comments there are hilarious too.

Here's another good one.

posted by Imshin 22:22

Where is the frog?
He should be back by now.
posted by Imshin 06:13

"Hell is heaven with people". Bish.

posted by Imshin 22:49

How many more innocent people are going to die before the bozos get it into their thick skulls that Israel is just A TRIAL RUN?
Has anyone noticed yet that there were no ISRAELIS killed in Bali?

posted by Imshin 22:36

Haggai went to the University of Michigan Divestment Conference. Here is his account of the event. I admire his courage.
posted by Imshin 19:16

By The Limey Brit.

Alone among the crowd an evil lurks
Behind a beard, a veil, a ballcap, a smile, even.
Can you pick out today's attempt?
Do you see the one who hates enough to die
Early, to invoke, for an instant, earthly Hell?
Fiery fury, detonated in a bus, exploded in the marketplace,
Grabs eight and a half lives to an all-too-soon conclusion.
He goes to Hell, his seventy two virgins unmet.
In whose plan do the murdered innocents follow him?
Justice may not equal the victim with her killer.
Keep her near your mercy, not your wrath.
Let your rage fall not upon those upon whom death has fallen.
Men cry aloud in the streets of Jerusalem;
No one will hear the pleas of the aggrieved for peace.
Once again we hear the old refrain:
"Palestine will not be occupied!"
Quote not the suppressed voice of reason,
Regarded here as treasonous collaboration and
Shot accordingly.
To the "victors" go the spoils;
Ululating former mothers praise their sacrifice, rewarded with status, cash, prestige.
Vene vidi vici has always been the dream,
Where one day the last Jew will be pushed into the sea.
Xenophobic hate is swelling, heaving, boiling, exploding.
You turn your face away?
Zion burns again.

Andrew Duncalfe, the Limey Brit himself. Is that a brilliant name or what?

Sent to me by Dan Lovelady. First thing I read today. Strong stuff for 5:30 in the morning. We don't usually have any suicide attacks before 7:45.

posted by Imshin 18:43

Haaretz thinks nature is a tragedy
Haaretz translated this NYT story about that lioness in Kenya that adopted the oryxes. But they changed the header to: “The lioness tourist attraction in Kenya ended in tragedy: The lioness that adopted oryxes killed and ate one of them”. This is not what happened at all, but the editors obviously didn’t read the story to the end (if at all). And anyway, since when is a lioness doing what lionesses do a tragedy?

posted by Imshin 18:25

More strike stuff.
This is what I wrote about the subject in August, when it was only a warning strike. I had no doubt at the time that there would be a full blown strike after the "Hagim" (which is now). These guys have to show they're doing something if they want to be reelected. And they do, more than anything. The country can go to h&#l, for all they care.
posted by Imshin 18:12

This is just what I was telling you about: Haaretz is hardly a left-wing publication with regard to the economy, while at the same time being fanatically dovish. I happen to agree with every word of this editorial about the strike that began today, which frankly disgusts me, although I stand to gain from it. They can take any gains of this strike and stuff them, for all I’m concerned. Money has no smell, they say, but any money ill gotten as a result of this strike, stinks to high heaven.
posted by Imshin 15:49

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