The Adventures of Tommy the Dinosaur or Not European, Not Eastern - Israeli, An Original and Unique Entity.
The intense tensions between different segments of Israeli society are copious. Rich and poor; Askenazi and Mizrahi; Jews and Arabs; religious and secular; right and left; center and periphery. A lot of people are afraid that all these problems are pulling us apart; that they are just too much for any one society to handle. They are so worried about all these problems that they can't see all the wonderful things that are happening here.

Tommy Lapid is one of a dying breed in Israel, with his admiration for European culture and mannerisms. Europhiles, some open like Tommy Lapid, others who think it but don't talk about it for fear of being seen as discriminative, have been temporarily strengthened by the large influx of Russian immigrants, some of whom are derisive of the Middle Eastern winds that blow here. But these winds continue to blow, regardless. Israeli popular culture is more Eastern than ever before.

Young Israelis are faced with the dilemma of the "bad" Europe that brought about the systematic extermination of the Jews during WWII and the "good" Europe with its philosophy, music, art and literature. But unlike Lapid's generation, youngsters today have multiple influences. Europe, with its perceived contempt for Israel, is no longer a default choice.

You may say I'm overly optimistic and that I am ignoring some unpleasant realities, but I truly believe that we are witnessing something exciting happening here, a slow but sure fusion of our rich cultural diversity. Unlike in the early years, Europe is no longer the main cultural axis around which everything revolves. Bish and myself are just one example of the many couples I know from different cultural backgrounds. I believe that, in a few generations, the question of Sephardi and Ashkenazi will be marginal. Most Israelis will be happy, healthy mongrels, like my girls. The result will be a whole new culture. No one can really prophesy what it will be like. It doesn't really matter, either, for it in itself will not be static, but a constantly transforming and developing entity, as is the nature of human society.

Which direction is this development taking right now?

Well, for one thing there is currently a lot of popular interest in Jewish roots and heritage. This is not necessarily a religious thing. Part of coming to terms with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin has been a growing secular movement of getting better acquainted with our Jewish traditional wisdom. Many organizations have sprung up that teach Judaism to secular adults without attempting to make them religious.

Another newish trend takes advantage of the fact that people are feeling more comfortable than ever before with their ethnic differences, within the framework of Israeli society, and not necessarily out of a place of protest (although some would want to exploit it to further such protest). The Yiddish theater is flourishing, and theatrical productions in Moroccan are very popular. And these are just two little examples.

I'm not sure where this is leading, but reconciliation with our past is surely the first step of moving forward.

Israeli pop music has become of late an interesting mixture of east and west. I find the current fad for releasing Mizrahi versions for old Israeli favorites particularly intriguing.

The widespread fascination in Israel for Eastern philosophies, and the firsthand experience of India and Thailand, by hundreds of thousands of young Israelis is sure to have an affect, too.

And then, of course, there's the American culture absorbed into our psyche through TV and music.

I believe we are right in the middle of a process of building our own unique identity. Unlike in the early years, this time it is not being pushed in any particular direction by an official ideology. It's just happening. I admit it's getting quite a lot of rather aggressive help from the electronic media. They're always eager to cash in on anything that seems popular. This will probably serve to slow down the process. People rapidly get fed up of what TV rams down their throat.

I think a lot of people of all kinds feel very threatened by this spontaneous change that is coming about (I wanted to call it a cultural revolution, but that term is rather loaded), without really being aware of what it is they are reacting too, so strongly. They're still stuck in old concepts.

People who complain incessantly about deprivation of the Mizrahim, for instance, can't stop Mizrahi youngsters from leaving the development towns that sadly can offer them little cultural or economic advancement and coming to Tel Aviv to change their destinies. A lot of the people I work with came to the Tel Aviv area from Tiberias, Sderot, Afula, Kiryat Shmona, to name but a few. They haven't waited for affirmative action. They have got on with their lives and many hold managerial posts. Their children are already growing up into a different reality than their parents experienced as children. In Mitzpe Ramon, I have met people who have returned to live in their hometown, strengthened and enriched from a few years away from it.

People, who continue to be stuck with their feelings of deprivation, cultural superiority or disappointment with the changing face of Israel, will forever feel uncomfortable in this whole new entity that is emerging. What can I say? That's their problem. You can't drink the empty half of the cup. You can dwell on it, be angry about it and let it pull you down into endless misery. But you can't drink it. It's your choice. Don't blame me for it.

Excuse me if I choose to enjoy the full half of the cup to the utmost.

I'm not sure why you liked the Ari Shavit article so much, Diane. I found it rather slanted. Tomy Lapid is a big threat to all the secular parties right now. Polls show he's going to do extremely well, and it's open season on him from all quarters, right, left and center (Maybe not center, because he's perceived, I think, as the center). All and sundry are doing their utmost to de-legitimize him and portray him as a racist. The gloves are off. It's quite easy because he is completely un-PC, king of the provocative one-liner, which is most of his charm for potential voters. He comes over as completely on the level, even if what he has to say is hard to stomach, and up till now appears to have kept his promises to his voters, a rare phenomenon indeed in Israeli politics.

The "how many Mizrahim have you got?” line, is a cheap shot. Personally, I'm fed up to the back teeth of it. I'm fed up of token women and token Mizrahim and token gays and token Arabs. Meretz seems quite obsessive about making sure every last minority is represented. Affirmative action gone haywire. Has everyone forgotten that people would appreciate representatives with actual abilities? The women who got into the Likud list are frankly shameful. What's the point of having women to represent me if they have no proven qualifications (besides knowing who to pay off)? No, it’s worse than that. Having unsuitable women in Knesset could even have long term adverse affects, in maybe showing that sexists and religious nuts are right, and that women really are unsuitable as national leaders.

I don’t like the European thing that comes over in the article one bit, but I’m also fed up of hearing, morning, noon and night, how downtrodden and deprived the Mizrahim were and are, when I’m completely surrounded, in my private life (What am I talking about? Since when do I have a public life?), by people who prove the complete opposite.

I found the Ari Shavit article particularly misleading for the foreign reader, who reads it out of the context of the rest of the input the Israeli reader is getting from the media. The Israeli reader knows Lapid extremely well, as the article suggests, from his days as a TV star on a hot current affairs program. A lot of other details could also be misleading for those unacquainted with the nuances. For instance, to the uninitiated his wife "Shula" comes over as a little home-keeper, quite in keeping with the right-wing bigot impression the article is pushing. It is not necessary to tell the Israeli reader, however, that his wife, Shulamit Lapid, is in fact one of Israel's foremost novelists. His son is also very popular as a newspaper columnist and TV interviewer, whose recent divorce from his also famous wife was widely speculated about and he himself wrote about it in his column. In fact, they are probably one of the most high profile families in the country.

All this is superfluous for the Israeli reader, so Shavit tries to scrape up some little known facts (everyone knows Lapid's a holocaust survivor) to try to keep the reader's interest and maybe give us some new angles to explain his personality. In Israel we call it “psychologia bigrush”. Would that be translated as “dime psychology”, I wonder?

Let us not forget that everyone has a vested interest, even Ari Shavit. Our not necessarily knowing what it is, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Reading Haaretz, I often think the writers themselves are not aware of how strongly their personal views come across, but maybe that’s just me being naive now.

Some party
This Brit went to an Astanga yoga Christmas party and was not amused. As a graduate of the beginner's course and one advanced course in Sivananda yoga at their Tel Aviv branch , I sympathize. I appreciated the elated feeling when finishing a yoga session, and the newly found bodily suppleness, but I fled when they started teaching us about chakras. Even I have my limits.

I actually saw my yellow-clad former teacher ride past me on his bicycle, a month or two ago, looking skinnier than ever.

An eventful weekend, mainly in Gaza. IDF divided the Gaza Strip into three parts Saturday morning, with roadblocks. This has been done before, and today came following the murder of Rabbi Arameh there, yesterday. A terrorist that infiltrated Morag, a South Gaza settlement was killed, before he could do too much mischief. He managed to injure a soldier, though. R.T., isn’t that near where you did reserve duty in May? A 12 year-old Palestinian girl was killed during a gunfight in Rafiah. Palestinians had been throwing grenades in Rafiah, as well. Palestinians attempted to assassinate a German United Nations official traveling in a diplomatic car near Jenin (Very bright these Palestinians). And the US deported some Palestinians to Gaza, because no one else would have them (Thanks for nothing). And so on and so forth. Nothing out of the ordinary, I know. I usually can’t be bothered to update about these things, but I’ve finished folding the laundry and the dishes are washed, the girls are showered and in bed, schoolbags ready for tomorrow. All this leisure. Lucky me.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Haaretz: “Syria told the United States on Saturday it had no right to attack Iraq and warned that U.S. support for Israel was fuelling popular anger in the region”. You see it’s Israel that “is the most dangerous core of terrorism in the region and the world”. I’m glad we’ve got that straight.

I can’t read this Proche-Orient Info article, because it’s in French, but Nelson informs me it supplies the information that a cable-TV operator showed a chapter of the Egyptian anti-Semitic series called Rider without a Horse in France last Sunday. I say supply and demand. Lots of French Muslims want to see it. Who are we to deny them their fun?

Mary has directed me to Howard Fienberg’s post about buses segregated by sex in Jerusalem. Last week I heard my very feminist neighbors in the next office talking about this heatedly, but I didn’t really listen. The ultra-religious have been pressing hard for this for a long time. I understand it’s only on bus lines that serve them in their neighborhoods. One of the reasons I dislike Jerusalem, having spent my two years of army service there, is the multitude of different cultures all mixed up together, and the tension between these different groups. Of course, coming from elsewhere, this makes the city seem all the more exotic and interesting, but I’d rather not live there, thank you very much. Eldest has a friend whose parents, both educated media people, fled Jerusalem a few years ago, because they couldn’t stand the rapidly growing ultra-religious flavor of the city any longer.

The special way the ultra-religious regard the differences between the sexes (aren’t I soooo politically correct?) is just the tip of the iceberg. There are all sorts of different sects and streams and degrees of intensities of the ultra-religious, but many of them live in horrifying ignorance. There is an ongoing battle to force them to teach the boys math and English at school. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

Dov Elboim, an Israeli writer and TV presenter, was brought up as an ultra-religious Jew. He comes from a family of important rabbis. A few years ago, he wrote a novel describing life in an ultra-religious yeshiva from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old boy. Very disturbing. I remember a passage in the book about the rumor going round the yeshiva that there were actually millions of secular Jews in Israel. If I remember correctly, the hero thought this a preposterous idea.

Of course, the more ignorant they keep them, the more difficult it is for them to leave, should they find the immense courage necessary to do so. The boys have absolutely no skills whereby to fend for themselves in the outside world. The girls are better equipped. They get a better education because they have to work to support their double-digit families, so their husbands can get on with the serious stuff of studying Torah.

I could probably write for weeks about the Haredim (ultra-religious), but I really don’t want to.

Susan sent me this NYT article about burning crosses. You Americans are so civilized in the face of racism, busy busy debating the legalities of this or that symbol. A white-clad Islamist from Gaza brandishing a Koran reminded Susan of the Klu Klux Clan.

We’ve had a serious storm in Israel for the last couple of days. If you’ve ever been to Israel in the winter you will know that a bit of rain causes everything to come to a standstill here, especially the traffic. It’s the shock at encountering this increasingly rare phenomenon, of course. They’re saying that this storm is a biggie. The winds have been unbelievable. We had to tie our plants to the balcony rail so they wouldn’t fly off and do any damage. The storm is top of the news. Can you imagine? This is a rare occurrence indeed. Five people were killed in Jordan, as a result of the storm, and twenty-five were injured, according to this Hebrew link.

We went to my dad’s for Erev Shabbat (Friday night) meal. He lives by the sea. The roar of the sea and the wind was so loud we could hardly hear each other speak. Later in the night, at home, a tree fell across the road from us. First we heard a big bang and a bright light. We thought it was lightening hitting the building across the road, but the lights were still on. Then there was another big bang with sparks of light. The tree had fallen on the electricity line. We rang the municipality and when we woke up this morning the tree was gone. Something must be working properly in this town, after all.

When we were at my dad’s the roar of the wind and the sea suddenly reminded my eldest daughter that once we were in a sand storm in Sinai. I’d completely forgotten about it. It seems to have left a strong impression on eldest, though. Before the Terror War, we used to drive down to the eastern coast of Sinai every August for a few days’ holiday. We used to scout the coast around Nuweiba until we found a nice beach with basic straw huts (just four straw walls and simple Bedouin rugs for a floor) that looked nice. We used to hire the hut nearest to the sea, preferably right on the water line. Meals were at the coffee shop that was always part of these little hut villages. We were careful to drink bottled water. People used to warn us about the food, but we were usually fine. Sometimes we stayed with Bedouins and sometimes with Egyptians. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but our idea of heaven. Cheap too. The girls had an opportunity to experience a life without modern amenities and swiftly became little nature girls, running around freely with wild hair and happy sparkles in their eyes.

One time, the girls were sleeping outside the hut. In August, it could get very hot sleeping inside, even with the nice sea breeze you get on the coast, and the natural air-conditioning of a straw hut. Sometimes the evenings could be very windy and even cold, though. Well, that night the wind gradually built up, until we found ourselves in a full-blown storm. This was unusual for August. You usually got sandstorms in the spring. I’d never been in a storm before, although I’d been going to the Sinai since childhood. We managed to get the girls, who were covered in sand, into the hut and reorganized the sleeping arrangements. The straw walls didn’t do much to keep the wind and the sand out. Bish ventured out into the storm and hung up Bedouin rugs on the outside of the walls, in an attempt to keep the wind out. We huddled together, wondering if the hut would last the night. Much to our amazement, it did. So did the sunshade Bish had erected outside the hut. But we didn’t get much sleep that night.

Back to the current storm, this morning Bish took the girls to the old Tel Aviv port to see the waves breaking on the bridge. While they were gone I made them a nice steamy vegetable soup for lunch.

The storm seems to have died down for now.

Shabbat Shalom.

A Rabbi was shot dead in front of his wife and six children, this morning, driving on the road in southern Gaza Strip.

Who let the truth slip in?
The doorman must have been sleeping on the job at the Guardian . Here is a realistic description of the Palestinians/Israel situation. It explains what a mess Arafat made of things, with the support of his people.

I am a bit confused about the final passage, though. The writer, Emanuele Ottolenghi, a research fellow in Israel Studies at the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in Oxford University, says that after the elections in Israel, Israel will move to unilaterally withdraw. I don’t see it happening at all. It’s not that simple. Evacuation of tens of thousands of Jews under fire is not realistic, for one thing; and the results of leaving the Palestinians to their own devices, as Ottolenghi puts it, without a real peace treaty that they mean to keep, could be rather horrific, for another, especially considering that the evacuation will have whetted their appetites and strengthened their conviction.

Still it’s nice to see some sense in the Guardian. A bit too complex for these guys to grasp, though (via Tal).

More election fun (boring it’s not)
Mitzna says he will form a coalition with Arab parties that recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (in the unlikely case that he wins and gets to form a coalition at all) (Hebrew link). Based on the actions and utterances of most current Arab members of Knesset and other Israeli Arab leaders, I'm wondering exactly which Arab parties he has in mind. Maybe Azmi Bishara’s “Balad”? I hope it keeps OK for him. Balad list stands a chance of being disqualified “because its goals contradict the Jewish-democratic nature of the state of Israel and because it supports organizations fighting against Israel.” according to Attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein. The other lists aren’t much better.

According to this poll (Hebrew), a third of voters say their vote will be effected by recent corruption (Turns out that there’s been quite a bit of it in Labor, too, surprise, surprise, but Likud has still managed to excel in this respect) -- 18% of voters say they'll vote for another party, 12% says they won't vote at all. Hmmm, worrying. I suppose I won't have any choice but to vote Likud, and hope they clean up their act, or all the nasties go to prison (fat chance).

Shinui really is a contrary party. I may agree with a lot of what they say, but definitely not the way they say it, or the way they manage to rub everyone up the wrong way.

What will happen, I wonder, if the elections fall in the middle of the Iraq war, which looks increasingly likely? If they don't postpone them, I wonder how voting rates will be effected. Actually I don't see how they can not postpone. If this war is anything like last time, Tel Aviv will be empty. Who's going to come back to town from, say, Eilat, just to vote? This probably means the left stands to lose out. The left's voters are more affluent, and more likely to be able to afford alternative living arrangements.

Now don’t start shouting
Your old pal Jane Fonda is here. She’s also taking the time to visit Israeli victims of Palestinian violence as well as the other side. I know a lot of you don’t like her, but I do appreciate the effort to see both sides’ suffering.

Uh!
Haaretz: “Hand found in park

City inspectors inspecting a public park in Rishon Lezion yesterday found a human hand in an advance state of decomposition that had drawn the attention of a pack of street cats. The inspectors called the police, which sent the hand to the forensics department. Most likely, said police sources, the hand was lost during a terrorist explosion at the nearby promenade in May and probably belonged to the terrorist, since all the body parts of the two Israeli casualties in the attack were buried and none of the dozens wounded lost a hand".

Oh, oh, oh. Ehud Yaari on Mitzna
VERY interesting. How did I miss this?
Thanks to Haggai for pointing it out.

Creepy
An English 39 year-old artist and writer, Margaret Davies, died of starvation and cold in an uninhabited wilderness in North West England. This is a very strange story. She sounds a very unusual person, too. I suppose it would be inappropriate to call her strange, under the circumstances. Maybe eccentric would be better. The article mentions she spent the summer in Israel, working for the UN, to make some money, before continuing to Nepal.

Isn't it strange? She and I are about the same age, but seem to have nothing in common. I have always lived a very structured life, completely of my own choice, grateful and appreciative of the security and warmth of family life and a steady job. She has gone looking for hardship, danger and solitude.

I suppose I am not a typical Israeli in my decided lack of wanderlust, but then, Bish is the same. On the other hand, my parents have traveled enough for all of us.

So if I regard someone like Margaret Davies as an eccentric it’s probably because most 39 year-olds are like me and not like her. Even if they were more like her when they were younger, traveling around and living on the edge, most have settled down by now. But just because most people live some version of my life, doesn't mean it is better than hers. You may say: Well, you're alive and she isn't. (Tfu tfu tfu! Bite your tongue!) I've got no guarantees that I won't get run over by a bus, on the way to work, tomorrow morning, have I?

I loved The Head Heeb's post about the working peace among Israeli and Palestinian criminals. Jonathan's mention of the late Jonny Attias amused me. Years ago, when I first came to work for my current employer, one of my first bosses was a cousin of the late Jonny Attias. Luckily for me, La Cousina, who, unlike her relative, was a law-abiding citizen, took a shine to little old Fresh Meat here (as I was then) and took me under her wing, thus protecting me from being devoured by the workplace pack. I rather suspect that otherwise she would have been first in for the kill. Years later, she reaped the benefit of this, when having ventured out into the far greater jungle of the world outside government salaries and job permanence, Bish threw a few tasty morsels of prey her way.

The very fruitful and widespread cooperation between Jewish and Arab criminals in Israel is truly a rare example of successful coexistence in Israeli society. It can be demonstrated nicely with the story of the Turk family of Yaffo. I think they are distant cousins of Rifat "Jimmy" Turk, once a famous Israeli soccer player, now a member of the Tel Aviv city council. (I must point out that these are Israeli Arabs and not Palestinians from the territories). At one point, the illegitimate son of one of the brothers was wanted by the police for his complicity in a big burglary of safe deposit boxes in a bank in Holon. Under his mug shot, the police poster gave his name as "Amir Cohen, son of Muhammad". He was never found, by the way, because, according to one of his uncles, his other uncles murdered him, as a “reward” for cooperating with the police.

Jonathan talks of Israeli (Jewish) car thieves supplying stolen cars to Palestinian car dealers and what's known here as car slaughterhouses, in the territories. Contrary to Jonathan’s claim, this successful business cooperation has been badly hampered by the Terror War (also known as the Intifada), much to the relief of car owners and insurance companies. In fact, I understand that car thefts have dropped so drastically, that the police have begun liquidating their special unit for investigating these car thefts, because it is no longer needed. Unfortunately, we have seen that this cooperation between Jewish and Arab criminals extends to a lively trade in weapons, as well, which Israelis (mainly Arab, but Jewish too) supply to the Palestinians in large amounts.

The real mistake
Says Ami Isseroff on MidEastWeb’s new blog: “It is one thing to view the Oslo accords from the perspective of those who believe in peace and equality for two nations, and to say, "this way did not work." It is quite different to begin with the idea that Palestinians or Jews do not deserve self determination, work very hard to make the Oslo agreements fail, and then when they do fail, say "You see, I told you so!"”

How do I feel about that? Well, I partially agree with it. Looking around, most people I know who say the Oslo Accords were a dangerous mistake, never believed in them from the start. People like me, who supported them but have been forced to admit that they have failed dismally, usually think we were right to have tried.

However, I believe it wasn’t the disbelievers on either side who finally derailed the peace train. It was Arafat, by refusing to accept the Camp David offers and not only failing to crush the terror war, but, according to credible sources, actually instigating it.

I think that to suggest that those who always believed that Oslo was a terrible mistake do not “believe in peace and equality for two nations” is an unfair generalization. Many of those Jews who opposed Oslo (I can’t speak for Palestinians) certainly do not think Palestinians “do not deserve self-determination”. They believe, however, that the Palestinians cannot be trusted and will use any independence given to them to further the goal of being rid of the Zionist entity. Sadly, they seem to have been right about that.

We wanted so much to prove wrong the disbelievers on our side. But another thing they said was that Arafat was not a reliable partner. Right again. That was both our mistake AND the Palestinians’ mistake. If the local Palestinians had had the guts to go without the Tunisian leadership, it’s much more likely we would have got on just fine. But they didn’t and couldn’t. We’re all paying the price.

I hope that in my lifetime, we will see a Palestinian leadership we can trust, and then, I hope, we can learn from our experience and (this time) slowly, carefully and sensitively, attempt again to learn to live in peace with the Palestinians.

Gotham 2003, the new Diane
No more pink. Does the dreary template reflect a new bleak realism in Diane's outlook? Time will tell.

Update: Pink again. What a relief. I hope this is permanent. Have I mentioned motion sickness?

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, addressing The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum, explains Israel’s strategic goals in the War of Terror and how to achieve them. I can think of a few people who should read this. Not that it would make any difference, of course.

It seems Tony Blair wants to talk peace with our neighbors the Palestinians. I hope the British and other Quartet members are successful in reaching a peaceful agreement and resolving their differences with the Palestinians. A word of warning: Negotiating with the Palestinians can be very dangerous. And the more you offer them, the nastier they get.

We also have our share of silly actors who have become too big for their boots (or, as we say in Israel, their urine has gone up into their head).

Yesterday I heard some local actors talking on the radio. Apparently they are planning violent protests ("the likes of which have never been seen before" - I kid you not) in view of the proposed harsh cut, in the state budget for 2003 (which should be passed this evening), of investment in cultural enterprises, meaning many of them stand to lose their jobs. The ones most likely to be thrown out, of course, are those who make a living from state-subsidized repertoire theaters.

These actors are very angry indeed. They honestly can't understand why they're not on the top of the list for government handouts or why Israel doesn't spend 2% of the GNP on culture, like in Europe.

Duh!

By the way, this came right after an item about a home for people who can’t look after themselves (I didn’t catch exactly what sort of people live there) in the poverty stricken southern town of Dimona, which is having such problems keeping afloat it is finding it difficult to supply the basic needs of its wards. Coming after this, the actors’ plight rather disgusted me.

How come some actors seem so intelligent when they say things other people write for them and so silly when they try saying anything they thought of themselves?

Probably the best example of this is Israeli actor Muhammad Bakri, whom you've probably heard of because his movie, "Jenin, Jenin", was recently banned from being screened in cinemas or on TV in Israel, apparently because it's a pack of vicious lies. I am told it especially offended parents of IDF soldiers killed in Jenin, who staged demonstrations at the couple of screenings that preceded the ban. I am opposed to the ban on the grounds that Bakri is a twerp and banning him only serves to advertise his movie and make him even more full of himself (if that is possible).

For some reason, he's very popular with TV interviewers in Israel, although he always talks such nonsense. Maybe it's because he's so good looking. I admit I don't switch channels when he's on, even though I usually find the content at best uninteresting, usually inflammatory. He manages to charm everyone into thinking that he has something worthwhile to say. The Arabs in Israel deserve a better spokesman, but I doubt if they could find a more prepossessing one.

I know nothing about the causes for the threatened New York transit strike, but I can relate to the strong words asparagirl has to say about it.

But what does it mean?
Erm, via Allison Lives

Diane of Gotham has gone from black on pink to ...pink on pink.

Diane! We can't read pink on pink! What do you take us for?

Just kidding. It appears she's having some problems. I'll update you when she manages to fix it, that is, if she updates me.

E-mailed to me by Our Sis:
Once upon a time a powerful Emperor advertised for a new Chief Samurai.
Only three applied for the job: a Japanese, a Chinese and a Jewish Samurai.

"Demonstrate your skills!" commanded the Emperor.
The Japanese samurai stepped forward, opened a tiny box and released a fly. He drew his samurai sword and "swish"; the fly fell to the floor, neatly divided in two! "What a feat!" said the Emperor. "Number Two samurai, show me what you can do."

The Chinese samurai smiled confidently, stepped forward and opened a tiny box, releasing a fly. He drew his samurai sword and "swish, swish"; the fly fell to the floor, neatly quartered!" That is skill!" nodded the Emperor.
"How are you going to top that, Number three Samurai?"

Number Three Samurai stepped forward, opened a tiny box, released one fly, drew his Samurai sword, and "swoooooosh," flourished his sword so mightily that a gust of wind blew through the room. But the fly was still buzzing around! In disappointment, the Emperor said, "What kind of skill is that? The fly isn't even dead."

"Dead, schmed," replied the Jewish Samurai. "Dead is EASY.....Circumcision. THAT takes skill!"

This is a bit over the top: “A respected Saskatchewan native leader said Adolf Hitler did the right thing when he killed six million Jews during World War II”. Is this a joke or what? It gets better/worse (depending which side you’re on): “"…That's how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn't take over Germany or Europe. That's why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the goddamned world. And look what they're doing. They're killing people in Arab countries."” This must be a joke.

Fred linked to it over on Israpundit. Hiya Freddie, how ya doing?

Hollywood to the rescue
I approve very much of Blogatelle’s initiative for solving the world’s ills.

A bit worn, I know, but my fantasy cel-dip (celebrity diplomacy) would still have Clint Eastwood standing over a hovering, quivering Saddam/bin Laden/Nasrallah/insert the bad guy of your fancy, “Uh-uh. I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kind of lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?”

I know, I know, I’m more likely to get a John Lennon look-alike plus goatee plus black and white Kaffiya singing Happy Christmas (War Is Over) or worse. Oh, well. The dream is over.

Don't mind me.

Needless to say, the news here is all about the nasty bribes and payoffs in the Likud “primaries”. Labor thinks they’re going to win back votes. They can just think again.

Aha! I spy an opportunity to be catty, which thankfully has no existential meaning for me and mine:

Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh): Spirituality for the young and good looking?
I always thought that using (an abundance of) sex as a means on the spiritual road to enlightenment a weird idea. I strongly suspect that most people came to Osho’s Ashram in Poona, India, mainly for the sex and not for the spiritual stuff (even if they told themselves otherwise), which is fine by me. People often delude themselves in much more destructive ways. So I’m not really surprised that twelve years after Osho’s death, (reading between the lines of this article) it looks like the sex has at last officially become the end. Well, I must say, it took longer than expected.

Funnily enough, the Hebrew version of the article, which appeared in Haaretz today, has cut out the mention of sex and AIDS testing that appeared in the original version. Are they getting prudish in their old age, or was it translated by an ex-disciple who thinks the emphasis on the sex in the media is taking it out of its spiritual context and making it sound too sensational? If it’s the second reason – maybe he or she didn’t get it at all. Based on everything I’ve ever read that Osho wrote, and I admit that I found reading his stuff a terrible waste of time and usually couldn’t get past the first few chapters (I also once saw a video of him talking which was an equal waste of time), I personally think Osho was a crook and charlatan. I do believe the sex stuff was invented mainly to attract suitably gullible and misguided customers. This is a rather mean thing for me to say, considering I know some ex-disciples of his who are very sweet and lovely people. What can I say? I’m obviously just not spiritual enough to have shed off my nasty cynicism, yet. This is another reason I left my Buddhist group – I felt like a fraud. I was a fraud.

Will I be getting responses telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about? Very likely, and probably rightly so. But I can’t help feeling a malicious delight that Osho’s Ashram in Poona is finally coming clean about what it seems to have been all along - a holiday resort for people who want to live it up and feel self-righteous and spiritual while they’re at it.

A (belated – sorry my fault) Hannuka story from the Jerusalem Post:
“Bus 16 moved slowly through traffic in Haifa. Olga Grossman Solomon was sitting in a seat that faced backwards. Across the aisle, in the window seat facing forward, a plump woman with soft white hair was staring at Olga. When a passenger got off, the stranger moved over and leaned across the aisle.

"Is your name Olga?" she asked. "Are you a twin?"

A twin! Olga's heart pounded. The question sent her hurtling back more than half a century to a freezing platform in Poland. Olga was clutching her momma Shari's long skirt, and a man with immaculate white gloves and a stick was asking, "Are you a twin?"”

Read on.

Strange
The Jerusalem Post claims that, unlike the interest shown by the Israeli media in this story, the Palestinian press remained indifferent to the plight of Nur Abu Tir. It was written before her body was found.

And if we're on the subject of Lebanon
Remember the Wazzani River business?
It seems the Lebanese haven’t started pumping, yet. They claim it’s because of technical problems.

Hezbullah – it seems CBC can’t understand what all the kerfuffle is about.
The Canadian National Post attempts to explain to Canadians a few things about the Hezbullah, for those who think they’re OK because they only want to kill (Jewish) Israelis.

Awful news
The body of 5-year-old Nur Abu Tir from East Jerusalem was found yesterday, in a drainage pit inside the grounds of the family home. They suspect family members (or A family member) of her murder. The motive seems to be sexual molestation.

I can’t believe we missed this.
We were in the best place in Israel to see it. How annoying! R.T. (who came with us this time) and I actually stood looking at the sky last night, but obviously not at the right time. Harry R. caught it from outside Jerusalem. (Sorry Harry, couldn’t link to the direct post – you should try fixing your archives or something).

We're off to Mitzpe Ramon tomorrow morning.
It's really cold there now. I've been packing long-unused sweaters.

We'll be back Saturday. See you then.

Someone in Haaretz gets it.
Thank you, Ari Shavit, for explaining what is as clear as the blue sky, but completely eludes most of the Israeli left, who continue to insist that the rest of the Israelis fail to see things as they do, because they are stupid and uneducated.

“Thus, the dove-hawk paradox is not an expression of the hysterical moods of a confused mob. The dove-hawk paradox is not the caprice of a stupid and frightened public. Indeed, the dove-hawk paradox does indicate that the Israeli majority is more mature and balanced today than it has ever been”.

Go read.

Diane and Grasshoppa also comment on this.

5 year-old Nur Abu Tir from East Jerusalem is still missing. I find the theory of her being kidnapped as part of a family feud rather hard to believe. Not that such family feuds do not often result in kidnapping and murder, But this is a small child, after all. The family seems pretty convinced, though.

Then again, I didn’t want to believe Eli Pimstein had murdered his baby, either.

Update: Channel 1 is saying something about sexual abuse in the family now.

Two Israelis have been shot dead in Hebron.
Two soldiers, military police. A boy and a girl.

Anti-Zionism is an anachronism
In this week’s UK spectator, Geoffrey Wheatcroft explains why anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism. A very interesting and persuasive read.

I had some thoughts about anti-Zionism, while reading, that don’t necessarily have anything to do with Mr. Wheatcroft’s argument.

One thing I think anti-Zionists fail to understand is that however Zionism began and whatever it meant to accomplish, and however you feel about all that on a philosophical level, it’s ancient history. There is now an Israel. The great majority of its citizens were born here. They are Israelis. They have no memories of the countries their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents came from. The Israeli nation may have been artificially created; it may have been a great mistake (I don’t believe that but I can respect others that do), but the fact is that now there is an Israeli people.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft talks of “One early Jewish opponent of Zionism, the ardently assimilationist Austrian writer Karl Kraus, thought the notion nonsensical: it was absurd to imagine that German, French, Slavonic and Turkish Jews had a common bond, or that any interest united the caftan-wearing tradesman of the Galician shtetl with the literary poseur of the Viennese cafיs”. Well today’s Israel proves him wrong. While his literary, Viennese, cafי-frequenting descendants were probably exterminated by the Nazis, this descendant of caftan-wearing tradesmen of the Galician shtetl is happily married to a descendant of Turkish rabbis and wealthy Bukharans. We get on just fine and we have a lot in common, thank you very much.

We are here. We don’t want to assimilate into a Palestinian state. We are not Palestinians. This week a whole nation held its breath as thousands searched for a lost baby. While I was waiting for my youngest daughter to finish her dancing lesson on Sunday afternoon, a man rushed past me towards the TV corner there, calling urgently, as if she was his own daughter “Have they found her? Have they found her?” A whole nation was horrified when the tiny body was finally found and the unbearable truth came to light. A father had done this to his own offspring. Fathers all over the country rushed home to hug and kiss their children, newly appreciative of their relatively normal lives.

We are here. This is our home. Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents may have spoken many languages. We speak Hebrew, the language Karl Kraus may have known only as a language in which to utter prayers he probably couldn’t understand. Contemporary anti-Zionists, rush past Israeli inhabited areas, on entering the country, lest they be contaminated by our moral deficiencies. They hurry off to show their solidarity with the Palestinians and to console them for the great injustice of the theft of their land by the Zionists. They fail to see, in their haste, that we are not like the French in Algeria, who returned to France; and that we are not like the British in India, who went back to England. We are home. We have not transported “life at home” to a new venue. Everything that went before is gone. The Galician shtetl has gone forever, as has the Jewish neighborhood in Baghdad. Now there is something new. This is our home and I, for one, love it dearly, corrupt politicians and all.

In summing up his essay, Mr. Wheatcroft, who describes himself as an honorary Jew, asserts that “More than 100 years later, every single dispute involving Israel demonstrates that, whatever else it may be, it is not a nation like all others, and maybe never can be”. I’m not sure by which standards Mr. Wheatcroft is gauging us when he makes this claim. As I see it, the only point in which we are not a nation like all others is in the particularly harsh judgment we receive from those who arrogantly see themselves as our moral betters.

[If anti-Zionism is an anachronism, you may argue, does that not mean Zionism is an anachronism, too? My Oxford dictionary from 1969, defines Zionism as “A movement resulting in the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine”. Seeing as this has already happened, Zionism could definitely be seen as an anachronism. A Jewish nation in so-called “Palestine” is a fait accompli.]

This is exactly what I’ve been talking about.
Dr. Patch Adams is in Israel and has been visiting Israeli victims of terrorism in hospital. He plans to visit Palestinian hospitals and refugee camps as well. This is REAL peace activism. He didn’t make a beeline for the Palestinians, like they usually do. He took the time to be in Israeli hospitals because he sees our wounded as also deserving of a bit of his laughter, even though I understand he is far more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel.

Politicians – can’t live with them, can’t live with them (I)
Dr. Yossi Beilin didn't do very well in the Labor Party primaries. Neither did Yael Dayan (Moshe's daughter). So now they're moving to Meretz. Gil sums all this up nicely. Yael Dayan is probably one of the most aggravating people in Israeli politics, but I disagree with Gil. She's done a lot in recent years for women's rights, violence in the family, sexual assault victims and so on. Anyway, Meretz is really a much more suitable party for them both. Maybe someone could get Mitzna to go, too ;-). Gil says that Yossi Sarid, head of Meretz, is “one of the most arrogant people in Israel and I’m not referring to his political views at all. I will even dare and say he is at least as arrogant as Bibi is”. Oh, Gil, what Sarid forgot about being arrogant, Bibi hasn’t even learnt yet! I’d say Bibi has a gigantic chip on his shoulder, whereas Sarid is quite convinced that Planet Earth is truly a fortunate place to have him walking on it.


Politicians – can’t live with them, can’t live with them (II)
I notice the EU court has OK-ed a decision to ban the sale of cigarettes marked as "light" or "mild" in EU countries. But they are not advocating a ban on EU countries exporting such cigarettes, mainly to countries less fortunate or affluent than EU countries. What hypocrites. They are opposed to waging war on poor unfortunate countries (although they supply them with the very weapons that make these wars necessary) because of the anticipated civilian fatalities, but they don't mind killing them slowly with their cigarettes.

This brings me back, for some reason, to the tendency in Israeli politics for (nearly) all the dirt to be out in the open. I have discussed this in the past. I find it hard to contain my utter disgust with the Likud's corrupt "primaries", which reached an historical peak with the election of an unknown pipsqueak named Inbal Gavrielli to the 29th spot on the list, which means she is very likely to be a Knesset member by February. A lawyer (I think, or is it a law student?), a woman, new blood, why am I taking offense? Well mainly because of her family connections. She belongs to a family of criminals. According to Haaretz (Hebrew version), two of her uncles went to prison in the 1980’s for drug dealing and trafficking, extortion, forging documents and fraud and now are mainly involved in the international gambling scene (including illegal gambling in Israel, I believe). I am opposed to legalizing gambling in Israel, by the way, but that’s for a separate post. One of these ex-con uncles was very much involved in her being elected to the Likud list. Even if she is on the level about her political agenda, whatever it is, and has a lot to offer, she will still be under a lot of pressure from La Familia, and their pals, to push their interests, whatever she says, won’t she? Right out of The Godfather, eh?

The upside is that she's right out there in the open. Most, if not all, politicians have the backing of unsavory characters, and they have to look after their backers' interests. But we usually don't know exactly who they are or what their agenda is until it's too late. This little lady we can keep our eye on.

My nausea might just cause me to vote Shinui (a small liberal, secular party, that runs on the vehemently-opposing-religious-coercion ticket, a little too vehemently for my sensibilities) and not Likud in the end. According to this poll (Hebrew) I'm not the only one who's nauseated. These Likud "Primaries" could affect other ex-lefties who were planning to vote Sharon. This week has been a sharp reminder that we're not voting Sharon; we're voting Likud. Yuck.

The Guardian discovers home schooling.
A few years ago I was very interested in home schooling and read a lot about it on the net. Not that I dreamt of not sending the girls to school and teaching them at home, but because before they started school I fantasized about supplementing what they would got thrust at them in school with some quality stuff. When my eldest daughter started school I had zero expectations of the system. This must be the reason I have been so pleasantly surprised. The state school they spend their days in isn’t bad at all. Its not that I think it is the best school in the world, far from it, but I’m satisfied, and I think they are happy there. They seem to be learning a thing or two, and even acquiring some skills of self-study.

In Israel, school is compulsory. The law probably has its roots in the early years, when a lot of poor, uneducated people came to live here (or lived here already) and sent their kids out to work instead of to school. They couldn’t be trusted to make their own choices for their children’s education (I know this sounds unpleasant, but I think you’ll agree that kids have rights too). There is, however, some sort of legal loophole that does allow for home schooling, in some cases, and there are apparently a handful of families who take advantage of this. I hear the authorities dislike it and give them a hard time.

Home schooling always comes over as sort of daring and pioneering, doesn’t it? As a parent, I always think that people, who educate their kids themselves, from beginning to end, must be wonderful, wise, patient people. The kind of parents we all want to be. I would lose patience and interest after about two minutes. I love working outside of the house. Housework bores me silly and (as a result?) I’m not very good at it. The idea of being stuck home with my kids, day in, day out, has very little appeal for me. I’m sure they’d be bored silly, as well. Home schooling obviously requires energies I just don’t possess. I think not being able to afford not to work is also rather relevant to the question of home schooling, too, don’t you? It’s obviously a rich person’s luxury.

Home schooling advocates often put an emphasis on the inability of regular schools to encourage a love of learning in children. They even go as far as to say that school stifles and destroys a child’s natural love of learning. They say it does bad things to a child’s character, or things to that affect, because of the unpleasant and unnatural atmosphere, lack of freedom and so on and so forth. This is all probably true, and makes me feel a pinch of guilt for ruining my girls’ minds by sending them to such a horrible institute. But maybe kids who don’t go to school are missing out as well.

They say “It takes a whole village to bring up a child”. Well these days most kids don’t live in a village or in any such close, nurturing community. (Actually, I know someone who grew up in a close, nurturing village that was sexually abused by family members and was thrown out when she finally found the courage to speak up, but you know what I mean…) Even extended families no longer live together and often don’t meet up on a regular basis. School is a regular, relatively stable society for kids. It’s their community. As I see it, the social side of school, for good and for bad, is much more important than the math and science kids learn there, especially in these days of readily available information. In school, children learn how to live in society. They learn that living with people is not easy, that it is full of challenges, but that it is also wonderful, interesting and exciting. They get the opportunity to meet people who are very different from them, and they learn to get along with them. Today, most of us work with other people. Learning to live with them and understand them, especially people we don’t particularly like or choose to be with, is a very important skill for life. Shielding children from anticipated unpleasantness of the social life in schools prevents them from gradually developing the ability to deal with such unpleasantness in adult life.

A reason many people give for home schooling is bullying and violence in schools today. But if you take your kids out of school because they are being bullied, or just because they don’t enjoy their social life there, you are not giving them the opportunity to deal with these problems. You are encouraging them to run away from difficulty. Of course, if you feel that your kid’s school cannot protect its wards from danger then this is not a suitable school for them, but is this a reason to write off the whole idea of schools?

A lot of people cite religion as a reason for home schooling. These are Christians wanting to avoid unwanted influences. This seems very strange to me, maybe because Judaism is such a very social religion. Judaism kept going in the Diaspora because Jews stuck together. Jewish men always studied together; first, as small children, in the “heder”, then, during youth, in the “yeshiva” and later on, as adults, together with the community, in the Rabbis’ “drashot”. This is still the religious Jewish way of life. Ten Jews are the minimum required to pray together.

My parents both stood out as Jews in predominantly Christian schools, when they were growing up. My mother even went to a Catholic convent during the war. Rather than hasting their assimilation, this experience served to sharpen their Jewish sensibilities and helped turned them into avid Zionists and then Israelis. Seeing other ways of life doesn’t necessarily encourage people to emulate them, but there is always the danger.

Erm, I seem to have lost my line of thought. Is that the time? I really must go.

Reshet Bet radio station:
"Two-year-old Hodaya Kedem Pimstein, whose body was discovered in a forest in western Jerusalem on Tuesday, was buried Wednesday afternoon at the Har Hamenuhaut cemetery in Givat Shaul, as details of her slaying were released for publication.

The father, Eli Pimstein, has admitted to drowning the baby in her bath and afterwards burying her in a pit that he had prepared a month ago. He has reenacted the crime to the police".

In Hebrew it says the court sent him for psychological observation. The police are opposed to this because they say his actions were planned and calculated. They also say he initially dug the pit a month ago and went back on Wednesday to deepen it further.

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear:
“The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tenderly, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as "my" feet were actually "our" feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time”. (Pg. 5)

Providential that Zionism should be on hand
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer:
“The communal compactness of the Jews, both in Palestine and the Diaspora, was probably one of the reasons that Christianity made so little headway among them. The destruction of the temple caused, if anything, a tightening of the communal bonds. The synagogue and the congregation received now much of the devotion which formerly flowed towards the temple and Jerusalem. Later, when the Christian church had the power to segregate the Jews in ghettos, it gave their communal compactness an additional reinforcement, and thus, unintentionally, ensured the survival of Judaism intact through the ages. The coming of "enlightenment" undermined both orthodoxy and ghetto walls. Suddenly, and perhaps for the first time since the days of Job and Ecclesiastes, the Jew found himself an individual, terribly alone in a hostile world. There was no collective body he could blend with and lose himself in. The synagogue and the congregation had become shriveled lifeless things, while the traditions and the prejudices of two thousand years prevented his complete integration with the Gentile corporate bodies. Thus the modern Jew became the most autonomous of individuals, and inevitably, too, the most frustrated. It is not surprising, therefore, that the mass movements of modern times often found in him a ready convert. The Jew also crowded the roads leading to palliatives of frustration, such as hustling and migration. He also threw himself into a passionate effort to prove his individual worth by material achievements and creative work. There was, it is true, one speck of corporateness he could create around himself by his own efforts, namely, the family - and he made the most of it. But in the case of the European Jew, Hitler chewed and scorched this only refuge in concentration camps and gas chambers. Thus now, more than ever before, the Jew, particularly in Europe, is the ideal potential convert. And it almost seems providential that Zionism should be on hand in the Jew's darkest hour to enfold him in its corporate embrace and cure him of his individual isolation. Israel is indeed a rare refuge: it is home and family, synagogue and congregation, nation and revolutionary party all in one”. (Pg. 43)

This was written in 1951, when Israel was three. A lot of Israelis feel nostalgic for that feeling of togetherness and the perception of a collective goal of those early years. On the other hand, a lot of people felt excluded from that feeling and still bear a grudge towards that young, secular, idealistic, Ashkenazi Israel.

I’m not sure if I like the way he claims that one of the main reasons Judaism survived down the centuries was exterior Christian pressure. Although Jews were never treated as equals, there were never such harsh pressures in the Moslem world as in Christian Europe, and still the Jewish communities flourished.

This is fascinating
William Dalrymple writes in the Guardian about Anglo-Indian mixed marriages in the 18th century and early 19th century. Don't you just love anything about British India?

Dalrymple sees these mixed marriages as a sign of multiculturalism, but I notice he only talks about British men marrying Indian women. Nothing about British women marrying Indian men. I'd say more a sign of dominance by the conquerer than true multiculturalism, even if some of the guys who took native wives also took on pseudo-Indian mannerisms. Maybe the practice stopped not only because of the Indian mutiny and the large scale British destruction of Indian upper echelons, which is Dalrymple's explanation (interesting in itself). Couldn't it also have something to do with indignant British women disliking being usurped? They probably had the full backing of Queen Victoria in their feelings! I can imagine her not being very amused by her officers’ un-British behavior, er, behaviour.

Well, anyway, Dalrymple has written a whole book about this phenomenon. I don't find it that fascinating, though. Actually, the editorial review in Amazon.com is quite enticing.

My Weather Pixie has got a Christmas tree.
Oy! Weather pixie people! I'm Jewish! Where's my Hannuka candelabra?

I'm sorry to say I'm the bearer of bad news, today
They've found the body of little Hodaya and arrested the father for the murder. It looks like they suspected him from the start. They said on the radio that they found her with the help of specific information. I heard him crying on the radio this morning. I really didn't want to believe he had anything to do with it, although everyone says he seemed very weird on TV (I didn’t see him). I think I’d look a bit weird on TV too, if my daughter had gone missing. Yesterday on the radio they broadcast the message she left on her mother's answering machine on the morning of her disappearance. A tiny, chirpy voice saying "Boker Tov!" (Good morning)

Can you imagine what the mother is going through?

They're still searching for Nur. They have been investigating family members about the suspicion she was kidnapped as part of a family feud. One family member has even been in police custody for two days, but refuses to cooperate.

Wounded soldiers up north
Yesterday, two soldiers were badly wounded when patrolling the northern border with Lebanon. A roadside bomb planted on the Lebanese side of the border detonated just when the patrol was passing.
One of them has serious head wounds; the other one lost both legs.

The search continues for the two little girls in Jerusalem.
Police have been checking a letter Hodaya's father had on his computer, but it seems there's nothing in that. Nur's family seems to be in a feud with relations and the police are looking into that, too. In the meantime, no girls.

Lest we forget that I am an ex-party member
Today, when I went to get some money out of the bank, I saw a crowd of people outside a building. It looked like there were stalls and things. When I got nearer I saw that it was a Labor Party polling station. The people outside were campaigning for various candidates in today’s party primaries, which were to determine the list for the elections. Likud’s was yesterday, but only party center members got to vote. In Labor all members voted. The festive atmosphere outside the labor polling station reminded me of my five minutes as Labor Party member. Bish and I joined up after Yitzhak Rabin’s murder. We were the guys who gave the world Ehud Barak. Well, I admit having been in awe of Barak for many years, ever since, as head of Military Intelligence, he went on TV to let all Israel hear a tape connecting the Achille Lauro attack to the PLO or the PLF or something. Well, he was very impressive, whatever. Imagine my surprise when years later I discovered Bish was also a fan (Bish is his last remaining fan, besides his wife, maybe.). So we became party members for the sole purpose of making him head of the party.

The whole being-a-party-member was very strange for us. The main thing I remember about going to vote were all these old timers hanging about there, Ben Gurion look-alikes.

I soon stopped paying party fees. Bish hung on a bit longer.

Oh, enough with the felafel, already! Who cares where felafel came from? Any Israelis reading this, who had felafel this week, stand up. Last week? This month? Last month?
See? All still seated.

Guess what? I don’t invite R.T. (and from now on Dad too) every Friday lunchtime for FELAFEL, I invite them for SPAGHETTI (good stuff too). This I stole from the Italians who in turn stole it from the Chinese (wait a minute, didn’t I read recently that Marco Polo never really got past Turkey and it’s all a big lie?).

What is Israeli? Are those three-cornered “tembel” hats, they used to make us wear in summer camp when I was a kid, Israeli? For the last twenty years, no Israeli kid would dream being seen dead in one of those hats. Are felafel and tembel hats and Hava Nagila (Ugh!) more Israeli than computer engineers with Jericho handguns stuck down the back of their jeans? Or a group of settler kids, the boys with their knitted kippot (yarmulkas) hanging off the side of their heads, the girls with black skirts down to their ankles? Or a convoy of cars full of families on a trip, all with bits of blue ribbon tied on their antennas for identification? Or someone meeting someone else in the street and starting to yell at him: “You s$%t! You maniac! You lunatic! Why haven’t you called me?” and then both of them embracing, obviously delighted to see each other? Or happy toddlers coming out of a Hannuka show, hand in hand with mum or dad, on a sun-drenched Hannuka morning, squinting at the light, faces still covered with sugar powder from the doughnut they ate during the interval?

When I was a child we used to go down UN Blvd. in Haifa, which became Zionism Blvd. when the UN became unpopular, by equating Zionism with racism, to eat felafel at the King of Felafel stall. It was owned and run by Arabs. Was I busy thinking about how Israeli the felafel was while I was eating it? No. I was just eating felafel.

So some Israelis left Israel and went to live in the US. So they opened a felafel stall. They could just as easily have opened a “steakiya” which is just as much an Israeli phenomenon, which like felafel stalls, peaked during the nineteen seventies. Were they trying to make a patriotic statement by opening an Israeli felafel stall? No, if they wanted to make a patriotic statement they wouldn’t have left Israel. They would have continued doing a month’s army reserve duty a year and continued scraping a living here. They opened a felafel stall in the US because they wanted to make a better living. So do please excuse them for not putting up a big notice saying: “Yes, we are Israelis selling Palestinian felafel, this is very remiss of us, but we really need to make a living.”

I heard felafel was Egyptian. Or was it Lebanese? Maybe the Palestinians should be apologizing, too. Cultural theft? The French claim they invented cricket. How very degrading for the Brits.

Administration stuff
A. Comments in which anyone calls anyone else a Nazi will be deleted, as of now. Behave yourself, QS!
B. I'm rather sorry I posted about that French book. I've been getting a scary amount of hits from people searching for it on Google.
C. I enjoyed the nutty hate comment immensely. I find it hilarious that someone actually spent time writing such pathetic drivel. Fear not, any more like it will be deleted.

Goodness me!
An article by Tanya Reinhart that is not spewing hatred and venom! Maybe this is because it appeared in Yediot Aharonot and they probably wouldn’t have accepted her usual offensive material. The content of the article is rather hallucinatory: “If Mitzna sticks to this plan, which offers a real alternative and hope, there is a good chance that he will be the next Israeli prime minister”. Who has she been discussing this with if she thinks this is the case? Obviously only fellow LINGUISTS!

The whole country seems to be holding its breath. Two little girls from Jerusalem went missing, yesterday. The first is Hodaya, a 22-month-old toddler, who disappeared from the yard of her father’s home in the Jewish neighborhood of Kiryat Yovel at 11:30. The other is Nur, a 5-year-old girl from the Arab village of Umm Toubas in Southern Jerusalem, she was also playing in the yard of her home, and went missing at 19:30. The police say the cases are unrelated. I’ll tell you if there are any developments.

Update: Someone commented here (in Hebrew) that the nights in Jerusalem are very cold right now. I hadn't thought of that. Poor little things.

Why should we feel apologetic about our accomplishments? Israel is a country poor in natural resources to draw from. It’s not as if we plundered Arab oil or anything, God forbid. We even found some for the Egyptians and gave it back to them on a platter, when we signed a peace treaty with them. Before the Jews got here, this country was a swamp-ridden, malaria-infested hellhole. The Jews dried the swamps the local Arabs had been living next to for hundreds of years, and built roads. Had those local Arabs (now known as Palestinians) accepted the partition plan in 1947 and two states had been created in 1948, it's very likely that Israel would have reached the same, or similar, economic and technological accomplishments.

Our accomplishments are down to human resources (well, maybe not mine personally... although, in my role as a minor bureaucrat, I may, in some small way, be helping maintain the rule of law over the rule of the jungle, that usually prevails in the Middle East). For years we’ve been hearing that we owe our affluence to Palestinian labor, but now they're gone and we’re doing just fine without them. (Imported Thai workers may eat a few domestic dogs here and there, but they haven’t been known to blow themselves up on buses).

I love driving along the Ayalon freeway, which cuts right through the center of the greater Tel Aviv area, connecting Tel Aviv’s northern satellite towns to the southern ones. Along the way, you pass the tallest buildings in the Middle East, which house a vibrant business center (yes, even in these dark depressed days). When I came to live in Tel Aviv, about seventeen years ago, most of the tall buildings did not yet exist, but the vibrant business center did. It just grew taller, flashier and more inspiring.

The Palestinians could have been a part of this exciting venture, and not just as laborers. This is what we were offering them, in effect. The vision of a New Middle East may have been naive, but it was a wonderful one. The Palestinians chose to pass. The whole region could have profited from Israel's impressive creative ability. The whole region chose to pass.

So why should we feel apologetic? As I see it, if we end up building that fence Martin Van Creveld talks about (remember? So high even birds can’t fly over? Can’t find a link to this, offhand, that isn’t pro-Palestinian), we'll be fine. The Palestinians will starve. But even that doesn't give them a jolt. Or maybe it does, but the deeper significance of it for them is so unpleasant they'd rather starve. Seven years of unsuccessful self-rule, with billions in foreign aid and a great deal of international good will (which is a lot more than what Israel got in the early years), have shown just how much Israel isn't beholden to the Palestinians for anything. There is no reason why the Palestinians couldn’t have used those years to flourish. No reason but their own pathetic ineptitude. For two years and more, they have been trying to stick their failure on us, and quite successfully, I must say (At last, something they do well. Oh, I forgot blowing themselves up among unarmed civilians. They’re excellent at that). They've got most of the world convinced, including Haaretz’s Danny Rubinstein (yawn). Haaretz hasn’t translated that particular article, for some reason. Just as well. We don’t need any more “Made in Israel” food for anti-Israel propaganda, than Haaretz already supplies.

Haaretz was derogative of the current trend in Israel to wear Magen Davids, the bigger the better, in this weekend’s magazine. Of course, if you think this terrorism war is all down to “the occupation, stupid”, then you are going to see any outward sign of affection for your country and people, especially using any sort of abstract symbol, as Nazi style nationalism, aren’t you? By the way, the article claims that the Magen David only became a Jewish symbol par excellence in 1897. Anyone care to challenge that, armed with data, if such data exists?

I don’t remember my mother without her Magen David. At one point, she lost the Magen David she had worn for many years and swiftly replaced it. Was she, as Prof. Moshe Zimmerman puts it in the article, clinging to a symbol? Was it “a substitute for any real achievement” caused by her “enfeeblement”? Or was it her way of expressing her Jewish identity, which was a very important part of who she was?

Simon Weisenthal Center: SUICIDE BOMBER: HEROIC ROLE MODEL FOR YOUNG READERS IN NEW BOOK
"A newly released best-selling novel for teens, Rever la Palestine (Dream of Palestine), sympathetically portrays a young Palestinian who becomes a suicide bomber. The fifteen-year-old Egyptian author, Randa Ghazi, who lives with her family in Italy, writes about Palestinian teenagers who fight 'bloodthirsty Jews, who assassinate children and old people, profane mosques, and rape Arab women.'

Dream of Palestine is being touted as 'surprisingly mature' and 'a great text of suffering and hope.' One of the novel's heroes calls for Jihad against the Jews who are 'a doomed people' and to 'kill all Israelis.' The main character is encouraged 'to kill hundreds in his suicide bombing' and later does blow himself up along with five Israelis.

Released to coincide with the Christmas season, and inexpensively priced, Dream of Palestine has quickly sold out in major bookstores in Paris. It has been released by Flammarion, the third largest publishing house in France, a subsidiary of the Italian media giant, Rizzoli Corriere della Sera, which includes among its holdings one of the largest Italian daily newspapers and Rizzoli bookstores in the United States.

The Wiesenthal Center is urging Amazon France and other French online websites to stop selling the book which is full of libelous accusations and which clearly incites racist violence and validates terrorism. The themes in this book could serve as the basis for litigation.

WE MUST ACT NOW to raise our voices in protest of this horrific book. The Jewish community of France has launched a protest, but more, much more needs to be done..."

I've looked it up on Amazon France but I can't read the review, not knowing French. Could someone please do it for me and put a translation or a summary on my comments?

***Important levivot (latkes) update***
Last night I added a grated carrot to the levivot and it was very good.

He's cruel, that Tim Blair, that's what he is.

Where is Arab anti-Semitism leading?
Ehud Yaari, top Israeli expert on Arab affairs, says some scary things in the Jerusalem Report. He starts off by describing just how trendy anti-Semitism has become on Arab TV. His conclusions are alarming:

”…The essence of the message is that there is no possibility of making peace with the Jews -- not because of any political argument or clash over territory, but because that nation is a priori unfit to be counted among the human race. The Jewish religion is one big, ongoing lie, and Jewish history is the fruit of a consistent distortion of the past. Furthermore, the Jewish people present a future threat to the rest of the world.

For some time now I, along with a few colleagues who lend their ears day by day to the voices coming from the other side, have been asking ourselves: Where is this campaign leading? After all, this is not about withdrawing from the territories or granting Palestinian refugees the "right of return." Rather, it is a far-reaching, dangerous rationale laying the ground for the justification of a mass exile of Jews from Israel -- "ethnic cleansing" in contemporary terms -- and even beyond that, it is gradually building a case for justifying genocide!"

More about Suzanne Goldenberg
Just before Mum died I discussed an article in Haaretz about Suzanne Goldenberg, former correspondent for the UK Guardian in Israel. On 2nd December, Haaretz published a reaction to the article in the letters to the editor. I think it’s worth translating:

”As someone who has read the articles of Suzanne Goldenberg, former Guardian correspondent in Israel, I can determine that, during all the time she was here, she represented Israel in a negative light with unfair, one-sided and venomous reporting.

She never wrote one positive word about Israel. On the other hand – not one word of criticism about the Palestinians. Arafat, according to her reports, is the Mother Teresa. She never wrote about cruel murder, without trial, of suspects of collaboration with Israel and the public abuse of the bodies of those murdered. The most terrible of Palestinian terrorist actions were Israel’s fault, according to her.

She didn’t write about Israel and its accomplishments in science, in technology, in hi-tech, about Israeli democracy. She tells us now about freedom of the press in Israel, these words of praise she utters only now, from afar.

She was a willing accomplice in the Arab propaganda effort to butt Israel and undermine the legitimacy of its people. When I saw she had left, I said “Good riddance”.

The only thing that can be said in her defense is that the Guardian newspaper is a newspaper with a decidedly anti-Israel editorial line, and that its editor for foreign affairs, Brian Whittaker, competed with her in writing anti-Israeli articles.

Eli Tavori
Jerusalem”

Hannuka is not a time for dieting.
Gil has posted a recipe for levivot (latkes). I use my mum’s recipe, which is written on a little piece of paper, which used to be pink but is now brownish and full of stains. When I left home Mum and Our Sis gave me this recipe along with Mum’s recipe for Spaghetti Bolognese (which I no longer use because it has meat in it). Thus armed, I went out to find my fortune. I found Bish instead. He has turned out to be a real treasure, but you wouldn’t have thought it at the time.

So here goes: Grate 4 big potatoes. Let drain. (I often add things at this point. Usually onion, sometimes zucchini (courgette), also grated and drained, sometimes chopped parsley. I tried tofu once, but it wasn't a success); mix 2 eggs; 4 tbs self-raising flour or 4 tbs plain flour and 1 tsp baking powder; add salt and pepper. (I once tried whole-wheat flour but it wasn’t as nice). Heat oil and fry till golden brown.

Actually, our recipes are very similar. Gil’s has more flour; Mum’s has more potato. Probably affected by what was available in days of old. I’ve tried making levivot using fancy recipes I’ve seen in books and they’re never as nice as the simple “heimischer” ones.

By the way, levivot are much tastier when the kids have taken an active part in making them.

Next year I’ll give you my mother-in-law’s recipe for sufganiot (Hannuka doughnuts). I’ll have to learn how to make them myself, first.

The new Gotham
is PINK. Yippy, she's back!

I'm not sure I am, yet, though. I'm finding it hard to write anything worth posting.

We went to a Hannukah thing with a dancing performance my youngest has been practicing for, for months. I really wasn't in the mood, but I couldn't disappoint her by not coming. She had a panic attack and nearly bailed out. Tears and hysteria. Trying to calm her down took my mind off things for a while. When she finally did her bit, I was busy smiling, waving, taking photos. When she'd finished, I suddenly thought how Mum would have "kvelled nachus". A friend who lost her father many years ago told me this never stops happening, but instead of being painful, it becomes a tender thought.

This morning I thought about Bish's father. He passed away about three years before I met Bish. Although I never actually met him, I feel as if I know him very well. I often find myself reacting to something Bish does or says by thinking: "He's just like his father" or "That (trait) he definitely got from his father". Isn't that funny? His father lives on in me, although I never met him.

Chris Newman, with dagger in hand, offers us an excerpt of Oriana Fallaci’s interview with the Palestinians' beloved Ra’is (although he was yet to become Ra’is when interviewed), in which he shares his perception of peace with Israel. Of course, we weren't very accommodating about a Palestinian state at the time, either. This is worth reading too.

”The empty path welcomes you,
fragrant with grass and little flowers,
the path paved with paddy fields
still bearing the marks of your childhood
and the fragrance of mother's hand.
Walk leisurely, peacefully.
Your feet touch the Earth deeply.
Don't let your thoughts carry you away.
Come back to the path every moment.
The path is your friend.
She will transmit to you her solidity, and her peace.”

Thich Nhat Hanh.


For seven days we have grieved. We have cried, we have laughed, we have cried some more, we have prayed, we have talked, we have remembered, we have hugged, we have kissed, we have shaken hands, we have shaken more hands, we have cried some more. Today we got up from the Shiva, the seven days of mourning, and returned to Mum’s grave. The circle of mourning has been completed. Now we begin our new life.

During the Shiva I learnt things about my mum I didn’t know. Well, not really things that I didn’t know, maybe things I didn’t really notice. I suppose you take your mother’s qualities for granted unless you get the opportunity to see her as others see her.

Throughout the months of her illness, Mum was always so grateful to the many people who were such good friends to her, so kind and so devoted in their day-to-day help and support. I said to her many times, we all did, that this was because she had been such a wonderful friend to them and they wanted to show their appreciation and love. She refused to accept this at all. I don’t know why, maybe because she was a genuinely modest person.

Mum didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the way she always thought about other people and made such a great effort to show them she cared about them and appreciated them. Dad says she used to spend a fortune on stamps. Right up to her death she was more worried that her caregiver wasn’t eating properly and about the social worker’s sick child (to their amazement) than about her own troubles. When I came to be with her, she was forever sending me home to look after Bish and her beloved granddaughters. Her main worry, when she was diagnosed, was how would she look after Dad. I’m sure that’s why she was so determined to fight the illness, against all odds.

It was only during the Shiva, listening to people’s recollections and seeing the great efforts some people made to be there with us, that I realized how many people loved her and thought she was special. Someone said she was a ray of sunshine. People said she was always happy and smiling. Many people talked of her remarkable energy. Others spoke of her extraordinary ability to listen.

She lives on in our hearts. In time, I will come to accept that I will never again open the front door to find her standing there, smiling, with baskets full of gifts, her fragrance and freshness filling the room. In time, the pain of not being able to be with her will ease. It will take time, because she has always been there for me, for thirty-seven years. And I will be happy, knowing how very fortunate I am to have had her for my mum. And I will know that she is still there for me, but in a new way.

My family and I were surprised and deeply moved by the many kind, comforting words we received, on the comments of Not a Fish and by e-mail, from readers and fellow bloggers. Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) says: “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting” (Chap. 7). And I say, better, but not easier. I have been comforted, knowing you have been with me in my bereavement.

When I started Not a Fish, Mum had not long been diagnosed with cancer and was receiving heavy doses of chemotherapy. At first, I suppose, writing a blog was a feverish escape from sorrow and worry. But soon I discovered my parents were delighted and proud and it became a joy for me to be able to give them a little something of myself every day. I never mentioned Mum’s illness here (besides a hint here and there), because it was her private matter. I didn’t want to embarrass her. Later on, towards the end, I didn't want my personal pain to add to the heavy burden already carried by my dad. He was so devoted in his caring for Mum. I’d like to think Not a Fish has been some sort of small comfort for him.

When she became bedridden, Mum liked R.T. to read her this poem, which was one of her favorites when she was young. It always amazed me that, however busy she was, and she was always very busy, she always seemed to have time to enjoy looking out at the sea and at the sun setting into it, at the end of the day.

LEISURE

By Wm. Henry Davies.

”What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”