Epikorsit log: Real life
Thirteen-year-old Eldest volunteered to help prepare food parcels for Tel Aviv’s needy before Rosh Hashanna. She said she had vaguely envisioned the work as involving sitting in the shade of a tree on a nice grassy spot with a few friends, passing along packages of biscuits, or something.

Reality, as always, was a little less idyllic. She found herself in a hot, smelly, dirty street, in an industrial area of South Tel Aviv, opening out seemingly endless amounts of cardboard boxes, and sorting crates of moldy vegetables. She worked very hard. She came home exhausted. I was so proud of her.

posted by Imshin 15:53

Epikorsit log: The perspective of the terrorist
Hadn’t had time to translate this, but I held on to it, because I think other people should get to read it. It’s from Yediot Aharonot 10th September, just a little corner frame at the end of an article in the weekend magazine, about a new book (Hebrew link) discussing the current war with the Palestinians. While the article puts an emphasis on the implications of the targeted killing of Raed Karmi in 2002, this little passage gives us an insight into what is going on in the heads of our enemies:

The Head of the Hamas Prisoners: The Israeli Peace Camp pushed us to continue terrorist attacks.
“Your debate about the future of the settlements and their necessity in the territories just served to strengthen our resolve to continue with the terrorist attacks”, So says Sheikh Hassan Yussuf, head of the Hamas prisoners held in Israel, in a rare interview. Yussuf is regarded the head of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank and head of that organization’s West Bank political bureau. He was convicted of belonging to a terrorist organization.

The things that Yussuf said to the authors of “The Seventh War” (Hebrew link) will undoubtedly inflame many in Israel, but they expose something of the state of mind in Hamas. “The people of the Peace Camp in Israel”, he says, “those who spoke of ending the occupation and retreating, pushed us forward in our decision to continue with the suicide terrorist attacks. Ariel Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan is also a great accomplishment that is a result of our activities. The refusenik phenomenon was the best evidence of the breakdown in Israeli society as a result of the suicide terrorist attacks. We thought that we should further deepen this breakdown and the use of the weapon of suicide became a matter of consensus in the organization”.

Another Hamas leader imprisoned in Israel, Jamal Abu Il-Hijra, who was the head of Hamas in Jenin and was arrested in August 2002 under suspicion of involvement in the suicide terrorist attacks in Meron junction, Matza restaurant in Haifa, and Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem, also explains that the choice of suicide attacks was a combination of vengeful feelings with the wish “to change the perception of Israelis, who thought they could continue with the occupation indefinitely. The political negotiations didn’t bring forth any change. On the other hand, the terrorist attacks caused the Israelis to feel the pain we felt. We wanted them to pressure their government to stop its actions – and as far as we’re concerned the disengagement is proof that we have succeeded in changing the Israeli consciousness. More proof is to be found in statements of Israeli public figures, such as that if writer Batya Gur, who said that she understands the perpetrators of suicide terrorist attacks.”

posted by Imshin 11:24

Epikorsit log: Listen to this, Shoosha - Someone comments on this Blog Full of Crap here that you are beautiful. I think someone needs their eyes examined. (We still love you though, especially since you haven't scratched us for about two weeks).

Eldest: 'Shoosha is beautiful'. Sorry, my mistake.
posted by Imshin 20:10

Epikorsit log: The view from here (forgive the plagiarism, Harry)
I must say I am enjoying following what’s being called Rathergate and its hilarious and informative coverage (not to mention creation) by bloggers.

The presidential elections in the US always seem such fun. They have this ‘The circus has come to town’ sort of quality, with fanfares, nice blue and red banners flapping, and people cheering, even as the mud gets slung.

Of course, I can say this because they aren’t my elections. For all I know, you might think the very same thing about our elections. Somehow I doubt it.

Afterthought: Mind you, the coverage of the US elections here is so clueless, what do I know?

The other day, channel 10 had on a giggly, fluffy blonde, who was apparently standing in for someone or other, telling us about Rathergate, among other things. The giggly, fluffy blonde version of Rathergate she shared with us, in a very pompous those-silly-Americans tone of voice, gave me the impression that Dan Rather himself had dictated it to her.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being fluffy and blonde. Fluffy and blonde is quite nice. But I really do prefer the supposedly serious news (well, some of it...) not to be giggled to me, especially if the giggler sounds so very full of herself when she obviously doesn’t have any inkling what she’s talking about.

Bish pointed out that, because she was a giggly, fluffy blonde, no one really cared what she was saying. (He's not very politically correct, my Bish, just one reason I'm so fond of him).

Important update: Bish says I misquoted him. What he said was even less PC than I thought. Never mind.

posted by Imshin 18:28

Epikorsit log: Two young female Palestinian students of economics who were planning to commit mass murder in Tel Aviv, by blowing themselves up, turned themselves in, after their operator, Hanni Akkad was killed by the Israeli army. According to Ynet (Hebrew link) the girls’ parents forced them to turn themselves in, following visits by Israeli soldiers who warned them of their daughters’ intentions. Apparently the parents weren’t too happy with the idea that their homes would be demolished should their daughters go ahead with their plan.

Maariv (Hebrew link) says that today security forces arrested another young lady, also a would-be suicide murderess.

Yesterday, Israeli soldiers killed nine Palestinian militants. Sadly, an 11 year-old Palestinian girl was killed as well, during a skirmish between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Haaretz says that the IDF shot her, but Maariv (in Hebrew) says that the army said that there was no use of firearms by Israeli soldiers in that particular skirmish and that she must have been shot by Palestinians. The IDF is checking.

posted by Imshin 18:22

Shanna Tova
Wishing you all a very happy and fruitful year.

I got Shoosha to pose for me. She was surprisingly cooperative.


What now?


Oh look! The large servant creature has given me a shiny green thing. Must investigate.


It rolls when nudged. Interesting.



posted by Imshin 22:00

German newspaper Die Welt apparently says Syria has been trying out chemical weapons on civilians in Darfur. Too horrible.

Is Die Welt a serious source of information?

Update: Jonathan says that "_Die Welt_ is one of the top five German newspapers and has an excellent reputation. If it says that Syria used chemical weapons in Darfur, then it's at least provisionally credible."
posted by Imshin 11:15

Clicking through to this 1961 IBM 72 SELECTRIC typewriter, on sale at eBay (hilarious – go read), pointed to by James Taranto, I realized, with a jolt, that these things were still in use in my current place of employment, when I first came to work there in 1989.

I don’t know about the US, but in Israel the public sector always seems to be the last to hear of any new inventions, although things have improved considerably. It took them a while more to discover computers in my workplace, and some people are still not convinced that it would be far better to computerize their card indexes, instead of writing them by hand (!!!).

Well, I will live in the Middle East. I sometimes find it hard to believe that such wonderful scientific research is going on in this country and amazing innovations are being developed, while money is so scarce at my place of work that they can hardly afford pens and paper (and isn’t that a good reason for computerization? A modern-ish version of ‘Let them eat cake’…).

posted by Imshin 10:03

Before I go and make the soup (R.T. is making the chicken soup. I'm making some clear vegetable soup for Bish and I)

Here they are again, the High Holidays, the time of year we look into our souls.

We don’t have to be religious or observant to do this. Actually, we don’t even have to be Jewish, do we? It is an opportunity.

Last year I took this opportunity to approach someone with whom I share a complex, uncomfortable, and unpleasant relationship. I said I was sorry that our relationship was so aggressive; I suggested we made a fresh start; I offered peace, friendship.

It took me a few days to start to doubt the sincerity of his reaction to my words, but his behavior towards me, during the days, weeks, and months that followed, proved to me that he had manipulated me.

It is hard for us to believe that some people do not want peace. When someone doesn’t want peace, we automatically try to work out what we have been doing wrong to hurt them so. It is hard for us to grasp, or accept, that sometimes it has nothing to do with us, or our behavior; that they may have their own agenda and that they may not care who gets hurt, as long as they get what they want.

Many months later, I once again found myself in an opportunity to speak to this person about our ever-deteriorating relationship. This time I was less apologetic. I told him how very offended I was by his behavior. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘It’s not personal.’

posted by Imshin 13:16

I have never had so many interesting, wise, and thought-provoking e-mails in reaction to a post. I am so relieved.

I was not trying to tell anyone off. I was talking about the quality of public discussion in America, as reflected in blogs, now that the pain is not as sharp, now that Americans, who were not directly involved, have finished their mourning and are ripe for moving on.

This may be strange for you to hear, but my local equivalent of 9/11 is not suicide bombings. It’s not even the Park Hotel. We’ve always had terrorism here. I grew up with it. The difference now is the level of the threat, not the essence.

No, for some strange reason, although it is maybe wrong to make such a comparison and you have to remember that I'm talking about deep personal feelings here, and (mainly) about how we deal with loss, my equivalent of 9/11, as that one national occurrence that rocked my being and deeply changed my life, was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

Although there are great differences, I feel there is some, slight similarity between this event and 9/11 that is worth mentioning. Like 9/11 it had a deep effect on the national psyche in Israel. And like 9/11, there were, and continue to be, deep disagreements in Israel about its meaning, and what’s to be done about it. Maybe this is why I felt so uneasy with bloggers’ reactions to 9/11 this year, or rather the lack of them.

I cried for a week when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. I cried on the first anniversary, and on the second, and on the third. Then I didn’t cry any more.

I’d finished mourning. And the commemoration of the day started to seem stale, insincere, even more so after Oslo finally collapsed altogether, in September 2000. Now the annual memorial of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in Israel has become the property of a certain political faction in Israel. It leaves me cold. No, it leaves me angry.

But it’s completely different, because this was something we did to ourselves. It wasn’t the work of a common enemy that we have to decide how to deal with.

When I started blogging in June 2002, 9/11 was still very fresh in the minds of people. It was part of blogging. It wasn’t the details, or the sadness of the loss. There was this spirit that bloggers seemed to have, this strength. On Saturday I found myself wondering if it had really worn down so soon.

I wasn’t trying to tell anyone off for not writing about 9/11, I know a lot of people did, and there were some excellent columns in some of the papers. And there was really nothing wrong with not writing anything at all.

My feeling was that the time was ripe to move on from reliving the day, the details, the pain felt. I didn’t mean moving on into forgetting, or ignoring, or discarding it like clothes we have outgrown. I meant using it, somehow, as a springboard for mature reflection, discussion. It worried me that this didn’t seem to be happening.

The authors of the e-mails I received discussed why they thought this was, each in a particular way, offering me some different perspectives. I’ve been wondering which of them to reproduce here, but I can’t decide. I will just summarize by saying that it seems that reflection is happening, and I shouldn’t be worried.

You’ll excuse me if I do anyway (worry that is).
posted by Imshin 09:35

You’ll say I don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ll say I’m a foreigner and I can’t possibly understand, and how dare I presume, and what business is it of mine anyway?

I know I am a foreigner, I know I should just butt out, but blogging has made me a bit of a big mouth. I get this uncontrollable urge to speak when it would be wiser to shut up. It’s a wonder I still have a job.

So I’ll say what I want to say. What will happen? You won’t read me anymore? You’ll write nasty things about me? I can always just turn off my computer, you know, and not turn it on again for six months. This has happened before, not recently, but if I feel like it, who’s to stop me?

It’s just that I have a question for American bloggers this 12th of September:

Was that the best you could do?

I wanted to know how you were feeling this year, but you just sent me over to last years posts. Many of you didn’t even bother to do that (not even a ‘I’m shutting down for 9/11’). Some of you just continued business as usual, as if nothing had happened.

And if you did write something it was the same thing as you wrote last year - more memories, some prayers, a few flags. It stuck in my throat, like a sandwich made of last week’s bread. Is that it? No fresh revelations, insights? Anybody?

I got a very strong feeling that the anniversary of 9/11 was a bit of an annoyance this year, a nuisance. It crept up while everyone was busy with other things. It got in the way of much fun being had with some authentic historic forgeries, that will or will not make a difference to something or other, for some reason.

Oh no, I could hear you thinking, but not daring to say, Not 9/11 again, just when we’d managed to forget all about it!

There is a word I am thinking about today. The word is DENIAL.

Oh, I know all about denial. What happened to you is pretty heavy. We Israelis, we always knew we were a shitty little country. We’d rather French VIPs would have the good manners to refrain from saying it in public, but we don’t really blame them. We’re bluffing, see? We’re used to being slapped in the face, first on one cheek and then on the other, and then kicked in the gut for dessert.

But you guys, you’re on top of the world. Should you fall, well, you’ve got a long way down.

It’s quite simple really. Think about a guy with cancer. He knows something is wrong, but he can’t deal with it. It’s too big. But the thing is, if he doesn’t get checked, he won’t get diagnosed. If he doesn’t get diagnosed, he won’t get treatment in time. If he doesn’t get treatment in time, and the only treatment is harsh and violent, he will soon die a horrible death.

There is a price to be paid for denial.

posted by Imshin 23:55

A British policeman spied for the Saudis, and has admitted he supplied them with a large amount of information, from police databases, about people and organizations that interested them. The man was born in Yemen and immigrated to Britain as a young man. He did it for the money, apparently.

More encouraging news is that members of England’s football (soccer) team and their manager, visited Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland last Tuesday, while they were in Poland for a World Cup qualifying game against that county's national team. Apparently it was some of the players themselves that asked to visit there.

Thank you to Bish and John Williams, for reading the Guardian and the Independent for me.

posted by Imshin 10:43

An Israeli blogger experiences the Academic Boycott first hand. Quite incredible, considering the subject he was researching.

And from the same blogger, a settler's perspective on the Jewish civil war we are being led to expect come evacuation date.

[By the way, Jeffrey, I am actually Not a Fish, but seeing as its nearly Rosh Hashanna, I'm prepared to compromise and be a Gefilte Fish, till Yom Kippur.]
posted by Imshin 06:37

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