Imshin the big mouth
It’s the twentieth of June again tomorrow. I wrote my first post two years ago tomorrow. And I’m still at it. It’s hard to believe. I find it incredible how beneficial blogging has been for me, how much it has helped me grow as a person.

This is what I wrote on my first blogiversary, last year. Still holds.

Last week I had my periodic interview with my boss. For the first time ever, I told him what I thought, what I really thought. I offended him. I guess that was inevitable, but I think I did it in the nicest way possible, considering the things I said. We talked for about two hours, about a variety of subjects, most of them unrelated to me personally. Usually these interviews last ten minutes.

Bish couldn’t believe. He said, “You’re turning into me.” I couldn’t believe either. I’m famous for being timid.

And the next day, amazingly, he didn’t cold-shoulder me (boss not Bish). At the end of the day I actually asked him if I were now the public enemy and he said not at all. Let’s hope he meant it, and that it stays that way.

It’s the blogging. Okay, living with Bish for seventeen and a half years has obviously done its bit, but mainly it’s the blogging. I find it increasingly difficult to shut up. When I have something to say, I tend to say it. Even if it’s better not to.

Will it make any difference to my boss, to his behavior, to our relationship? I doubt it, but I feel so relieved to have finally got things off my chest. And, mainly, I feel so incredibly empowered.

posted by Imshin 22:01

Yippee! It is a green cap, after all! (Another follow-up)
Combustible Boy informs me that “Some commenters in that Michael Totten thread said this guy with his ersatz Mao cap is a regular presence at San Francisco rallies. Here's a pic of him that was snapped at a rally on April 10:”

“Same hat, same sunglasses, same clips on the sign.” Adds Combustible boy, “Somebody in S.F. needs to figure out who he is and what he's all about.”

Ersatz. That’s a nice word.

posted by Imshin 10:59

Reader Michael Lonie had some comments on my post The Sting (of course, it's taken me ages to post them, lazy me):

I have often marvelled at the restraint of Israel in the face of the horrible things the Palestinian Arabs are doing in the present Oslo War (as I think of it). I think if they had tried this stuff on an Arab government starting at the end of September 2000, by the end of that October half the PA territory would be a smoking ruin and tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, just like at Hama in Syria in 1982. The Palestinians are lucky they are fighting Israel, infused as its people are with Jewish ethical and moral beliefs, and not some brutal Arab dictatorship. Think of Saddam Hussein gassing Jenin.

I never forget the reason there is an Israel occupation in the first place: the concerted Arab effort in 1967 to destroy Israel. I was a teenager at the time, but I well remember the period of tension leading up to the fighting, when it seemed the whole world had abandoned Israel to its fate and the Arabs were ready to pounce. Then Zahal struck and produced what seemed to be a miracle of deliverance. "He blew and they were scattered" sums up the amazed relief Israel's friends felt at the close of the sixth day.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as the Palestinians maintain their goal of the destruction of Israel they can rot in the mess they have made for themselves.

posted by Imshin 19:01

I’m no lawyer but
I am horrified by Attorney General Meni Mazuz’s decision to close the corruption case against Arik and Gilad Sharon for lack of sufficient evidence.

But it’s not the actual decision itself I’m horrified by.

It seems quite logical to me that if there is no sufficient evidence (and the highly self-publicized video/audio-toting turncoat star witness for the prosecution is absurdly unreliable), this is the right decision. Why is it better to haul all concerned through the courts for years, at considerable cost to the taxpayer (me), ruining political careers, blackening names, maybe even having an adverse affect on such minor subjects as war and peace, only for the accused to inevitably be acquitted at the end?

No, I am horrified at what the decision seems to reveal about the state prosecution. About the press too, but that’s nothing new.

I haven’t read the whole decision, only about ten or eleven pages of the seventy six, but these few pages spell out a story so completely different to what we have been fed by the press, according to information supplied by the prosecution, that I am horrified at the apparently blatant impartiality of both these parties.

One of the targets of the corruption investigation in question was Arik Sharon’s son, Gilad. Gilad Sharon was accused by the prosecution and by the press of receiving very high payment for counseling work he didn’t do, on a Greek island construction project that eventually didn’t materialize.

The recording of a phone conversation was made public in which he is heard clearly saying that all he’s doing (in return for the money) is taking some things from the Internet. The conversation makes it sound like he did absolutely nothing to earn the large amounts of money he received, paid straight into the family estate. It sounds very much like he was a vessel for bribing his father, Arik Sharon.

Mazuz’s decision reveals that this conversation was taken completely out of context. There are apparently police recordings of dozens of telephone conversations showing that Gilad Sharon worked hard and long on the marketing side of the Greek Island project. There is a police recording of a conversation in which Gilad’s former boss in the project, alleged briber, David Appel, talks about how satisfied he is with Gilad's work. There are testimonies given by people in the advertising company they were working with, among others, telling of Gilad’s remarkable marketing skills and about the valuable work they did together.

The conversation in question is from a period when it was becoming clear that the project was losing momentum. There was no need for marketing at that point. The reason Gilad was being paid at that particular point, when he obviously wasn’t doing very much, was because he hadn’t been paid before, when he was doing a lot, and because it had become apparent that he wasn’t going to get any of the bonuses he had been expecting, on account of the problems the project had run into.

Out of dozens of conversations, why was this the only one leaked with regard to this issue?

There’s more. It’s just that this particular discrepancy shocked me. I had no intention of writing about this matter before I read this and understood what Mazuz was inferring the prosecution had done.

I’m not completely naive. I realize that Sharon and his sons are not squeaky clean. Even Mazuz doesn’t say he’s closing the case for lack of blame, only for lack of evidence. The Sharon’s are, most likely, at least as corrupt as the next powerful politician (on both sides of the political fence here) if not more so, far more so. But to prove corruption, it stands to reason that you need evidence, and not just circumstantial evidence. Attorney General Mazuz says there clearly isn’t enough of that in this case in order to prosecute. The police didn’t think so either. That doesn’t seem to have bothered the prosecution.

From where I’m sitting this looks like a disgusting attempt by public servants to intervene in national politics, supported by a left leaning press eager to discredit the prime minister they detest. Mazuz has created a media storm by openly questioning the motives of the prosecutors and specifically, of high handed State Prosecutor Edna Arbel, who has recently been appointed judge in the Supreme Court (oops).

New Attorney General Mazuz wrote a seventy-six page decision (Hebrew rtf link) and signed it simply Meni Mazuz, not Menahem (his full name), not Attorney General, just plain Meni Mazuz (his interesting life story is worth reading). In his decision he kicked ass. He stood up to the state prosecution and told them there’s a new boss in town and a new way of doing things. I like this guy. What like? I love this guy.

posted by Imshin 11:00

I hope Charles Johnson, Michael Totten, and 'zombie' don’t mind my borrowing this photo. I printed it out yesterday and stuck it on the wall in my office this morning, where only I could see it. Today I sat with the man holding the sign, occasionally glancing at him while I worked, trying to understand.

‘SMASH THE JEWISH STATE’, he says. Smash the Jewish State. I’ve been rolling those words on my tongue and looking at the man’s image looking back at me.

He’s wearing a nice green golf shirt with a pocket. My dad likes a pocket in his shirts too, so he can have his sunglasses and other things handy. This person also has things in his pocket, just like my dad.

He’s also wearing a nice, good quality cap. It looks green, but it could be gray. I’d like to think it’s green and that he’s matched the colors. The cap looks like it has a little red five-pointed star pinned on it. Someone on Michael Totten’s comments said that he doesn’t look like a lefty, whatever that means, but doesn’t that star mean he’s a communist? I thought communists wanted to make the world a better place.

It looks like he’s made the sign himself, and attached it to the placard with clips. I wonder if he goes to a lot of demonstrations and changes the signs according to the subject on hand? That’s a very tidy, organized thing to do.

You know, physically, he reminds me of someone else. Someone I was just thinking about this year on Remembrance Day for the fallen of Israel’s wars. Guy called Yossi. He used to be in my class. I can’t remember how he was killed, but I remember not being surprised. He was the type of guy who was always ready to help, who carried the girls’ backpacks when they were tired on school trips. He was an innocent who really believed in things. And he was the type of guy who would think nothing of volunteering for the really dangerous stuff.

The appearance of the man in the photo is probably similar to how Yossi, my old classmate, would have looked had he been fortunate enough to reach fifty. He didn’t make it to twenty-six. But maybe our green-clad friend here could have learnt something from him about kindness, about industriousness, and about trying to make the world a better place. Oh, and about smiling at the camera. Yossi would have smiled at the camera, no doubt about it.

And he would never have been holding a sign saying anything like that.

Everything about the harmless-looking gentleman in the photo, in his green or gray cap, even his serious, committed expression, is in such sharp contrast with the viciously violent, hateful sentiment expressed on his little sign.

Smash the Jewish State. Smash the Jews in it. Smash my nine-year-old daughter. Smash her little collection of Bratz dolls, lovingly collected one by one. Smash our three-month-old kitten. Smash my great grandmother’s Shabbat candlesticks. Smash Ronit’s new baby with her dark skin and bright eyes, suckling milk from her mother’s breast in the shade of the tree. Smash Doctor Assuline, who helped bring her into this world. Smash Luda, who washed the room after mother and daughter had been wheeled away, and Hameed, who built the crib her parents bought for her when they brought her home from the hospital.

Smash the memory of my dead classmate, look-alike of one hate-filled American protester.

What did we do to this tidy, organized, serious man to make him hate us so much that he wants to smash us?

I suppose he will tell you he isn’t an anti-Semite.

Update: Thank you Mark in Mexico for such warm words of support. And thank you Yael in Boulder, for the excerpt of Oriana Fallaci.

posted by Imshin 18:47

Shooshinka
Carnival of the Cats #13 is up at Laurence’s blog that is…erm…full of crap (Dad’s away so I don’t have to apologize for writing that word. Still I feel guilty).

Shoosha isn’t in the Carnival this week. She’s got a post all to herself. She appreciates this greatly, as you can imagine. Well she will, as soon as I can find her to tell her. These days she’s forever emerging from new and interesting hiding places. Then Eldest appears carrying more garments with little holes in them, for me to sew…

Found her! In bed with Youngest.
posted by Imshin 21:15

Staying Alive: The Abu Mazen Version
In a Newsweek interview with Dan Ephron, former Palestinian Prime Minister, Abu Mazen, reveals the real reason he resigned, besides blaming Bush and Sharon for not helping him, or giving him any cause to gain popular support, which we’ve heard before.

Someone was going to kill, he says carefully, but then confesses that he was the target and goes on to offer a pretty thinly veiled hint to who was going to do the killing.

I wouldn't want to mention anyone by name. But I'll give you something to understand: I don't have any relationship with the chairman from the resignation to this day.

When you're in Ramallah, you don't meet with him?
I live in Ramallah and he's 100 meters away. I don't go to him, I don't meet with him, I don't have any relations with him.

I’d say that was quite clear, wouldn’t you?

posted by Imshin 16:31

What can I say? I’m a masochist.
Someone at work is a Spinning instructor. She’s started a special class for us lazy lumps. Twice a week we pedal away for an hour, have a nice shower (it doesn’t matter how high the air conditioning is set, we’re completely soaked at the end of it), and then get to work. The first two lessons were sheer hell, but now I’ve started to enjoy myself.

With all this running and spinning I am now as fit as a fiddle. I need to be fit as a fiddle to handle my baby. She’s a little devil. We’re all covered in scratches most of the time, the result of ferocious battles, and usually, by the time I get to read the newspaper, it’s full of tiny little bite marks. Seeing as the newspaper in question is Yediot Aharonot, this is probably an improvement. On second thoughts, I can’t think of a newspaper that wouldn’t benefit from a little impromptu feline editing.









A belated Happy Birthday to Dad. I didn’t actually forget about it (although I pretended to, for in-joke reasons), but I did forget to post congrats on the blog. He wouldn’t have seen it anyway. He’s far too busy sailing away for a year and a day, lucky him.

posted by Imshin 21:34

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