Pan-Arabism 2004
Yoav Biran, Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, is retiring soon. He was interviewed by Yediot Aharonot this weekend and had a few surprising things to say. He pointed out that many in the international community, including Arab countries, expect Israel to do the dirty work with regard to the Iranian nuclear threat.

He also told of his many meetings with Arab leaders over the years, leaders of countries not necessarily openly friendly to Israel. Itamar Eichner elaborates (my translation):

In his meetings with Arab leaders Biran heard interesting things, different and opposite to what the same dignitaries say about Israel in the media. “There are Arab leaders who attack us in the media, but in closed conversations confess that they admire Israel. If you want to be a Zionist, all you have to do is visit an Arab country and hear what its leaders think about us: about the Israeli capability, about the technological development, financial and military, about our standing in the world and especially about our special relationship with the United States. Israel is known in the Arab world as a country that, when faced with a real problem, finds a real solution. Again and again, they bring up the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor”.

Biran reveals that in conversations he held with Arab leaders he heard hair-raising attacks on Arafat: ”The Israeli public expressions of animosity towards Arafat do not come near to the level of animosity and hatred you hear in private from Arab figures. You hear names like liar, swindler, and even expressions of street-profanity and curses. It even embarrassed me as an Israeli. An Arab leader of a country with which Israel does not have relations, told me that if he was in one room with the prime minister of Israel and with Arafat, and he had a pistol with one bullet in it, the Israeli prime minister would have nothing to be worried about…”

Update: More and a link here.
posted by Imshin 19:58

Affaire du lycee Montaigne

anti-Semitism in France : the courts say YES
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 9:07 AM

Dear friends,
You may have heard this year of the ugly anti-Semitic incident in which an 11 years old Jewish boy was molested by two older Arab boys in his school, the Lycee Montaigne, located in the center of Paris. This lasted for about 6 months before the affair was understood by the parents who then complained to the principal of the school. The two Arab boys beat the Jewish boy and bullied him, shouting "dirty Jew" at him and other anti-Semitic jeers. They stole from him, and there was no reaction neither from other pupils who saw what was happening, nor from any teacher.

After the complaint of the parents, the principal called for a disciplinary council, one of the bullies recognized the anti-Semitic insults, the other, who did the actual beatings, did not. The medical evidence which the parents brought to the school was sufficient and the two Arab boys were expelled. They are sons of diplomats working in an Arabic embassy in Paris.

Then, started an outcry by some of the teachers who considered this much too harsh a sanction. They called an organization fighting against racism, the League for Human Rights (Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, LDH), made a big issue of the matter in newspapers. The newspapers and the media in general spoke a lot about the "injustice" done to the expelled boys, while, for a long period, they had ignored the actual anti-Semitic incidents, as they are prone to do when the culprits are Arabs, and when they mentioned them, they called these either "usual school turbulence" or "conflict between communities".

The parents of the expelled boys then, with the support of the group of teachers and the LDH, complained and sued the school board and the ministry of education for an unjust measure. Such a complaint is treated by an administrative tribunal in France.

The administrative tribunal convened, and heard the lawyers for the parents and the teachers supporting them. They never heard the molested child, nor his parents, nor his lawyer. Based on the complaint it decided that the two expelled boys should return to the school, after the end of the present school year, and condemned the ministry of education to pay them damages of $1200 to each boy.

An administrative tribunal in France is entitled to judge procedures only, not to judge the actual matter. In this case it judged on the actual matter.

The ministry of education and the parents opposed this decision in an appeal court. Imagine what will happen to the Jewish boy if he sees his tormentors back in school. The execution of this judgment means in fact expelling the victim from the school. The judgment will be rendered in August, when all France is on vacation, and the lawyer of the parents is very pessimistic, based on many recent cases in France where complaints about anti-Semitism were minimized and usually dismissed by the French courts. In this case, the administrative court judged that, based on the accused boys declarations, the anti-Semitic acts, even though recognized by the authors, were not numerous enough to justify expelling the authors form school. So, for this French court, a certain level of anti-Semitism, even though illegal (it is against the law in France to proffer anti-Semitic or racist remarks in public), is acceptable.

The parents of the molested Jewish boy have asked me to publicize this as widely as possible in the media, in America and elsewhere, because it is only through publicity outside of France that we have a chance of avoiding the return of the bullies in this school. If the judgment of the administrative court is maintained it is a clear signal to all anti-Semitic children in all French schools that they have nothing to fear for attacking Jewish children in schools or in the streets. The lesson has been quickly learned: since the judgment, at least 5 Jewish youths have been attacked with knifes in France. In the latest incident children, coming out of a Jewish school in Paris, were attacked by an Arab young man throwing bottles onto them from his window, in front of the police. He was brought to the police precinct, and the mother of one boy who protected the children in her car came to lodge a complaint. The police officer receiving the complaint let the man go free, saying that he had been called "dirty Arab" by the children (primary school). Nobody was witness of any insult; the insult was most improbable as the man was at his window on the fourth floor of his building when he started throwing bottles on the kids. The police officer had learned the lesson. She preferred to let the man go rather than start a legal procedure which she knew the court would dismiss, thus losing her time.

If the present judgment is upheld, no street nor school will be safe for Jewish children in France next year.

I beg you to disseminate this information as widely as possible. If journalists want to know more, I'll put them in contact with the parents of the molested boy. This has to be published in America, French representatives have to be confronted by this, only such pressure can change the present tragic course of events.
Thank you in advance
Norbert Lipszyc

posted by Imshin 19:19

Read this excellent article by Mark Steyn, as posted by DFME, about Europe with regard to the welfare supplied by the USA.

I was astounded when, after the targeted killing of Sheikh Yassin in Gaza, someone wrote to me that Israel had no right to do such a thing, because it endangered American troops in Iraq. I think that was more or less the wording, I can’t check because I deleted the e-mail long ago.

Now I can think of plenty of reasons for not killing Sheikh Yassin, although I wholeheartedly support that action and others like it, this is war and he was one of the main enemies, but I really fail to see the connection to American soldiers stationed in Iraq.

Some Americans get very annoyed with Israel when it doesn’t function solely with the USA’s interests in mind, as they see them, before its own, even if this endangers Israel’s very existence. They think that, if such a dilemma should arise, Israel should always choose to act against its own interest, because the USA is footing the bill.

That is a hard one to argue, moreover I don’t like to argue it, because I don’t want to be seen as ungrateful, when I’m not.

I believe Israel and all its citizens are very aware, on a very daily basis, of how much it owes the USA. The need to balance our security needs with USA interests is something that I am sure our leaders take very seriously. This claim by some Americans is therefore certainly worthy of our attention, even though on occasion it may seem to us a bit loopy.

I am continually amazed therefore, that these very same Americans seem to make no such accusations where Europe is concerned. In fact they utterly support Europe when it repeatedly damages the interests of the USA, that most generous of benefactors.

But how can this be? Defending Europe costs them a far greater percentage of their tax money than the defense of Israel. But these Americans seem to have no problem with the Europeans, who, unlike Israel and the Israelis, are quite convinced that they live their lives of quiet affluence and peace because they are better people, definitely far better than the Americans, and that their happy, relatively carefree existence has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that they are enjoying the military protection of the USA, paid for by the very American taxpayers they so despise.

Could it be that these particular Americans actually buy into the Europeans’ pompous and ridiculous belief of their inherent superiority over the Americans? Could it be that they too have forgotten that twice during the last century Europe plunged itself, and the whole world with it, into a nightmare of death and destruction, which only came to an end when the USA intervened?

Naaaah, these are educated people, they couldn’t be that idiotic.

posted by Imshin 15:45

I first read about this John the Baptist Cave thing in Yediot Aharonot. I said to myself, ‘Well, if it’s in Yediot Aharonot it must be a hoax’. Another reason it seems dubious to me, even though I know little about archeology and even less about John the Baptist, is that I would imagine that if there was anything in it, the Israeli archeologists would have elbowed their way in, and muscled the foreign archeologists out long ago. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? But I could be wrong.

Afterthought: On the other hand, it could be the policy of Israel, and its Jewish archeologists, to butt out of Christian archeological digs so as to avoid religious tension.
posted by Imshin 18:34

Hmmm (2)
Now I wonder why Our Sis sent me this...

Rules of English

1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat).
6. Always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also, too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments. No comma splices, run-ons are bad too.
11. Contractions aren't helpful and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's
highly superfluous.
14. One should never generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words
however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is probably not the best way to propose earth
shattering ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a million times worse than understatement.
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Actually, I know exactly why Our Sis sent me this :-p

Oh well, at least I have a good excuse - I'm a bloody foreigner.

Update: John writes

On the subject of ending sentences with prepositions, people often recount a story involving Winston Churchill. When an editor dared to change a sentence of Churchill's that appeared to end inappropriately with a preposition, Churchill responded by writing to the editor, "This is the kind of impertinence up with which I shall not put." His purpose, of course, was to illustrate the awkwardness that can result from rigid adherence to the notion that prepositions at the end of sentences are always incorrect.

posted by Imshin 09:45

Rear guard. Childbirth at fourteen.

This is what blogs are for, so people can read things like this.

Via Truegrit.

posted by Imshin 21:42

Done it!
At long last we’ve done the shopping for the new school year. Every year I get the school books ready at the beginning of July, but somehow this year I didn’t get round to it, and suddenly it was August.

It’s not really so bad. I fax the list to the book store and the next day they call to tell me it’s ready. This morning I was there at seven o’clock sharp, so as not to have to queue. Then we went to Office Depot to get supplies.

We used to go to Dyonon, the university store, at the end of August, which was always awful. I get very uptight in small crowded places and Dyonon is certainly that at this time of year. Office Depot on Yigal Alon Road was very pleasant. There is a multi-story car park there, very civilized, and the choice of exercise books was much to my daughters’ approval. Youngest got everything with something called Pucca, whatever that is.

posted by Imshin 15:36

I am intrigued, as I believe a lot of Israelis are, by Tali Fahima, a young Israeli woman who was arrested last week on suspicion of aiding Palestinian terrorists. She had apparently been getting a bit too pally with Jenin’s most wanted Palestinian, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades commander Zakariya Zubeidi, for the Shabak’s (General Security Service) liking.

She seems to have taken the move from the periphery to the center (from Kiryat Gat to Tel Aviv), and the consequential value and belief switch it can often instigate, way too far. But I really don’t want to get into dime psychology here, or discuss the ‘It must be love, love, love’ angle. This is a hard one to avoid because, based on Fahima’s severe, dry image, hair pulled back, schoolmarm-ish specs, sharp business-like dress code, it is amusing to see the attraction to a man with a definitely thuggish charm. You get the strong impression that Fahima would definitely steer well clear of any man who looked like Zubeidi if he were a Jew, if he were a native of her home Kiryat Gat, a southern-ish development town (she cites his hard-luck story as what differentiates him from the gangster she originally took him for, but I have yet to meet the gangster who doesn’t have a heartbreaking hard-luck story, all true mind you, to help him gain entry into the beds of well-meaning, gullible young ladies).

I am also a bit perplexed by her paradoxical complaint that the unfriendly reaction she has received from the Israeli ‘street’ is proof of the lack of freedom of speech in Israel. I ask myself why she thinks she is the only one who deserves freedom of speech. What about the freedom of speech of people who wish to tell her that they think she is a traitor? (Although they really should have the sense to leave her mother alone. Sadly a lot of people have little or no sense).

Friends point out, on her behalf, that if she had grown up among lefties she would have a strong emotional support system protecting her. This is probably true, but I really do fail to see the relevance.

You see the thing that differentiates Tali Fahima from all the other lefties, going out on a limb for their views, is her background. She comes from a very poor family, even by Kiryat Gat standards. Her mother brought her and her two sisters up on her own, scraping a living as a cleaner, but mainly unemployed. She says she grew up in a very right wing environment and friends from home say she took great pride in her army service. Then two years ago a change came about her.

In Yediot Aharonot this weekend, one of her former bosses explained that they had no choice but to fire her because she was surfing to hostile Palestinian websites from the office computer, and posting comments on them, and refused to cease when asked to (and very rudely, if the account is accurate). Since then she hasn’t been able to get a job. This is unfortunate, she looks like an intelligent girl, if a bit of nutcase, but under the circumstances, I can understand potential bosses seeing her as a liability.

Update: Wise words on this subject, as usual, by Shai, here too.

posted by Imshin 10:17

A rare treat!
I’m all out of chocolate, so here’s a photo of me ascending a rather steep path in Rosh Pina.

Photo taken by Youngest.

posted by Imshin 00:04

Pride and Prejudice (Updated)
Today, on an Israeli satellite channel, I saw ‘Fictitious Marriage’, an Israeli film that was made in the eighties. We’re a racist society, here in Israel, that’s why we regularly get to see Israeli-made movies on TV telling the story of Palestinian suffering, actually mainly on the state funded channels. The film took me back to a period in which it was clear to me, at least, that we really were in the wrong; when the Palestinians were an integral part of our daily lives and we mistreated them.

This situation, as described in this film, and the bad feelings of many Jewish Israelis, including myself, brought us out into the streets, en masse, demanding a change. The public pressure, coupled with the second Intifada (the first Intifada, in my view, was between 1936 and 1939, against the British, while the current conflict is no intifada, it’s a war) resulted in the Oslo Accords, and the conceding of power over a sizable portion of the territories, and a large part of the Palestinian population in the territories, to self-rule under Arafat, on the way to independence and statehood (racist society, remember?).

Watching the film I could well remember the sentiment and identify with the message. I also could understand how completely different the situation of the Palestinians is today. They had a wonderful opportunity to build themselves a better life and they squandered it. What a terrible waste. And they took most of our goodwill and threw it back in our faces, ‘You suckers’.

Today they are no longer a part of our lives like they were before. Murderous terrorism, the likes of which we had never seen, never imagined possible, the horrible, distorted child of those very Oslo Accords that were meant to solve the problem, forced us to shut many of the Palestinians out. Other people are doing the work that once was theirs. They can no longer get into their Peugeot 404’s (the last car made to last for ever) and drive from Han Younis to Rishon Letzion. The sons of the real live versions of the laborers from Gaza in ‘Fictitious Marriage’, have probably never seen the new skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, besides on TV, and they certainly weren’t the ones to build them.

Even the affluence the Palestinians enjoyed during the Oslo years, when Israelis flocked to the West Bank to buy everything from furniture to dental treatments, is long gone and forgotten. It disappeared overnight, when they decided to go back on their promise to give up the road of violence, and attacked Israel in the autumn of 2000, hoping to extort a more favorable deal that way.

But they have something their parents never had, these children of Oslo and the Terror War. They are no longer invisible. They may be seen as the enemy, but that in itself is a sign of some respect, is it not? Love is best, of course, admiration - even better. But where that is lacking, for obvious reasons, hatred is far better than derision, or worse, indifference.

And thinking about this, I can understand why Palestinians should prefer the Israeli Right to the Israeli Left, whatever they may say to the cameras or to the idiotic, pasty-faced Europeans in Birkenstock sandals who frequent Jenin and Ramallah. Because the Israeli Right sees them as adversaries, while the Israeli Left sees them as miskenim (I’m not sure how to translate that, maybe ‘unfortunate wretches’).

The Israeli Left is motivated by pity and guilt, and there is nothing more degrading than being pitied. I’d rather be hated and feared any day, than be pitied.

Update: For 'misken' - one suggestion is 'pitiful wretch'.

And a reader comments: "more and more I see articles exclaiming "Why can't the Israelis see that the occupation is destroying their country and just end it!" - completely oblivious to the fact that millions of Israelis (and Jews in the Diaspora) DID reach this conclusion at the end of the 1980's, the result being Oslo, and the elections of Rabin and Barak with mandates to seek peace through an end to occupation.

Today it is as if Oslo never happened, Camp David never happened, Taba never happened.

I have gotten to the point where I don't even read articles that might be critical of Israel unless I can see that they at least mention Camp David in 2000."

And maybe this is a good time to say that the new policy is NOT to give reader's names. I always worry about this, so I've decided to just not put people's names and finished, unless they specify that I can.

Update update: Yael has the links.

posted by Imshin 22:39

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