Thursday, January 30, 2003

Oh, look what happened while Dad was beaming applications to me from his new Palm Pilot. They finished counting the soldiers’ votes. Likud got another seat. They’ve now got 38. National Religious party also got another seat, giving them a total of 6. Who lost? Hadash (Commies, mainly Arabs) and One Nation - Am Ehad (party of Amir Peretz, head of the Histadrut, trade union). The right is bigger by two. Excellent.

I’m not going to get into coalition speculations right now. I’ve started really enjoying the Ben Gurion biography. It’s started reading like a really exciting suspense-filled novel. Haim Arlozorov just got murdered (1933) and things are heating up between the Workers and Zeev Jabotinsky’s Revisionists.

This is good:

“Nothing is more ridiculous and more criminal than to fight with constitutional means against an absolutely anti-constitutional force.” David Ben Gurion, 1934.

He said it about the Revisionists, but it has wisdom beyond the context.

By the way, did I ever tell you that, according to my grandfather’s memoirs, my great-grandfather came back from the Great War raving about his impressive Russian officer? This was Jabotinsky, of course. I’m excited to think that I am descended from someone who was in the first Jewish Legion. I hadn’t really thought about it before.