A (belated – sorry my fault) Hannuka story from the Jerusalem Post:
“Bus 16 moved slowly through traffic in Haifa. Olga Grossman Solomon was sitting in a seat that faced backwards. Across the aisle, in the window seat facing forward, a plump woman with soft white hair was staring at Olga. When a passenger got off, the stranger moved over and leaned across the aisle.

"Is your name Olga?" she asked. "Are you a twin?"

A twin! Olga's heart pounded. The question sent her hurtling back more than half a century to a freezing platform in Poland. Olga was clutching her momma Shari's long skirt, and a man with immaculate white gloves and a stick was asking, "Are you a twin?"”

Read on.

posted by Imshin 23:19

Strange
The Jerusalem Post claims that, unlike the interest shown by the Israeli media in this story, the Palestinian press remained indifferent to the plight of Nur Abu Tir. It was written before her body was found.

posted by Imshin 23:04

And if we're on the subject of Lebanon
Remember the Wazzani River business?
It seems the Lebanese haven’t started pumping, yet. They claim it’s because of technical problems.

posted by Imshin 22:43

Hezbullah – it seems CBC can’t understand what all the kerfuffle is about.
The Canadian National Post attempts to explain to Canadians a few things about the Hezbullah, for those who think they’re OK because they only want to kill (Jewish) Israelis.

posted by Imshin 22:30

Awful news
The body of 5-year-old Nur Abu Tir from East Jerusalem was found yesterday, in a drainage pit inside the grounds of the family home. They suspect family members (or A family member) of her murder. The motive seems to be sexual molestation.

posted by Imshin 19:39

I can’t believe we missed this.
We were in the best place in Israel to see it. How annoying! R.T. (who came with us this time) and I actually stood looking at the sky last night, but obviously not at the right time. Harry R. caught it from outside Jerusalem. (Sorry Harry, couldn’t link to the direct post – you should try fixing your archives or something).

posted by Imshin 19:38

We're off to Mitzpe Ramon tomorrow morning.
It's really cold there now. I've been packing long-unused sweaters.

We'll be back Saturday. See you then.
posted by Imshin 00:17

Someone in Haaretz gets it.
Thank you, Ari Shavit, for explaining what is as clear as the blue sky, but completely eludes most of the Israeli left, who continue to insist that the rest of the Israelis fail to see things as they do, because they are stupid and uneducated.

“Thus, the dove-hawk paradox is not an expression of the hysterical moods of a confused mob. The dove-hawk paradox is not the caprice of a stupid and frightened public. Indeed, the dove-hawk paradox does indicate that the Israeli majority is more mature and balanced today than it has ever been”.

Go read.

Diane and Grasshoppa also comment on this.

posted by Imshin 00:15

5 year-old Nur Abu Tir from East Jerusalem is still missing. I find the theory of her being kidnapped as part of a family feud rather hard to believe. Not that such family feuds do not often result in kidnapping and murder, But this is a small child, after all. The family seems pretty convinced, though.

Then again, I didn’t want to believe Eli Pimstein had murdered his baby, either.

Update: Channel 1 is saying something about sexual abuse in the family now.

posted by Imshin 23:41

Two Israelis have been shot dead in Hebron.
Two soldiers, military police. A boy and a girl.
posted by Imshin 23:31

Anti-Zionism is an anachronism
In this week’s UK spectator, Geoffrey Wheatcroft explains why anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism. A very interesting and persuasive read.

I had some thoughts about anti-Zionism, while reading, that don’t necessarily have anything to do with Mr. Wheatcroft’s argument.

One thing I think anti-Zionists fail to understand is that however Zionism began and whatever it meant to accomplish, and however you feel about all that on a philosophical level, it’s ancient history. There is now an Israel. The great majority of its citizens were born here. They are Israelis. They have no memories of the countries their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents came from. The Israeli nation may have been artificially created; it may have been a great mistake (I don’t believe that but I can respect others that do), but the fact is that now there is an Israeli people.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft talks of “One early Jewish opponent of Zionism, the ardently assimilationist Austrian writer Karl Kraus, thought the notion nonsensical: it was absurd to imagine that German, French, Slavonic and Turkish Jews had a common bond, or that any interest united the caftan-wearing tradesman of the Galician shtetl with the literary poseur of the Viennese cafés”. Well today’s Israel proves him wrong. While his literary, Viennese, café-frequenting descendants were probably exterminated by the Nazis, this descendant of caftan-wearing tradesmen of the Galician shtetl is happily married to a descendant of Turkish rabbis and wealthy Bukharans. We get on just fine and we have a lot in common, thank you very much.

We are here. We don’t want to assimilate into a Palestinian state. We are not Palestinians. This week a whole nation held its breath as thousands searched for a lost baby. While I was waiting for my youngest daughter to finish her dancing lesson on Sunday afternoon, a man rushed past me towards the TV corner there, calling urgently, as if she was his own daughter “Have they found her? Have they found her?” A whole nation was horrified when the tiny body was finally found and the unbearable truth came to light. A father had done this to his own offspring. Fathers all over the country rushed home to hug and kiss their children, newly appreciative of their relatively normal lives.

We are here. This is our home. Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents may have spoken many languages. We speak Hebrew, the language Karl Kraus may have known only as a language in which to utter prayers he probably couldn’t understand. Contemporary anti-Zionists, rush past Israeli inhabited areas, on entering the country, lest they be contaminated by our moral deficiencies. They hurry off to show their solidarity with the Palestinians and to console them for the great injustice of the theft of their land by the Zionists. They fail to see, in their haste, that we are not like the French in Algeria, who returned to France; and that we are not like the British in India, who went back to England. We are home. We have not transported “life at home” to a new venue. Everything that went before is gone. The Galician shtetl has gone forever, as has the Jewish neighborhood in Baghdad. Now there is something new. This is our home and I, for one, love it dearly, corrupt politicians and all.

In summing up his essay, Mr. Wheatcroft, who describes himself as an honorary Jew, asserts that “More than 100 years later, every single dispute involving Israel demonstrates that, whatever else it may be, it is not a nation like all others, and maybe never can be”. I’m not sure by which standards Mr. Wheatcroft is gauging us when he makes this claim. As I see it, the only point in which we are not a nation like all others is in the particularly harsh judgment we receive from those who arrogantly see themselves as our moral betters.

[If anti-Zionism is an anachronism, you may argue, does that not mean Zionism is an anachronism, too? My Oxford dictionary from 1969, defines Zionism as “A movement resulting in the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine”. Seeing as this has already happened, Zionism could definitely be seen as an anachronism. A Jewish nation in so-called “Palestine” is a fait accompli.]

posted by Imshin 23:07

This is exactly what I’ve been talking about.
Dr. Patch Adams is in Israel and has been visiting Israeli victims of terrorism in hospital. He plans to visit Palestinian hospitals and refugee camps as well. This is REAL peace activism. He didn’t make a beeline for the Palestinians, like they usually do. He took the time to be in Israeli hospitals because he sees our wounded as also deserving of a bit of his laughter, even though I understand he is far more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel.

posted by Imshin 18:42

Politicians – can’t live with them, can’t live with them (I)
Dr. Yossi Beilin didn't do very well in the Labor Party primaries. Neither did Yael Dayan (Moshe's daughter). So now they're moving to Meretz. Gil sums all this up nicely. Yael Dayan is probably one of the most aggravating people in Israeli politics, but I disagree with Gil. She's done a lot in recent years for women's rights, violence in the family, sexual assault victims and so on. Anyway, Meretz is really a much more suitable party for them both. Maybe someone could get Mitzna to go, too ;-). Gil says that Yossi Sarid, head of Meretz, is “one of the most arrogant people in Israel and I’m not referring to his political views at all. I will even dare and say he is at least as arrogant as Bibi is”. Oh, Gil, what Sarid forgot about being arrogant, Bibi hasn’t even learnt yet! I’d say Bibi has a gigantic chip on his shoulder, whereas Sarid is quite convinced that Planet Earth is truly a fortunate place to have him walking on it.


Politicians – can’t live with them, can’t live with them (II)
I notice the EU court has OK-ed a decision to ban the sale of cigarettes marked as "light" or "mild" in EU countries. But they are not advocating a ban on EU countries exporting such cigarettes, mainly to countries less fortunate or affluent than EU countries. What hypocrites. They are opposed to waging war on poor unfortunate countries (although they supply them with the very weapons that make these wars necessary) because of the anticipated civilian fatalities, but they don't mind killing them slowly with their cigarettes.

This brings me back, for some reason, to the tendency in Israeli politics for (nearly) all the dirt to be out in the open. I have discussed this in the past. I find it hard to contain my utter disgust with the Likud's corrupt "primaries", which reached an historical peak with the election of an unknown pipsqueak named Inbal Gavrielli to the 29th spot on the list, which means she is very likely to be a Knesset member by February. A lawyer (I think, or is it a law student?), a woman, new blood, why am I taking offense? Well mainly because of her family connections. She belongs to a family of criminals. According to Haaretz (Hebrew version), two of her uncles went to prison in the 1980’s for drug dealing and trafficking, extortion, forging documents and fraud and now are mainly involved in the international gambling scene (including illegal gambling in Israel, I believe). I am opposed to legalizing gambling in Israel, by the way, but that’s for a separate post. One of these ex-con uncles was very much involved in her being elected to the Likud list. Even if she is on the level about her political agenda, whatever it is, and has a lot to offer, she will still be under a lot of pressure from La Familia, and their pals, to push their interests, whatever she says, won’t she? Right out of The Godfather, eh?

The upside is that she's right out there in the open. Most, if not all, politicians have the backing of unsavory characters, and they have to look after their backers' interests. But we usually don't know exactly who they are or what their agenda is until it's too late. This little lady we can keep our eye on.

My nausea might just cause me to vote Shinui (a small liberal, secular party, that runs on the vehemently-opposing-religious-coercion ticket, a little too vehemently for my sensibilities) and not Likud in the end. According to this poll (Hebrew) I'm not the only one who's nauseated. These Likud "Primaries" could affect other ex-lefties who were planning to vote Sharon. This week has been a sharp reminder that we're not voting Sharon; we're voting Likud. Yuck.

posted by Imshin 18:13

The Guardian discovers home schooling.
A few years ago I was very interested in home schooling and read a lot about it on the net. Not that I dreamt of not sending the girls to school and teaching them at home, but because before they started school I fantasized about supplementing what they would got thrust at them in school with some quality stuff. When my eldest daughter started school I had zero expectations of the system. This must be the reason I have been so pleasantly surprised. The state school they spend their days in isn’t bad at all. Its not that I think it is the best school in the world, far from it, but I’m satisfied, and I think they are happy there. They seem to be learning a thing or two, and even acquiring some skills of self-study.

In Israel, school is compulsory. The law probably has its roots in the early years, when a lot of poor, uneducated people came to live here (or lived here already) and sent their kids out to work instead of to school. They couldn’t be trusted to make their own choices for their children’s education (I know this sounds unpleasant, but I think you’ll agree that kids have rights too). There is, however, some sort of legal loophole that does allow for home schooling, in some cases, and there are apparently a handful of families who take advantage of this. I hear the authorities dislike it and give them a hard time.

Home schooling always comes over as sort of daring and pioneering, doesn’t it? As a parent, I always think that people, who educate their kids themselves, from beginning to end, must be wonderful, wise, patient people. The kind of parents we all want to be. I would lose patience and interest after about two minutes. I love working outside of the house. Housework bores me silly and (as a result?) I’m not very good at it. The idea of being stuck home with my kids, day in, day out, has very little appeal for me. I’m sure they’d be bored silly, as well. Home schooling obviously requires energies I just don’t possess. I think not being able to afford not to work is also rather relevant to the question of home schooling, too, don’t you? It’s obviously a rich person’s luxury.

Home schooling advocates often put an emphasis on the inability of regular schools to encourage a love of learning in children. They even go as far as to say that school stifles and destroys a child’s natural love of learning. They say it does bad things to a child’s character, or things to that affect, because of the unpleasant and unnatural atmosphere, lack of freedom and so on and so forth. This is all probably true, and makes me feel a pinch of guilt for ruining my girls’ minds by sending them to such a horrible institute. But maybe kids who don’t go to school are missing out as well.

They say “It takes a whole village to bring up a child”. Well these days most kids don’t live in a village or in any such close, nurturing community. (Actually, I know someone who grew up in a close, nurturing village that was sexually abused by family members and was thrown out when she finally found the courage to speak up, but you know what I mean…) Even extended families no longer live together and often don’t meet up on a regular basis. School is a regular, relatively stable society for kids. It’s their community. As I see it, the social side of school, for good and for bad, is much more important than the math and science kids learn there, especially in these days of readily available information. In school, children learn how to live in society. They learn that living with people is not easy, that it is full of challenges, but that it is also wonderful, interesting and exciting. They get the opportunity to meet people who are very different from them, and they learn to get along with them. Today, most of us work with other people. Learning to live with them and understand them, especially people we don’t particularly like or choose to be with, is a very important skill for life. Shielding children from anticipated unpleasantness of the social life in schools prevents them from gradually developing the ability to deal with such unpleasantness in adult life.

A reason many people give for home schooling is bullying and violence in schools today. But if you take your kids out of school because they are being bullied, or just because they don’t enjoy their social life there, you are not giving them the opportunity to deal with these problems. You are encouraging them to run away from difficulty. Of course, if you feel that your kid’s school cannot protect its wards from danger then this is not a suitable school for them, but is this a reason to write off the whole idea of schools?

A lot of people cite religion as a reason for home schooling. These are Christians wanting to avoid unwanted influences. This seems very strange to me, maybe because Judaism is such a very social religion. Judaism kept going in the Diaspora because Jews stuck together. Jewish men always studied together; first, as small children, in the “heder”, then, during youth, in the “yeshiva” and later on, as adults, together with the community, in the Rabbis’ “drashot”. This is still the religious Jewish way of life. Ten Jews are the minimum required to pray together.

My parents both stood out as Jews in predominantly Christian schools, when they were growing up. My mother even went to a Catholic convent during the war. Rather than hasting their assimilation, this experience served to sharpen their Jewish sensibilities and helped turned them into avid Zionists and then Israelis. Seeing other ways of life doesn’t necessarily encourage people to emulate them, but there is always the danger.

Erm, I seem to have lost my line of thought. Is that the time? I really must go.

posted by Imshin 22:58

Reshet Bet radio station:
"Two-year-old Hodaya Kedem Pimstein, whose body was discovered in a forest in western Jerusalem on Tuesday, was buried Wednesday afternoon at the Har Hamenuhaut cemetery in Givat Shaul, as details of her slaying were released for publication.

The father, Eli Pimstein, has admitted to drowning the baby in her bath and afterwards burying her in a pit that he had prepared a month ago. He has reenacted the crime to the police".

In Hebrew it says the court sent him for psychological observation. The police are opposed to this because they say his actions were planned and calculated. They also say he initially dug the pit a month ago and went back on Wednesday to deepen it further.

posted by Imshin 17:17

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear:
“The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tenderly, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as "my" feet were actually "our" feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time”. (Pg. 5)

posted by Imshin 18:11

Providential that Zionism should be on hand
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer:
“The communal compactness of the Jews, both in Palestine and the Diaspora, was probably one of the reasons that Christianity made so little headway among them. The destruction of the temple caused, if anything, a tightening of the communal bonds. The synagogue and the congregation received now much of the devotion which formerly flowed towards the temple and Jerusalem. Later, when the Christian church had the power to segregate the Jews in ghettos, it gave their communal compactness an additional reinforcement, and thus, unintentionally, ensured the survival of Judaism intact through the ages. The coming of "enlightenment" undermined both orthodoxy and ghetto walls. Suddenly, and perhaps for the first time since the days of Job and Ecclesiastes, the Jew found himself an individual, terribly alone in a hostile world. There was no collective body he could blend with and lose himself in. The synagogue and the congregation had become shriveled lifeless things, while the traditions and the prejudices of two thousand years prevented his complete integration with the Gentile corporate bodies. Thus the modern Jew became the most autonomous of individuals, and inevitably, too, the most frustrated. It is not surprising, therefore, that the mass movements of modern times often found in him a ready convert. The Jew also crowded the roads leading to palliatives of frustration, such as hustling and migration. He also threw himself into a passionate effort to prove his individual worth by material achievements and creative work. There was, it is true, one speck of corporateness he could create around himself by his own efforts, namely, the family - and he made the most of it. But in the case of the European Jew, Hitler chewed and scorched this only refuge in concentration camps and gas chambers. Thus now, more than ever before, the Jew, particularly in Europe, is the ideal potential convert. And it almost seems providential that Zionism should be on hand in the Jew's darkest hour to enfold him in its corporate embrace and cure him of his individual isolation. Israel is indeed a rare refuge: it is home and family, synagogue and congregation, nation and revolutionary party all in one”. (Pg. 43)

This was written in 1951, when Israel was three. A lot of Israelis feel nostalgic for that feeling of togetherness and the perception of a collective goal of those early years. On the other hand, a lot of people felt excluded from that feeling and still bear a grudge towards that young, secular, idealistic, Ashkenazi Israel.

I’m not sure if I like the way he claims that one of the main reasons Judaism survived down the centuries was exterior Christian pressure. Although Jews were never treated as equals, there were never such harsh pressures in the Moslem world as in Christian Europe, and still the Jewish communities flourished.

posted by Imshin 17:57

This is fascinating
William Dalrymple writes in the Guardian about Anglo-Indian mixed marriages in the 18th century and early 19th century. Don't you just love anything about British India?

Dalrymple sees these mixed marriages as a sign of multiculturalism, but I notice he only talks about British men marrying Indian women. Nothing about British women marrying Indian men. I'd say more a sign of dominance by the conquerer than true multiculturalism, even if some of the guys who took native wives also took on pseudo-Indian mannerisms. Maybe the practice stopped not only because of the Indian mutiny and the large scale British destruction of Indian upper echelons, which is Dalrymple's explanation (interesting in itself). Couldn't it also have something to do with indignant British women disliking being usurped? They probably had the full backing of Queen Victoria in their feelings! I can imagine her not being very amused by her officers’ un-British behavior, er, behaviour.

Well, anyway, Dalrymple has written a whole book about this phenomenon. I don't find it that fascinating, though. Actually, the editorial review in Amazon.com is quite enticing.

posted by Imshin 17:22

My Weather Pixie has got a Christmas tree.
Oy! Weather pixie people! I'm Jewish! Where's my Hannuka candelabra?

posted by Imshin 16:56

I'm sorry to say I'm the bearer of bad news, today
They've found the body of little Hodaya and arrested the father for the murder. It looks like they suspected him from the start. They said on the radio that they found her with the help of specific information. I heard him crying on the radio this morning. I really didn't want to believe he had anything to do with it, although everyone says he seemed very weird on TV (I didn’t see him). I think I’d look a bit weird on TV too, if my daughter had gone missing. Yesterday on the radio they broadcast the message she left on her mother's answering machine on the morning of her disappearance. A tiny, chirpy voice saying "Boker Tov!" (Good morning)

Can you imagine what the mother is going through?

They're still searching for Nur. They have been investigating family members about the suspicion she was kidnapped as part of a family feud. One family member has even been in police custody for two days, but refuses to cooperate.

posted by Imshin 16:50

Wounded soldiers up north
Yesterday, two soldiers were badly wounded when patrolling the northern border with Lebanon. A roadside bomb planted on the Lebanese side of the border detonated just when the patrol was passing.
One of them has serious head wounds; the other one lost both legs.

posted by Imshin 23:18

The search continues for the two little girls in Jerusalem.
Police have been checking a letter Hodaya's father had on his computer, but it seems there's nothing in that. Nur's family seems to be in a feud with relations and the police are looking into that, too. In the meantime, no girls.
posted by Imshin 22:58

Lest we forget that I am an ex-party member
Today, when I went to get some money out of the bank, I saw a crowd of people outside a building. It looked like there were stalls and things. When I got nearer I saw that it was a Labor Party polling station. The people outside were campaigning for various candidates in today’s party primaries, which were to determine the list for the elections. Likud’s was yesterday, but only party center members got to vote. In Labor all members voted. The festive atmosphere outside the labor polling station reminded me of my five minutes as Labor Party member. Bish and I joined up after Yitzhak Rabin’s murder. We were the guys who gave the world Ehud Barak. Well, I admit having been in awe of Barak for many years, ever since, as head of Military Intelligence, he went on TV to let all Israel hear a tape connecting the Achille Lauro attack to the PLO or the PLF or something. Well, he was very impressive, whatever. Imagine my surprise when years later I discovered Bish was also a fan (Bish is his last remaining fan, besides his wife, maybe.). So we became party members for the sole purpose of making him head of the party.

The whole being-a-party-member was very strange for us. The main thing I remember about going to vote were all these old timers hanging about there, Ben Gurion look-alikes.

I soon stopped paying party fees. Bish hung on a bit longer.

posted by Imshin 22:48

Oh, enough with the felafel, already! Who cares where felafel came from? Any Israelis reading this, who had felafel this week, stand up. Last week? This month? Last month?
See? All still seated.

Guess what? I don’t invite R.T. (and from now on Dad too) every Friday lunchtime for FELAFEL, I invite them for SPAGHETTI (good stuff too). This I stole from the Italians who in turn stole it from the Chinese (wait a minute, didn’t I read recently that Marco Polo never really got past Turkey and it’s all a big lie?).

What is Israeli? Are those three-cornered “tembel” hats, they used to make us wear in summer camp when I was a kid, Israeli? For the last twenty years, no Israeli kid would dream being seen dead in one of those hats. Are felafel and tembel hats and Hava Nagila (Ugh!) more Israeli than computer engineers with Jericho handguns stuck down the back of their jeans? Or a group of settler kids, the boys with their knitted kippot (yarmulkas) hanging off the side of their heads, the girls with black skirts down to their ankles? Or a convoy of cars full of families on a trip, all with bits of blue ribbon tied on their antennas for identification? Or someone meeting someone else in the street and starting to yell at him: “You s$%t! You maniac! You lunatic! Why haven’t you called me?” and then both of them embracing, obviously delighted to see each other? Or happy toddlers coming out of a Hannuka show, hand in hand with mum or dad, on a sun-drenched Hannuka morning, squinting at the light, faces still covered with sugar powder from the doughnut they ate during the interval?

When I was a child we used to go down UN Blvd. in Haifa, which became Zionism Blvd. when the UN became unpopular, by equating Zionism with racism, to eat felafel at the King of Felafel stall. It was owned and run by Arabs. Was I busy thinking about how Israeli the felafel was while I was eating it? No. I was just eating felafel.

So some Israelis left Israel and went to live in the US. So they opened a felafel stall. They could just as easily have opened a “steakiya” which is just as much an Israeli phenomenon, which like felafel stalls, peaked during the nineteen seventies. Were they trying to make a patriotic statement by opening an Israeli felafel stall? No, if they wanted to make a patriotic statement they wouldn’t have left Israel. They would have continued doing a month’s army reserve duty a year and continued scraping a living here. They opened a felafel stall in the US because they wanted to make a better living. So do please excuse them for not putting up a big notice saying: “Yes, we are Israelis selling Palestinian felafel, this is very remiss of us, but we really need to make a living.”

I heard felafel was Egyptian. Or was it Lebanese? Maybe the Palestinians should be apologizing, too. Cultural theft? The French claim they invented cricket. How very degrading for the Brits.

posted by Imshin 21:03

Administration stuff
A. Comments in which anyone calls anyone else a Nazi will be deleted, as of now. Behave yourself, QS!
B. I'm rather sorry I posted about that French book. I've been getting a scary amount of hits from people searching for it on Google.
C. I enjoyed the nutty hate comment immensely. I find it hilarious that someone actually spent time writing such pathetic drivel. Fear not, any more like it will be deleted.
posted by Imshin 17:39

Goodness me!
An article by Tanya Reinhart that is not spewing hatred and venom! Maybe this is because it appeared in Yediot Aharonot and they probably wouldn’t have accepted her usual offensive material. The content of the article is rather hallucinatory: “If Mitzna sticks to this plan, which offers a real alternative and hope, there is a good chance that he will be the next Israeli prime minister”. Who has she been discussing this with if she thinks this is the case? Obviously only fellow LINGUISTS!

posted by Imshin 21:27

The whole country seems to be holding its breath. Two little girls from Jerusalem went missing, yesterday. The first is Hodaya, a 22-month-old toddler, who disappeared from the yard of her father’s home in the Jewish neighborhood of Kiryat Yovel at 11:30. The other is Nur, a 5-year-old girl from the Arab village of Umm Toubas in Southern Jerusalem, she was also playing in the yard of her home, and went missing at 19:30. The police say the cases are unrelated. I’ll tell you if there are any developments.

Update: Someone commented here (in Hebrew) that the nights in Jerusalem are very cold right now. I hadn't thought of that. Poor little things.
posted by Imshin 20:28

Why should we feel apologetic about our accomplishments? Israel is a country poor in natural resources to draw from. It’s not as if we plundered Arab oil or anything, God forbid. We even found some for the Egyptians and gave it back to them on a platter, when we signed a peace treaty with them. Before the Jews got here, this country was a swamp-ridden, malaria-infested hellhole. The Jews dried the swamps the local Arabs had been living next to for hundreds of years, and built roads. Had those local Arabs (now known as Palestinians) accepted the partition plan in 1947 and two states had been created in 1948, it's very likely that Israel would have reached the same, or similar, economic and technological accomplishments.

Our accomplishments are down to human resources (well, maybe not mine personally... although, in my role as a minor bureaucrat, I may, in some small way, be helping maintain the rule of law over the rule of the jungle, that usually prevails in the Middle East). For years we’ve been hearing that we owe our affluence to Palestinian labor, but now they're gone and we’re doing just fine without them. (Imported Thai workers may eat a few domestic dogs here and there, but they haven’t been known to blow themselves up on buses).

I love driving along the Ayalon freeway, which cuts right through the center of the greater Tel Aviv area, connecting Tel Aviv’s northern satellite towns to the southern ones. Along the way, you pass the tallest buildings in the Middle East, which house a vibrant business center (yes, even in these dark depressed days). When I came to live in Tel Aviv, about seventeen years ago, most of the tall buildings did not yet exist, but the vibrant business center did. It just grew taller, flashier and more inspiring.

The Palestinians could have been a part of this exciting venture, and not just as laborers. This is what we were offering them, in effect. The vision of a New Middle East may have been naive, but it was a wonderful one. The Palestinians chose to pass. The whole region could have profited from Israel's impressive creative ability. The whole region chose to pass.

So why should we feel apologetic? As I see it, if we end up building that fence Martin Van Creveld talks about (remember? So high even birds can’t fly over? Can’t find a link to this, offhand, that isn’t pro-Palestinian), we'll be fine. The Palestinians will starve. But even that doesn't give them a jolt. Or maybe it does, but the deeper significance of it for them is so unpleasant they'd rather starve. Seven years of unsuccessful self-rule, with billions in foreign aid and a great deal of international good will (which is a lot more than what Israel got in the early years), have shown just how much Israel isn't beholden to the Palestinians for anything. There is no reason why the Palestinians couldn’t have used those years to flourish. No reason but their own pathetic ineptitude. For two years and more, they have been trying to stick their failure on us, and quite successfully, I must say (At last, something they do well. Oh, I forgot blowing themselves up among unarmed civilians. They’re excellent at that). They've got most of the world convinced, including Haaretz’s Danny Rubinstein (yawn). Haaretz hasn’t translated that particular article, for some reason. Just as well. We don’t need any more “Made in Israel” food for anti-Israel propaganda, than Haaretz already supplies.

Haaretz was derogative of the current trend in Israel to wear Magen Davids, the bigger the better, in this weekend’s magazine. Of course, if you think this terrorism war is all down to “the occupation, stupid”, then you are going to see any outward sign of affection for your country and people, especially using any sort of abstract symbol, as Nazi style nationalism, aren’t you? By the way, the article claims that the Magen David only became a Jewish symbol par excellence in 1897. Anyone care to challenge that, armed with data, if such data exists?

I don’t remember my mother without her Magen David. At one point, she lost the Magen David she had worn for many years and swiftly replaced it. Was she, as Prof. Moshe Zimmerman puts it in the article, clinging to a symbol? Was it “a substitute for any real achievement” caused by her “enfeeblement”? Or was it her way of expressing her Jewish identity, which was a very important part of who she was?

posted by Imshin 19:47

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