About Sharon's firing cabinet ministers
Go read Allison. Hilarious. The comments too.

Thank goodness some of us are still finding the energy to write about what is actually happening here right now.
posted by Imshin 12:38

Hahaha
And what's wrong with muesli and sandals, exactly? (You forgot to point out that they have to be Birkenstock, preferably the green plastic ones).

Update: I’ve been admonished as unpatriotic by Allison, for writing about Birkenstock without mentioning the far-superior Israeli equivalent – Naot.

Somehow I don't think Guardian readers would dare wear Israeli sandals, for fear of their hard-earned subscriptions being automatically revoked.

The funny thing is that, in Israel, the most fervent among the Settlers are also muesli and sandals people. Things are often not quite as they seem.
posted by Imshin 11:28

And talking about humility...
I agree SO much, Alisa (no longer in Wonderland?)! Every word in the rock, as we weird Israelis say.
posted by Imshin 11:22

So who isn’t a bloody misfit? (revisited)
Last week a friend at work was telling us at great length about the hard-luck story of an apparently well-known Israeli model and former beauty queen, as it had appeared in an interview in the paper. (Don’t you just hate it when people do that? If I’d really wanted to know the story of that TV movie on Hallmark last night, I would have watched it myself. You really don’t have to tell it all to me! Nu, but I have to be polite).

Anyway, this poor gorgeous model (I forget the name) had had an awful life. Grown up in a well-to do family, beauty queen, followed by successful modeling career, got married to a handsome Italian millionaire who had fallen in love with her image in a magazine and flown straight to Israel to woo her… Now I’m just being mean. The sad truth was that the Italian millionaire treated her like a piece of jewelry to put on his arm and they eventually divorced leaving her with three kids, I think.

Now she’s a bright girl, even though she’s a model, so she studies medicine, not because she has a burning need to heal the world’s sick, but to prove that she’s not just some dumb model. Then she starts writing, and quite well, according to her. But no one will publish her, because she’s just this dumb model, see? Even when she sends her stuff in incognito, and the publishers show an interest, they back off when they hear that it was a dumb model celeb person who wrote it. Okay, so this is how my friend told it, okay?

I’m getting there; I’m getting there…

Now, I’m a pretty self-absorbed person myself, but I try to keep quiet about it, because I know I’ve been very lucky in life. I have absolutely no call to feel sorry for myself, even if I do every once in a while (Don’t worry, Bish refuses to allow me to wallow in self-pity for more than two seconds in a row).

This model person is rich (I suppose she did get something from the Italian millionaire), beautiful, and she has three lovely kids. What else? Oh yes, she’s clever and accomplished. But that’s not enough! No, she wants the whole world to bow down before her in recognition and say ‘We know you’re not only beautiful, we admire you also because you are clever and accomplished’. A bit of humility is in place. Some people are hungry, you know. Count your blessings before whining.

But then again, if everyone were happy and satisfied with their lot in life, who would write the books?

Sayed Kashua’s first book made a strong impression on me. I haven’t read his second one (Hebrew link) yet. Maybe I’ll buy it during the upcoming Book Week.

You can’t help liking Kashua. He’s so painfully truthful, about everything, but he’s never vicious.

By the way, my friend from Tiberias, the one I mentioned yesterday, besides being brilliant, was also an incredibly well-adjusted person. She wasn't at all one of the gifted-but-confused I also discussed in the same post.

Update: Oh dear, I hope I haven't awoken the dormant Feminist beast(-ess) in my female readers with this, who sympathise with our long-suffering beauty-queen/model/doctor/writer in her quest to be taken seriously. Confess! Aren't you secretly delighted to hear that a model's life can be horrible and that beauty is a terrible crutch to have to live with?

posted by Imshin 11:14

Shabbat Shalom.
posted by Imshin 20:05

So who isn’t a misfit?
Jonathan Edelstein has just read Sayed Kashua’s book “Dancing Arabs”. I read it when it came out in Hebrew in 2002, before I began blogging.

I can’t remember the book well enough to comment on it. I mainly remember falling in love with the hero’s grandmother, as she is described in the book. Kashua portrays a powerful image of her that has stayed with me.

Jonathan writes:

But Dancing Arabs isn't fundamentally about harmony; it's a story of conflict. The narrator is an Arab Israeli from Kashua's home village of Tira - he is never named, and we are left to guess how many of the details are autobiographical - and Dancing Arabs is the story of how he was caught between two worlds. The narrator's father and grandfather were Palestinian militants, and he is raised on stories of the 1948 war which he retells in the first person. When he is accepted to a predominantly Jewish boarding school for gifted children, he responds by trying to "pass" - to become as Jewish as possible, to blend in to the Israeli society around him.

The conflict comes from the fact that, from the narrator's standpoint, it is impossible to be both Arab and Israeli at the same time. This is due at least in part to his village background; much of his difficulty fitting in at the boarding school comes from his accented Hebrew and unfamiliarity with middle-class norms rather than his Arab ethnicity as such. He is no middle-class urban Arab who can comfortably consider himself Israeli; to him, Israeli society is Jewish society, and to become an Israeli it is necessary to become a Jew.

But even when he passes for Jewish, he learns another truth - that acceptance is always conditional, that efforts at coexistence are often gratingly artificial, and that the rift between Arabs and Jews will come back to bite him when he least expects it. He ends up a man without a country, too Israelized to return to village life but barred by accident of birth from blending fully into middle Israel. This loss of identity follows him through depression, failure in career and marriage, and finally resignation.

I am reminded of a friend, with whom I lost touch long ago, who was originally from Tiberias. We were in the army together and later we met again in university. She was the most brilliant person I knew (besides Bish, of course :-)). She must have tried to explain to me what her thesis was about at least three or four times. I just couldn’t understand. And it wasn’t in Higher Mathematics, it was in Psychology and I was also studying Psychology. Still it was far too clever for me.

When she was fourteen, my friend had left her family in Tiberias and had gone to a special school in Kfar Saba, a boarding school for especially gifted children.

The idea of this boarding school (which has since closed, I believe, for lack of funds) was to give very talented children a chance to develop their special abilities. These were children from development towns in remote areas, where the schools couldn’t give them suitable intellectual stimulation.

I remember my friend telling me that there were two such boarding schools in Israel. The other one was in Jerusalem. It was to this other one, it seems, that the narrator in Kashua’s book was sent, as was the author himself, in real life, I believe.

I can well understand and sympathize with Kashua’s hero not feeling that he belongs to either Arab or Jewish society. I too am a child of two very different universes. You are probably thinking that my worlds couldn’t possibly conflict as severely as Kashua’s. Maybe not, but conflict they do nevertheless, and my life has always revolved around my inner struggle to find my place.

Something else sounds familiar in Kashua’s story, from my limited experience observing gifted people, and that is the difficulties that these people can encounter, in adjusting to life. They are brilliantly shining stars in a dull, mediocre world. Their everyday social experiences can often be disappointing. Even without such an inner (and outer) cultural conflict, as Kashua’s hero experiences, just dealing with the world can be extremely frustrating for them. Learning to successfully cope with these dilemmas along with such a cultural conflict is certainly no small feat.

Israel has so many serious social challenges to meet, but it can’t address them properly until it is at peace. But how can it be possible for Israel to achieve peace while all these social challenges are pulling it in all directions from the inside?

posted by Imshin 20:02

Comfortably ugly 2







posted by Imshin 18:13

Haaretz again
Jonathan tells me that the three missing paragraphs I translated myself were added to Haaretz English version later. He pointed out that "Ha'aretz English articles are updated frequently, and the version you read might have been put on the web before those three paragraphs were translated."

Fair enough. I still think they could have translated those three paragraphs before the bit about Yossi Sarid calling Mofaz names.
posted by Imshin 18:06

Mazal Tov to Ly-LY of Lights in the Distance. She's had her baby and all's well (tfu tfu tfu).
posted by Imshin 17:36

No one is immune

There is a story about a Zen master whose monastery was overrun by marauding soldiers. When the Zen master did not appear frightened, the soldier’s captain said, “Don’t you know who I am? I could run my sword through you and not think twice about it.” The Zen master replied, “Don’t you know who I am? You could run your sword through me and I wouldn’t think twice about it.”

Written on the inside flap of the cover of No Death, No Fear, Comforting Wisdom For Life, by Thich Nhat Hanh.

This is what immediately came to mind when I heard of the beheading of a Buddhist by Islamic separatists in Thailand on Saturday. Maybe not so appropriate. This was no Zen master. And he was killed because he wasn’t a Muslim.

Cheam, 63, a Buddhist who lived with his wife in a remote Muslim village, on Saturday became the latest victim in the litany of killings blamed on Islamic separatists in Thailand's deep south.

To drive home the message, the killers had flung Cheam's head in the village street while the body was left in the rubber plantation he managed several kilometers away.

posted by Imshin 20:04

Look at this great Map of Israel. Click on the different areas to get a closer look. Then you can get even closer and even see photos. Bish found it for us. Thank you Bish.
posted by Imshin 19:43

A letter
Sent to me yesterday by reader Randy Daitch:

I discovered this morning, on Memorial Day, a letter sent by my father to my mother, when he was serving in an army medical detachment in British Guiana, in April 1943. My father's Yahrzeit is next Sunday. His words would surely resonate with our soldiers overseas today:

LETTER DATED APRIL 1943, FROM MAURICE DAITCH, IN BRITISH GUIANA, TO SELMA ROSENBERG, IN WINDSOR ONTARIO, SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE THEIR MARRIAGE:

Our countries are fighting a war, and I am a soldier - a fighter for the common cause. At present my leaders have seen fit to place me in a position of comparatively little danger. I'll not complain, but accept the verdict of my commanders as to the best place in the scheme of things for me.

I've heard men say that they would rather be a live coward than a dead hero. I would rather be neither. I believe that while it is great to die for one's country, it is even greater to live for it. But if it ever comes to the choice of losing, to the Nazi hordes, our way of life, or dying in the attempt to maintain that way of life, I'll choose the latter.

Sweetheart, I miss you much, but whether I see you soon or later does not really matter. The important thing is that there is a job to be done, and if there is to be any of peace, freedom and security in the future - do it, and do it well, we must.

Until I return then, my love, keep me close to your heart, and I will remain happy in the knowledge that some day, soon I hope, I'll return and there will be no more waiting, wondering, worrying, for either of us, and we will be eternally happy in one another's arms.

With all my love,
Maury

Randy found this letter while organizing his worldly possessions for shipment to Israel. He's making Aliya in September, lucky us.

posted by Imshin 19:37

What side is Haaretz on?
‘Did you hear’, Bish asked me, ‘that Defense minister Mofaz told Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting today that in May alone 18 suicide (homocide) bombings had been thwarted in Israel’. ‘Where did you read this?’ I asked. ‘In Haaretz (Hebrew link)’, was his answer. So, as usual, I looked up the English version, thinking of sharing this interesting and important piece of information with you.

But what’s this? Nothing about thwarting terrorist attacks in the English translation. More than half of the report in English is given over to scathing criticism of Mofaz’s appearance by various Knesset members (In Hebrew this criticism is far less prominent), but not a word about suicide attacks being prevented.

A quick count revealed that the English language editors had completely ommitted a whole three paragraphs of the first part of the original Hebrew article*. Makes you wonder.

Well that’s what bloggers are for. The annoying-but-gripping thriller I’m reading will have to wait, I thought, and got right down to work.

Here’s what Haaretz thought wouldn’t interest their English language readers (you’ll forgive my hurried translation, it’s nearly bedtime for me):

Mofaz further said to the Committee that “Terrorist organizations wish to take revenge for the elimination of their top people and they also wish to harm Israel in view of the upcoming disengagement.” He said that there have been successes in the war against terror: There have been no suicide bombings inside Israel since 13th March. He said that in May alone 18 suicide bombings in Israel have been thwarted.

The Head of Research in Army Intelligence, Brigadier General Yossi Koppervasser, said during the meeting that the first signs could be seen of efforts by terrorist organizations, to move smuggling of weapons from Egypt into Israel away from the Philadelphi route to other areas. He said that the smuggling layout in Rafiah is made up of about 10-20 people, some of them Palestinian Security Personnel.

Brigadier General Koppervasser added that the Palestinian leadership, headed by Arafat, was following the disengagement plan with concern and was worried that after Israel cut itself off from Gaza, the (Gaza) Strip would remain a big prison of Palestinians. Answering a question by KM Haim Ramon (Avoda), Brigadier General Koppervasser said that terrorism coming out of the (Gaza) Strip would lessen as a result of the disengagement.

So, what do you think of Haaretz’s editing out one of the most interesting and informative parts of the article, while still managing to fit in Yossi Sarid saying that Mofaz was an insult to intelligence? Do you know what I think? I think Haaretz is an insult to intelligence.

By the way, the stuff they didn't edit out of the article is interesting enough. Apparently, Egypt has been smuggling large amounts of Egyptian-made RPG launchers into the Gaza Strip through the tunnels. Good thing we're at peace with Egypt. Can you imagine if we weren't?

______________________
* In all fairness, I must point out that Haaretz also changed the last few paragraphs of the article, cutting out petty details that really would not be of interest to the foreign reader.

posted by Imshin 23:09

Good post by anglosaxy about driving in Israel. I've rarely driven anywhere else, so I thought all the things he described were quite normal (what? You're meant to indicate on a roundabout?).

Actually, I do remember driving in the center of Paris once and feeling quite at home. Couldn't find anywhere to park though. I just kept going round and round the Arc De Triumphe...
posted by Imshin 21:54

'We only want to hurt the Westerners. Where can we find them?'
Headline in the UK Independent, referred to me by John. He also sent me the Guardian article about it:

According to another survivor, Abu Hashem, an Iraqi with a US passport, they demanded: "Are you Muslim or Christian? We don't want to kill Muslims. Show us where Americans and westerners live."

He said there were four gunmen aged between 18 and 25 wearing military fatigues. "Don't be afraid. We won't kill Muslims, even if you are an American," he said they told him.

The four gunmen had been polite and calm, he said.

"They gave me a lecture on Islam and said they were defending their country and ridding it of infidels.

Two nice lefty newspapers.

Do you think they get it yet? Naaah.

(BUT IT’S THE ISRAELIS WHO ARE THE RACISTS)

posted by Imshin 20:31

I tell you, I’m having such fun with this little camera


This road is completely straight in real life, honest (click photo for larger image). Please don't e-mail me to explain why this happened. I don't want to know. I'd rather continue believing it was magic.


More inner city nature (click photo for larger image).
posted by Imshin 20:16

Yes!
She's back at last, and interesting as ever, writing about the use of children in war.
posted by Imshin 19:45

Okay, so I have to vent sometimes. Makes me feel much better. The nice thing about blogging is that even if I write the occasional drivel, you don't like me any less.

Erm, you don't, do you?
posted by Imshin 22:24

The (used to be) White City


I don't live here either.


posted by Imshin 22:15

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