**News Flash**
Gil, of Israeli Guy fame, is back with a new blog and a new address. It's really nicely designed. I especially like the retro Israeli poster he has on the left side at the top. It's a bit reminiscent of old Commie stuff but it says it all about, well, life as I see it, actually.

And another piece of interesting news is that my e-mail friend Alifa, has started her own blog. I'm very excited about this because her e-mails are always sagacious and insightful. Her blog is, too.
posted by Imshin 07:13

Today, I am going to spend a whole day of meditation somewhere out of town with my old Buddhist group. I haven't done this for over a year, and even then my contact with the group was already sporadic. I'm looking forward to seeing old friends and having a quiet peaceful day in a lovely place.

The tensions I left at work, when I went on my little holiday, were still there when I got back (surprise surprise). The first day was nice but on the second I could feel the poison creeping back and taking hold.

I have known for a long time that this is something I have to tackle face on, but I'm chicken. Maybe today will give me some tools to do so.

posted by Imshin 07:04

These are lovely paintings by a Palestinian artist. I don't suppose she'd want to sell any of them to me. Via Grow a Brain, which has a lot of other interesting eclectic links connected to Israel and the Middle East.
posted by Imshin 19:27

Oh look, an Israeli blog I hadn't seen before, written by a former Belgian.
posted by Imshin 19:52

So I went back to work. It actually wasn't so bad. I must have really needed that vacation.

I won't be quitting just yet.

I think I'll just hang around until they give me a kitschy fake gold watch with an embarrassing inscription.

posted by Imshin 19:34

I feel like someone who just said, "Don't think about pink elephants". You must all be imagining Allison wielding a great big axe. How mean of me.

Allison is great. She's just my sort of person. I knew she would be. I'm rather introverted so I need nice outgoing people (like Bish). Allison is just my cup of tea (Or should that be coffee? She made me two excellent cups). She needn't have worried about tidying up, though. As I see it, you either blog OR have a neat and tidy home. You can't have both. Actually, I didn't have a neat and tidy home before I blogged, so I must be a natural (Isn't there a blogger out there who sells "Born to Blog" T-shirts? I should buy one).

Allison really does have a problem with her judgment of people, though. Me wise??! That will have Bish and the girls rolling about in hysterics. I'll never live it down.

posted by Imshin 19:22

Allison is not an axe murderer.
Eldest was rather worried about my going to meet someone I'd met through the Internet. "Isn't that a bit dangerous?" She asked me. This was one of those embarrassing moments parents find themselves in, when they are caught by their beloved children doing something they preach against. I fumbled through the situation somehow, feeling like an idiot.

I explained that I had been reading Allison's blog for a long time and I didn't think she could have kept it up so well, if she wasn't whom she said she was (Oh, really?). I told her that Allison had written for the Jerusalem Post for a long time and that a lot of people had heard of her, including Grandpa (So?). I said it was different for grown-ups because they had more experience in sussing people out (Yeah, right!).

By this point I was feeling rather uncomfortable.

Well, anyway, I lucked out. Allison turned out not to be a deranged serial killer. What a relief. It was fun to finally meet her in person.

I'm worried about Allison's survival instincts, though. I managed to get through the whole morning without her finding out the horrible truth about me.

posted by Imshin 17:24

Yesterday the Orr Judicial Commission of Inquiry gave its recommendations. The Commission's mission was to investigate the riots of Israeli Arabs in October 2000, and the killing of thirteen people by the Police, during these riots.

A lot has been said, since these events took place, about the discrimination of Israeli Arabs, about their feelings of alienation and their low socio-economic status in Israeli society. All these are serious matters that demand attention and solutions.

However, I've read very little that manages to convey the atmosphere among Jews in Israel at the time of the riots, or at least as experienced by this Israeli Jew. I'm not trying to judge, or say who was right and who was wrong. The Judicial Commission of Inquiry has had its say, based on all the relevant evidence. I respect its recommendations. I just thought I would like to write about how it felt for me at the time, as I remember it.

Through my eyes.
In October 2000, Israeli Arabs rose up in solidarity with their Palestinian brethren. Widespread riots were reported, with frenzied crowds throwing stones at Jewish passers-by and clashing violently with the Police, who were completely unprepared for this eventuality. Yaffo, the southern part of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, was cut off, for a day or two. You couldn't get to Bat-Yam via Yaffo, the shorter route, when coming from inner Tel Aviv. You had to go right round, through Holon. Even when the road was opened, people were afraid to drive that way. The riots in the north of the country were the worst. Main roads leading to the north of the country were sporadically blocked by rioters, effectively cutting off the north from the rest of the country. People were scared to go home. Jews living in secluded villages and small towns in the north were afraid that they were going to be attacked (Bish reminds me that people traveling on slip roads leading to secluded villages and small towns, such as Lotem and Misgav, in the Galilee, actually were attacked by their longtime Arab neighbors, who they had formerly seen as their friends, and the Jewish inhabitants were placed under protective curfew). A man was killed (Hebrew link) from a stone thrown at his car, while he was driving along highway #2, the main road from Tel Aviv to Haifa, near the Arab village of Jisr a-Zarqa, a bit north of Hadera. Thus the road connecting the main Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa seemed to have become as dangerous as roads leading to remote West Bank settlements. There was a decided feeling of alarm and emergency. It felt like the terrible 1948 war was coming alive again before our eyes. Would we have to travel in armed convoys from now on, in the middle of the country, like we did back then? The whole country was in shock. Suddenly people realized how dangerous the Israeli Arabs could be if they chose, and it looked like they were choosing.

The riots seemed, at the time, to be an integral part of the awful violence that had erupted in the territories, with the full backing of the Palestinian Authority, if not actually initiated by the Palestinian Authority, as the more serious experts for Arab affairs believe. At the same time, there was real fear that the surrounding Arab countries would rally round their Palestinian brethren and attack Israel. Bish cancelled his long-awaited Vipassana meditation course in Kibbutz Hatzeva in the Arava desert that month. He didn't want the girls and I to be alone, should all-out war break out.

This was what was happening. It was very scary.

The Israeli Arabs ceased their rioting only after thirteen Arabs had been killed by police forces in the north, twelve Israeli and one Gazan.

Quiet returned, but everything had changed. The feeling of betrayal we Jews felt was overwhelming. Israeli Arabs had violently sided with the Palestinians against the rest of us.

Long after Arab Yaffo was quiet, the Jews didn't go back. The restaurants, the stores, the flea market, all remained deserted. The queue outside Abu-Lafiya's bakery on a Friday night disappeared. At first people were afraid. Then, when the fear subsided, they were angry. A lot of people told me they would not buy from Arabs any more, they would not eat at their restaurants or shop at their stores, even if it meant paying more elsewhere.

Three years on, you still don't need to queue up at Abu-Lafiya's bakery on a Friday night, although people are gradually coming back to Yaffo.

We were surprised to discover that the Israeli Arabs also felt betrayed. By the Israeli establishment, by Israeli Jews. They also experienced what had happened as a complete breakdown. They had never felt so alienated and angry. They were outraged that the police had opened fire on what they saw as peaceful demonstrators in legitimate demonstrations, in situations that were not threatening anyone. They were understandably heartbroken by the youngsters that were killed. I suppose they don't really understand, to this day, why their Jewish customers stopped coming.

* * * *

This is my personal recollection of that time. Maybe other people experienced it differently. I feel no anger towards ordinary Israeli Arabs, although I can't help feeling they have been led astray by their leadership. Israeli Arabs are my fellow citizens and as such I feel an affinity for them. I see no reason why they should have less opportunities than me, or why their towns and villages should not be allocated equal funding, if this is not the case. I believe they should be my equals in everything, rights and obligations alike. I see no reason why they cannot do national service, if they have a problem with military service. I pray we can put aside our differences and forgive each other for what happened.

posted by Imshin 15:37

I was hoping someone would bring up the new French ambassador thing. I couldn't be bothered to look for an English language link myself. So Allison has kindly obliged. Laurence too.

France's newly-appointed ambassador to Israel described Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) as a "lout" and said the Jewish state was "paranoid" during a recent cocktail party in Paris, the Yediot Aharonot reported.

[…]

A correspondent for Yediot Aharonot, Boaz Bissmuth, said he had overhead a conversation between Araud and two other veteran diplomats in the gardens of the French foreign ministry in Paris.

You'll remember Israeli journalist Boaz Bismuth from Yediot Aharonot. He's one of the two idiot Israelis who galloped into Iraq with the American troops at the height of the war without any authorization, and were enraged and indignant when the American soldiers, on discovering that they were stowaways, as it were, arrested them and treated them rather badly. Trust him to eavesdrop on other people's private conversations at cocktail parties and then publish their content in the paper. Not that it makes the things said by the person in question any better, but it's the new French ambassador, for goodness sake, you know, representing France. Did anyone really expect him to actually be pro-Israel?

I see the London Telegraph has an opinion piece on this affair.

posted by Imshin 22:23

Oh, oh, oh! Diane says nice things about me in a post about blogfights, blogging groupthink and blogging versus journalism. It's a very interesting post, although I don't know most of the people she's talking about. Well, I have heard of Glenn Reynolds (although I rarely read him). You know what I mean.

But you know, even though I like reading what Diane has to say about them, blog politics are rather boring. I can't be bothered to follow all the big fights.

Blog politics are nearly as boring as the petty politics in my workplace. Not that I'd throw anyone out of my office if they came to tell me all the latest gossip, mind you.
posted by Imshin 21:38

Well, my mother-in-law came home from her trip to France. She had a wonderful time (grrrr). Not that I begrudge her, I am very happy for her, I just would have prefered she had a wonderful time somewhere else. The sad truth of the matter is that she is a Francophile and always has been. When she was a child they spoke French at home until her sisters and her came home from school and demanded to speak Hebrew. That's how they got people to speak Hebrew in those days, through the children, because everyone spoke different languages, German, Yiddish, Russian, French, Ladino, Arabic. This is actually one of the great wonders of the Jewish return to the Land of Israel, the way they resuscitated a dead language, regarded as holy but never spoken. My mother-in-law also has a lot of family in France. Anyway, she was over there for a family affair, somewhere in the country and she had a wonderful time.

She met a young Lebanese-born Palestinian while she was there. At first he was wary of her, and kept his distance. Then he tasted her ma'amouls. (Told you they were good, Diane, but I didn't realize they were our secret weapon for bringing the Palestinians to their knees). She said he came up to her and said they were better than his mother's (praise indeed from an Arab man). And from that point on they were the best of friends. Maybe he realized that he had a lot in common with her. That makes me sad, on one hand, but on the other, it gives me hope. She said to him that he sees himself as belonging here more than her, although he's never been here and was born in Lebanon. But she was born here, she told him (she's seventy), and so was her father.
posted by Imshin 09:00

10 things I'd like to do but don't dare
1. Quit my job. I'm coming to the end of a two and a half week vacation from work. It's been heaven. I really really don't fancy going back. Moreover, I think work is highly overrated.
2. Quit my job. Did I say that already?
3. Spend Shabbat Hayei Sara in Hebron with the nutty settlers there and their supporters. I am strongly opposed to these people and their behavior. I think they should be evacuated, the sooner the better. They are serious obstacles to any possibility of peace in this region. So why am I so fascinated with the idea of spending time there? Is it just an anthropological interest or is there something more?
4. Did I mention quit my job?
5. Quit my job and move to Mitzpe Ramon full time.
6. Become a foster parent.
7. Write a book. So far I've never got past the first page. I never know what language to write it in, for one thing. It's the split personality issue, you see. (Now she's started with the lame excuses again).
8. If I say quit my job again, will you hit me?
9. Shave all my hair off. (And cut off my ear?)
10. Smuggle drugs in Turkey. Just kidding, I needed a number ten.
posted by Imshin 08:36

I can imagine that a lot of people who wander onto this page probably leave in a hurry, disgusted with this Israeli's preoccupation with Israeli issues (How provincial!), and with the fact that she ignores the Palestinian side of things, and that she seems indifferent to the suffering just a few kilometers to her East. Oh, yes, they probably say, it's all very well for her, worrying about sending her kids to nice schools in wealthy Tel Aviv, but what about the Palestinian children? What about their schooling? What about their miserable lives?

The first thing I have to say about that is that I am living my life, not theirs. If I write about their suffering it will mainly be the fruit of my imagination or things I have read. Before the first Intifada and before the wave of terrorist attacks that hit Tel Aviv in the mid-90's I was in regular contact with Palestinians. Not any more and not as a result of anything I did.

The second thing I have to say is that I am well aware that what happens to the Palestinians, how they live, what they learn in school, if they learn in school, and what their lives are like, has a real affect on my life. I know this, I live my life in awareness of this fact. And I worry about it. I worry about it no less than I worry about the lives and schooling of Israeli children from lower socio-economic strata than myself. There is no getting away from the fact that the lives of our two peoples are intertwined.

A lot of people who don't live in this region are very critical about Israel and its policies, although these things have no affect whatsoever on their personal lives. Some of these people are rather ignorant about some of the basic facts of the conflict. This doesn't bother them particularly or stop them from judging harshly.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel is not to blame for the situation ordinary Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza strip find themselves in. I know we are all in this together and Israel has certainly made many mistakes and done cruel things. Many things were done (and are still being done), that could be avoided, or maybe done in a more humane fashion. This is regrettable and should be seriously looked into and fixed. But these things are not representative of the whole picture. When seen out of context they look horrific, but this is not all there is to this.

A lot of people are forgetting something that is central to the conflict, or maybe they never knew, and that is that the Palestinians had a wonderful opportunity, a real, sincere opportunity offered to them by Israel, with the backing of the western world, to build a nation and a state alongside Israel. This was a time when the Left in Israel was strong, creative, persuasive. Something wonderful was happening, we were building the future of this land together. Many Right Wing friends of mine decided to vote with me for the Left, so persuaded were so many of us that we were going in a good direction.

And then buses started blowing up. One of the buses that blew up in the mid-90's was a busy Tel Aviv no. 5 bus, on one of the most central lines in the city. Parking and traffic being what they are in the city, I often prefer to get the no. 5 bus to more or less anywhere I want to go in Tel Aviv. There is a stop right across from my apartment, another by my workplace.

That murderous attack completely shattered my feeling of security in the place I live my life.

But do you know what? It didn't change my belief in the Oslo Accords. Not one little bit. It maybe even strengthened it. So did the many murderous attacks that followed. The change didn't come until September 2000.

So what changed?

What changed was that the Palestinians refused an offer of a lifetime and then ATTACKED us! What changed was the shock of the realization that our yearning for peace and coexistence, and our willingness to compromise and share this land, with joint research and development in education, agriculture, technology, with Israelis shopping in Bidya and Palestinians working in Petach Tikva and holidaying in Herzliya, with this land developing towards becoming an economic heaven for both peoples, was not being reciprocated.

The leadership on the other side was just biding its time, we discovered, waiting for more and more concessions. They had never given up their determination to rule the whole of the Land of Israel, although they had said they had. They had promised that they would never again take up arms against us as a way of solving their differences with us. And we had believed them. And then we offered them to end it all, once and for all. A historic finish to the conflic for all time. They weren't interested. They didn't even ask to think about it. It was just NO.

Because instead of using those years to build a nation, a society, a state, the Palestinian leadership, fresh from their privileged exile in Tunisia, had used them to build a culture of hate. They had sowed, not seeds of understanding and coexistence among the young generation of Palestinians in schools, but seeds of hope that it would not be necessary to make compromises with the hated Zionists after all. They had taught them that the day when they would all be back in Haifa and in Jaffa, and that the Jews would be gone, was getting nearer and nearer with every concession made by the weak, spoilt Israelis.

It's easy to judge from the other side of the world, where the chance of your kid getting blown to smithereens in the local mall are still extremely slim, even in these days of planes being flown into tall buildings as part of a sick game of terror (but for how long?). It's easy to decide who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, when it doesn't touch you, when it makes no difference to your life, when you don't really know all the facts and don't really care to know them.

I don't know how we can resolve this conflict anymore. I thought I knew. This knowledge was such a deep belief for me that it shaped and defined most of my adult life. It was who I was.

It turned out I was a naive, trusting fool. Now, it seems, this conflict can only be solved if my people and I cease to exist. Well, I have no intention of doing anything that would further that end. My only alternative is to be strong, refrain from spending too much time worrying about the situation and just live my life.

So forgive me for not agonizing about the Palestinians all day, every day. I am sorry for them. They have terrible leaders who have been holding them down and leading them astray, and they have no way of getting rid of them. I can't change that. I have my say every four years, sometimes more often than that. I'm sorry the Palestinians don't have the same privilege. On second thoughts, maybe I'm not. They probably wouldn't elect anyone who would want to make peace with us.

posted by Imshin 20:37

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