A few months ago, a friend at work told me that they were making a film version of Cold Mountain, and if I hadn’t read it yet, I should do so before seeing the film. Even if it turned out to be an excellent production, he said, it could hardly be as good as the book. I’m afraid I revealed my ignorance by looking at him blankly. He gleefully looked down his longish nose at me, obviously satisfied that he was far better read than that Imshin person with all her airs and graces (It’s a lie, I tell you!). In his presence, I politely jotted down the names of book and author, meaning to look it up, and promptly forgot about it the moment he was no longer in the room. Don’t you hate it when people take pleasure in making you feel small, so they can look clever?

A week or two ago, he asked me if I’d read Cold Mountain yet, the hint of a sneer on his upper lip (or was I just imagining it?). By now I’d heard of Cold Mountain, those pretty blue eyes were already advertising the film on every street corner.

So I ordered it from Amazon.co.uk. It’s faster delivery. On Thursday, I went to the Post Office across the road to pick up the parcel. Parcels aren’t usually delivered to the door in Israel.

“You must hate us now,” a woman called Miryam said in English to a lovely looking woman, standing behind me in line. The other woman looked slightly familiar, petite, blonde, forty-ish. Where had I seen her before? Was she famous? “No! No! I don’t hate you!” She answered, obviously embarrassed, in a gentle German accent, and proceeded to tell her friend about moving back to Europe with her child and getting settled. Maybe the son was in school with Youngest last year? Miryam, who looked about sixty and should have known better, was not deterred. “Because I feel so ashamed about what we are doing…,” she pressed on. Thankfully, the familiar looking blonde woman refused to be sucked into a discussion about “the situation”, with the thoughtless Miryam, in such a public place. Queuing up in the Post Office is so boring, everyone was hanging on every word of this, the only diversion. I was ashamed too, but not of “us”, of Miryam.

Anyway, the book is wonderful. I am still at the beginning, third chapter, and feeling fortunate that I read so slowly. I can savor every word. Magnificent, it says on the cover. Indeed. Even though it is about the horrors of a terrible war, one that people of the same country waged against each other.

I am reminded of a night, many years ago, at a friend’s apartment. After having one two many, a young man with short fair hair, a strong, square shaped face, and gentle, sad eyes, began telling of his experiences from the battlefield; terrible, nightmarish recollections of face-to-face combat during the Lebanon war. I was young. I had never heard such graphic descriptions before. The young man was dating the friend’s pretty sister, at the time. She chucked him, a month later, for the longhaired, extremely cool, hippy type, she later married and headed off to India with. I would have stuck with Sad Eyes, if I were her. Longhair was fun, a real charmer, and I liked him, but Sad Eyes had soul. I never saw him again, and I wouldn't recognise him in the street, but, every so often, I find myself thinking of the things he said that night.
posted by Imshin 18:05

The basic problem
Excellent post by Shai. A must read. It is his reaction to an article by a mainstream Palestinian journalist, that appeared in the Jpost.

If mainstream Palestinian thinking truly sees building a settlement outpost as equivalent to blowing up a bus, then there's no hope for progress. Settlements can be evacuated; the children murdered on the bus can never be brought back. If you can't see this essential difference then there's not much point talking to you.

And this brand of moral equivalence has led the Palestinians to shoot themselves in the foot. There is a majority -- albeit a slim one -- in Israel that supports withdrawing from the Territories. But this support has become eroded over the years by Palestinian suicide bombing. By supporting suicide bombings (and poll after poll indicate that the majority of Palestinians do), the Palestinians effectively undermined the Israelis who were sympathetic to their cause.

Worse, by sticking to this line that settlements=terror, the Palis ensure that their fears become self-fulfilling. Israeli support for the government's hard line against the Palestinians (and by extension in support of the settlements) is a direct result of the Palestinians' war of terror.

You really should read the lot.

posted by Imshin 10:27

No cause for alarm, but thanks for the concern.
Commenters on Asparagirl’s new site think we shouldn’t be in such a rush to give back our gas masks. Fear not, my friends, the army promises that even after they have recalled the seven million* gas masks, they will still be available for us, should we need them again in a hurry. It’s just that they won’t be cluttering up our usually smallish dwellingses**.
____________________________

*I’ve been wondering about that – if there are six and a half million of us, and there are seven million gas masks (Hebrew link) out there, what happened to half a million gas masks? Were they all lost? Good grief! Actually, on a personal basis, this is quite an uplifting thought. It means that I am not the most irresponsible person in the country, after all. I never lost even one, and I’ve got four to look after. Some of them could have been sold to Palestinians (to be used in violent mass demonstrations, should tear gas be employed), or to foreign workers (who had to give a deposit for theirs). Still, half a million sounds a lot for that. Even Israel doesn't have that many crooks (although some might not see selling them as an ammoral act). No, far more likely people left them at the back of "boydems" when they moved apartment, didn't take them with them when they left home on reaching adulthood, or neglected to give them back posthumously (some people have such a nerve).

**More bloody foreigner-ness.

posted by Imshin 09:14

So the sun will become a gigantic diamond when it burns out in a few billion years' time. Sadly, no aging billionaires will be around to buy the love of any dumb blondes with it. What a waste. (Erm, excuse the un-PC stereotype. Make that: no dumb blondes will be around to buy the love of any aging billionaires with it. Is that better? Okay, how about rich brunettes? Highly-intelligent redheads? Destitute billionaires? I'm just making it worse, aren't I?).

Oh well, I hear diamonds are much overrated as an investment anyway.
posted by Imshin 20:16

Shabbat Shalom


posted by Imshin 19:57

What?! No shredding machine?! All my nightmares were in vain?! (The link is to an article the UK Spectator, which now requires registration. Grrrr).
posted by Imshin 19:55

Big excitements in the Tennenbaum case.

Apparently.

They're not telling much (or they don't know much), but it sounds exciting. He seems to have failed a lie detector test, and isn't cooperating very well with his interrogators.

You'll remember Tennenbaum, he got exchanged a few weeks ago along with the bodies of three IDF soldiers, for a few hundred live prisoners Israel was holding. Well, he was immediately whisked off to hospital (he came back with all his teeth intact, except one, by the way), and then to interrogation, in a very comfortable police installation (usually used as a training center for police commanding officers or as a holiday camp for policepeople and their families), where he has been ever since, apparently lying through his (not torn out) teeth. It seems things were not exactly as they seemed (I can say things like that, you see, because I'm a bloody foreigner). It's looking like much more than a case of a greedy, stupid gambler-turned-drug trafficker, who bit off more than he could chew. Maybe real bad guy stuff. Real real bad guy stuff. Take-him-out-and-shoot-him bad guy stuff.
posted by Imshin 17:27

I wonder how Haaretz’s new editor will effect this newspaper. Intriguing choice.
posted by Imshin 08:57

growabrain has a new address and has become very bloggy. I like the funny cartoon figure on top left. I have to admit I was asked my opinion of it before it was put there, so I feel a deep spiritual connection to it (Imshin, you're getting pathetic).
posted by Imshin 08:48

Many thanks to M and Joe who explained how to pronounce Columcille, which is apparently an Irish name. I like Irish names. Welsh names too. It's KOL-um-kil or Column-kill. Both the same actually, but interesting how different people thought of different ways to explain. M also contributed this article about the Passion film issue - a different perspective by Rabbi Daniel Lapin.
posted by Imshin 08:42

The Shaister has moved!
I am extremely impressed.

It's getting quite roomy over here on the wrong side of the blogging tracks. I am sooooooo cool and un-bourgeois. Well, at least I think so.
posted by Imshin 20:20

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Arafat's true identity revealed - a Moroccan Jew.

Tee hee.

Welcome back, Gil. You were missed.
posted by Imshin 20:05

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to Thich Nhat Hanh read his wonderful poem "Call Me By My True Names" (click on bottom left of page). Here is a printed version of the poem. This is what peace is about.
posted by Imshin 18:21

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