As long as I’ve brought the subject up (Mel Gibson’s religious film, that is), you might like to read this article that Roger Simon links to.
posted by Imshin 09:03

Blogging is essentially an unregulated, free-agent activity, and that can drive people who prefer rules and regulations and decision-by-committee crazy. From its earliest days, I noticed a tone of disapproval towards bloggers that reminded me of school, what with all the carping from magazines like The Nation and The American Prospect about the blogging world's sorry lack of supervision. The tongue-clucking made me think of the teacher's pet constantly raising a hand to protest: "Miss Jones! Miss Jones! Johnny's reading ahead again! Unsupervised!"

(The strong emphasis at the beginning of the paragraph is mine).

Read the rest of it.
posted by Imshin 08:11

I think what I was trying to say, yesterday, was that because I live in Israel, I don’t have to be concerned about my being Jewish on a daily basis, because being Jewish is not being different. I don’t have to play down my Jewishness to get a job, I don’t feel the need to wear a Magen David (Star of David) to make a statement, or neatly tuck it inside my blouse when it would not be advisable for it to be seen. And I don’t have to worry about that Mel Gibson film, and about how it makes us look bad.

Besides the question of how religious I am, being Jewish is not an issue.

A friend said to me yesterday that her Post-Zionist husband wants to leave the country, claiming, among other things, that it is more dangerous to be a Jew in Israel, at the moment, than anywhere else in the world. Probably true.

But unlike in, say, France, this isn’t the personal problem of Imshin walking down the road in danger of being beaten up by Muslims. My daughters are not Jews at school (and they’re certainly not Dirty Jews). I don’t have to deal with being different in my everyday life. I can delegate the problem of looking after my personal safety, as a Jew, to my representatives in power, who will deal with it with the usual incompetence, but deal with it they will.

It's true - at the moment I am more likely to die for being Jewish in Israel. But the difference is that here I have an army, a police force, and other security organizations, all working night and day to protect me, as a Jew. Sixty years ago, in Poland, my cousins didn't have that, and the descendants of the few of them who mananged to survive don't have it either, in France, today.
posted by Imshin 07:07

Bish touched Goldie Hawn. Really. Here in Israel. It was about twenty years ago, he was a waiter, and she was a customer. Me? I really like Goldie Hawn, but Bish would be the first to tell you I’d rather touch Mel Gibson than Goldie Hawn. And I don’t care if it wasn’t his real posterior in that film (or hers for that matter). By the way, did you know his full name is Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson? Columcille??? How do you pronounce that?

And that’s as deep I’m going to go in a discussion about a Hollywood actor (and director, nearly forgot). He’s an entertainer for goodness sake! The fuss made over these people, and everything they say and do, is so pathetic.

I suppose I should take an interest in that controversial film he made, but I can’t. I won’t go and see it because I don’t go to see any films. I wait for them to come to me. And I somehow doubt this one will be airing on Israeli television. So I don’t have an opinion, sorry.

But John does have an opinion. He says it reminds him of that old joke:

A Jew was walking down the street when he was attacked and beaten up by a Christian. The Jew asked why on earth he had been beaten. The man replied,

"The Jews killed Christ!"

"But that was 2000 years ago!"

"I know, but I only heard about it today!"

You see, that’s why I like living in Israel. The likelihood of being beaten up for being a Jew, while walking down the street, is slim. Blown up yes, but not beaten up.
posted by Imshin 20:19

Enough already! (updated)
I’m so fed up of the (was there any/wasn’t there any) WMD discussion. It wasn’t about WMD. It wasn’t even about Saddam being a very nasty tyrant. It was about the big picture. It was about 1991 and the U.S. not sticking around to win the war, and deserting the local opposition. It was about the U.S. and the West coming out of that war, in the eyes of the Arabs, as weak and decadent, and about the Arabs seeing themselves, at last, as a worthy adversary and serious threat to the new sole world leader, in the post-USSR era. And that is what led to the emergence of Islamic terrorism as a real threat to the world as we know it.

What’s Iraq got to do with al-Qaeda and terrorism, you ask? Well, as I see it, even if there were no direct connection, there is the connection of empowerment; of nationalistic pride; of saying “boo” to the big guy and watching him retreat, red-faced, with his tail between his legs; of understanding Western weaknesses and learning to effectively exploit them.

And that’s why taking out Saddam was so essential for the first stages of the global War on Terror (remember the War on Terror?). WMD really wasn’t the issue. So why did they go to such lengths to say that it was? Big mistake.

Haggai has posted the most intriguing comment on the subject. It’s got everything – Hitchcock, Kipling, lions in Scotland. I love it. I have a slight problem with the bottom line, because I personally really do think it was never about WMD. I just can’t understand (and couldn’t understand at the time) why anyone ever said it was. Still, Haggai’s idea is so creative and fascinating, you just have to read it.

Update: Haggai says

My bottom line is actually a lot more involved than what I put in that post. I do think the war was a good idea overall, partly for some of the reasons you specified. But for me, the ultimate success of the war, and the ultimate success of anything this big that the US attempts to do, depends very heavily on a phrase that became widely used during Vietnam: "the informed consent of the American people," with they key word being "informed." Everyone's gotta know what they're getting into. When it comes to the cost of the war in terms of money, the number of post-regime US casualties, the length of time for the reconstruction, etc., there's just no doubt for me that most people in the States were NOT informed about it by the administration ahead of time. There really is a lot of concern about how expensive it is, how messy and violent it is, how long it's taking, etc. I think these things are absolutely tied in with the credibility of the case that was made ahead of time for going to war, and they're very important in terms of how successful the whole thing ends up being in the long run.

With WMD, specifically, I don't think the lack of WMD means that one has to retract their support for the war in retrospect. But it's undoubtedly an important issue, for US credibility and for the future of dealing with these problems with other regimes. When people say things like, the war was a good idea even though we haven't found WMD, there were other reasons to care about more than WMD, etc., I think that's fine, and it's largely what I think anyway. But when people here in the US say that they NEVER cared about WMD AT ALL, that the obvious disconnect between what the administration said going in and what's happened since then doesn't matter at all, and that it doesn't raise serious questions about the specific way in which we went to war, then I really find that troubling. In a movie, OK, it's the MacGuffin, it doesn't matter, but this is real life!

As a mother of twelve years, four months, eleven days, four hours, and three minutes, I think I have enough experience to safely say that the truth, the whole truth (as far as possible), and nothing but the truth is always, yes always, the best policy for parents interacting with their children. It may not be easy, it may require courage at times (and I am eternally grateful to Bish for helping me daily with my considerable flaws in that department), but there is no alternative policy that works, not in the short run, not in the long run. Even at a very young age, kids can take far more than most people realize. How they react to the truth is mainly a result of the way they are told and the emotions their parents transmit to them.

If this is true for children, even very small children, why should anyone think it wouldn’t be true for adults? Governments should have more trust in the collective common sense of their people.

(There are, of course, things that are not for public consumption, for reasons of safety and security. A child should not know the combination of a safe containing weapons, for instance, but it is a good idea that he or she should be aware that there are weapons in that safe, and how to behave around those weapons to make sure that they are not harmed by them.)
posted by Imshin 12:12

Quake
You know, in the first split second you can't quite grasp it. Is my desk MOVING? And then you start to realize you aren't imagining things, and it's not the rabbi, in the office on the floor above you, moving furniture. Your desk really is moving. Moving?! Shaking like nobody's business! And your computer, and the walls, and the windows, and the floor. And shaking, and shaking, and shaking. They said it was only few seconds but it felt like about two minutes. It went on and on. I actually had time to ring Bish and discuss the situation with his secretary, before she got hysterical and dived under the table (they're on the twelfth floor). You suddenly know exactly what it's like to be living your whole life on the back of a sleeping monster that is just starting to wake up. I mean, if even the ground under your feet isn't stable any more, what the hell is?

And we're still waiting for the big one.

Experts say Israel is heading for a major earthquake in the next 50 years, due to tension along the African-Arabian fault line. The boundary between two tectonic plates runs the length of the country along the Jordan Valley.

Oh well, never a dull moment.
posted by Imshin 16:19

Now, my dad is really well-travelled. Hey Dad, you forgot South Africa and Spain. Fancy forgetting Spain - you had a holiday apartment there! And haven't you been to Taiwan? I'm sure you've been to Taiwan. (And you have technically been to Egypt, although Sinai wasn't Egypt when you were there).

As you can see, my dad has done enough travelling for ten people (and he really has been to Alaska), so I can stay at home.
posted by Imshin 19:01

Last night I dreamt I was humming a tune as I washed the dishes, some old shmaltzy Country and Western. In my dream I was really hit by the two lines of the song I could remember, real haunting tear-jerkers, so this morning when I awoke, I googled them. It seems they don’t exist, not as part of a popular song, anyway.

Maybe I wrote them. Now all I need is to find the rest of the song that goes with them.

posted by Imshin 06:20

Poetic Justice?
Remember Rim al-Riyashi, mother of two, who blew herself and four Israelis up, at the border crossing between Gaza and Israel, taking four Israelis with her? You may also remember that she was allegedly sent on this mission by her charming lover, in cahoots with her equally charming husband, because she had dishonored the family, by sleeping with the charming lover.

Well, according to Yesha News (this is a Hebrew link, read about this source here), Rim al-Riyashi’s lover (although maybe “lover” is the wrong term, how much love could there have been?) was none other than Abd el-Nasser Abu Shoka, Commander of the Hamas Central Command in Gaza, who was killed this weekend. Here’s an Arab source about his death.

Bish says that the story about Abu Shoka being al-Riyashy's infamous lover is all over Israeli current affair forums, posted by people who claim to be quoting Arab sources.

According to the forums, the details of Abu Shoka's killing were as follows: He was in contact with an Israeli Arab through whom he was purchasing uniforms for Hamas “militants”, but in addition to the uniforms he was also given a gift, a relief of the el-Aqza mosque. Unfortunately for him, it seems to have had a bomb in it, which was activated by an aircraft. Boom.

Yesha News also has the el-Aqza mosque relief story, but nothing about the uniforms, or the Israeli Arab. They also say this is from Arab sources, but fail to elaborate.

If all this is true, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Excuse my blood thirst, this doesn’t sound exactly like the-boy-next-door.

The killing of Abu Shoka has been mentioned in a few more places.

I'd like to point out that Abu Shoka's connection to al-Riyashy hasn't been confirmed by any major news sources, yet.

Afterthought: I forgot to point out that Israel denies any connection to Abu Shoka's death, so maybe the al-Aqza story is just that - a story.
posted by Imshin 20:03

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