BAKA DIARY

2012--the Age of Resurgent Racism

2012-01-04T15:51:00.000+02:00

I grew up in the post-Civil-Rights era; the era of Martin Luther King Jr., when Ghandi was quoted along with poet Khalil Gibran and the Desiderata, and we sang about The Impossible Dream. To my generation, racism, bigotry, discrimination and stereotypes were a part of history, a lesson from which we learned, and if the future could not be one of harmony and peace (even we conceded this was unlikely)it would at least be a better future for everyone, with all of us working together to the best of our abilities. It was the Era of The Peace Corps, of VISTA, and other organizations which in turn birthed Habitat for Humanity.

No one would ever again be forced to ride at the back of the bus; no one would ever again live in "restricted" neighborhoods; no one would ever be deprived of a decent education by a segregated school system. We would never again be judged by the color of our skins, but by the content of our characters.

This was no Age of Innocence. We were children of the Cold War and Viet Nam. We knew the cost of nuclear brinksmanship, saw the concrete walls through the heart of Europe, the dehumanization of state fascism in Eastern Europe, the brutality of "proxy wars" from Africa to Southeast Asia. We were not blind to American support of dictatorships which served American interests either. We saw children like ourselves needing a military escort to an American school because they were the "wrong" color. We saw race riots and police brutality. We saw a nation in the throes of change and the fear that those changes wrought.

But we also believed in progress; if freed from oppression and given a choice, we believed people would cherish the values of western humanism, freedom of choice and could find a way to live together in mutual respect. We thought we saw harbingers of this in the Velvet Revolution, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, advances in science, medicine and technology that fed and cured and educated an ever-growing world populace.

Now it appears that the Impossible Dream is fading. Today a man is running for President of the United States as a "Libertarian" but on a platform supported by racism, isolationism and hate.

Bigotry is going mainstream. This resurgence of racism comes from the political Right as Paul is a self-described "Republican" candidate, but the hate is equally vocal on the Left in political and academic discourse.

Alan Dershowitz, the one-time darling of the Left for his defense of the individual against the state, has expressed his own alarm at the beating drums of antisemitism in the halls of academia. When prominent academics endorse a rabidly antisemitic book published by a self-acknowledged antisemite, it's 1935 Germany all over again.

When a candidate for U.S. President refuses to disavow the enthusiastic support of neo-Nazis, antisemites and other racist fringe groups, then the future world we hoped for in 1970 is dead. The Ron Paul Survival Reports spewed bigoted statements throughout the 1990s without a single denial by their purported author. Now that national attention is focused on the candidate of the Fringe Right, suddenly these statements were authored by "ghostwriters" and he wasn't aware of them. Any attempt to discuss these writings are dismissed as 'hysterical smears aimed at political enemies.'

"Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."

"Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day."

The candidate doesn't disagree with these statements. He doesn't condemn them, object to them or say that they are wrong. He simply says he didn't write them. I'm appalled at the chutzpah of a man who can make such statements then dismiss them as "smears" while running for the highest office in the land. Not surprisingly, he is opposed to affirmative action, characterizes the Civil Rights Act as a mistake, and is opposed to abortion under any circumstances.

You don't think antisemitism is going mainstream in America? Guess again: David Duke, one-time Grand Wizard of the white racist terror group "Ku Klux Klan" interviewed an African American teacher on his radio show recently.

Why would a hate-monger who is a white supremicist interview an African American, the KKK's victim-of-choice? Why would a white racist seek out the opinion of an African-American whose ancestors were routinely terrorized and murdered by the KKK?

More to the point, why would an African American teacher, a supporter of the Left-wing Occupy movement, agree to join a notorious white racist whose organization was responsible for pogroms against her people and actively maintained the disenfranchisement and segregation of Black Americans?

Because of their mutual hatred of Jews.

You can find their discussion under the title "Dr. David Duke and Patricia McAllister Discuss Wall Street Zionist Criminals."

Love the title! First, the hate-monger is a "doctor" by virtue of his Ph.D. Who bestowed that Ph.D.? None other than the infamous institution nicknamed "The University of Hate" in the Ukraine, the Ukrainian Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP), an institute notorious for being the main source of antisemitic activity and publishing in Ukraine. "Doktor" Duke's thesis was titled "Zionism as a Form of Ethnic Supremacism."

Then there's the reflexive connection between "Wall Street" and "Zionist Criminals." This harkens back to the "Jews-control-the-world-through-control-of-all-the-world's-banks" canard that became fashionable in Europe following the publication of the Russian antisemitic forgery, "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." That work, designed by the Russian secret police to incite the populace against Russia's Jewish minority, blamed everything from crop failures to inflation on a mythical Jewish conspiracy to control the world. Duke and McAllister simply put the same nutty conspiracy hatred into modern form, substituting "Zionist" for "Jew" and "Wall Street" for "world banking."

But the podcast itself is a study in stereotyped hate tropes. McAllister blithely submits that Jews were kicked out of 109 countries because of "the evilness of their acts" and that the United States should become the 110th country to expell us. People have lost their jobs and homes because of the Jews: they were "tricked" out of their homes by Zionist Jews on Wall Street and the Federal Reserve. Jews seek control "of wherever they can make an extra dollar, they don’t care about this country, and they're taking our jobs over, paying those people pennies, and they make all the extra money." She recounts that Jews "...continue to rape this country..and around the world..." She characterizes Jews as traitors, stating that "…they control the money..they’re squeezing us, they're known to pull off things like lying, refusing to deal, illegal interest rates on loans, product bundling, boycotts,frequent bankruptcies in countries" to control currency rates. White-Black conflicts in the United States are all due to Jewish manipulation. She asserts that Hitler was a "victim" of a Jewish economic war against Germany and that the Rothschilds financed Hitler's killing of the Jews of Germany.

Her solution to the current economic problem: "I want them (Jews) banned from this country, put out of this nation, take their passports..they can take their relatives and families;...it may not be easy, there may have to be some bloodshed…"

A shorter, more succinct videotape of only McAllister's comments, without Duke's, but complete with antisemitic images, appears at Unite Against Zionism which comes with a cute graphic of a black figure arm-in-arm with a white figure under the title.

McAllister was confronted about her statements by a KTLA reporter in a broadcast interview:

REPORTER: Your remarks are racist.

PATRICIA McALLISTER: It is not racist. It's been telling the truth. Anyone who speaks against the Jews are called racist nowadays.

REPORTER: If somebody said the same thing about African Americans, it would be considered racist.

McALLISTER: If we were destroying this nation, you better say something, and take us down with it.

According to racists like McAllister and Duke, the Jews are destroying the United States. In the KTLA exchange, you see the disconnect between her earlier use of "Zionist" to disguise her bigotry and her angry, outright use of "Jew" in her defensive interview.

She is a star on Stormfront, the Nazi hate site, and Rense, another virulently antisemitic site.

A Stormfront talkback opines: Patricia McAllister is an impressive black woman -- speaking out against the oppressive criminal jewish establishment regardless of personal consequences. She's an excellent example for us all of speaking truth to power. I think we will be hearing more of her. Interestingly, this black woman, in this interview, called David Duke a great man. We know how true this is. As honest and honorable White men and women, we must give credit where it is due...I'm even beginning to think an alliance of some type may be possible among the enlightened of the various races against the common enemy of the world, the jews.

Nothing underlines the collapse of the Left-Right paradigm as much as these developments. The alliance of a Far Right National Socialist party member and leader of the KKK with a Left-wing Occupy movement African American is the Perfect Storm of rising racism in American political discourse and society. Now that antisemitism is getting academic imprimatur as well, I submit American Jews have reason to worry.

Aliyah, anyone?

Vetting The Dogs

2011-07-22T14:14:00.001+03:00

We became dog owners by accident. I had lived with dogs as a child; my earliest doggie memory was someone about my height whose stubby tail wagged and who I liked. Her name was Ginger, and she was really my mother's dog, but I was too young to know that. To me, Ginger was just the other kid in the house, albeit sort of funny looking. Ginger was, as her name implied, a red-gold Cocker Spaniel back in the days when Cocker Spaniels hadn't had all the brains bred out of them.

My parents told me years later that Ginger was "practice" for having a child: learn to care for the demands of an animal, and you're on the right path to child-rearing.

My father was transferred to the north-east, to Boston. Ginger wasn't there. I don't recall if she left before we moved or because we moved, but since shortly thereafter my mother acquired another animal, this time a baby brother, I was more fascinated by the new arrival than cognizant of my loss.

I don't remember this, but my parents often told me that Ginger was the best baby-sitter: I would play in the front yard in our 1940s-era rental home (something no child dares to do today) with no front fence. Ginger, no doubt relying on some ancient instinct, would always herd me away from that fascinating thing called "the Road" with all the shiny cars moving on it.

Again at 11, I had another dog. Scamp was a puppy from our cousins' bitch, and a lovely blend of German Shepherd and retriever. In retrospect, I wasn't mature enough to deserve her. First, I couldn't believe it when my father really held me to my promise that I would walk her. "But it's dark!" I whined as he woke me, the leash in hand. It was dark--it was right after Thanksgiving and there was snow on the Rhode Island fields all around us. The sun was a hint of light beneath the eastern horizon. I walked her. I cared about her. But I was also turning 12 and hanging out with girlfriends; sneaking cigarettes, listening to the Beatles and memorizing the lyrics of every popular song and playing, dreadfully, with make-up took up much to much of my time, and poor Scamp spent a lot of time alone in our yard.

We moved from rural Rhode Island to suburban Virginia. My parents, without telling me, gave Scamp away to a retired gentleman who wanted a companion and had the time and the loneliness to give to a sweet dog. Still.....I almost ran away with Scamp when she came back, having escaped her new owner. I reasoned that we were both unhappy with the arrangement, but I couldn't figure out for the life of me how I would take care of her on the road. I didn't care if I didn't eat, but I cared if Scamp didn't eat. There is a part of me that never forgave my parents for giving her away without telling me, without giving me the peace of mind of meeting her new owner, seeing where he lived, seeing that she was happy.

So I never had a dog after that....too much attachment, too much pain. I told myself they were slobbery, demanding, they shed, they smelled bad - in short, I made up reasons not to get a dog. Cats were another story. Cats can take care of themselves in disasters, or if I go away for the weekend. The cat doesn't care as long as I leave ample food and water.

Then my oldest daughter got divorced. They had three dogs. One dog went to a friend; another dog went to his parents. She was heart-broken over giving up and finding a placement for her long-haired Shepard-Husky mix, especially in Florida where a non-hunting, high-maintenance dog is considered more of a nuisance than a working member of the family. Daughter came to California while her Ex disposed of the dogs. She showed me a picture of this last, unplaceable dog---and my heart stopped!

She looked exactly like Scamp.

Divorce was bad enough--frosting that cake with the loss of a beloved dog, one nursed back from near drowning in a hurricane, one that was not a 'good fit' in rural Florida, one about whom she would always wonder....naw, her dog came to live with us. There was no other answer. [So did her cats, who made themselves highly unwelcome, but that's another story.]

Her name was PAX--no, not "Pax" as in "peace" but as in military jargon for "passenger" since she went everywhere in the car with them. By this time we were in a real house with a fenced backyard amid moderate northern California temperatures. Perfect for this dog, who also loved long walks in the neighboring hills with her mistress.

But then, the daughter changed careers, went back to school full-time, worked part-time and ultimately departed to Arizona. Pax stayed with us. The daughter would have taken her but we said, "No." An Arizona apartment was no place for a mid-sized dog alone all day while the daughter worked two jobs to cover rent and school loans.

So when it came time to make aliyah, Pax came with us. Of course. Her crate had a large sign on it, "Aliyah Dog" in English and Hebrew, which garnered a lot of sympathy and good will from the El Al crew.

We found a great landlord who was agreeable to us having a dog in his garden apartment, and we had a huge park in front of our building, so Pax was perfectly happy. The daughter, who had made aliyah herself a couple of months before us, came over often enough to make Pax happy and content as well.

We lived in this rental while waiting for our condo to be finished. Like every condo in Jerusalem, it is part of a multi-story building on a street full of multi-story buildings. I made frequent treks out there and found a 6-week old puppy amid the building debris one day.

Dog number two thus came to live with us. I would have liked to have named her "Biscuit" but since giving my husband a stake in unasked-for-ownership was a must, he named her "Hobbit" for her small size, insatiable appetite and furry feet. We were told she would be a Jack Russell terrier, something we still laugh about today as our mid-sized Kanaani leaps over the couch to chase her sister.

Not really her "sister" -- but another Kanaani, abandoned at the Malcha Shopping Center, no doubt by an owner who either found dog ownership too onerous, or who simply could no longer afford to feed both his kids and his dog following the 2008 financial collapse. We weren't going to take her, or keep her. We saw her and went inside. When we came back outside an hour later, she was still there, looking hopefully from man to man with that lost-dog-look that says, "Are you my person?" It broke my heart. She was sweet, gentle and clearly distraught.

I proposed that we take her to the SPCA shelter. "The last time we did this, we ended up with a dog," my husband pointed out, correctly. No, no, I assured him--we'll just take her to the shelter because she'll be road kill if we leave her here where the Mall traffic, technology park and freeway all come together. He agreed.

Man plans, and G-d laughs.

The shelter was full. Our choice was to take her to the pound or take her home. "How long will the pound keep her?" I asked hopefully. "Two weeks and then they'll put her down -- there's no demand for a six-month-old brown dog."

So she came home with us.

Dogs need food. Dogs need shots. Dogs need companionship and love. Dogs need grooming. Dogs need exercise, especially if one has large dogs in a small condo. But they're worth it, because they pay it back ten times over in love and protection. I used to tell people, only half-joking, that I loved coming home from work because I was greeted with enthusiastic, unconditional love. "Ahhhh, your son?" or "your husband?" they would ask.

No, my dogs. No matter how bad the day, no matter how late the hour, my dogs are always thrilled to see me. Much pack-style greetings, nudges, affection and bright happy eyes. My son? Glued to his computer. My husband? Glued to the television. The dogs always make a big deal out of my home-coming. The rest of the family hardly notices.

This week's adventure was the trip to the vet. We like the SPCA in part because it's close, but also because it's reliable and all the money goes to its programs and no-kill shelter.

However, three dogs in one trip is a challenge. Pax likes riding in the car, but whines. Pax is the Queen of Whiners. Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm....all the way there. Anxious, high-pitched whining. Car rides are rare these days, so she knows something is up.

Kinnimon, our abandoned brown Kanaani, was hesitant about getting into the car this time, a first, but once inside settled down and did her best to be comfortable while gazing out the window and ocassionally leaning forward to lick my husband's ear while he drove.

Hobbit, the brave, the unflinching, the guard dog extraordinaire -- terrified! She hates anything with wheels (perhaps a nightmare from puppyhood, dodging them as she sought shelter on our truck-and-tractor busy street during construction?). The husband had to lift her into the back seat. I sat between Hobbit and Kinnamon and spent the entire trip holding both so they didn't slide or fall as we rounded corners. We have roundabouts in Jerusalem--slows down the traffic but also makes for lots of centrifugal force on three dogs.

Hobbit spent most of the trip to the vet trying to climb out of the car through the back window. When she finally figured out that it wasn't going to open, she literally climbed on my shoulders in fear. I moved forward a bit, and she huddled behind me, trembling.

It was a 10 minute drive to the vet. It felt like an hour.

They were champs with the shots and meds. Just getting them to the vet was the challenge. They were a bit tired and anxious going home, but no one was climbing on my shoulders or whining like a bad violin.

On the other hand, I noticed not one of them had a nice thing to say to us for the rest of the day.

Sorry, girls. It's only once a year (thank G-d!).

Borders - The End of an Era

2011-07-20T12:20:00.002+03:00

There is an old saying, "You can't go home again."

Nonsense. Of course you can go home again. But it won't be the same home as last year, or five years ago, or twenty years ago. Home is home, but time moves on.

I opened the newspaper today and saw that, indeed, a mainstay of my life is going the way of the buggy-whip-factory.

Borders Books & Music is closing.

I remember when Borders opened. It was reviled and condemned by some for putting small book-sellers and stores out of business; castigated as a monolithic corporate entity designed to drive the small sellers out of the competition. Others, like me, enjoyed the broad, well-stocked aisles, the vast selections of every subject imaginable, the well-chosen children's books, the great sales and the fact that the next wing also carried music. It was one of the first stores where I could go and actually listen to selections from a CD before deciding whether or not to buy it.

I like strolling through a book-store. I like to hold the book in my hand and riffle through the pages before deciding to buy or not. Most of my purchase decisions have been made by skipping through the actual book and getting a feel for the writing style, the voice, the intricacy of the text.

I also liked the easy access and good parking. Where others would spend an hour in Nordstrom's, I'd rather spend an hour browsing in Borders.

Now Borders is the victim of progress. Walking into a bookstore is being replaced by ordering on-line.

I'm heart-broken. It's not the same. Going to Borders was a treat, an hour away from the hurley-burley demands of everyday life. It was a place to consider the future (science fiction) or the past (history) or current events (politics) or beauty (art and architecture) or a myriad of other interests. It was a place where I could easily pick up foreign language tapes while also picking up travel books. It was a place to step out of time and consider something other than the immediate mundane demands of work, children, grocery shopping, bill paying and getting the car serviced.

Sorry, ordering on-line from Amazon or Barnes & Noble just doesn't do it for me. An e-book is not a book any more than a Facebook friend is a friend. Amazon is not a bookstore, it is a web portal.

I work all day on a computer. There is nothing fun, restful or relaxing about "browsing" on-line through pages of internet offerings. Nor do I want to wait 2 days to hold my book in my hand. Book, you will notice--not digital download. When I find something (more often, a half-dozen somethings) I want to take it to the check-out stand, pay for it, and be holding it in my hand, reading it that night after work.

Ah, the pity of it all. I will miss Borders, and I am sorry to see my favorite bookstore bite the dust.

I can take some comfort in Tzomet and Steimatsky's, however. I can browse through the English-language selections in bookstores here, but it's just not the same. The stores are smaller, the selections more limited whereas at Borders I always had the feeling of being a kid let loose in a gigantic candy store.

So many books, so little time! Good-bye, Borders. I, for one, will miss you.

The Agalah Conundrum

2011-07-08T14:31:00.000+03:00

In the Old Country, it was a given that whenever you put one sock of a matched pair in the dryer, you would inevitably not get it back. You might lose it altogether; you might receive one sock of the original pair back but not the other, so end up with a mismatched pair; you might get two separate socks neither of which were in the original matched pair.

It was a sort of Murphy's Law of Sock Drying.

Israel seems to have a similar conundrum, or else I am similarly blessed, with the Agalah Conundrum.

Last week I needed chicken. Super Deal was having a sale: 5 packages of chicken for 70 NIS. Such a deal. I bought staples: chicken, wine, yogurts, milk, vegetables, coffee, beer (yes, in my husband's eyes, beer is a staple in the summer) a LOT of cheese, fruit and cereal, plus humus and tehina and sugar.

This plus some other odds and ends came to around 850 NIS.

Okay, that's not bad for a week's shopping for a family....but oddly familiar to the week before when I bought NO meat, half as much cheese, no energy bars for the lunch bunch, but did get applesauce and fruit cups for lunches, real fruit, lots of vegetables, no chips, no beer, no humus and no tehina. Still right around 850 NIS.

Oh, well.

But then I shopped again today. No meat, yes beer, very little cheese, no vegetables, but more cereal, fruit, yogurts, soft drinks, chips, but then no applesauce or fruit cup snacks, but yes, energy bars. Plus some odds and ends, like Kleenex and deodorant.

Again, a tad over 850 NIS.

I'm not complaining. I'm just puzzled. I am not doing anything consciously to reach this amount--I'm not talented enough with math to keep an accurate running total of the groceries, nor am I making an assessment based on how full the cart is, since every week if has been different.

So maybe I am simply blessed with agalah luck--my cart is full whenever I reach this shekel amount and dayenu! It's enough for the week!

It's just puzzling.....like wondering where all those socks went?

Five Years On....

2011-06-18T21:38:00.000+03:00

This coming week, we celebrate our 5th year in HaAretz.

Why do we leave our homes, the comfort of the familiar, the solace of whatever high-paying job we have, to settle in Israel?

Whether secular kibbutznik, chareidim, or masorti, everyone I've talked with boiled it down to one common denominator: our children.

Some are fleeing antiSemitism; some are leaving the American Dream-cum-Nightmare of assimilation; some simply believe that raising Jewish children in a free Jewish state is better than being a minority on sufferance.

Conventional wisdom isn't always right. "Don't take your cats," we were warned, with dire tales about the 50,000 cats already in Jerusalem. Apart from displaying angry indignation over being cooped up in an airplane for 20+ hours, our cats adapted just fine. Food bowl-check. Litter box-check. Water dish - check. No problem!

"Don't take teenagers," we were warned. Teens, we were told, were especially problematic, and even more so in our case since we had a boy with special needs. We had, with foresight attributable to the teen in question, made a pilot tour to find an appropriate school. Having already spent one year in a charter high school with fabulous teachers in the Bay Area, we had a sense of what challenges he had. College was not an option in California, which had just passed a bill requiring a high school exit exam, which exam did not permit accommodations to children who need them. No exam, no diploma.

Israel has the bagrut system. No bagriot, no college. On the other hand, it also has a large portion of the population which works in good jobs without needing a college education....something that California seems to be revisiting in light of high tuitions and high unemployment.

What Israel does have are special education schools. Many people dislike this, thinking children should be mainstreamed. Having come from a system where there was no option except mainstreaming, I can tell you that Israel's system is better. In California, special needs children are "mainstreamed" in that they get to go to some of the same classes with their peers -- but are socially excluded, mocked, often subjected to mean tricks, because frankly, teenagers are cruel. The Boy was good at holding his own, but struggling to keep up academically while also dealing with the sheer meanness of a minority of kids, made middle school and high school more than challenging.

I think we knew we'd made the correct decision for our son when he found, among a selection of special ed and regular schools, a school he liked. It's a special education school for kids who have normal intelligence but often severe physical handicaps.

I wondered how he would react. He had an entire year of being highly frustrated because he had trouble understanding the Hebrew. But then his best buddy, fluent in both Hebrew and English, convinced their classmates that they would all benefit from teaching our son Hebrew--and the tide then turned. Like on kibbutz, kids spent all day talking to the new oleh in Hebrew and correcting his Hebrew as well.

I knew it was all good the day he said to me, "I LIKE my school, Ima. It's nice to be someplace where everyone has problems and I'm not the only one who is "different."

Israel also has an extensive social worker system for special needs children and adults. He had a social worker and counselor at the school; he received vision therapy in addition to math and Torah and history. His confidence grew and his maturity blossomed. He's transitioning into the adult social worker system, where he won't be left alone to fall through the cracks. He will receive job placement assistance, or if he wants it, more vocational training. His social worker will be his advocate at his place of employment, and if he is mistreated, she is his back-up. The work day and tasks will be tailored to meet his medical needs.

In California, his option was that of working as a bag boy at Safeway the rest of his life.

So this week, he finishes high school and transitions into adult life. We don't know yet what that will entail. He would like to do Sherut Leumi (the army won't take a child who is low-vision and subject to seizures) but that may be foreclosed because of his shortened work day. Or he could work on kibbutz where special needs children are welcome and cherished....although given his distaste for the smell of stables, I'm not sure this is the option he would choose.

What we do know is that his options here are greater than in the Old Country. There are programs here that aren't merely "placement" but are also "social" -- groups for drama, for music, for playing pool or going bowling, for judo--all geared to creating a social life for special needs adults.

During our time in Jerusalem, two motivated moms who wanted summer camps for their own special needs children, but couldn't find any, started their own. Josh has been a junior camp counselor at Camp Shutaf for four years now, and loves it. It has taught him patience, never his strong suit; it has allowed him to show compassion and care for kids he truly identifies with, although he admits that now and then a couple of them can drive him crazy.

During our time in Jerusalem, he also received the best medical attention and we found neurologists who brought his seizures under control with new and more advanced medication.

Being a young Jewish adult in a free Jewish state where the college entrance exams aren't given on Yom Kippur, where the homecoming dance isn't held on Shabbat, where one is free to live a Jewish lifestyle without needing to compromise in order to be "accepted" on the football team or gossip girl clique would have been enough, dayenu!

But we have all that and more in the many options available to our son. We will always be the old immigrant parents--but so what? What is your life for if not for your children?

There is nothing here to be afraid of; there are nothing but opportunities for your children. And if not now, when?

Move On.Org's Double Standard

2011-05-19T23:12:00.001+03:00

I am about to piss off all of my Democratic friends, all of my liberal friends and all of my feminist friends....

But it's your own fault. Sorry.

Remember an organization that was born in the midst of the partisan warfare within the Beltway during Clinton's presidency? MoveOn.Org was launched initially to oppose the Republican-led effort to impeach Clinton. Initially called "Censure and Move On," it invited visitors to add their names to an online petition stating that "Congress must Immediately Censure President Clinton and Move On to pressing issues facing the country."

The whole point of the MoveOn petitions was to quit wasting taxpayer monies on what amounted to a stealth attack on the people's choice for President of the United States. The sense at the time, which I clearly recall because I was part of this consensus, was that as a nation we had better things to do than spend billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to investigate yet another case of Men Behaving Badly. Gee, the POTUS got a blow job from his intern....this is news? You wasted my hard-earned tax dollars to discover yet another politician is having sex with an aide?

MoveOn.Org was a truly grass-roots, computer generated petition movement started by two Berkeley computer entrepreneurs. Granted, they were Berkeley liberals but even Berkeley liberals get it right some of the time. Sadly, it was grass-roots only until it sold its soul to George Soros.

Being aware that Clinton had the happy precedent of FDR, Ike, JFK and MLK, and having lived in the Beltway suburbs twice during my father's tour of duty at the Pentagon, it came as no huge shock that such things could and often did happen in the hallowed precincts of government.

Like many people, I was appalled at the waste of taxpayer money spent investigating the Clintons and the fact that the only thing of note that the investigation turned up was a man's denial of having an affair when publicly questioned about it (which in an earlier age would have been the chivalrous response) only convinced me, as it did others, that this was nothing more than a partisan attempt at impeachment because the Republicans would stoop to any low tactic to remove the lawfully elected President. Besides, I thought Gore was a pompous dunce and didn't want him running the country anyway.

I still think the original petition was well-founded, and that like a person's sex life, birth control, and how you voted in the last general election, there are just some things that aren't the government's business--and that includes elected officials' sexual indiscretions. It's private. You don't "need to know." For those of you who disagree on the grounds that it is a reflection on a man's moral character -- well, in this department, generally, men don't have "moral character." I'm sure there are exceptions, but the general rule, long acknowledged in human history, is that men screw around. As my mother-in-law was fond of saying, "A stiff d$#^ has no conscience."

But then MoveOn.Org sold out. It became not a grass-roots effort to curb ridiculous government expenditures on stupid partisan issues, but instead a Left-liberal mouthpiece for trashing Republicans.

In 2003, rather than focusing on the substantive issues, MoveOn.Org wasted its donors' money on attack ads alleging that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a serial groper of women. This overbroad attack was seriously undermined by using as support the claims of women who were into body-building and Hollywood groupie-dom some twenty years earlier, none of whom filed a complaint with anyone -- not police, not friends, not relatives, not SAG, not the owner of the gym -- at the time of these alleged sexual harassments. And, not coincidentally, the first public complaint of this alleged groping behavior came at anti-Schwarzenegger press conferences and rallies called by....MoveOn.Org.

That attack ad alone would have been bad enough, but there were others accusing the Republican candidate of "hijacking" the great state of California; after he was elected, MoveOn.Org mounted a recall petition.

MoveOn.Org also lambasted Schwarzenneger for refusing to provide copies of his immigration files.

Gee, is that like refusing to provide copies of one's Hawaiian birth certificate?

The last time MoveOn.Org solicited contributions from me, I sent them a curt note declining to contribute on the grounds that if we, the taxpayers, were supposed to simply "censure and move on" with regard to Clinton's sexual peccadilloes, which were allegedly numerous, then certainly the same standard applied to all politicians and candidates, and their blatant disregard for their founding mission in the interests of promoting a partisan political agenda and smear campaign was very, well, Gingrich-like. No thanks.

And now it's "I-told-you-so-time" on the Left. Schwarzenneger has admitted to sleeping with a housekeeper on his staff and fathering a child. Apart from the heartbreak this has caused to nearly everyone intimately connected with this, he is being lambasted on Facebook, Twitters, Talkbacks and Op-Eds by liberal, Left and/or feminist commenters everywhere.

"What a pig!" one said.

"Maria doesn't deserve this heartbreak."

"He should be castrated!"

Tiger Woods didn't get this kind of opprobrium. Neither did Jesse Jackson, who fathered a child on an aide. Or Willie Brown, who although not married, got an aide pregnant and acknowledged the child was his. John Edwards did come in for more condemnation but that wasn't because he had an affair -- it was because he dissed the campaign wife, dying of cancer, who stood by him throughout his political career.

I have a problem with the Double Standard. Not THAT Double Standard, where men are "men" but "girls" must be "virgins" ... I have a problem when the media and it's sheep-like public pillory one politician or prominent public figure for sexual escapades, but give a pass to others. Especially as the distinction seems to be strictly along political party lines....

I give the Governator a lot of credit, actually. In an era when public officials have to chase deadbeat dads through the court system to get even minimal child support payments, he did the old-fashioned European thing and took financial responsibility for his child. Under California law, he didn't have to: a parent has only two years to contest or claim paternity. From all accounts, Schwarzennegger was told that the child was his only after that statute of limitations had passed.

That says more about his moral compass to me than baseless allegations of groping brought by MoveOn.Org-sponsored Arnold-bashing press conferences.

Move on, okay?

Mass Graves--Stepping Stones to Greater Syria

2011-05-17T10:48:00.001+03:00

I have a friend who, in most cases quite correctly, has stated that the first person to resort to name-calling in an argument loses. As the Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor, he has little patience with those who trivialize his father's experience by calling everyone they disagree with a "Nazi."

He has a point.

But there is a time when the N-word is appropriate.

Today's as yet unconfirmed news is that Bashar al-Assad, Ba'athist dictator of Syria, has quelled dissent in his country not only through mass arrests of protestors, indiscriminate shelling of towns, opening fire on civilian crowds, gunning down women who opened their front doors to security agents, and rape, but has now added mass graves to his tool-kit of oppression.

Why not? The world continues to give him legitimacy despite the rising death toll of Syrians. The Russians protect him as a quasi-client state; the U.S. has apparently decided to maintain an ambassadorial presence there despite Assad's multiple pogroms in multiple Syrian cities and villages. The EU and NATO are otherwise occupied holding on to Libyan oil and bank bailouts.

Why not? It worked for Saddam Hussein, who is famed for his genocide against the Kurds of Iraq (see "Halabja") who refused to change their names, their language, their history, and their aspirations for autonomy by "Arabizing" under Saddam's reign of terror. Ask the Iraqi Arab parents of a third grade class which vanished one day, after one prankster wrote "Down with Saddam" on the class blackboard when the teacher stepped out. The mass grave of these eight-year-olds was later uncovered by Coalition forces.

Why not? Bashar's father, the leader of a military coup in 1961, maintained his Ba'athist secular party's grip on power by slaughtering 40,000 residents of Hama, a Sunni town opposed to the Alawite-controlled Ba'athist government. The rancor between the Muslim Brotherhood representing Sunni interests and Hafez al-Assad's Alawite-controlled Ba'athists had festered from 1940 until 1982, when decades of guerrilla tactics by Sunnis erupted into full-scale revolt following al-Assad's execution of 1200 Sunni prisoners.

The world took no notice of Hama.

The world ignored Halabja.

The world ignored the killing fields of Ba'athist Iraq and Syria for decades.

The world is a dunce.

The Ba'athists are the closest living political relatives to the German Nazis around. They are allied with Iran not because they share a fundamentalist Islamic world view--they don't.

What they do share is a virulent desire to bring the Middle East under their governance. Syria wants an all-Levant Ba'athist Arab future; Iran wants a Shi'ite Moslem Caliphate. The Syrian Ba'athists, albeit a nominally secular political party, are Alawites, a Shi'ite minority believed to be "heretics" by their Sunni majority population. What more natural ally than another Shi'ite nation, Iran, which shares a desire for Moslem hegemony in the Middle East, free of such decadent Western imports such as democracy, equal rights, free press, enfranchised women, birth control, and so forth?

Syria has never abandoned it's dream of "Greater Syria" formulated during and after World War I.

"Within the Levant, Syrian Baathists find Lebanese, Jordanian, and Palestinian autonomy barely tolerable. From the late Ottoman period onward, Syrian Arab nationalists have viewed Lebanon and Palestine as part of a Bilad ash-sham (Greater Syria). Syrian leaders considered the western side of the Fertile Crescent to be the Syrian backyard and Damascus, the region's rightful political center." (Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2005)

In 1920, the majority of the Arab population in the Levant, freed finally from Ottoman Turkish rule after World War I, identified as "Syrian." The post-war subdivision of the Levant by British and French allied victors in 1923 was decried as the "First Naqba" or catastrophe by Levantine Arab populations, who saw this carving up of the region as an impediment to Arab national expression. The Arab residents of that section of the Levant called "Mandatory Palestine," a name coined by Protestant British rulers, took to the streets in riotous protest at what they saw as the false, European-created suggestion that Palestinian Arabs constituted a separate ethnic nationality from the rest of Syria.

The term "Naqba" or "Catastrophe" was originally coined not because of Israel or "Palestinian" nationalism but because Arabs living in Palestine regarded themselves as Syrian, and were enraged at being cut off from their Syrian homeland. Palestinian Arabs saw themselves as Syrians and were seen as such by other Syrians.

The chronicler of this "Naqba" was none other than an Arab historian, George Antonius,a man of Lebanese-Egyptian origin who lived in Jerusalem for a short period (and hence is called "Palestinian" although he wasn't) at the mansion of Nazi-allied and paid for stooge, Haj Amin el-Husseini.

In his seminal work, The Arab Awakening, Antonius wrote, "The year 1920 has an evil name in Arab annals: it is referred to as the Year of the Catastrophe (Am al-Nakba). It saw the first armed risings that occurred in protest against the post-War settlement imposed by the Allies on the Arab countries."

What does this have to do with mass graves today?

The Syrian regime is the heir to Vichy France's pro-Nazi occupation, home to fled Nazis, inculcated with Nazi nationalist ideology, convinced of Arab ethnic superiority (hence it's hatred of Jews, Kurds and other non-Arabs) and equally convinced of its "right" to take back its "historic homeland" of Greater Syria.

Look at the map of Greater Syria. It divides the Levant into Greater Syria and Iran. Together they wish to control the Middle East, its resources, its people and impose their Shi'ite nationalism on the entire region. This is why Syria occupied Lebanon and oppressed non-Shi'ites; this is why Syria invaded Jordan; this is why Syria connives at war both open and covert against Israel.

And this is why there are mass graves in Daraa. A totalitarian racist Nazi-like regime intent on "Lebensraum" does not brook dissent. A totalitarian racist Nazi-inspired regime intent on conquest of its neighboring countries does not permit democratic expression. A Nazi regime slaughters its opponents, both domestic and foreign to further the goal of Greater Syria.

There are stark moments in time when to refrain from identifying a brutal totalitarian war-mongering regime bent on conquest as "Nazi" is to side-step the ugly truth.

Children of Abraham

2011-05-15T11:33:00.003+03:00

I have a friend of whom I am very fond...we worked in the trenches of criminal courtrooms for decades. Our only real disagreement is and was over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

She is the daughter of a Palestinian man from Beit Hanina, and grew up in California, and has a narrative quite at odds with my own Zionist appreciation of history.

She sees the Palestinians as victims of Israel; I see Israel as the stalwart beacon of hope and refuge for spat-upon, murdered, humiliated, disenfranchised Jews world-wide. Including those in that Arab world which has tried to destroy us time and again.

She sees 1948 as the "Naqba"; I see 1948 as the rebirth of our ancient sovereign state, living in dignity and freedom instead of under the boot of European Christians, or Arab Moslems. She sees 1948 as a disaster; I see 1948 as the Intifada of the Jews, shaking off the yoke of centuries of oppression.

One of her friends recently posted the newest in Jewish delegitimization: Jews aren't really descendants of Abraham but instead are European Slavs who converted to Judaism.

He then conceded that North African and Middle Eastern Jews might be, but Ashkenazi Jews are not descendants of Abraham and the Judean tribe that survived multiple conquests and ethnic cleansings in our own land.

I can only assume that his adherence to this is based on his own racism--Middle Eastern and Maghrebi Jews are usually but not always darker in skin, eye and hair color than the Ashkenazi populace (I have one Syrian-Jewish friend and one Turkish-Jewish friend who are both blue-eyed blondes), therefore his declaration is based on the absurdity of a person's coloring. This is laughable in large part because Palestinians and Jews here are largely indistinguishable. Yes, red-headed, freckled, blue-eyed Ashkenazi Jews live here; on the other hand, my Arab electrician is a fair-skinned, blue-eyed guy with wavy light-brown hair; the Palestinian woman waiting in line at Hadassah with me had two daughters young enough to not wear hajib, who both had porcelain skin, grey eyes and blonde hair. Even Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy contained an Egyptian daughter with blue eyes and blonde hair.

I don't ascribe this racism to my friend, who is a peaceful woman of good intentions and who believes that Jews and Arabs are descendants of the same father Abraham.

However, her friend's comment points to a rising tide of delegitimizing not just the Jewish connection to Israel, but to Jerusalem and to historic Jewish connection to this land.

I doubt that most Arabs understand that our Law commands us to live in this Land. I doubt that most understand that Judaism, among many details, overarchingly relies on the Torah, on Am Yisrael the People, and on the Ha Aretz "the Land."

Maybe they do know this. Maybe that's why it is so important to teach Arab and Palestinian youth that these are all Jewish lies, because by reducing the Jews to cockroaches instead of cousins, it is easier to call for our expulsion and extermination.

Young people have the internet. They can do their own research. They can travel virtually to someone else's web-page, and if they both speak English, they can talk directly to each other, and maybe come to a better, if not complete, understanding of each other's hopes and fears.

I cited one of many studies regarding the close genetic affinity between Jews and Palestinians--ALL Jews, including Ashkenazim. Her friend shrugged it off as "fantasy." I got the clear impression he didn't even read the scientific article demonstrating this affinity.

I already have one friend who wryly refers to the Palestinians as "The Cousins" and I thought by pointing this out to the writer who dismissed this affinity, he might, like me, view us as "cousins" and have more regard for our mutual desire to live in this small piece of land.

Silly me.

Arab rejectionism has reached new lows.

In 2002 at Camp David, Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian, announced that the Jewish Temple was never in Jerusalem, in complete contradiction to Islamic writings.

This was just one in a series of Palestinian attempts to erase any Jewish connection to Jerusalem or Eretz Israel.

In a statement issued Dec. 10, 1997, the PA’s Ministry of Information claimed that Jews never had any connection to Jerusalem because archaeological excavations in the Old City have found “Umayyad Islamic palaces, Roman ruins, Armenian ruins and others, but nothing Jewish.” The Ministry also falsely claimed that “there is no tangible evidence of any Jewish traces/remains in the old city of Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity.”

Well, in fact there are plenty but they are ignored when professional archeologists uncover them, or derided as "plants" or destroyed when Palestinians uncover them.

The PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah published an article in its issue of Dec. 1, 1997, which declared: “I call to be alert and to treat the Tomb of Joseph and the Tomb of Rachel as dunams of Palestinian land which must be liberated, and to treat Joseph and Rachel as just two people who died, like anyone else who dies.”

Similarly, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz quoted Palestinian Authority officials as saying that “Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem is the traditional tomb of the Cushite servant of Mohammed.” (Ha’aretz, Oct. 9, 1996)

Prior to 1996, no one in the world had ever claimed that Rachel's Tomb was anything but a Jewish holy site. Ottoman historical records support this. The alleged "Cushite servant" is actually buried in Syria, according to other Arab records.

The oddity of this is that for centuries, Moslem rulers of all stripes, Turk, Mameluke or Arab, treated these as Jewish sites and protected them as Jewish sites. Only since Arafat came to power has the Jewish connection to these ancient sites of veneration been erased.

“The Western Wall is not a Jewish holy site.” The Arafat-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrama Sabri, who was the PLO’s senior religious authority for the city, said: “The Al-Buraq Wall [Western Wall] and its plaza are a Muslim religious property, and the Israeli government’s decisions do not affect it…The Al-Buraq Wall is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque. The Jews have no relation to it.” (Al Ayam, Nov. 22, 1997)

No, actually, your mosque is built on top of our Temple's ruins. Check out those Herodian walls and carbon dating....

Arafat’s Minister of Religious Affairs, Hassan Tahboob, said: “The Al-Buraq wall is Muslim property and it is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque of course.” Tahboob said that in accordance with a Muslim religious court decision in 1929, Jews “are allowed to pray towards the Wall,” but they must remain “two meters [six feet] away from the Wall” and not touch it. (Interview with the Israeli news agency IMRA, Nov. 23, 1997)

This is another excellent reason for Israeli unwillingness to give up the Old City--discriminatory laws and practices against Jewish worshipers, which were practiced under the Turks but not under the Jordanians--they simply denied all Jewish access to holy sites.

Yasser Arafat corroborated the Islamic denial of any Jewish connection to our ancient Temple: “That is not the Western Wall at all, but a Moslem shrine.” (Ma’ariv, Oct. 11, 1996)

And then there is the "Slavic conversion" lie:

“The Jews never lived in ancient Israel.” A program broadcast on Palestinian Authority Television in June 1997 featured Palestinian Arab historian Jarid al-Kidwa, who claimed that “all the events surrounding Kings Saul, David and Rehoboam occurred in Yemen, and no Hebrew remnants were found in Israel, for a very simple reason—because they were never here.” Al-Kidwa said: “Most of the Khazars [a Turkish tribe that converted to Judaism in medieval times] are the Ashkenazic Jews who arrived in Palestine. As Allah is my witness, in my blood flows more of the Children of Israel and the ancient Hebrews than in the blood of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.” [Ha’aretz (July 6, 1997)]

The Khazar fable is debunked by modern DNA testing showing that Palestinians and Jews are closely related. A little historical knowledge would help those in denial as well: there was a Khazar tribe in what is now the Ukraine. There is some apocryphal evidence that some of them converted to Judaism, but ultimately the area was overrun by the Russians who converted the populace to Christianity at sword point, and later the same area was conquered by the Ottoman Turks who made many of their conquered into Moslems. The vast bulk of the Jews of eastern Europe were migrants from Jewish communities fleeing from western Europe to escape Christian persecution.

“Jerusalem was never a Jewish city.” Someone please get the Palestinians a copy of the Ottoman censuses....from the time the Turks first started keeping census records, Jerusalem was a majority-Jewish city. Oh, you mean ancient Jerusalem? David and Solomon weren't Jewish? The Roman and Jewish records of the Jewish capital's conquest and destruction are about some "other" Jerusalem? The Byzantine tendency to build churches where Jesus was buried in Jerusalem aren't evidence we're still in the same Jerusalem? Jerusalem has always been a Jewish city, not only in terms of population but also because every religious Jew in the entire world sings of it during the blessing after meals, and bends toward it in prayer three times a day.

“Jerusalem is not a Jewish city, despite the biblical myth implanted in some minds…There is no tangible evidence of Jewish existence from the so-called ‘Temple Mount Era’…The location of the Temple Mount is in question…it might be in Jericho or somewhere else.” (Walid M. Awad, Director of Foreign Publications for the PLO’s Palestine Ministry of Information, interviewed by the IMRA news agency, Dec. 25, 1996.)

Sure. All those archeological remains, those bullae written in Hebrew and carbon-dated to before the Islamic conquest and colonization of Israel, those shards, those wall and floor tiles.....those are all figments of international archeologist's imaginations. And then there is the historical record....

Yasser Arafat, the Egyptian: “Abraham was not a Jew.” “Abraham was neither Jewish nor a Hebrew, but was simply an Iraqi. The Jews have no right to claim part of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Abraham’s resting place, as a synagogue. Rather, the whole building should be a mosque.” (Arafat, quoted in the Jerusalem Report, Dec. 26, 1996)

Abraham was the first Jew, you illiterate terrorist....the first to accept HaShem as the One and Only G-d; the first to enter into the Covenant of Circumcism; the father of Isaac and grandfather of Israel.

More Palestinian denial and delegitimization: “There never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.” “The people of Israel realize perfectly well that they have no temples or ruins near Al Aqsa Mosque. According to the Koran, the people of Israel lived somewhere to the west of Bethlehem…they were living in Bethlehem and not in Jerusalem.” (Sheikh Ismail Jamal, the PLO’s Director of the Islamic Wakf in Jericho, quoted in the Chicago Jewish Sentinel, May 18, 1995)

This is in direct contrast to Islamic teachings:

Imam Abu Abdullah al-Qurtubi, who lived from 1214 to 1273 and was one of the most authoritative medieval Quranic annotators, in his Al-Jami’ li Ahkam il-Qur’an, or Encyclopedia of Quranic Rules, explains the context (asbab) of the verses by mentioning among other sources the authentic Prophetic tradition (hadith). He wrote:

Hudhayfah Ibn al-Yaman asked the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him:

‘I travelled more than once to Jerusalem, but saw no Temple standing there. What is the reason?’

The Prophet Muhammad replied:

‘Verily Solomon son of David raised Bayt al-Maqdis [i.e., Beth ha-Mikdash, the First Temple] with gold and silver, with rubies and emeralds, and Allah caused human beings and spirits to work under his command, until the raising of the House was completed. Afterwards a Babylonian King destroyed Bayt al-Maqdis and brought its treasures to the land of Babylonia, until a King of Persia defeated him and ransomed the Children of Israel. They rebuilt Bayt al-Maqdis for the second time [the Second Temple], until it was destroyed for the second time by an army led by a Roman Emperor.’

Thus Jewish and Muslim traditional sources corroborate each other: The Temple was built by Solomon and destroyed by a Babylonian king. A Persian king later defeated the Babylonians and ransomed the Jews, permitting them to return to the Land of Israel. The Temple was rebuilt but afterward was destroyed by the Romans. This Temple stood in the area referred to as Beit haMikdash in Hebrew and Bayt al-Maqdis in Arabic. Those political and pseudo-religious Palestinian leaders like Arafat and his politicized religious appointees who claim that “there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem” are surely aware that, in order to support their political claims, they are compelled to lie and contradict the letter of the Quran and the Islamic tradition.

An earlier Quranic exegete and jurist, Imam Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari, who lived from 838 to 923, writes in his Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, or History of Prophets and Kings, that the same sacred area was the place where Jacob had his vision of the Heavenly Ladder:

When Jacob awoke he felt blissful from what he had seen in his trustful dream and vowed, for God’s sake that, if he returned to his family safely, he would build there a Temple for the Almighty. He also vowed to perpetual charity one tenth of his property for the sake of God. He poured oil on the Stone so as to recognize it and called the place Bayt El, which means ‘the House of God.’ It became the location of Jerusalem later.

In Jerusalem on a huge Rock, Solomon son of David built a beautiful Temple to expand the worship of God. Today on the base of that Temple stands the Dome of the Rock.

In 1932, during the British Mandate period, the Supreme Muslim Council of Jerusalem published a Brief Guide to Haram as-Sharif for Muslim pilgrims, written in English. “This site is one of the oldest in the world,” it says. “Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.”

My friend asked me why I was making Arafat "the heavy" with regard to Jewish delegitimization. I can answer that question easily: because historical negation of Jewish and Islamic sources concerning Jerusalem is recent and does not predate the PLO and its political propaganda. It started on Arafat's watch and under his direction,and is continued by his successors in the Waqf and the PLO. His lies undermining Jewish existence historically and religiously here are designed to sow discord, hate and war.

Most Moslems seem to be unaware that the Jewish return to our land from centuries of exile is fulfillment of Islamic prophecy as well as our own:

Sura 17:104~ "And thereafter We [God] said to the Children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd."

Such A Deal!!

2011-05-12T00:18:00.000+03:00

In the interests of getting Palestine recognized as a real rather than ersatz state, Hamas has been pimping their party platform.

On May 11, Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar said Hamas would be willing to accept a Palestinian state on 1967 borders.

Nice. Except that there are no "1967 borders." There is a 1948 Armistice Line which the Arab nations insisted for decades were NOT borders. They saw it merely as a minor delay, a sort of Do-Not-Pass-Go line on their way to the eradication of Israel and the slaughter of its dhimmi inhabitants.

However, this announcement of Hamas's gracious acceptance of a Palestinian state must be read in light of other official pronouncements.

On May 4, the same official stated that Hamas would never recognize the State of Israel. In other words, we want to be a U.N.-member state without recognizing another U.N. Member state, and while communicating our intention to wipe out said U.N.-member state....

According to Zahar, who was speaking on Al Jazeera, "Palestine is "hallowed ground" and Hamas will never recognize Israel. He added that Palestinians will not give up on their "right" to Palestine, while recognizing "the rule of Poles and Ethiopians in their land."

I'll just skip right over the obvious racism in this statement and head straight for the facts:

(1) Religious tomes, as the Left so often derides Israeli "settlers", are not a Title to real estate....and that includes the Quran;

(2) Palestinians have no "right" to Israel; those "Palestinians" born abroad and living in Lebanon, Syria, Chile, Jordan, Brazil, Canada, Europe, Kuwait, etc. are Lebanese, Syrian, Chilean, Jordanian, Brazilian, Canadian, European, Kuwaiti, etc....they are NOT "Palestinian" both because they were not born in Palestine, and because there IS no Palestine. When a state of Palestine is recognized, they have the "right" to live there -- not in Israel.

Side note: Palestinians claim that their identity as "Palestinian" is immutable and survives emigration, flight, intermarriage, overseas birth, other citizenship....once a Palestinian, always a Palestinian unto the nth generation....

So why do they have such a problem recognizing immutable Jewish rights to this homeland?

(3) 70% of Israelis are native born....they may have parents or grandparents who came from Poland or Ethiopia, but they did not....they speak Hebrew, not Polish; they have no "right" to EU or Ethiopian citizenship.

According to Mashaal, leader of Hamas, they are willing to temporarily accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. But the ultimate goal, however, would be a state of "Palestine in its entirety," meaning the eradication of Israel.

This position was reinforced by Zahar, who stated that Hamas could not recognize Israel, because doing so would "cancel the right of the next generation to liberate the land." He added that recognition of Israel could lead to Palestinian refugees losing their right of return.

"What will be the fate of the five million Palestinians in the diaspora?" Zahar asked.

Duh!

They're supposed to give up their U.N. welfare cards, become Palestinian citizens, and work on building their new state, much like Israel did with its influx of Jewish refugees driven out of Arab states.

And where did you get 5 million? Palestinians can't count. The number of Palestinian "refugees" still living is less than 300,000 -- the rest of them are descendants and welfare frauds, neither of which is a "refugee" category.

So, this is the deal Hamas is offering in its bid for statehood:

a. We'll take a state in the West Bank and Gaza;

b. It's temporary;

c. We reserve the right of the Next Generation to wage further war against the Zionist entity to "liberate" the rest of "Palestine;"

d. We refuse to recognize the state of Israel because to do so would abrogate our "right" to eradicate Israel;

e. There is no "peace" but only a "truce" (Hamas reloading) while we prepare the next wave of invasion and war.

THIS is a peace offer?

They think we'll accept this?

The Collective Idiocy of the EU, Ashton et al, thinks we'll accept this?

This is a recipe for war and genocide.

Not only "No" but "Hell, no! Never Again!"

Murdering Jewish Children Generation to Generation

2011-04-19T22:45:00.000+03:00

Sixteen year old Daniel Viflic has died....who was he? ask those exposed only to the western media.

Everyone in Israel knows who Daniel was-- he was the boy on the back of the school bus targeted by Palestinians who aimed an anti-tank missile at that school bus. He died finally of massive brain trauma from the shrapnel that lodged in his head. He fought to live for ten days.

There have been arrests in the deaths of the Fogel family. Who are the Fogels? ask those exposed only to western media. The savage butchery of a sleeping family, which would have been headline news had it happened in the U.S., was either barely mentioned or not mentioned in the western press. BBC did cover the arrests finally, ending with the politically correct and totally inane comment:

"There are almost 500,000 settlers living on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Settlements are regarded as illegal under international law although Israel disputes this."

Let's start with the obvious--what has this got to do with a horrific mass murder by two Palestinians from the neighboring village with familial ties to a terrorist organization?

Is BBC implying that three helpless children, ages 11 years, 4 years, and 3 months old, deserve to die for living in an area Arabs and Israelis dispute? Apparently so. This is "politically correct" to the moonbat Far Left BBC-types, but morally horrific -- it's like telling a rape victim she deserved to get raped because she went out to a nightclub in a cocktail dress, went dancing where it "inflamed" men's passions and her rapist then shouldn't be expected to control himself. See, it's really HER fault.

That inflammatory figure of 500,000 fails to mention that 250,000 reside in Jerusalem suburbs already conceded by the Palestinians. The majority of the rest live in former Jewish lands (Kfar Etzion, for example) or along the Green Line (an armistice line, not a "border") itself, and for which the Palestinians had previously agreed to land swaps.

And yes, Israel and Israelis dispute the "occupied Palestinian land" propaganda also; none of it is "Palestinian" since the Supreme Court disallows building on privately held land, and "state lands" are disputed because the Palestinians have consistently refused to build a state, and therefore the last "land grant" by the League of Nations by default makes that land Jewish. THAT's the law, not the highly biased politically based opining of the anti-Israel demimonde.

Palestinians deliberately shoot an anti-tank missile at a school bus. Intended consequences: mass murder of children. Palestinians deliberately break into a home, armed, and slaughter most of a family [they missed two children but stated that had they known of those two children, they would have killed them also]. One news report stated that the killers were leaving the home when they heard the baby, 3 months old, crying -- so they returned and stabbed her to death as well.

No remorse. No compassion. No heat-of-passion defense. Solely murder because the victims are Jews. History shows this has nothing to do with "Israel" or "Zionism." Current events throughout the Middle East show that Moslem Arabs routinely murder their oppressed minorities. They hate Israel because we can't be oppressed and taught to fear them.

Palestinians, from the PA apparatchiks to the common citizens, uniformly lied and denied, suggesting that the Fogels were murdered by Thai workers (DNA evidence now proves it was Palestinians affiliated with PFLP, a terrorist group) and that 16 year old Daniel was not a minor, but rather a soldier:

"...the slain Zionist was killed weeks east of Gaza City after the targeting of a bus he was traveling in by the Qassam Brigades...the dead man was a Zionist soldier who stayed in intensive care at Soroka Hospital in BeerSheva in the territories after a significant deterioration in his health." [trans. thanks to Elder of Ziyon]

In fact, Daniel wasn't supposed to be on the bus -- he hitched a ride with the bus driver, a family friend, so he could go visit his grandparents who lived on the route.

We aren't surprised by the Palestinians....Jews in Israel remember the pogroms of the 1920s and 1930s by Arabs. Jewish families all over Mandatory Palestine were attacked and slaughtered in their homes. The butchery was savage, slow and torturous. This was before the State of Israel existed; before the Six Day War and "occupation" of the West Bank; these were long-established religious communities with religious, non-Zionist Jewish households.

Arab hate has nothing to do with Zionism, or Israel, or "occupation" or "settlements" -- it has existed in this land since Arab invaders moved in and oppressed Christian and Jewish natives in the name of Arab and Moslem supremacy. And the mewling moon-bats of the Left, willfully ignorant of history, are simply useful idiots for Palestinian propagandizing.

Israel remembers these deaths, and all of our deaths. Peace is impossible with Arab-Islamic supremacist murderers whose raison d'etre is killing Jews.

The Un-Ceasefire Up-date

2011-04-16T23:51:00.000+03:00

On April 10th, following at least three open and various back-channel pleas by Hamas for a cease-fire, Israel finally agreed to stop responding to Palestinian rocket, mortar and missile fire from Gaza.

The Usual Suspects all breathed a sigh of international relief and proclaimed a "cease fire."

Thirteen rockets and missiles were fired into Israel anyway. Hamas always has to have the last word.

Then on Wednesday, April 13th, another round of missiles were fired at local farming villages.

Then on Friday, April 15th, Grad missiles were fired into Ashdod, a major city on the Israeli coast and the biggest port in Israel.

It is, coincidentally, where I go with my family in warm weather because it has cleaner and less crowded beaches than Tel Aviv...and parking!

Forecast: clear and sunny with a chance of drizzling missiles later in the day.

WHAT "cease-fire?" It was just the Palestinians, reloading.

Chametz Cleaning

2011-04-16T23:33:00.000+03:00

I love Passover. I love the food, the songs, the Haggadah, the friends, the whole celebration!

I hate cleaning for Passover.

There are all levels of cleaning chametz out of the home before Pesach. Even my most secular friends here in Israel make their homes free of chametz which is any leavened food, forbidden to Jews during the Passover week.

Note to Jew-haters: blood is forbidden year round, so you can quit spreading that rumor any time....

What is chametz? It's bread, obviously, and not so obviously it is any combination of water and grain that ferments. Specifically, it is any of the five grains -- wheat, spelt, barley, oats, and rye -- which has come into contact with water for more than 18 minutes. It includes such basic food stuffs as breakfast cereal, crackers, cookies, cakes and.....beer!

The Husband is already feeling withdrawal pangs.

Chabad points out, correctly, that since chametz can be present in the ingredients of prepared food items, one should buy only "kosher-for-Pesach" labeled food items.

Okay, I see the point in this, and when we lived in a Chabad community, we followed that as closely as practicable....if there is an upside/downside to living in Israel, you find that Chabad is correct if one is a Lubavitcher, but that there are other, more lenient interpretations also.

I don't keep bread and cookies and beer in my house during Pesach.

Generally, anything already opened and used in the kitchen and dining room is also chametzdik, to be on the safe side, so the open container of cottage cheese which had a knife in it that previously had contact with crackers (to spread the cottage cheese) is something that goes. Unopened cottage cheese stays.

OTOH, I see no reason to get rid of my sealed yoghurts. The label says "kosher" but not "kosher-for-Pesach"....so I looked at the ingredients and failed to find anything that remotely suggested chametz in the ingredients. The yoghurt stays.

I do NOT throw out all the spices in my cupboard which have been opened and used. But I put them away in the "chametzdik" cupboard and sell them for the week, and buy new unopened spices for that one week. Heck, I always need extra turmeric, cinnamon, and curry anyway...

Ditto for the dried fruit. Unopened packages are okay for Pesach, and the opened ones get put away in the "chametz" drawer.

People's practices vary depending on their degree of religious observance and also on the time available. Pesach cleaning was never intended to be a prodigious spring-cleaning, although I know a lot of women who treat it as a major household overhaul. Even rabbis caution against this -- Pesach cleaning is to rid the house of chametz. Period.

Why the fixation on what seems to be such an ancient ritualistic rule?

First, G-d commanded it. If you don't believe that, then I can't help you.

Second, any Jewish community, no matter what its level of stringency, or not, loves its customs that have come down from antiquity in our annual celebration of the Festival of Freedom.

Third, there is a spiritual aspect to ridding one's home of chametz, which is, sadly, often overlooked or lost in the hectic rush. As one rids the home of leavening, one should be ridding one's soul of the schmutzi stuff we've accumulated over the year. It's time to let go of ego, let go of anger, let go of pettiness, let go of injured feelings, false pride, revenge fantasies, despair and hurt.

If you clean your house but don't try to clean your soul, you're sort of missing the point, apart from "First" noted above.

The importance of this commandment regarding ridding ourselves of chametz is discerned in the way it is applied: first, it is the only time Jews are commanded to do without something communally for a week; and second, it is the only food that cannot be nullified by the 1/60 admixture rule during this week.

Now, there is chametz cleaning and then there is OCD chametz cleaning. My rebbetzin tells tales of people who actually put cheesecloth in the water pipe between the street main and the pipe into the house to prevent chametz from entering the home. Sorry, but this is just too over-the-top for me...when was the last time you turned on your faucets and saw bread crumbs pour out, after all?

We do what I think is pretty basic: eat all the chametz items we can before Pesach.

Clean every room that has had food in it. This is every room except the bathrooms and our bedroom. The Boy eats at his desk in front of his computer, the Husband and I both eat at our computer desk, and of course there is the living room/dining room area...

Prodigious laundry stuff. Wash sheets, wash tablecloths, wash clothes, wash dishtowels, etc.

We clean for chametz. Way too many people do "Spring Cleaning"...as much as I love the fact that my husband cleaned all the windows in the house, I don't remember ever eating on the windows.....however, I'm not complaining since he cleaned the refrigerator for me tonight (a job I loathe, and which he does better and faster than I do...).

In addition to the 'fridge, we also clean the cupboards, stove, the burners, kasher the sink and line it, and boil the granite countertops. I specifically got granite countertops so I wouldn't have to line them. And also scrub the backsplashes...I'm even known to take toothpicks to pick the schmutz out of the cracks....

Now if I could take those toothpicks to grimy parts of my neshamah as well....

Lying To Their People: School Bus? What School Bus?

2011-04-12T23:36:00.001+03:00

People who live outside of Israel, Jewish and not, ask all the time, "Why can't you all just get along?" or words to that effect. Sometimes they simply short cut straight to "You (meaning Israel) need to do something to make peace." In diplomatese, it is frequently pronounced as "Israel needs to take bold steps to advance the peace process."

You'll notice that almost no one asks what the Palestinians need to do to "make peace."

Peace is like dancing -- it takes two.

One does not make peace with a governing body which educates its people to slaughter you. The United States did not run after al Qaeda following 9/11, crying "peace, peace!" but instead bombed Afghanistan into the Stone Age. Speaking of disproportional force....

The British did not rush to the conference table, with warm invitations to the IRA to join them for tea after the Irish "freedom fighters" bombed London. Instead, they invaded Ulster, imposed martial law, arrested people without cause, detained and tortured anyone they felt like, and threw up an Apartheid Wall to separate Catholic citizens of the same country from the Protestant pro-British milieu.

Yet these world powers, among others, have been strangely silent over the barrage of missiles and rockets hurled by the Palestinians at Israeli civilians these last couple of weeks.

And the icing on the cake came from the Palestinian Authority, who told its population that the perfidious Jews are making a big deal out of nothing in order to attack the righteous Palestinian people [insert sarcasm here]:

"Israel is a country that was founded on aggression and colonialism, and it lives on the continuation of bloodshed, war and violence. The racist Israeli apartheid state is incapable of turning to peace and coexistence between nations... This aggression is currently focused on Gaza, under the pretext of a shell being fired at an Israeli bus. The [school] bus wasn't that badly damaged, but Israel wants to use the attack on the bus as an excuse for its latest war crime against our people."

"Pretext?" Hardly.

A Palestinian fires an anti-tank missile, which has to be sighted on its target, which is a clearly labeled school bus which had just discharged a group of students, and fires it -- this is a deliberate targeting of children, and beyond being criminal, is morally indefensible.

And the PA knows it -- which is why this particular rant omitted any mention that it was a school bus or any mention of the child critically wounded in the attack.

It's hard for Palestinian officials to sputter indignantly at the camera, while seeking the moral high ground, about "Palestinian schools being attacked [because rockets were launched from them]" when you yourself are targeting Israeli school kids in school buses.

This same pronouncement was also wholly devoid of any mention of Palestinian rocket and missile attacks on civilian towns and cities, which drove over one million Israelis into bomb shelters for the better part of a week. Since the week-long barrage was what the Israeli military was responding to before the attack on the school bus, the omission of this critical fact is an enormous lie of omission.

Carpet bombing and then re-occupying all of the Gaza Strip would be an appropriate response, a la Coalition Forces in Iraq, or the British invasion of Ulster. After all, if it's permissible for the Great World Powers to bomb indiscriminately and occupy countries tens of thousands of miles from them, I'm sure they'd understand our taking similar steps. Right.

But the Israeli government, unlike the Palestinians and the neighboring war-mongers-in-chief, isn't looking for a war.

We may end up with one. Judging by the steady build up of weaponry by Hezbollah and Hamas, its only a matter of time.

But it is moments like this that the world press needs to cover, instead of ignore: one cannot make peace with a leadership which consistently lies to its own people about the state of the conflict, playing the "victim card" when they themselves are historically the aggressors. This creates a scenario where, because of generations of lies, the leadership cannot compromise, cannot make peace, and cannot educate its people to compromise in favor of peace.

This is why we can't make peace with the Palestinians. There really is no peace partner on the Palestinian side. There is no real desire for peace, but simply a desire to negotiate or war for the greater advantage. The Palestinians have been taught nothing by their corrupt leadership but hatred of the "other," to extol murder, to glorify war, and to seek revenge for an invented victimhood. Peace could be at hand, but the Palestinian mafia governing its people rejects it every time for maximalist demands and strident calls for killing Jews and destroying Israel.

About That Cease-Fire

2011-04-10T22:28:00.000+03:00

I love listening to France 24 and BBC. They are both so pro-Palestinian that it hurts for them to include facts that the entire blogosphere knows. You can almost see Annette Young wincing at the bad-for-Palestinian facts.

For example:

France 24: "Twenty Palestinian men have been killed, as well as a child." No mention that the twenty Palestinian men were Hamas terrorists engaged in firing weapons into Israel. They leave out that pertinent fact so that it sounds like 20 guys on their way home from work got offed.

BBC: Mentions as an afterthought to its portrayal of Palestinians being killed that, oh, by the way, this Israeli response was in retaliation for a barrage of missile and rocket attacks on Israel's civilians -- while playing video of the school bus hit by a Hamas anti-tank projectile, and totally omitting the fact that the kid on the bus is at death's door.

Hamas has been talking since April 8th about a cease-fire. Not unsurprisingly, the France 24 correspondent in the field was down south, and told Anettele that Israelis thought any cease-fire was probably pretty fragile, since during his interview he could see a Grad missile launched towards Ashkelon, a major Israeli city.

Hamas is trying their past tactics: fire missiles, look like "resistance fighters;" do as much damage to Israel as possible, and then shout "Cease-fire!" before the our jets get off the tarmac.

Not buying, guys.

Targeting our school bus took us to a whole new level...which I'm sure you noticed as we are now bombing YOU instead of tunnels.

In the interests of showing Hamas's true intentions regarding the mythical cease-fire, I give you today's Qassam Count:

3:19pm: A Qassam rocket was fired from the northern Gaza Strip and exploded in the southern Ashkelon.

2:37pm: Two mortar shells fired from northern Gaza landed in the Eshkol Region.

1:21pm: A Qassam rocket fired from northern Gaza Strip landed in the Eshkol Region.

12:53pm: Two rockets fired from northen Gaza landed in southern Israel.

10:21am: Qassam rocket was fired from the northern Gaza Strip and exploded in the southern Ashkelon, Israel.

6:52am: 3 mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip hit western Negev in Israel.

WHAT cease-fire?

The Arab League Wants A "No Fly Zone"

2011-04-10T21:52:00.001+03:00

The Arab League wants a "no-fly-zone"imposed over Gaza to protect the Palestinian civilian population from Israeli air raids.

Of course, if Hamas were not firing barrages of missiles, rockets and mortars into Israel from Gaza on a daily and nightly basis, there wouldn't be any Israeli retaliation that endangers the allegedly innocent Palestinian civilian population. I say "allegedly" because that is the population that elected Hamas, and seems to cheer, dance in the streets and hand out candy every time a terrorist kills a Jew, regardless of how young.

However, let's assume that as civilians they are non-combatants and hence should be protected.

Hamas could protect their civilian population by firing its varied arsenal of weapons from the open spaces away from densely crowded city centers. Hamas chieftains could hide in bunkers someplace other than below their major hospital, full of civilian patients. Hamas could stock their ammo dumps in places other than mosques and civilian homes. Hamas could stop firing Kassams from schools. Hamasnikim combatants could wear uniforms instead of civilian dress.

Israel does its best to take out the terror chiefs and not the general population, however, collateral damage is a fact of war, and when cars are blown apart by a missile in a targeted killing, the intent is not to wound the civilian 20 feet away, but frankly, there is no way to protect against the hazards of shrapnel. Note please, that unlike Hamas, Israel is targeting military targets instead of school buses.

Even Goldstone finally got around to recognizing that there is a difference between deliberately targeting civilians and the unfortunate hazards of shrapnel in crowded areas.

So, in sum, Hamas has a couple of options:

1. Stop firing weapons into Israel proper and stop targeting civilian locales; and/or,

2. Use non-civilian venues for war purposes; and/or

3. Hamas could even wear uniforms instead of civvies in order to make it clear who is the fighter and who is the civilian, but apparently identifying one's self as a "shaheed" is too risky for always-civilian-clad terror squads.

Hamas has declined to take any steps to protect its civilian population and all evidence points to their fighters deliberate embedding in civilian locales and populations in order to use those civilian as human shields.

And this just in: any cease-fire agreement, according to Hamas, specifically means that Israel cannot target terrorist cells preparing to launch rocket attacks on Israelis. In other words, we have to give them a "free shot" before we can fire back....News For Hamas: this is NOT a basketball game. You "prepare to launch" and you're fair game.

So why is the Arab League in a lather?

Well, let's start with the obvious.

The Arab League is not calling for a "no-fly-zone" over Syria, which is committing daily massacres of unarmed Arab civilians. The Arab League is not calling for a no-fly-zone over eastern Turkey, where fellow Moslems, the Kurds, are strafed and shot on a routine basis by Turkey's air force and army. The Arab League did not convene a special meeting to call for a "no-fly-zone" over Yemen last year when Saudi forces invaded it in order to stamp out terrorist training camps, whose denizens had killed a Saudi police officer.

So, why is the Arab League treating Israel's justifiable response to its civilians being shot at as some sort of atrocity that needs stopping?

Because it's Israel, that upstart Dhimmi state that under Sharia law has no right to exist, and its population should be exterminated or at least brutalized into knowing their places as second class untermenschen of the Moslem Arab world hierarchy.

It's okay with the Arab League if Moslems slaughter other Moslems, as in Turkey (or Kurdistan, where the killing fields are); or if Arabs slaughter other Arabs, as in Syria and Lebanon and Yemen and Darfur and South Sudan and Somalia and....well, you get the idea.

But it's NOT okay for anyone else to defeat and kill genocidal Arabs who are killing non-Arab civilians, because THAT is an affront to "Arab honor" and must be prevented--preferably by NATO so the Arab world doesn't have to run any risks.

It doesn't worry Israelis. First, because we're sure the sane world (NATO powers, not the U.N.) will see this ploy for what it is; and secondly, so what? Even if the world falls for this comedy, Israel has a pretty fabulous track record of shooting down Russian and British pilots. Come one, come all -- our Air Force is demonstrably better than your Air Force.

The Upside of Unemployment

2011-03-31T16:09:00.000+02:00

I'm "laid off." Actually, my entire office of approximately 30 attorneys was laid off. I am not alone.

We all worked for a U.S.-based outsourcing firm, and outsourcing is very dependent on the client's desires. Our client desired to dispense with our services after two and a half years. It was a good, and financially rewarding, period.

I learned a lot. I learned I could manage a team of attorneys, and I gather from their feedback I did all right in their book and in upper management's book as well. I learned to balance work and family, which at first had seemed almost impossible. I learned that if you sit all day in front of a computer and never get to the gym, you get fat. (My personal "duh!" moment.)

It gave us a stepping stone into the Israeli job market, and now the time has come to move on.

The upside of unemployment is that I have more time. Not more time simply to blog, which I came back to with alacrity, but simply MORE time. I've taken the dogs on long walks with my husband; I've looked into retraining and found a program I like; I've applied to Misrad HaKlitah for a scholarship for that program; I've re-upped into my old ulpan. I have time to work on editing my husband's novel, and finally have time to answer some email letters that are long overdue.

It's all good, but the shock of the project closure took a few days to wear off.

First, there is a sense of relief -- I do NOT have to meet my production quota today!!! I could feel my blood pressure and stress level drop.

Then there is panic-busy -- email everyone and ask "Now what?!" Lots of signing up for LinkdIn and NBN and other job-networking sites.

This is followed by rumor-mongering -- why this happened, what will happen, what will become of us, how does one apply for unemployment, when is pitzuim (severance) paid, and all the horror stories that everyone has heard from "someone" who heard the horror story from someone else.

Then there is the constructive period -- one gets a firm grip on the panic and rumor, sets them aside, and maps out a Plan and starts to execute it.

I think this is what all those Life Coaches and therapists and empowerment types call "taking charge of your life."

Not that I'm really "taking charge" of my life--my life, like everyone's, is in G-d's hands, and I just do the best I can to stay organized while living it. Hopefully, He approves.

Take A Pen For Freedom and Free Speech

2011-03-30T07:27:00.000+02:00

I don't know Mohammed Radwan. I DO know Mohamed, The Traveler Within, and read him regularly.

I also know that whatever fears Israelis harbor over the unrest amongst our neighbors, a free press is vital to strengthening democratic institutions and watch-dogging any government.

So, my only hesitation in spreading the word of Mohammed Radwan's incarceration by the the Chinless One's despotic thugs is fear that a plug for his freedom by an Israeli blogger may be counter-productive.

Mr. Radwan, who traveled to Syria to cover the uprisings against that tyranny, was arrested for being an Israeli spy.

If it weren't so serious, I'd laugh. I doubt he speaks a word of Hebrew. He's an Egyptian, ferhevvinsake, a people who range from coolly hostile to Israel to downright warmongering, depending on where they sit on the political spectrum.

Of course, the Syrian regime has castigated its own citizens and social networkers for all being Israeli spies, and claims that all the tweets favoring the downfall of this benighted dictatorship originated in Israel.

I doubt any Israeli objection made to Syria would even be heard -- but on the other hand, we are in a unique position to protest his incarceration to the United States Congress and the British Parliament.

So--start your engines, Google your representatives, and WRITE!!!

This will lead you to your representative: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml, as will this: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/.

Register your anger at the baseless incarceration of a journalist who was in Syria to cover the news. Do it quickly--as Mohamed pointed out, he is probably being tortured in the course of his questioning, so please raise some Hell on behalf of a man whose life is a testament to freedom of expression.

Obama Makes A Speech

2011-03-29T10:43:00.001+02:00

Even Associated Press took the President of the United States to task for his platitudinous rhetoric.

Most laughable moment was, "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."

Reeeaaallly? [insert sarcasm here]. This is the man who ran on an anti-war platform and now takes the US to war in Libya (of all places) without Congressional advice or consent.

Mass violence against civilians has been epidemic in the world without recent U.S. intervention.

So why Libya?

Obama and his supporter's castigated Bush for his foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even Clinton was criticized heavily for committing the U.S. to action in Yugoslavia, mass graves and genocide notwithstanding. [I personally agree with our intervention in Serbia's killing fields, but the point is that many of Clinton's own supporters are against any military action overseas.] Bush Senior was castigated for intervention in Somalia, which had U.N. approval, and involved a multi-nation task force bent on providing humanitarian aid (contrary to Democrats shrill accusations that it was just for "oil" which if it exists at all in Somalia, is totally undeveloped).

So why Libya? And why not take it to Congress for approval, as the Constitution requires?

Obama redux: "I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.""

So what are you doing about Syria, where the government is slaughtering civilians in the streets?

And where was your voice when the Bajlis militia gunned down protesters in Iran? Why did you not share the outrage of millions over the death of Neda, a woman deliberately targeted and shot to death while standing on the street and simply watching a demonstration demanding a recount of a fraudulent election.

And how do you excuse your silence over Darfur, where human rights organizations have amply documented the slaughters, rapes, kidnappings, maimings of Black Sudanese by their Arab overlord's well-armed gangs?

Do you have anything to say about intervening in North Korea, a repressive regime which starves its citizens and kills dissenters?

Or Myanmar (Burma), which is equally repressive?

Or how about the current and on-going attack-helicopter sorties against Kurdish villages in Turkey and across the border into Iraq by the Turkish military. Civilians are butchered by your NATO ally to oppress an indigenous people who aren't seeking independence or civil war, but who are asking for autonomy: the right for their children to learn the Kurdish language, keep Kurdish festivals, keep Kurdish names and not have to be "Turkicized" in order to be considered citizens of the country they live in. [A right, oddly enough, given Turkey's opprobrium towards Israel, granted to Arab Israelis, who are permitted to run their schools in Arabic.]

And what about the Ivory Coast, where the will of the electorate in the first free election in decades has been thwarted by the dictator who will not leave, Laurent Gbagbo. U.N. observers have reportedly documented his forces using heavy weapons against his own civilian population. Press reports claim there are confirmed reports of more than 460 killings of supporters of the legitimately elected leader, Alassane Ouattara.

Why is Ggabo more legitimate than Gadaffi? Why is Kim Il Jung more legitmate than Gaddafi? Or Erdogan, Turkey's Kurd-killing leader?

Tell the world what distinguishes this military intervention from all other places crying out for protection from brutal, murderous leaders who fire on their own populations, such as Iran. Why is Libya a legitimate target, and Iran, which is trying to build nuclear weapons with which to terrorize and control the Middle East, is not?

Tell me it isn't just oil. No one can be that stupid.

Main Stream Media Self-Censorship In Gaza

2011-03-28T21:18:00.001+02:00

If Jews broke up a political demonstration, beat the reporters and stringers for major news agencies, stabbed them, tortured them, beat them, confiscated their equipment and notes, then took the injured to a hospital and falsified the victims' injuries as "traffic-accident related," the world media would go crazy and descend on Israel in angry droves.

Op-eds would scream from every media outlet about Israeli brutality, lack of freedom of expression, the sanctity of the Fourth Estate. BBC would run special segments interviewing the victims, especially since most of them are women, and talk about Israeli misogyny and the trauma suffered by these hard working, earnest seekers of truth.

However, this didn't happen in Israel. It happened in Gaza, also known as Hamastan to those who understand that its political and military muscle comes from Iran, which uses Gaza as a forward military base.

Khaled Abu Toameh, a fluent Arabic speaker and correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, picked up the following story which has been totally ignored by the western mainstream media whores.

Pro-unity rallies took place in different parts of the Gaza strip where tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered to protest the on-going split between Fatah and Hamas. The rallies were organized by various youth groups and political factions, and called upon the divided leadership of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to put aside their differences and form a united government for the sake of Palestinian national aspirations.

Inspired by the aocial-media-assisted revolts in other countries, Palestinians demanded an end to the dispute between the two governmental entities of the West Bank and Gaza.

These demonstrations were covered by reporters, including some from Reuters and CNN. Following the rallies, women reporters revealed that they were beaten and tortured by Hamas security forces in the Gaza strip while they tried to cover the pro-unity rallies.

Some were beaten; one was stabbed by a Hamas security official; many had laptops and computers confiscated; some were forced to sign statements that they would not cover such events in the future. The female reporter who was stabbed was accompanied to the hospital by Hamas police officers who forced the medical team to admit her under a different name and to list her as a victim of a traffic accident.

Other female journalists were beaten with clubs, hit over the head with a chair, and one was knocked unconscious by the severity of the blows. Hamas forces also set fire to the tent being used by the journalists while covering the demonstrations.

Major news outlets CNN and Reuters were raided by Hamas security personnel who confiscated equipment and documents.

So.....what did CNN have to say about this outrage? What depth of coverage did Reuters devote to these incidents?

None. Both agencies are conspicuous by their cowardly silence.

I went to both websites today, which is certainly enough time to upload coverage of events which happened last week.

I searched by using the terms "Hamas" and "CNN" and "Reuters" -- and found nothing. I searched again under "demonstrations" and "journalists." Nothing about these vicious attacks at all.

When the forces of repression, aggression, misogyny, and hate get a free pass from a cowardly, quaking press corps, which has expediently surrendered journalistic ethics in order to buy Hamas protection, and which peddles Hamas propaganda as "fact," we have entered a new age of evil, aided and abetted by the very "free" press that is supposed to be a watchdog of civil liberties.

Targeting Our Children

2011-03-28T09:48:00.000+02:00

I mentioned last week on Facebook and in emails to friends that the timing of this bus-stop bomb was not serendipitous: children are on their way home from school, as are working mothers with young children, around the time our blood-thirsty cousins detonated their shrapnel-filled mass murder device. Maximum death and carnage was the plan, and killing young mothers and children was even better.

The names and ages of some of the victims most in need of tehillim, courtesy of Jameel at the Muqata:

Who are the wounded from the Jerusalem Bomb Attack this past Wednesday?

Odelia Nechama bat Michal who is in 9th grade, and was severely injured in her head, on her way home from Ulpana. She suffered serious head injuries and is in intensive care. Her life is still in danger.

Leah Bracha bat Shoshana Batya, a 19-year old seminary student from the US. She suffered burns to her legs and arms as well as serious shock.

David ben Sara (David Amoyal), owner of the snack stand next to the bus stop. He told everyone to run away and then called the police, and was ont he p hone with them when the bomb exploded. He suffered injuries to his legs and feet and lower body. He is in moderate condition.

Ad Shapira, an 18-year old just about to complete high school. She suffered light orthopedic injuries and is in good condition in hospital.

Shaindel bat Raizel, another seminary (post high school) girl learning in Israel this year was operated on last night from the Jerusalem bombing yesterday.

Shilo ben Zehava Ofra, a 15-year old, who suffered burns and fractures to his legs and lower abdomen. He is sedated in intensive care.

Daniel Yehuda ben Rachel Nurit, a 13-year old, who suffered lacerations and shrapnel injuries to his lower extremities, and is likely to be released from the hospital before Shabbat.

Elchanan Ovadia ben Alona, a 14-year old, who suffered serious injuries to his feet. One ankle and three of his toes were crushed. He has had one operation and will require more surgery. He will likely be in the hospital at least 2-3 weeks.

Netanel ben Shlomit, an 18-year old who works as a security guard at the bus station. He was injured in teh abdomen and had surgery. He is now recuperating in the hospital.

Yisrael ben Dina, 8th grader from Netivot.

Natan Daniel ben Shulamit is 17 years old. He is the oldest of five children in his family and was on his way to yeshiva in Migdal HaEmek yesterday when he was seriously injured in the bombing in Jerusalem. He suffered massive internal injuries and has had a number of internal organs removed.

And I'm just waiting for Goldstone or the United Nations Human Rights Commission to declare this a war crime....but I'm not holding my breath. In a world that gives a pass to Palestinian incitement to mass murder of Jews and open warfare against Israel, there are no moral boundaries left.

O Say Can You See.......?

2011-03-27T22:57:00.003+02:00

Most Yanks know the rest of the song that goes with this intro--it's the American national anthem, commemorating the sighting of the young American flag flying over Baltimore as the city is pounded by British invasion forces. The poem, later set to music, extolled the besieged for never lowering that flag in surrender.

Israel owes a debt of thanks to one of our Arab citizens for also refusing to lower the Israeli flag when threatened.

The story, found on YNet News, is that last Wednesday, the Iranian embassy in Prague organized an event at a well-known hotel in the Czech capital. Prior to the event, a senior embassy official was shocked to see an Israeli flag flying high at the head of a line of flags situated near the entrance to the hotel.

The diplomat spoke to the hotel manager and demanded that the Israeli flag be taken down, but the manager, an Arab-Israeli from Nazareth, rejected the request.

"The (Israeli) flag will remain at the front of the hotel always," the manager told the Iranian official. "If you don’t like it, you are welcome to hold the event at another hotel."

Ynet News reported that the angry Iranian diplomat had no choice but to accept the hotel's position, and the event was held as scheduled.

Kol ha k'vod, chaver! Shukran from the bottom of this citizen's heart!

[and I'd love to know which hotel you manage so I can stay there!]

The Jerusalem Marathon

2011-03-25T13:29:00.002+02:00

Today was the Jerusalem Marathon.

What a mess!

I used to run in my salad days. Love those endorphins!! But because of that youthful connection, I have tremendous respect for marathon (and half-marathon, and 10K runners) who braved the hilly streets and vales of Jerusalem, in the teeth of absolutely icy weather this morning.

Jerusalem is hard to explain to people, geographically as well as politically. It is built around the Old City, founded as the Jewish capital by King David 3000 years ago, and inhabited overwhelmingly by Jews during the Ottoman period and up to the time of the Jordanian ethnic cleansing of 1948.

The Old City sits on several plateaus and hills, and traverses ancient wadis. At it's greatest extent in King Herod's time, the Old City walls stretched all the way to the Russian Compound to the northwest and down to the City of David south of the southern walls today.

There is a drop off to the Vale of Kidron to the east, where the land slopes steeply up towards another ridge. The Kidron brook is no more, and the once well-watered vale is now much disputed outside-the-walls housing.

From a geographer's point of view, the city is really a bowl, with higher ridges rising all around it. The southernmost ridges are the hills of Gilo, which tower over southern Jerusalem and used to be the site of Arab artillery forces who used those heights to pummel the Jewish neighborhoods below them. To the north, the rise is not so precipitous, but there is a gradual rise towards French Hill and Mount Scopus, north of the Old City. There is a dizzying drop into the valley between the modern city's edge at Romema and the unspoiled valley below it, which in turn rises to the Ramot neighborhoods north of the city proper. The stepping stones of Ramot lead up to the plain on which Kever Shmuel sits, the site of the prophet's grave which overlooks Jerusalem to the southeast. To the east, the modern city ends at the escarpment which drops down into Ein Kerem, probably the most picturesque place in Jerusalem.

The point of this description is to point out that this is not some flat-out surface over which runners can jog along without breaking a sweat. We have serious hills. Maybe only San Francisco and Vancouver B.C. could out-do us for hilliness.

So, kol hak'vod to all the runners who ran this morning!

And may our mayor, Nir Barkat, who I truly admire, have the common sense NOT to close every major road in Jerusalem on the Erev Shabbat again!

Run this race, yes! But run it on a weekday, or on a holiday, or make the day itself a city holiday, whatever!! But DO NOT close the roads. This is my day, many working folks' day, to shop for groceries. Major shopping during the week is often not practical, especially if you have chuggim for children, work late, or have other pressing time commitments which make shopping something done on the "weekend." Getting to Rami Levi, a grocery store usually 5 minutes from me, was a nightmare.

First, we went the wrong way, thinking that somewhere along Derech Hebron there must be some left turn allowed. Wrong!

We got all the way to Tzomet HaBankim and gave up, turning up Ein Gedi and then U-turning back down to Derech Hebron, only to move like molasses to the Gilo turn off in the hopes that we could enter Talpiot from Gilo.

Probably we could have--but we took a short cut. We turned down into Tantur, an Arab suburb of Beit Safafa, and followed a rural road that ran from Tantur to the center of Beit Safafa, where we wended our way carefully through the narrows of the old city by the mosque and then through Beit Safafa into Talpiot.

[Noto bene: this is why people who blithely recommend 'dividing Jerusalem' along the 1948 lines are idiots. There are no lines on the ground, and these neighborhoods by now all blend together like a melting jig-saw puzzle.]

So, we got to shop for the week and for Shabbat, ran to Canyon Malcha for challah and deserts, picked up some pre-made salads (because we have company for Shabbat and want to put out enough to please them and honor Shabbat), and then crawled home through traffic, "crawled" being the operative word.

Everywhere we drove, at a snail's pace, people rolled down their windows and called out. "Is there a left turn down farther?" [No] "Does the road open up ahead?" [No--what you see is what you get.] "How long have you been driving southbound?" [It took us 30 minutes to get from Tzomet haBankim to Gilo, ok?]. And so on...

But for an unruly rude people who hate standing in line, Jerusalemites for the most part took it in stride, with some complaining, but with a shrug of the shoulders, and "ma la'asot?"

Note to the mayor, with all due respect: How about, "Next Year NOT In Jerusalem?"

A Death in Jerusalem

2011-03-24T22:46:00.002+02:00

Mary Jean Gardner died yesterday on an express bus in the heart of Jerusalem.

She was a victim of a terror attack.

I know nothing about her, sadly, other than she was close to my age; a student at Hebrew University, and was taking the 74 bus through Jerusalem to a destination I don't know.

I don't know who she was, what she loved, why she came here, what she thought of Jerusalem, what mark she wished to make on the world, what good she hoped to accomplish before leaving it.

I don't know what her family life is like: did she leave children, a husband, a lover? Who mourns her?

This came from Tel Aviv's Liberal Rag: "A Hebrew University spokesman told Haaretz that the woman was born and raised in Kenya and lived in Togo before she came to Israel, where she lived in Mevasseret Zion. She was a student at the Home for Bible Translators and Scholars and took courses in Biblical Hebrew and historical geography at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and lived in the dormitories."

Sadly, the world lost a soul who appeared to be inquisitive, bright, diligent, curious, and committed to what interested her. Who knows what contributions she might have made had she not crossed paths with terrorists.

Her death has changed one thing however.....my household watches the British news channels. Like Egypt and Qatar, the British media tends to pretend Israel isn't on the map, except when condemning us [if you watch BBC, you'll see that even the weather report ignores Israel, giving weather for Amman, Beirut, Cairo, et al but never mentioning Tel Aviv].

Israel has been under bombardment for the last couple of weeks. The bombing of the bus station was just another variation of the drumbeat of hate and warmongering taking place in Palestinian echelons.

Today there were 12 or more rocket and mortar attacks on central and southern Israel from Gaza: Ashdod, Gedera, Yavne, Sderot and the Eshkol region.

Yesterday Grad missiles were launched against Beersheva, southern Israel's largest city, as well as rockets launched at Ashkelon.

This is what the last month has looked like (courtesy of QassamCount):

12 missile attacks on Israeli cities today, the latest at around 4:30 pm.

March 24 3:35pm: Gaza rocket fired at Eshkol Region; Grad missile found in Israeli city of Ashdod;

March 24 2:50pm: Rocket from Gaza fired towards Eshkol Region;

#March 24 12:18pm: Gaza fires a Qassam rocket which explodes in Negev region;

March 24 11:55am: Another Gaza rocket hits Negev region;

March 24 9:50am: Qassam rocket from Gaza hits south of Israeli port city of Ashkelon;

March 24 8:15am: Qassam rocket from Gaza hits Negev region overnight;

March 23 6:06pm: Mortar shell barrage from Gaza hits southern Israel;

March 23 10:45am: Missile from Gaza explodes in Beersheba;

March 23 10:13am: 7 Mortar shells hit Eshkol Region (a rural area of farms and small towns);

March 23 9:59am: Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Beersheba missile attack;

March 23 7:21am: Hamas launches a Grad missile which explodes in Beersheba, one injured;

March 23 3:27am: Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for a rocket attack on the Israeli city of Ashdod;

March 23 1:43am: 2 Grad missiles fired at Israel;

March 22 10:16pm: Qassam rocket from Gaza explodes south of Ashkelon; oops, missed again;

March 22 7:25pm: Mortar shell hits open space near southern kibbutz--but for Hamas's bad aim and our bomb shelters and warning systems, there would be many more dead Israelis.

March 22 6:49pm: Qassam rocket from Gaza explodes in the Israeli city of Ashkelon;

March 22 5:16pm: 4 Rockets fired from Gaza hit the Negev;

March 22 10:01am: Qassam dud found in Negev; nobody's perfect, but don't worry, Hamas haas entire mosques full of more rockets.

March 22 8:09am: Qassam rocket fired from Gaza hits western Negev;

March 21 8:39pm: 2 Qassam rockets fired from Gaza explode in the Israeli city of Ashkelon;

March 20 3:29pm: 2 mortar shells fired towards Israel from northern Gaza;

March 19 12:48pm: Hamas military wing claims responsibility for mortar fire into civilian neighborhoods which injured two, thus turning themselves into Prime Target Number One of the Israeli military;

March 19 5:24pm: 6 mortars fired at Israel from Gaza;

March 19 11:35am: Israel to file UN complaint over Gaza mortar attack which shelled civilian neighborhoods, injuring two. [Anticipated UN response: tsk, tsk!]

March 19 10:11am: 49 mortar shells fired from Gaza at western Negev landing in and among civilian homes; 2 injured;

March 18 2:56pm: 4 mortar shells explode in Negev;

March 12 5:04pm: Qassam hits Negev;

March 10 7:14am: Rocket hits Negev;

March 10 10:34pm: Qassam lands in Eshkol Region;

March 5 12:00pm: 2 Qassam rockets fired into Israel overnight;

Feb 27 7:36pm: Mortar shell fired from Gaza explodes in Palestinian territory [where the dead will be counted as "Israeli war crimes];

Feb 27 7:07am: Qassam rocket hits Eshkol Region near Gaza;

Well, you get the idea. I will spare you the recitation of February and January. Notably, the only word of this on the British news was in a news story about an IDF tank shell fired at rocket launchers which went awry and hit four Gaza civilians. No broader context was ever given by the media except the trite and tired "escalating tensions" as opposed to attribution to "constant rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli civilians" which at least would have had the merit of being accurate.

That changed noticeably today. Following a British citizen's tragic and needless death, suddenly the British media discovered that Hamas is waging war on Israel. Today news anchors showed the range of the missiles, the Israeli cities within range of those missiles, strike sites and even video of civilians running for cover.

And judging from the talkbacks on those sites (ok, I skipped the Guardian, which is simply nauseous, and only publishes talkbacks which agree with their editorial board) the British public has caught on also. In one 9 page sheaf of talkbacks, the voices were about 90% in favor of Israel and condemning the chronic Palestinian addiction to death and war.

G-d bless you, Mary Jean, and may your loved ones be comforted amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Palestinians Pick A War

2011-03-23T16:08:00.004+02:00

I've been laid off, due to our legal outsourcing project ending, just in time to come back to action-packed blogging.

Frankly, I'd rather write about the kalniot than our cousins, who have ratcheted up the war whoops and dead-and-maimed count recently.

Today starred a bomb planted at a major bus stop in front of the Jerusalem Convention Center, which exploded as the 74 bus pulled up. Latest news is 25 maimed and injured, and 2 dead, although we're getting conflicting reports. We also had rocket and mortar fire across the Negev region this morning, with a missile or two falling on Beersheva's residential neighborhoods.

This follows last week barrage of over 50 mortar shells aimed at civilian communities in southern Israel.

And what are the Palestinians saying?

Ma'an News: a trash can blew up in Jerusalem near a bus stop. Liars. Not just cowards, but liars.

The heart of Anglo-Saxon civilization and spokespaper for the progressive liberal side of things said: a bus has exploded.........Only in the sick world view of The Guardian do buses just explode by themselves, without attributing this to any human agency, much less their pet Palestinians.

Then there is the former Mideast Correspondent for France24, who when interviewed by today's anchor about this latest murder spree, opined that she felt so sorry for.........Barack Obama!!

Excuse me? I didn't know he lived here, much less commuted on the 74 bus to school or work every day.

I live on the 74 route. The 74 is the cross town express bus if you want to get downtown or if you want to go to the movie center or if you want to just get to the Central Bus Station to catch another bus. Many of my neighbors take this bus to work, especially since parking downtown is pretty much nonexistent. Many of the children in this neighborhood get to school on that same bus.

There is absolutely nothing that any news outlet or anchor can say that will justify the deliberate mass murder of civilians who have done nothing to deserve death other than live as Jews in a Jewish state.

Another writer pointed out that Jews live behind walls and fenced communities, but Arabs have no need to......Jewish stores and businesses all have security guards, but shops in Arab neighborhoods on either side of the Green Line do not....the Israeli bus companies used to (and now may again) have security guards profiling the passengers to intercept would be suicide bombers, but no Arab bus in Jerusalem or elsewhere has ever had such security or needed it.

So those facts alone tells you who the killers among us are.....

Et tu, Libya?

2011-03-22T08:43:00.002+02:00

I would love to hear the West explain to me, in cogent terms, why it is "right, legal and necessary" to impose a No-Fly zone over a civil war in someone else's country in the name of humanitarian concerns, but it was "okay" to allow Darfur, Rwanda, Sri Lankan shelling of Tamil civilians cowering in a hospital, and the missile and mortar barrages against Israel?

And the Arab League is backing this, albeit not with the commitment of any forces.....if Saudi Arabia and Egypt aren't using all that wondrous American military hardware for the survival of brother Arab civilians in Benghazi, then maybe the US shouldn't sell them any more. Kind of a dress rehearsal for Iran, no? All those fighter jets but no will to use them.....

It Depends On Whose Ox Is Being Gored....

2010-11-05T14:07:00.002+02:00

It's been a busy week. I only skimmed the headlines as I've rush to work or to shopping or to medical and school appointments...

But today, Erev Shabbat, I actually found some time to sit and read.

And what a read!

You no doubt remember American and European outrage over Israel's "targeted killings" of terrorists? Israel felt, rightly so, that the propagandized sheep led to the slaughter by Terror, Inc. were just the fall guys, and the people who really needed to be B-slapped were their Paradise-pimps, those vicarious killers who enjoyed sending young men and women out to kill Jews in defamation of Islam.

You know doubt recall former Secretary of State Colin Powell's declaration while in office that the United States condemned Israel's policy of targeted killings, declaring at one point, "We continue to express our distress
and opposition to these kinds of targeted killings and we will continue to do so."

Another American hypocrite, Martin Indyk, while serving as American Ambassador to Israel, provided a harsh criticism of targeted killing on Israeli television saying, "The United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations." "They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that."

Yeah? Well, when the American ox gets gored, the policy changed.

So this morning, I'm glancing through the internet and come across this:

First US targeted assassination in Gaza pre-empts next Al Qaeda offensive

A missile fired from an American warship in the Mediterranean hit the car in which Muhammad Jamal A-Namnam, 27, was driving in the heart of Gaza City Wednesday, Nov. 3 and killed him, debkafile's exclusive counter-terror sources report. Namnam was an operational commander of the Army of Islam, Al-Qaeda's Palestinian cell in the Gaza Strip. He was on a mission on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP to plan, organize and execute the next wave of terrorist attacks on US targets after last week's air package bomb plot.

According to our sources, the Palestinian cell members were planning to infiltrate northern Sinai from the Gaza strip over the coming weekend and strike American personnel serving with the Multinational Force and Observers Organization – MFO, which is under American command and is stationed at North Camp, El Gorah, 37 kilometers southeast of El-Arish.

In a coordinated operation, Al Qaeda fighters hiding up in the mountains of central Sinai were to have attacked US Marines and Air Force troops stationed at the South Camp in Naama Bay, Sharm el Sheikh.

The twin attacks were scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 7, or the following day.

Kol ha k'vod, America! Welcome to the War On Terror in Gaza....yeah, this kind of news will do a lot to convince the world's leaders to open up Gaza (aka, the Iran/Al-Qaeda forward Mediterranean military base).

Rivka

2010-10-31T09:06:00.004+02:00

I've been away for over a year, really. A million excuses: the computer died (a couple of times); work demands; family demands; exhaustion from both of the former.....if something had to give way, it was time for blogging.

But I'm heartbroken, and this is where I come to say so.

We all live in overlapping circles--circles of friends, circles of work acquaintances, circles of family members, circles of neighbors. Most people's lives can be charted like giant Venn diagrams.

I started blogging about aliyah to Israel right before we left the Old Country. I met other bloggers here and connected with other bloggers across the world.

But in my Venn diagram of friends/neighbors/bloggers I met one special blogger. And now she has left us for HaOlam HaBa.

I first met her before I moved. I was on Tachlis looking for a swim instructor for my son. Rivka wrote and told me about her swim lessons, about Ramat Rachel and the area.

I saw her there often, teaching the kids and clearly having a great old time. I didn't connect the feisty red-head with the woman who was writing "Chemo and Coffee" in the blogosphere. How could I? To watch Rivka teach swimming to children was to watch what appeared to be boundless love and energy in motion.

Later, through other blogs, I started lurking at Chemo and Coffee. I lurked not because I'm shy (I'm not) but because the subject matter frightened me. Every woman in my mother's family has dealt with or is dealing with breast cancer. I lurked, and in lurking, I learned.

I didn't learn to NOT fear breast cancer. Rather, I learned that how you handle your life with breast cancer is more important that the disease itself. That faith, friends and a sense of humor count for a lot. That ultimately, a woman of valor defines her own life and doesn't let cancer define it for her.

At the first blogger's convention, I saw the swim teacher from Ramat Rachel...."what is she doing here?" I wondered, and snuck by for a quick look at her name tag. And stopped dead in my tracks. "You're Rivka!" I blurted. I knew from her blog that Rivka was a red-head, and a swim teacher, but I hadn't quite put together those facts with the dynamo I saw at Ramat Rachel!

We chatted, and later found out that we are neighbors--she lived "up the hill" from me in Har Homa. I once gave her a ride to Hadassah hospital when her regular ride couldn't handle a last minute change of plans. Besides probably scaring her to death with my driving (she never asked me for a ride again) the most noticeable thing about this trip to Hadassah (where I had to confront MANY women being treated for breast cancer) was the warmth and happiness just seeing Rivka brought to other patients and even to staff. She was clearly a source of comfort and strength to the caregivers and patients both.

I had so much faith in HER faith that I convinced myself that she would be with us until 120....the news of her death was devastating.

I feel like I didn't do enough for her or her family. I feel that in learning so much from her, I gave so little in return. I feel helpless and heartbroken that a wonderful woman, neighbor, teacher, and mother is gone.

Her memory is already a blessing. May HaShem grant us all the grace and courage and humor Rivka exemplified in extreme adversity.

May her family be comforted among the mourners of Zion of Jerusalem.

Gaza--Some Inconvenient Truths

2010-06-02T22:34:00.005+03:00

Un dhimmi says it so well....here's the article, and the link is in the title.

Those Poor Palestinians™:

If all goes the way sponsoring NGOs planned it, a nine-ship armada of activists will steam into a small Mediterranean seaport to break the “siege” of Gaza. Timed for the slow news cycles of the US Memorial Day weekend, organizers, led by “peace crusaders” from Turkey, Ireland, Sweden and North America will unload 10,000 tons of construction material, school and medical supplies.

The organizers are not surprised that Israel has already notified the Irish, Turkish and Swedish ambassadors that the flotilla will not be allowed to disembark in Gaza. They are probably counting on it so they can YouTube images to the world of the Israel Navy’s barbaric maneuvers to thwart the SS Rachel Corrie, named for the anti-Israel American activists dispatched by the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement to Gaza. She died needlessly and tragically “confronting” an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 -another useful martyred poster child for “peace and justice.”

So what can be done to thwart this cynical exercise from reinforcing the dominant narrative not only in the Arab and Muslim world, but in mainstream Western media, that Gaza is “under siege” by callous Israel?

For starters it can tell an indifferent world what actually entered Gaza legally from Israel just this last week of the “siege”: 637 truckloads, consisting of 14,069 tons of humanitarian aid.

Among the goods for Gaza civilians were 810,209 liters of heavy duty diesel fuel; 21 truckloads of milk powder and baby food; 897 tons of cooking gas; 66 truckloads of fruits and vegetables; 51 truckloads of wheat; 27 truckloads of meat, chicken and fish products; 40 truckloads of dairy products; 117 truckloads of animal feed; 36 truckloads of hygiene products; 38 trucks of clothing; 22 trucks of sugar and 4 trucks of medicine and medical equipment.

In addition to that, 781 medical patients and accompanying individuals from the Gaza Strip crossed into Israel to receive treatment in various hospitals and 191 staff members of international organizations crossed into the Gaza Strip, and 202 crossed back from Gaza.

But numbers alone cannot win the day against the imagery of an international humanitarian flotilla braving a naval blockade. No, to win the day at CNN or SKY News, Israeli NGOs should launch their own flotilla from Ashkelon. It should be led by survivors of suicide bombings and families of the innocents who perished in the tsunami of terror that led to the erecting of the anti-terror fence in the first place.

Here’s a partial list of carnage caused by over 70 attacks between just 2001 and 2004 that the anti-Israel peace crusaders should be confronted with:

* June 1, 2001 – 21 killed and 120 Israelis – mostly teenagers – wounded outside a Tel Aviv disco.

* August 9, 2001 – 15 people were killed, including 7 children, and 130 injured in a suicide bombing at Sbarro’s in downtown Jerusalem.

* December 1, 2001 – two genocide bombers detonated explosive devices on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda’s pedestrian mall on a Saturday night. A car bomb exploded nearby 20 minutes later. Ten people were killed, including many children, and 188 were injured.

* February 16, 2002 – A suicide bomber deliberately targeted Jewish children sitting at a pizzeria in the town of Karnei Shomron. Three children died and over 30 were wounded.

* March 9, 2002 – A suicide bomber kills 11 people and injures 54 in a crowded Cafe in Jerusalem.

* March 27, 2002 – At a Passover Seder in a Netanya hotel, a genocide bomber belonging to Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs detonated an explosive device, killing 30 and injuring 132, including many children and elderly.

* January 5, 2003 – 23 people were killed, and more than 80 were wounded when two Palestinian murderers blew themselves up near the old Tel Aviv bus station.

* June 11, 2003 – Sixteen Israelis were killed and more than 100 were wounded when a homicide bomber, dressed as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, detonated his explosives belt on a bus in downtown Jerusalem. Palestinian terrorists have attempted 11 homicide bombings and murdered 23 Israelis in the last 4 days, since Palestinians “accepted” the international “roadmap for peace.”

* January 15, 2004 – Two Israeli soldiers, a border policeman, and a security guard for a private manpower company, were murdered by a female suicide bomber at the Erez Gaza crossing.

* September 1, 2004 – Two suicide bombers exploded almost simultaneously on two buses in central Beersheba, killing 16 innocents and wounding dozens.

And if their stories aren’t enough, maybe Sderot’s Amar family should join the flotilla. You remember the Amars. During the 2008 US presidential campaign, they were visited by candidate Barack Obama. He visited their family’s home, which sustained a direct hit by a Qassam rocket. They could hold up Mr. Obama’s quote, who said at the time, “if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.”

There is some talk that the international humanitarian aid may be off-loaded in Ashdod and transferred into Gaza. Fair enough, but Israelis should demand that a special care package to Gilad Shalit be added to be delivered by UNRWA.

It is Israel’s fear that her civilian population centers in the South will have to face another 7,000 terrorist missiles that had has led her to try to prevent the influx into Gaza of weapons but not food, fuel, or medical supplies. No other government, not Turkish, Swedish, Irish or American would act any differently.

Currently, Western public opinion is virtually drowning in a tidal wave of media lies about Israel’s self-defense measures against Gaza’s terrorist “Hamastan.” To rescue the Truth, let a people’s flotilla of inconvenient truths, serve as Israel’s first line of defense.

This is nothing to do with ‘aid’. The ‘NGOs’ that are sponsoring the ‘flotilla’ stunt number among them hardline terror supporting groups, hard left militants and leftist-led charities. There is a political narrative that left-leaning, anti-Israel media such as the BBC are hiding from you.

‘Palestine’ is among the world’s largest recipients of international aid.

Read the rest at his/her site; the link is in the title.

-----------------

ON that same note, I thought it only appropriate to include the YouTube video of the allegedly starving, miserable Palestinian population's scanty food rations under the Israeli military embargo:

Do these people look like they're suffering any kind of a shortage? Hardly.

BUT THIS JUST IN!!

Among the wheelchairs, children's toys and date-expired medicines in the Agitprop Flotilla were other items that didn't quite jibe with the loudly proclaimed and completely mendacious "humanitarian" mission: over a million dollars in cash (that will buy you a couple of Scuds and lots of AK-47 ammo); bullet-proof vests; night-vision goggles; and gas masks.

THIS, folks, is why we examine all the cargo going into Gaza--the last shipment of "humanitarian aid" also had weapons and ammo in it.

Gaza "Peace Activists" Redux

2010-05-31T20:27:00.004+03:00

More pro-Palestinian "peace activists" engaging in their typical humanitarian efforts.

"Peace Activists" = Martyrs

2010-05-31T20:01:00.003+03:00

So let's get this straight: the "peace activists" were armed, according to videos made by both Israeli and Turkish cameramen, with knives, clubs, iron pipes, handguns (seized with empty magazines,indicating they were fired), Molotov cocktails and stun grenades.

According to al-Jazeera, the ships' complements were full of enthusiasts for martyrdom, happily chanting a traditional anti-Jewish rant reminding Jews of an earlier genocide happily committed by Arabs on the Arabian peninsula. One report on British news stated that one ship had a painted sign posted, "Hitler was a blessing." These were NOT people involved in a peaceful mission. These were people looking for a confrontation, and armed themselves in preparation for it.

I do agree with the Labor MP who is grabbing her 15 minutes of fame by dissing the commando action -- we shouldn't have used commandos.

Next time, order them to leave--and if they persist, just sink them rather than risk our kids' lives.

Start-Up Nation

2010-05-27T07:25:00.001+03:00

This is the Israel that the MSM, deeply embedded in Arab propaganda, never mentions in their knee-jerk bias:

Where Is The Protest?

2010-05-23T22:48:00.003+03:00

I haven't posted in ages...and I need to...much ridiculousness going on in the upper echelons of diplospeak, while real life continues.....BUT....

A friend pointed this out. I just cannot resist. Where, oh, where are the Free Gaza and lefty protesters ready to demonstrate against government oppression of these Palestinians?

By RIZEK ABDEL JAWAD, Associated Press Writer Rizek Abdel Jawad, Associated Press Writer – Sun May 16, 2:59 pm ET

RAFAH, Gaza Strip – Hamas police wielding clubs beat and pushed residents out of dozens of homes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Sunday before knocking the buildings down with bulldozers, residents said.

Gaza's militant Hamas rulers said the homes were built illegally on government land. Newly homeless residents were furious over Palestinians on bulldozers razing Palestinian homes.

For years, Palestinians have criticized Israel for destroying houses, mostly because they were built without permits issued by the military. Now, Rafah residents complained, their own government, run by the Islamic militant Hamas that seized power in Gaza in July 2007, has done the same.

"They promised reform and change — instead they've destroyed our homes," shouted Miasar Gan, a 54-year-old woman. Gan said she and her husband had nowhere else to go.

"I found my mattress, and that's where I'll be sitting," she said, standing next to the concrete chunks — all that was left of her house.

Her neighbor, Nazira Abu Jara, 56, said policewomen wearing face veils typical of conservative Muslim women beat her with clubs until she fled her house with her husband and two children. "Neighbors help us get by with charity. We can't afford to build again," Abu Jara said.

Others picked through rubble to retrieve dusty clothing and mangled furniture.

Residents said between 30 and 40 homes were torn down, ranging from concrete structures to tin shacks. They did not know how many people were affected. Hamas officials did not allow reporters into the area until the demolition was over.

Residents said more demolitions in the area were expected Monday.

Even if they are allowed to rebuild, Israel does not allow most building materials into the territory it has blockaded since Hamas seized power. The newly homeless residents are unlikely to be able to afford the steep black market prices for concrete, steel and wood. Some of the families cannot afford rent.

Rafah's mayor, Issa Nashar, promised alternative housing. Gaza's housing minister Yousef al-Mansi said he had no information about such housing.

-----------

....and not one peep from the Committee Against House Demolitions.......imagine that! Seems Hamas, like most governments, doesn't let you build just any old place but only on land you own with properly issued permits....sort of like in California, and in England and in....Israel!

Corruption, Chicago Style

2010-03-28T23:13:00.002+03:00

When Hamid Karzai pays off Afghan warlords to keep the peace and political stability, we call him "corrupt."

Whe Iraqi politicians make pay-offs to sheiks and tribes for their political support and votes, we cry "corruption!"

But when the Democrats make pay-offs, that's called a "job stimulus" even when it's only one job and rank nepotism is the alleged motive.

According to an unnamed source, Oregon State University Athletic
Director Bob DeCarolis was considering firing their basketball
coach, Craig Robinson, after an 8-11 start (2-5 in the Pac 10
conference). This was admittedly a poorer record than the year before, and certainly universities have fired coaches for disappointing the alumni in other venues.

Corvallis received stimulus money for the university from the federal government. The source now says that Craig Robinson's job is safe for this year due to this influx of funds. This was confirmed by the university's athletic director, who which stated that Robinson's six-year coaching contract with OSU was recently extended through 2016 (an additional two years), but insisted it had nothing to do with federal stimulus grants.

Coach Robinson just happens to be Michelle Obama's brother.

The University denies that there is any connection between their coach, his job and the $26,434,969 as its portion of stimulus money from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the Oregon University System.

Riiiiight.

The interesting thing to me is not whether or not this is a whistle-blower exposing corruption or an internet rumor gone viral, but the media take on this.....if this rumor were about Cheney, the Fourth Estate would be slobbering over their word processors, spewing out reams of unsubstantiated text and demanding that a Special Prosecutor open an investigation.

But apparently the current administration is exempt from that level of journalistic indignation, invention or legal inquiry. There are a lot of indignant denials; trite put-downs of "internet stories" but there is no Woodward and Bernstein out there looking to see if maybe there is a connection or proving there isn't a connecton between the money and the brother-in-law's job. The very lack of investigation speaks volumes about the Obama Machine's ability to squelch inquiry.

Now THAT's what is corrupt: the Mainstream Media blatantly prostituting itself. No wonder no one watches them, reads them, or trusts them any more--they've become the propaganda corps of the Obama Machine.

Sauce For The Goose

2010-03-25T19:31:00.003+02:00

Britain has expelled a member of Israel's consular corps in outrage over the "misuse" of British passports by an as-yet unproven intelligence service.

British double-standards never cease to amaze me. Not only do they allow their own passport holders to fly to Israel to commit acts of terrorism and mass murder (Mikes' Bar) but they have the nerve to condemn Israel for assassinating a terrorist when their own hands aren't clean.

Anyone remember Operation Flavius?

The British were all too ready to use their special forces to gun down three IRA "freedom fighters" seeking the "liberation" of "Occupied Irish Homelands" in what the British call Northern Ireland (better known historically as Ulster). In 1988, the British SAS gunned down three unarmed "terrorists" who were planning a car-bombing on a British military target (note that "terrorists" are defined as such because they attack civilians, not military targets). It appears that the three were casing the neighborhood on foot for a place to park the car-bomb when intercepted and were butchered in the street because one of them made "an aggressive move." Like, maybe towards his wallet? Maybe for his passport? They weren't armed, so there was nothing to be "aggressive" with. They didn't have any weapons or explosives or detonators.

The car bomb was found 46 miles away in Spain.

British hypocrisy is beyond belief. The Provisional IRA, which shared training camps with the POL in Libya, are apparently considered terrorists who can be gunned down on foreign soil without compunction or regret in British eyes. When Irish "militants" seek the "liberation" of their "occupied territory" by attacking a military target, the broad daylight slaughter of all three is justified by the British government as an anti-terror operation.

But the quiet execution of one terrorist, far more dangerous than all three Provos together, without risk to surrounding civilians, now ostensibly outrages British sensibilities.

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, you English (Ireland-occupying, Gibraltar-occupying) hypocrites.

I've Been Gone A Very Long Time....

2010-03-25T19:27:00.002+02:00

No, I wasn't on vacation.

First, I took a supervisory position at my work, which is great in terms of work and paycheck but takes its toll on time.

Then, we experienced every parent's nightmare. My husband went to wake up my son, and he'd had a seizure in his sleep and was nonresponsive. Code 3 to the hospital, and almost 6 weeks in and out of the hospital. 10 days in Intensive Care.

I'm not ready to blog about that quite yet....

But it's coming. Maybe after Pesach.

Now, we're getting back to normal

Chag Sameach!

To Yalla or Not To Yalla

2010-01-04T19:19:00.002+02:00

How many conversations have you heard in Israel that end in "Yalla!"?

Or that blended phrase, "Yalla-bye!"?

I hear it constantly. I began using "yalla" a bit self-consciously during my first year here, and as an olah, it provoked laughter from Israelis.

I even hear my friends hang up the phone with "yalla!"

So I've grown more comfortable with the word and peppered my scant Hebrew with it. I've used it as a substitute for "let's go" most of the time, and sometimes also "yalla" instead of l'hitraot, which is harder to rattle off.

So last week Yossi and I are running some errands and he asks me, "Is it okay if we stop at my parents' house? I need to pick up something."

No problem. Ayn bayah! Somehow in the course of running our various errands, I brought up "yalla." I may even have said it.

"Never use that word, Sarah, " he told me sternly. "It's not a nice word."

Whadayoumean? I'm saying something obscene without even knowing it?!

"No, it's just not nice." He paused, trying to figure out how to explain it to me in English. We have interesting conversations--I have just enough Hebrew to get me into trouble, and he speaks English well enough for everyday talk, but there are some elusive concepts I don't understand in Hebrew and he can't express in English.

"It's a word from the street," he continued.

"Like slang?" I offered helpfully.

"No, it's not just slang...it's from the street, it's not nice," he amended, still searching for a good explanation.

"It's low class," I said.

"Bidyuch!" he exclaimed. I love how he says it: BEEEEEE-dyuch!

"It's not a phrase an educated person would use, and it can cause trouble," he went on. "If you said 'yalla' to the clerk at the grocery store, it would be like you are telling her to hurry up, she's not doing her job well enough for you. You're talking down to her."

"Condescending," I amended.

"What?"

"That's the word in English -- con-de-scending." I figure if he can correct my Hebrew all day, I can add to his vocabulary. "Like you're better than she is," I explained.

"Yes, that's it. You shouldn't use it--it's not nice," he warned.

By this time we had reached his parents' home, and his mother had actually come outside to give him the item he had come to pick up. She and I chatted for a few minutes, trading good and bad news about our families, and I wished her a Shabbat shalom, and got back in the cab.

Yossi was already in the cab, and as he started the engine, he and his mother finished their conversation, and he called out, "Yalla, Ima!"

"WHAT did you just tell me?!" I asked in fake indignation. "Isn't that a bad word? Isn't that a word you should never use?"

He smiled, a bit sheepish. "Sometimes it just slips out," he admitted.

Yalla!

The Disputed Territories

2010-01-03T18:50:00.002+02:00

Here's a point I've tried to make many times with the propaganda-sated who can't understand the legal ramifications of international law. The Wall Street Journal ran this last week, and I picked it up courtesy of West Bank Mama :

Israel's Right in the 'Disputed' Territories

By DANNY AYALON
The recent statements by the European Union's new foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton criticizing Israel have once again brought international attention to Jerusalem and the settlements. However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel's rights to what are generally called the "occupied territories" but what really are "disputed territories."

That's because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered "occupied" in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel's conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years.

The name "West Bank" was first used in 1950 by the Jordanians when they annexed the land to differentiate it from the rest of the country, which is on the east bank of the river Jordan. The boundaries of this territory were set only one year before during the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan that ended the war that began in 1948 when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State. It was at Jordan's insistence that the 1949 armistice line became not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: "No provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations." (Italics added.) This boundary became the famous "Green Line," so named because the military officials during the armistice talks used a green pen to draw the line on the map.

After the Six Day War, when once again Arab armies sought to destroy Israel and the Jewish state subsequently captured the West Bank and other territory, the United Nations sought to create an enduring solution to the conflict. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is probably one of the most misunderstood documents in the international arena. While many, especially the Palestinians, push the idea that the document demands that Israel return everything captured over the Green Line, nothing could be further from the truth. The resolution calls for "peace within secure and recognized boundaries," but nowhere does it mention where those boundaries should be.

It is best to understand the intentions of the drafters of the resolution before considering other interpretations. Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in 1967 and a drafter of the resolution, stated in 1990: "Security Council Resolution 242 and (subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution) 338... rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to "secure and recognized borders," which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 194."

Lord Caradon, the British U.N. Ambassador at the time and the resolution's main drafter who introduced it to the Council, said in 1974 unequivocally that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial."

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, made the issue even clearer when he stated in 1973 that, "the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal." This would encompass "less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel's prior frontiers had proven to be notably insecure."

Even the Soviet delegate to the U.N., Vasily Kuznetsov, who fought against the final text, conceded that the resolution gave Israel the right to "withdraw its forces only to those lines it considers appropriate."

After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose. However, Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said "the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors." There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since.

And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it. Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted, the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table. Statements like those of Lady Ashton's are not only incorrect; they push a negotiated solution further away.

Mr. Ayalon is the deputy foreign minister of Israel.

And he's so much calmer than I am......that's why he's the diplomat, no doubt. "Diplomatic" has never been my forte -- sledgehammer is more my style.

I like one commenter's suggestion: For her next public appearance, maybe Lady Ashton would be so kind as to address Britain's illegal occupation of Ulster.

Show and Tell Picture Day

2009-12-29T22:21:00.015+02:00

I don't have a lot of time for blogging these past couple of weeks -- one humor, one wry and one angry was about all I could manage given my schedule, but I do look at other blogs from time to time.

I am amazed at the Useful Idiots that are out there preaching about how Gaza is "under seige" and suffering a humanitarian crisis. Certainly the Pallywood Press plays up that angle.

But pictures are worth a thousand paragraphs of propaganda:

Here is the typical propaganda picture showing what is described as the "wide-spread destruction in Gaza." I only find this laughable because the local (Israeli and Jordanian and Al Jazeera news programs) news often quotes Hamas spokesmen speaking from Gaza with a wholly intact, gleaming city stretching out behind the speaker.

Does this look like a starving crowd of people under seige? Didn't think so.....Hardly the Warsaw Ghetto imagery that the Palestine propagandists pimp to the unwary.

Another shot of shoppers. There is apparently both food and clothing for sale in Gaza and people with enough money to buy. Note that in this picture and the preceding one, the skyline is intact and the city is NOT lying in ruins.

As these two pictures show, neither clothing nor shoes are in short supply.

Candies -- today Grandstanding Galloway is leading yet another 15-minutes-of-fame-pay-attention-to-me convoy of "humanitarian aid" into Gaza. None of the people in these photos look like they need George's help, or his publicity (except for Hamas, whose popularity is quickly waning)and the whole thing is really a stunt organized by Socialist Unity. The fact that foreign aid is trucked into Gaza daily from Israeli crossings goes unmentioned. Hamas's beef is that Israel won't allow in construction materials (kassam rockets are made from pipes; concrete and rebar used to build bunkers and command centers) and insists on searching all the aid packages (because we keep finding weapons and ammunition in boxes marked "baby formula" for example).

This is an older picture of the trucks at the Keren Shalom border crossing into Gaza, waiting to bring in humanitarian aid, which they do on a daily basis.

Really?! you ask--because you've been told that Gaza is "under seige" and "blockaded" by Israel. Well, you've been lied to. It's true that the borders are closed. The borders are closed because an Islamist dictatorship whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and genocide of the Jewish population seized power in a coup d'etat in 2007, and has refused to honor any past agreements (these include agreements on border crossings) with the "Zionist Entity."

Fine. We closed the borders. We will open them as soon as Hamas renounces violence, recognizes Israel and agrees to abide by earlier Palestinian agreements with Israel. These aren't just Israel's conditions--they are also the conditions of the international community.

But in the meantime we truck in humanitarian aid daily because Hamas is too busy building tunnels to smuggle weapons, training kassam and missile crews, running war camps for youngsters, building better command and control centers, adding more ammo dumps, to do anything about building an infrastructure for a state that will help its people. Thus, while we have closed borders we do NOT have a blockade.

None of these people look undernourished.

More food.

Gaza. Hardly the image of mass destruction.

And I had to post this picture. I love it! You hear all the time about the "Wall" surrounding Gaza -- well, here it is! A fence with a road which is patrolled by the Border Police and army, as is customary in most nations. But what I like best about this picture is the wide open spaces. Haven't you heard that Gaza is "the most densely populated area on earth?"

It's not. In fact, downtown Tel Aviv is more densely populated than Gaza.

And while civilian deaths are tragic, look at this last picture and understand that Gaza's civilians died because Hamas chose to pick a war and fight from the midst of its civilian areas, even though there was ample room outside the towns and cities to fight in the open. Even the Palestinians say it now, bitterly: HAMAS--stands for Hides Among Mosques and Schools.

Cowards and liars.

The Politically Over-Corrected Christmas

2009-12-28T18:45:00.003+02:00

I am not generally a huge fan of the New Yorker magazine....or of anything remotely connected to New York City, with the exception of one cousin and some friends who are otherwise such neat people that I can even forgive them for being from the Big Apple.

It is, after all, the place my family ran from as fast as their finances would allow. I've been there. Nice to visit, couldn't pay me to live there.

OTOH, Beth Steinberg tipped me to this tidbit, which is the funniest, snarkiest thing I've seen on political correctness run amok around Christmas. Bad enough that my son's public school teachers were instructed to NOT wish anyone "Merry Christmas" for fear of offending non-Christians, but now offices are having "holiday parties." One year, I couldn't convince my former boss that the reason I didn't go to the office Christmas Party wasn't because it was called a "Christmas Party"--it was so the front office staff COULD go, and the receptionists weren't allowed to party because they had to relieve each other on the phones. So I took the phones for the afternoon, along with another attorney, so our receptionists could relax for one single afternoon of the year. But everyone wigged out over the fact that, "Gosh, she's Jewish, maybe we've offended her!"

Hey, I went to the stupid party for years when it was a "Christmas Party" and only stopped going so I could help out reception. Good grief!

So everyone is so worried about offending non-Christians at Christmas that they've tried to rob the holiday of its religious significance. Sad.

So here it is, Big Apple humor which pokes fun at the idiocy of being TOO politically correct and post-modernly sensitive, to the point where you've overdone it into boorish rudeness:

Holly or Challah?
by Paul Rudnick December 21, 2009

Just because anyone with half a brain celebrates Christmas, no one should ever use the holiday to make non-Christians feel uncomfortable. Here are some tips to help the sensitive Christian make everyone, no matter what they’re wearing on their head, feel at ease and have a Happy Interfaith Holiday Season!

1. When non-Christians are present, don’t call Jesus “Our Saviour,” “Our Lord,” or “Mister Perfect.” Refer to him more casually, as “the Son of God, or maybe not,” “the Jew that got away,” or “the bachelor.” When chatting with Jews, try to avoid the subject of the death of Jesus. If a Jew asks, “So how did Jesus die?,” simply reply, “Natural causes.”

2. Don’t refer to Christmas as a day to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Instead, try calling it “the world’s day off ” or “a big party for almost everyone.” Instead of saying “Merry Christmas!,” try calling out, “The plain wrapping paper is right over there in the corner!”

3. If you’re visiting a mixed couple during the holidays, here are a couple of gift suggestions: for the Christian wife, a bayberry-scented candle or a fresh evergreen wreath; for the Jewish husband, a lovely framed portrait of his parents, rending their clothes and sobbing.

4. Try to take a delighted interest in the Jewish holidays by asking questions like “Do you ever create a tiny Victorian village under your menorah?,” “Does your family sing ‘Silent Night’ in Hebrew?,” and “When you were little, did you ever wonder if Santa hated you?”

5. When you’re walking down the street with a Jewish friend and you pass a sidewalk Santa, say something comforting, like “Jesus barely knew him,” or “I bet you liked sitting on the big rabbi’s lap.” You might even introduce Santa to your friend by saying, “Santa, this is Richard Weiner. And it really doesn’t matter if he’s been bad or good.”

6. On Christmas Eve, why not remind Jewish children to leave out milk and cookies for Mayor Bloomberg?

7. For a jolly holiday film festival, invite your Jewish neighbors over and screen “White Christmas,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” and “Munich.”
8. When a Jewish friend compliments your Christmas tree, modestly reply, “Oh, but it’s not as nice as your couch.”

9. Change the words to popular Christmas songs, as in “Frosty the Orthodox Rebbe,” “Deck the Halls with Photos of Your Many Beautiful Grandchildren,” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Our Accountant.”

10. Never refer to Hanukkah as “their Christmas,” “Merry Wannabe,” or “the Goldberg variation.”

11. For real holiday enchantment, tell your kids the story of “Yussel, the Reindeer Who Spent the Whole Night Studying.”

12. If your town wants to put up a life-size crèche on public property, suggest that there should also be, right beside the Nativity scene, mannequins representing a Jewish family, sitting outside the manger and reading the Sunday Times. ♦

Here's Clarification: Fuck Off

2009-12-27T22:14:00.006+02:00

The United States has demanded clarifications from Israel after IDF special forces killed three terrorists Saturday who murdered a civilian, Rabbi Meir Chai, on Thursday.

Nice. Has the United States demanded clarifications from Iran on the nine civilians murdered by government storm troopers yesterday? Of course not.

Is the United States subjecting itself to demands about terrorists it has taken out since 9/11? Of course not.

Did the United States at any time in the last 48 hours demand clarifications from the Palestinian Authority about the cold-blooded gunning down of an unarmed kindergarten teacher and father of seven who was driving his wife and child at the time of the attack?

Of course not. Because the overt and despicable racism of Jew-killing is being deliberately overlooked by the left-wing elites of the Obama administration. You can bet that if a Black father of seven was gunned down in cold blood on an Alabama road for the sin of driving in a "white neighborhood" there would be hell to pay!

Calls were made to National Security Adviser Prof. Uzi Arad, apparently by senior U.S. Administration officials, in which he was asked to provide clarifications. The calls came from the United States after Palestinian Authority officials complained to the Americans that the IDF had carried out “executions.”

No, we killed them. Let's be precise in our terminology. "Execution" means the act or an instance of putting to death or being put to death as a lawful penalty. Its prerequisite is a court order. It implies that there is some legality, some legal procedure at issue here, which is precisely why lawfare gamesters like B'tselem like to confuse the issues with word plays such as these. It implies that they are in custody, which they were not. We did not "execute" them--they were never in our custody. We hunted them down and killed them where we found them, armed. They refused to surrender. Fine. Die.

They were terrorists who thought they had found a safe haven hiding behind their wives' skirts, and discovered they were wrong. Reagan said it: "You can run, but you can't hide."

Arad informed the White House of details of the counterterrorist raid and rejected the PA officials' claims.

The left-wing group B'Tselem also made a public demand that an investigation be launched into whether the IDF “executed” two of the three terrorist murderers. The self-acclaimed human rights group said that an initial inquiry it conducted at the homes of the dead killers indicated that they were executed.

Wow! Imagine that! B'Tselem ran in there and got the evidence! What evidence?! The self-serving whine of the terrorists' family members, who support them in their chosen career of murdering Jewish civilians? This is, of course, the same Euro-funded NGO that has been repeatedly lambasted for its skewed statistics, lies of omission and lies of comission, and most infamously for white-washing terrorist deaths and trying to pass them off as civilians on the grounds that they "weren't involved in hostilities when killed" -- i.e., he was driving away from the launch site of his kassam rockets when the Israelis killed him, thus he was a civilian. This is, of course, the same "human rights organization" that remained silent when missiles targeting Israeli civilians rained down on civilian population centers. This is the same NGO whose "field investigators" are all Arabs.

READ MY LIPS--this is not a police action. This is a war. The Allies didn't land at Normandy, read the Nazis their Miranda rights and arrest them. They killed them. They killed the soldiers in the field and they bombed German cities into rubble. The Allies, consequently, won.

Terrorists, or if you prefer the politically correct label, "armed militants" who claim allegience to an entity which, despite the momentary quiet, is and has been in a state of de facto war with Israel since 1948, are combatants. In this case, they were battle-hardened combatants who had been taken as prisoners before for their terror activities. The men were identified as 38-year-old Raed Sukarji, 39-year-old Ghassan Abu Sharakh, and 40-year-old Anan Subih. Subih was armed with a handgun and was hiding two M16 assault rifles, and an additional handgun and ammunition.

Surkajy was a Nablus Fatah Tanzim terror operative who had previously been in custody. He was arrested in 2002 for his involvment in multiple terror attacks, and was a senior member of Al Aksa who was also involved with the manufacturing of explosives and the establishment of an explosives-manufacturing laboratory in Nablus. He was released from Israeli custody, no doubt as part of a prisoner exchange or "confidence building measure" last January.

Sharakh was the brother of Naif Abu Sharakh, the former head of the Fatah Tanzim terrorist group in Nablus, who was responsible for planning multiple terror attacks until he was killed by during an IDF operation in 2004. Sharakh did a stint in Israeli prison as well for terror activities. Subih was also an Al Aqsa terrorist affiliated with the Nalus Fatah Tanzim.

They've all been at war with Israel for years. They've all been involved in the planning and executing of mass murder attacks against Israeli civilians. They know the price -- when they kill Israeli civilians, they are hunted down and killed. That is not an "execution," B'tselem & fellow travelers--that is war.

I'm sorry to deflate your happy peace balloon, but the Palestinians, both Hamas and Fatah, still recruit their children to war camps in the summer, train them in hatred and racism towards Jews, incite them to murder in the name of religion and nation, and all the nice talky-talky peacy-peacy vibes from the useful idiots in the West has not changed the fact that Israel is under seige and has been warred upon by Arab entities intent on the destruction of our state and eradication of our people.

And no compromise, no offer is ever good enough. Why? Because they don't want a compromise--they want to win the wars they've lost since 1948, and destroy us. To them, a kindergarten teacher in a van with his wife and kid is just another Jew to be exterminated.

But my favorite posts of the day were these:

1)I feel no need for an explanation as to why you killed barbaric savages.
Keep up the good work and don’t listen to the moonbats currently running our country.

2) The question should be, "Why did you stop at three terrorists?"
Get them all.

3) Here’s clarification: They’re dead.

The Common Man's common sense gives me hope that the Orwellian administration fiddling while the world burns will soon pass. The other silver lining: this terror trio will never be released in some future "confidence building measure" to kill again.

*Photo of Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade courtesy of Life.com

Fly Naked

2009-12-27T14:07:00.005+02:00

In a world where normal people are trying to get their children an education and make enough money to pay for a roof over their heads and food on the table, we now have another advocate of mass-murder-in-the-name-of-Allah (in Hebrew, this is called a chillul HaShem--a desecration of the Name of G-d)trying to bring down a plane-load of civilians flying from Holland to the United States.

I can't even call this Islamic extremism because apart from the fact that the would-be mass-murderer is a Moslem, his handlers are of the ilk that have hijacked the Quran and its faith and perverted it into a political instrument. They're not really Moslems in the sense that they submit to the will of their Maker--they can quote from the Quran to justify just about any political abomination or murder they want, and claim, like the bloody-minded Crusaders before them, "Deus vult!" (G-d wills it!) It's really not Islam--its a form of idol worship, with the object of that worship being the temporal desire(s) of whatever scheming warlord is running the operation.

I wonder if there is an Arabic equivalent of chillul HaShem?

I'm waiting to see whose heads roll at State, at TSA and at Homeland Security for this balagan. The three agencies charged with keeping people safe in the air and on the ground from psychotics who dress up their murderous instincts in the clothing of invented grievances simply screwed up big time.

Why wasn't Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab placed on the U.S. no-fly list?

What asleep-at-the-wheel functionary who appears to have not checked or only checked randomly or briefly or incompletely the flight list from Holland is going to get fired? C'mon, I know it was Christmas and you wanted to get home to the family but you permitted the near murder of almost 300 people because you couldn't wait to get to your family holiday celebration.

Or is it worse? Does Al-Qaeda have moles in the aviation industry who coordinate this kind of attack and are they capable of working from inside (or hacking from outside) to prevent the interception of their operative? Doubt it. But if its not that, then it was sheer laziness and stupidity on the part of the U.S. personnel who approved this flight list.

How the hell did he get a U.S. Visa? The Brits have barred him. His own family reported his extremism to British, Nigerian and U.S. authorities.

After the last trans-Atlantic brouhaha, with four planes scheduled to blow up simultaneously over mid-Atlantic enroute from London to the U.S. all kinds of security precautions were put in place....most of them seemingly ridiculous. One security expert at the time said these precautions were a total waste of time, because the fanatics always find a way around them.

A prophet. This time, it wasn't liquid in a bottle. It was, reportedly, nitro and glycerine, (or PETN depending on your news source) smuggled separately, strapped to his body, to blow up the plane over densely populated Detroit (killers please note: Detroit is the city with the biggest Moslem population in the United States--wrong target, idiots).

So how do we avoid future incidents of this kind? What can we do to make flying absolutely safe?

Fly naked.

That's right. From this date forward, everyone will be escorted first to a dressing room, asked to unclothe, given a 4-hour (or six or 8 or 10 hour) sedative, placed naked on a gurney with only a blanket for modesty's sake, then wheeled to their assigned seats (which will have to be reconfigured as beds) and we'll be flown naked and unconscious to our destinations! Anyone who gets out of his seat will be shot by an air-marshall.

That should put an end to this nonsense!

And you won't have to worry about shoe-bombers, under-wear bombers, baby-bottle bombers or any other wanna-be mass murderers in the air.

Random Thoughts

2009-12-27T09:29:00.001+02:00

This must be making its way around the internet, but I laughed out loud at a couple of them, which in my mind makes them worth sharing. Thanks, Harriet!!

Random Thoughts:

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on #5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection... again.

13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this -- ever.

15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

18. My 4-year-old son asked me in the car the other day, "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How do I respond to that?

19. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

20. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.

Fear and Loathing in Switzerland

2009-12-12T22:50:00.005+02:00

I remember a discussion I had with a classmate in class back in the ancient days when I was a high school student. We were discussing things only high school and college students have the time to ponder, and that day's subject was Hate.

She and others had different views of what made people hate other people as a collective group. I disagreed with all of their theses.

"Hate," I said, not entirely understanding where this came from, but quite certain to the depths of my soul about it, "comes from fear."

I have yet to see this disproved. Human beings do not hate without being first taught to fear, and hate is the reaction to that fear.

Switzerland, another European bastion of enlightened western humanism, democracy and human rights (ok, for the moment we won't talk about the stolen Holocaust assets or Nazi gold reserves or shooting Jewish refugees at the borders or turning them over to the SS.....) has voted to ban minarets.

This is one of the stupider decisions made anywhere on earth recently.

First, what does a ban on minarets accomplish?

It tells the world that you are afraid of minarets. And why would you be afraid of an architectural adornment? Because it's emblematic of Islam. And why would you want to ban a Moslem architectural adornment? Well, because you're afraid. What are you afraid of? You're afraid of Islam.

Or what your limited, parochial, impoverished and ignorant understanding of what Islam means to you.

"People's Party lawmaker Walter Wobmann said minarets are part of Muslims' strategy to make Switzerland Islamic. He said he feared Shariah law, which would create "parallel societies" where honor killings, forced marriages and even stoning are practiced."*

Oh, please......you don't already have laws in Switzerland which can address these issues? You don't already have a non-Moslem majority which can pass any law to checkmate these unlikely scenarios? There have been honor killings in the United States -- and there are laws against murder, and they are enforced when one person kills another, no matter what the label. So this is a ridiculous reason that is put forth solely to create division between Moslems and non-Moslems, and to inflame an uneasiness about demographic change into full-fledged hatred.

"The problem is not so much the minarets, but rather what they represent," said Madeleine Trincat, a retiree from Geneva. "After the minarets, the muezzins will come, then they'll ask us to wear veils and so on."*

This is the kind of garbage that the Far Right xenophobic (and antiSemitic) parties of Switzerland are pushing. That's right--let Moslems build a minaret, just like churches build bell-towers, and the next thing you know -- POOF! You'll be wearing a burkha!

The battle lines were drawn over a minaret that went on top of an Islamic cultural center in July, 2009, after a protracted court battle which pitched the local Islamic Cultural Center against neighborhood residents who opposed it.

This brought the extremists out of the woodwork: "[T]he construction of a minaret has no religious meaning. Neither in the Qur'an, nor in any other holy scripture of Islam is the minaret expressly mentioned at any rate. The minaret is far more a symbol of religious-political power claim [...]." The initiators of the ban referendum went on to justify their point of view by quoting parts of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's 1997 speech, which holds: "Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets, believers our soldiers. This holy army guards my religion." Inflammatory comments like this from the Islamic Republic of Turkey, or any Islamic Republic, didn't help.

Ulrich Schluer, who is one of the referendum committee’s most prominent exponents, pointed to Erdogan's speech and concluded: "A minaret has nothing to do with religion: It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established." *

Funny, most people think that a minaret symbolizes a place where Moslems worship. Sort of like how bell-towers symbolize places where Christians worship. Shaaria law is not the law of the land, and to suggest that a minaret makes it so is disingenuous at best, xenophobic for sure.

Noise. We can't have noise! some voters said. Ridiculous. Switzerland already has mosques, including four minarets, and has noise ordinances which prohibit the muezzin calling anyone to prayer in public. So noise isn't the issue.

Building codes? There are already cantonal zoning laws which prohibit the construction of buildings that do not match their surroundings.

Fear is the issue. The campaign posters don't show a graceful spire arising out of a place of worship. It shows, instead, a battery of Islamic missiles arising out of the Swiss flag, a crude but effective message that militant Islam is going to take over your country at weapon-point.

I understand the demographic trends. I understand the cultural conflicts and lack of integration in European society. I understand the fear of more Van Goghs and Halimis, the fear of the dark underside of fundamentalists....

But this isn't the way to handle your fear, or make your Moslem neighbor more integrated. Switzerland has bell towers, church steeples. There is nothing wrong with a minaret alongside those. A minaret in your neighborhood is not going to bring burkhas and honor killings.

[Take note of Iran, the home of jihadi values, where women are demonstrating in the streets against the imposition of hardline fundamentalist strictures, as well as the lack of democracy--and these are Moslem women!]

Some common sense asserted itself prior to the vote: The cities of Basel, Lausanne and Fribourg banned the billboards, saying they painted a "racist, disrespectful and dangerous image" of Islam.*

Of course, this backfired, with subsequent posters calling for a ban of minarets because of censorship.

The EU and UN Human Rights Council (which has bankrupted all credibility by ignoring Darfur and Sri Lanka to demonize Israel) have waxed indignant over the ban, whose passage surprised everyone except perhaps the Swiss.

I live in an area surrounded by minarets. Even in a part of the world where extremists misuse them to store kassams and katyushas and manufacture suicide-bomb-belts, I am not afraid of the minaret. The minaret is emblamatic of Islam, but like the towers of Gothic cathedrals, it is an ancient architectural innovation which, while meant for utilitarian purposes, is also decorative. A mosque, while oft-times misused to engender hatred of Jews and other infidels in these politicized days, was originally intended as a place for worship and is used by most Moslems for just that. The world loves the Taj Mahal, and it is a protected world heritage site--with four minarets.

Fear extremism. Don't fear minarets. Minarets are beautiful, and even useful....I never miss Mincha now....afternoon call to prayer in Islam is the same as afternoon prayer in Judaism.

sources: *Huffington Post and Wikipedia

Hashgachah Pratis in Montana

2009-12-12T22:32:00.004+02:00

I found this story in the Facebook Feeds posted by Robin, and it was too cute not to post here also:

Religion Journal
Yes, Miky, There Are Rabbis in Montana

By ERIC A. STERN
Published: December 4, 2009

Officer John Fosket of the Helena Police Department and Miky, a bomb-sniffing dog trained by the Israeli Defense Forces.

HELENA, Mont. — In Montana, a rabbi is an unusual sight. So when a Hasidic one walked into the State Capitol last December, with his long beard, black hat and long black coat, a police officer grabbed his bomb-sniffing German shepherd and went to ask the exotic visitor a few questions.

Though there are few Jews in Montana today, there once were many. In the late 19th century, there were thriving Jewish populations in the mining towns, where Jews emigrated to work as butchers, clothiers, jewelers, tailors and the like.

The city of Butte had kosher markets, a Jewish mayor, a B’nai B’rith lodge and three synagogues. Helena, the capital city, had Temple Emanu-El, built in 1891 with a seating capacity of 500. The elegant original facade still stands, but the building was sold and converted to offices in the 1930s, when the congregation had dwindled to almost nothing, the Jewish population having mostly assimilated or moved on to bigger cities.

There is a Jewish cemetery in Helena, too, with tombstones dating to 1866. But more Jews are buried in Helena than currently live here.

And yet, in a minor revival, Montana now has three rabbis, two in Bozeman and one (appropriately) in Whitefish. They were all at the Capitol on the first night of Hannukah last year to light a menorah in the ornate Capitol rotunda, amid 100-year-old murals depicting Sacajawea meeting Lewis and Clark, the Indians beating Custer, and the railway being built. The security officer and the dog followed the rabbi into the rotunda, to size him up.

Hanukkah has a special significance in Montana these days. In Billings in 1993, vandals broke windows in homes that were displaying menorahs. In a response organized by local church leaders, more than 10,000 of the city’s residents and shopkeepers put make-shift menorahs in their own windows, to protect the city’s three dozen or so Jewish families. The vandalism stopped.

Lately, the only commotion about Hanukkah has been the annual haggling among the rabbis over who gets to light the menorah at the Capitol. (It has since been resolved — at this year’s lighting, on Dec. 16, they will each light a candle; in the future they will take turns going first.)

Last year, the rabbinic debate resumed as the hour of lighting neared and 20 or so Jewish Montanans filed into the Capitol.

One woman could be heard reporting, excitedly, that a supermarket in Great Falls would be carrying matzo next Passover; a guy from Missoula was telling everyone that he had just gotten a shipment of pastrami from Katz’s Deli in New York.

The menorah was lighted and Hebrew prayers chanted, while the officer watched from a distance with his dog. He figured he would let it all go down and then move in when the ceremony was done. The dog sat at attention, watching the ceremony with a peculiar expression on its face, a look of intense interest. When the ceremony was over, the officer approached the Hasidic rabbi.

“I’m Officer John Fosket of the Helena Police,” he said. “This is Miky, our security dog. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Miky, pronounced Mikey, is in a Diaspora of his own. He was born in an animal shelter in Holland and shipped as a puppy to Israel, where he was trained by the Israeli Defense Forces to sniff out explosives. Then one day, Miky got a plane ticket to America. Rather than spend the standard $20,000 on a bomb dog, the Helena Police Department had shopped around and discovered that it could import a surplus bomb dog from the Israeli forces for the price of the flight. So Miky came to his new home in Helena, to join the police force.

The problem, the officer explained, was that Miky had been trained entirely in Hebrew.

When Officer Fosket got Miky, he was handed a list of a dozen Hebrew commands and expressions, like “Hi’ sha’ er” (stay!), Ch’pess (search!), and “Kelev tov” (good doggy). He made flashcards and tried practicing with Miky. But poor Miky didn’t respond.

Officer Fosket (who is not Jewish) suspected he wasn’t pronouncing the words properly. He tried a Hebrew instructional audio-book from the local library, but no luck. The dog didn’t always understand what he was being ordered to do. Or maybe Miky was just using his owner’s bad pronunciation as an excuse to ignore him. Either way, the policeman needed a rabbi.

And now he had found one. They worked through a few pronunciations, and the rabbi, Chaim Bruk, is now on call to work with Miky and his owner as needed. Officer Fosket has since learned to pronounce the tricky Israeli “ch” sound, and Miky has become a new star on the police force. The two were even brought in by the Secret Service to work a recent presidential visit.

So all is well in the Jewish community here because the Hasidic rabbi is helping the Montana cop speak Hebrew to his dog. It is good news all around. The officer keeps the Capitol safe, and the Hebrew pooch is feeling more at home hearing his native tongue.

But the big winner is the rabbi, a recent arrival from Brooklyn who is working hard (against tough odds) to bring his Lubavitch movement to Montana. He has been scouring the state for anyone who can speak Hebrew, and is elated to have found a German shepherd he can talk to.

The NSA Finally Wakes Up

2009-12-07T09:51:00.003+02:00

This just in from Associated Press:

Obama national security adviser: Picture not good on Iran

Ya THINK?!!

Nice that NSA and other administration Great Thinkers and Policy Wonks have finally gotten on the same page with the rest of us.

That loud noise emanating east of D.C. is all of Israel simultaneously chorusing "Duh!" We know genocidal fascism when we see it. Been there, done that.

Never again.

US President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser James Jones on Sunday said the door remains open for Iran to work with other countries on its nuclear program but the "picture is not a good one."

Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Jones said the clock is ticking toward the end of the year.

That's when Obama has said it would be clear whether Teheran was ready to work with the United States, other UN Security Council members and Germany to assure the world it was not trying to build a nuclear weapon.

So far, the Islamic republic has rejected calls to enter negotiations, and Obama is believed preparing to seek harsher international penalties against Iran. Jones said "the door remains open" for Iran to change course.

Hello? Has Iran demonstrated any evidence that it is not trying to build a nuclear weapon? Other than the formulaic and meaningless statements, uttered with barely suppressed hilarity, from Iranian spokesmen?

Yeah, let's all worry about those nursery schools and one-room additions the Jews living in the territories are building. Certainly a new nursery school is far more threatening to world peace than a nuclear-armed End-Times theocracy bent on what they believe is a G-d-given mandate for regional domination and Jewish genocide, no?

In debate, settlements are what used to be called a "red herring" -- a deliberate attempt to change a subject or divert an argument. Oooooooo....look, the Jews are building houses*! Nevermind those hundreds of centrifuges spinning Iran towards a nuclear bomb, or the upgraded missiles and payload systems. How many power plants in France have state-of-the-art anti-aircraft missile batteries? None. How many sites in Iran do? All of them. Which is a clue that Iran isn't building a power plant, ferhevinsake....but the most important thing on Obama's Middle East agenda is stopping Jewish parents from adding a bedroom to their home for their new baby.

*photo courtesy of Kochav Yaakov website

Gaza "Civilians" -- The Movie

2009-12-06T13:14:00.002+02:00

From Wikipedia: The Big Lie (German: Große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf for a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".

Here's Gaza's Big Lie:

Kol Ha K'vod, Elder of Ziyon !

Welcome to Orwell's World: civilians = terrorists; Israeli self-defense = war crimes. Then the West complains when we don't listen to them, because we don't believe them. DUH!

Take THIS, Lebanon!!

2009-12-06T11:31:00.002+02:00

A few months ago, the Lebanese got all huffy about the fact that Israeli hummous was being sold abroad as an "Israeli" foodstuff.

They promptly went whining to the E.U. and complained that hummous, a dish known all over the Middle East, should be trademarked solely to Lebanon.

This is, of course, all about money. The Lebanese don't care that Syrians and Turks or whoever eat and sell hummous, for example, but what galls them no end is that Israel markets more hummous to the rest of the world than Lebanon does. They're asking Big Brother--oooops, the E.U.---to designate hummous as a "Lebanese" specialty so that any other country (hah!-they mean Israel) who calls their product, for example, Israeli hummous, can be sued.

The French did this with champagne; the Greeks did it with feta cheese; the Italians did it with Parmesan and Gorgonzola cheeses.

What the Lebanese miss in this argument is that champagne is regional--it originated only in the province of Champagne; ditto Parmesan cheese. I haven't a clue how the Greeks got away with "feta" but I'm sure it ticked off the Danes, who make a decent "feta" of their own.

But hummous? Calling hummous "Lebanese" is like insisting that beer is Iraqi. Don't laugh -- the earliest beer recipe in history was found in Sumerian ruins. Think the Germans and Czechs would sit still for that?

Hummous is Middle Eastern. Even the rest of the neighborhood, ranging from cool to downright hostile to Israel, is not getting on the bandwagon for "Lebanese" hummous. The overall tone of blogs, letters and op-eds has been "yawwwwwnnn" around the Mediterranean, with a few Arab writers pointedly stating that hummous is Arab, not merely Lebanese, so maybe the Lebanese should shut up about this already.

What next? A regional trademark war over who gets to call their fruits "olives?" Maybe the Italians want to get on board and insist that no menu outside of Italy can list "pasta" as a dish?

But undaunted by the Lebanese tirade and hummous cook-off, Israelis responded with a different world-record-setting dish: meorav Yerushalmi. A group of 9 chefs got together at Machane Yehuda souk, and cooked up the world's biggest example of this local specialty.

NO ONE can claim this dish except Jerusalem Jews. It's actually delicious although the pictures posted of the event wouldn't lead you to believe it. [Hit the link in the title].

Meorav's origins were poverty. Jerusalem Jews didn't have it easy under either the Turks or the British, and then in the war for Independence, nearly starved to death due to the Arab blockade of Jerusalem where food rationing included items like one egg every other week for protein. Even after Independence, meat rationing was in effect for years.

What did we eat? We ate meorav Yerushalmi, known in English as Jerusalem mixed grill. [The very best is supposed to be found on Agrippas Street at restaurant Chatzot, but since the link to that site was broken in the reviews I've read, maybe the restaurant has succumbed to the Great Recession? I happen to know that the best hummous in town is served at Yossi's mom's house but you're out of luck unless you know her...]

Meorav is made by grilling a mixture of chicken meat, chicken livers, hearts, kidneys and other innards (don't grimace--what do you think you're eating when you eat a non-kosher hotdog? Trust me, if you don't know, you don't want to know...) with thinly sliced onions and seasoned with unique spices, served up with pita bread. (Shall we fight about who has the trademark on pita bread? Let's talk matzah!!)

The nicer grills serve meorav with tehina, and often tabouleh, spicy Morrocan carrots, or kruv salad (chopped cabbage dressed with lemon, oil and vinegar), or Arab salad (yes, it's called "Israeli salad" in San Francisco, but Israelis call it "Arab salad," a delicious concoction of chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs and dressed with lemon and oil).

So Israelis, undeterred by Lebanon's one-upsmanship in the hummous competition for the Guinness Book of Records, came back with the record for the World's Largest Meorav Yerushalmi.

And we always serve it with hummous. Israeli hummous. B'teavon!

2009-12-04T07:17:00.003+02:00

On 9/11, citizens of over 92 countries died in a terror attack in American skies. Last month saw the launch of a new U.S. war ship, built with parts of the World Trade Towers.

Last month also saw the dedication of a memorial, built from parts of the World Trade Towers, in memory of the victims of Moslem terrorists. The memorial stands at the gates of my city, and commemorates those who died in New York, in Washington D.C. and the heroes in the skies of Pennsylvania who died wrestling their plane into the ground rather than letting it be used to cause more civilian deaths.

A friend of mine who lives in the States sent me this video, and commented sadly that while the launch of the warship got endless coverage, the unveiling of the memorial at the gates of a Jerusalem, a city which too well understands the carnage of Moslem terrorism, received no coverage.

It doesn't matter. Everyone driving into Jerusalem will see this, and know that here too is a nation that stands firmly against the tide of rising evil in the East.

Why We (Still) Need Checkpoints

2009-12-03T12:15:00.003+02:00

YouTube got the title wrong, of course....it's much more sinister to label the civilian security guard, who makes minimum wage, as a "soldier" when in fact he's just a guy checking your purse.

Unfortunately for him, she had another knife. One person posted that she was Hamas, but she's probably just another brainwashed loser faced with an honor killing, the main recruitment tool for Arab women.

But this is why we need checkpoints...our "partners for peace" are still sending their killers:

Meet The Neighbors

2009-12-02T20:39:00.005+02:00

"Take us the foxes, the little foxes,
that spoil the vines: for our vines
have tender grapes."

Meet my neighbor. We were privileged to see someone almost never seen in the daytime here or in the neighboring regions.

This is a Blanford fox. Reports state that he is usually found in the driest and hottest regions of the Middle East. In Israel, researchers report that the densest population is found in the Judean Desert at elevations of 100-350 meters below sea level.

It must be getting crowded there, because Renaud has moved to our neighborhood.

Of course, the wadi just outside my window, if followed relentlessly eastward, ends at a row of hills and over those the undulating descents to the Dead Sea commence. Foot traffic from the Dead Sea is eminently possible.

I wouldn't have seen him at all but for The Husband's sharp eyes. "Come quick," he called. "See the fox?"

Silly question. I am blind as a bat without glasses, and even with glasses, picking out a grey something that is lying on grey rocks in the shadow of a rock wall is not particularly feasible. But I took his word for it, and kept my eyes glued to the spot. Nothing. No motion.

But there was motion down the slope. Our neighbor the Palestinian/Jordanian-settler-rancher/shepherd, was herding his sheep up from the lower pastures, now green from the rains, up to higher pastures.

Renaud didn't twitch.

Once the herd of sheep and goats meandered out of sight. Renaud jumped up onto the rock wall, and into the rocky olive orchard beyond. My last glimpse of him was that of a quick-trotting, confident fox making good time through the sparse orchard, tail streaming out behind him like a banner.

I did a little trotting through the internet myself, fascinated by our fox. My husband had seen a lot of them down in the Arava during his kibbutz sojourn, but I had only seen the Sierra-Nevada variety.

It appears that the Blanford fox is nocturnal, so we were lucky to see him (or her) at all during the day. However, mating season is from December through January (another source said January through February), so maybe he was looking for a mate. Dry creek beds are the most popular range for these foxes in Israel, according to researchers, because of an abundance of prey in that locale. It just so happens that at the foot of our terraced wadi is a creek bed which is mostly dry until it rains.

Renaud eats everything. Not merely omniverous, he also like fruit, insects and olives. Maybe wind-falls are why he's hanging around in the olive groves below. This also explains the verse from the Tanakh: as a child I always wondered why a fox would eat grapes, and dismissed it as mere poetic license.

Wrong. Renaud likes his fruit. "The species has been observed eating domestic crops and seems to prefer melons, grapes, and Russian olives in some areas."**

Russian olives??!

He also is known by other names: royal fox, hoary fox, king fox, Blandford's fox, corsac, dog fox, steppe fox and Afghan fox. His "official name" is Vulpes cana, a name seemingly shared with most foxes and which in Latin sounds suspiciously like "wolf-dog." Various maps on the internet show him living in Israel and Jordan, Egypt, the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, he is a trusting soul with no fear of man, so while he is not endangered (yet) he is easy to trap and often is trapped for his fur. Not in Israel, however, where he is a protected species. Although I can't answer for what might happen if he decides he wants one of my neighbor's lambs for dinner.....

Reports are that the fox is strictly monogamous, although one has to wonder why....it seems the female and male have barely overlapping territories, and after mating, the female is the one to care for and raise the kits. Mom has the kits out of the den and foraging with her after 6 weeks, and by four months they are hunting on their own. They reach sexual maturity at 10-12 months and live in the wild for only 4-5 years. Pity. Something this handsome should have a longer life.

I hope he/she finds his mate. I hope they have a den in our honeycombed hills along the wadi. I hope their kits make it, and dine on windfallen olives, and run like the wind through the groves and hills and desert.

--------------------------------------------

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

**
Information courtesy of Geffen, E., Hefner, R. and Wright, P. (2004) Blandford’s fox. In: Sillero-Zubiri, C., Hoffmann, M. and Macdonald, D.W. (Eds) Canids: Foxes, Wolves, Jackals and Dogs: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan.IUCN, Gland.

Yihiye B'seder

2009-11-26T19:37:00.006+02:00

There is an Israeli phrase that is peculiarly...Israeli. Every Hebrew speaker and even some non-Hebrew-conversant Jewish types know this phrase: Yihiye b'seder.

"It will be okay," or "Everything will be fine" or "Things will get better" all approximate yihiye b'seder. Literally, it means "it will be in order" but that doesn't have the same flavor.

However, it is a phrase used with heavy irony here in Israel, which is not always understood by olim or tourists.

The bank calls to tell you that you're over your overdraft. "Yihiye b'seder."

Your car went into the shop for a routine tune-up and you get a call telling you that you need a new transmission. "Yihiye b'seder."

You have a tooth ache and go to the dentist, thinking you have a cavity, but what you need is a root canal. "Yihiye b'seder."

No matter how awful, no matter how impossible, no matter how difficult the situation, no matter how painful, Israelis wryly remark, "Yihiye b'seder." It's Israeli gallows-humor. I'm sure it stems from an ironic contemplation of life's disasters coupled with an absurd faith in the future.

Hence, Benji Lovitt's new T-shirt line has a shirt I HAVE to buy!

The perfect Hanukkah gift for Israel - berated by friends, abandoned by allies, threatened with extinction by enemies.

Yihiye b'seder!

Cholent Season

2009-11-26T19:14:00.001+02:00

The Rains came. Now they've gone but for a week it looked as if the drought might end and Cholent Season might be underway.

I am a very seasonal cook. Summers are barbecue and fruit salad (or other salads--green, Arab, kruv, egg, potato, pasta and so forth...oftentimes several on the table at once). Oftentimes the kiddush is chalavi, with simply fish and salads and this allows me to serve oddles of cheese on the salads or as a spread.

Winter is different. Winter needs cholent (or as our Sephardi relatives and friends call it, "chult"). Cholent is a slow-cooked stew. Too many Ashkenazi households I've visited (okay, not the Hungarians--they know how to cook!) serve beans with some meat and ketchup.

My guys would turn up their noses if I brought that to the table. Californians like a little more heat in their food, like the Moroccans.

Cholent in my house is a layer of frozen garbanzo beans and white beans, with beer poured over the top for openers. Add meat (I use #8) which has been browned with at least one onion--two is better. Toss this on top of the beans and beer with one or two hot red peppers and an entire head of garlic, top sliced open to let out the flavors. Add however many quartered potato pieces you think your family will eat. In Israel, use the yellow potatoes, not the red--the latter get too mushy. Many households add eggs, but since I'm the only one who really likes slow-cooked eggs, I don't usually bother. A proper cholent also has barley in it, but again, I love barley but the guys don't, so I usually omit it. Sprinkle a generous amount of baharat (or allspice if you can't find baharat), cumin, Madras curry and turmeric over the stew. Don't forget salt and pepper. Green tomatillos in their juice is also good if you have them. Throw in a handful of dried red pepper flakes if you want to make sure its really charif. Add chicken broth and water to cover the ingrediants. Cook in a crock pot overnight. I start mine on "high" around 1pm to make sure its mostly cooked before Shabbat begins. Then put it on low to keep until kiddush on Shabbat day.

Now THAT's a cholent. Guaranteed to warm you up on the coldest days. And sitting on the edge of the Judean desert, we have extremely cold days like most high desert lands. Our springs and falls are long and lovely; our summers are bearable because they are dry. But the winter is a killer. It's better when it rains because then the cold is ameliorated and doesn't chill the bones the way the the dry cold days of recent winters have.

Cholent has an ancient history and is found everywhere, although by different names: hamin in the Maghrebi communities; daube and cassoulet in France; chili con carne. Among Jews, it was essential to have a meal that could be assembled in advance, mostly cooked and then left to stew in the embers of one's fire or the communal oven after Shabbat started, since lighting a fire on Shabbat is forbidden.

Now, we're back to a long, lovely autumnal period that's crisp in the mornings and nights, cool in the evenings and perfect during the day. And totally bereft of rain. We need the rain. This isn't even a political question--the land needs the rain, the farmers need the rains, the Jews, the Moslems, the Christians, the Druze, the Bahai---we all need the rain.

May the rains come again and soon...and I will celebrate with a spicy cholent.

Global Warming's Dirty Little Secret

2009-11-25T15:52:00.004+02:00

If you've ever seen Fiddler On The Roof, you'll remember when Perchik popped The Question:

"I'd like to ask you a question."

"What kind of question?" she asks.

"Well, a political question. About marriage." he splutters.

"Marriage? A political question?!" She's astounded.

He's defensive. "Yes, well, everything is political."

So it seems.

The great hullaballoo about Global Warming never caught on with me. Yes, the Earth is polluted. Yes, we have dirty rivers, poisoned wells, too much desertification, we throw too many pollutants into the air......I am, at heart, a Green, and don't want highways bulldozed through forests or housing projects on open space...but....I did a bit of reading on The Inconvenient Truth.

It left me sceptical. Not because I'm an environmentalist or scientist--I was lucky to survive algebra. What made me sceptical were some angry Third World voices raised in protest and joined by unhappy Eastern Europe voices. What they basically said was this: "The First World Industrial Powers with all their money, their developed infrastructure, their ample food which they either grow or import, are laying down these environmental rules not to protect the world from climate change, but to stifle developing nations' ability to compete with them."

I'm not an economist, either, so I couldn't tell how accurate these alternate-voice assesments were -- but it made me stop and wonder. It's not often that Nigeria and the former Eastern Block nations raise a common voice.

I started reading more about global warming. There was a trial in London on the issue--and the judge ruled flat out that Global Warming was "junk science." This was not a ruling made lightly or out of pique but after a great deal of testimony by experts.

Now, it turns out that Global Warming is the biggest con job since Ponzi schemes. The Wall Street Journal, among other journalistic institutions, published an eye-opening account of scientific political correctness run amok. Or maybe its just ego and greed run amok.

The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) is staffed by one of the world's leading climate scientists, apparently a little Stalin in his own right, who demands a unified theory on man-made climate change from his colleagues, engages in overt manipulation of scientific data to fit his theories on global warming and promotes censorship and boycott of any who disagree with him. "Deleting, doctoring or withholding information" was the Journal's description of his tactics to scam the public and the governments who up until last week felt they had solid scientific reasons to believe Global Warming existed and was a man-made problem.

How do we know all this? Someone (bravissimo!) stole over 3000 emails and documents from CPU and published them on the Web for the world to read. Someone, presumably, who is a REAL scientist and disillusioned with CPU's results-manufactured-to-fit-a-political-agenda. Jewish World Review's Robert Tracinski gives even more detailed coverage to the contents of the emails and overt censorship and manipulation that CPU and its allies engaged in [hit the link embedded in the title].

This is bad news for environmentalists everywhere. When some hot-dog like this plays fast and loose with scientific data, all his mendacity, his manipulation, his ego-centric determination to prop up his faulty theory with manipulated data results in setting back real environmental research and casting doubt on all environmental research.

Idiot.

I will quote the Journal's closing lines, because I'm sure we'll hear much more of the same in days to come:

We...now have thousands of emails that give every appearance of testifying to concerted and coordinated efforts by leading climatologists to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics. In the deparment of inconvenient truths, this one surely deserves a closer look by the media, the U.S. Congress and other investigative bodies.

And kudos to West Africa and Eastern Europe, who smelled the rat first.

Pure Plagiarizing

2009-11-23T22:31:00.003+02:00

I unashamedly admit it--I stole this from Gila because it had me in stitches! I think I'll post it to FB too:

Obama To Enter Diplomatic Talks With Raging Wildfire

Somebody Please Buy The State Department A Map

2009-11-22T22:45:00.003+02:00

Much whooping and hollering in the diplomatic circles this week over the approval of a tender to build 900 homes in Gilo.

© RomKri

"It doesn't advance the peace process," was the oft-heard complaint.

Neither does the Palestinians' juvenile rejection of every offer that doesn't meet their maximalist demands, but no one says anything rude about that.

The State Department and its elite allies amongst the diplomatic aristocracy of western Europe start with the faulty premise that Gilo was built on captured Arab lands. Any number of sources report that contrary to this canard, the majority of Gilo is built on land legally purchased by Jews prior to 1948, and it has been an "open secret" in Beit Jala that Jabra Hamis, former mayor of Beit Jala, sold Israelis the land on which parts of Gilo are built.

In the 1948 war, Jewish lands in Gilo were captured and confiscated by the Jordanian government, as were the Jewish lands of Atarot, the Old City (which was majority Jewish), Sheik Jarrah, Silwan, Kfar Etzion, and countless other places in what is now referred to by the politically correct as "Occupied Palestinian Lands."

Sorry, useful idiots -- many of those lands were Jewish to start with. We just got them back, is all.

From 1948-67, during the illegal occupation and annexation of everything over the Green Line by Jordan, Jewish landowners did not relinquish ownership of their land in Gilo, ( or in Har Homa, for that matter, where land was also purchased by Jews prior to 1948) and when Israel recaptured the land in 1967, Gilo was built -- not because of war victories, but because of longstanding legal land purchases.

Also, we're not idiots. Gilo sits on one of the highest points overlooking Jerusalem--which the Jordanian and Egyptian armies recognized and capitalized on, placing artillery batteries on the hills and shelling the Jewish population under their guns at will.

We're not giving up the high ground again so that during the next disagreement with our neighbors, they can shoot from the high ground.

Besides, calling Gilo a "settlement" conjurs up this image of hilltop caravans, or in the case of France 24, mendacious stock footage of a desolate spot with some rebar and concrete prefab going up -- when in fact, Gilo is a thriving suburb (see picture) that looks a lot like any suburban neighborhood around here. There are over 40,000 people living in Gilo, on Jewish land, and the fact that the Municipality approved a housing tender which has been in the pipeline for years in order to alleviate a severe housing shortage, is really none of State's business.

It's just Left-Wing Grandstanding, "settlement" being the incitement.

And by the way, idiots, Gilo is not in "East Jerusalem." Somebody get these people a map.....Gilo isn't even within walking distance of East Jerusalem. It's at the very southern edge of the city, right before you bump into Beit Jalla, which abuts Bethlehem to the south.

There has been this absolutely Orwellian transformation of truth in that everything that was once over an armistic line which for 50 years the Arabs adamantly refuse to acknowedge is now suddenly referred to as "borders" (which they never were--it was an armistice line--borders have never been determined) which the Arabs now equally insist are sacrosanct. This is the same armistice line that the Palestinians and their Arab state backers refused to acknowledge for decades on the grounds that Greater Palestine was the goal, and to acknowledge anything demarking the Jewish state from Greater Palestine from-the-River-to-the-Sea was tantamount to treason. This same sudden insistence on the "1967 borders" (Arab propaganda for the 1948 armistice line)has also brought with it a new gospel that every plot of land over that armistic line is "East Jerusalem" even when it's northwest (Givat Ze'ev) or southwest (Gilo) of Jerusalem. Or more amazingly, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Never mind that Jews have lived in the Old City for at least a millennia, and constituted the majority of the Old City's population in 1948--suddenly that is "Palestinian territory" because the Jordanians conquered it, occupied it, annexed it, settled it and killed or expelled the Jewish population.

The fact that the Jordanian Army marched across the Jordan River like conquistadores, stole Jewish lands and houses, ethnically cleansed the Jewish population, destroyed Jewish holy sites, illegally annexed and occupied those lands over the Green Line, and settled thousands of their own people on that land, does not automatically translate into "everything-over-the-Armistice-Line-is-Palestinian."

That's what this peace process is supposed to be all about--deciding where the borders go, and what the two nations will be.

Saeb Erekat and Co. ominously promise to declare unilateral statehood. Go ahead--and watch us declare a unilateral annexation. You don't want to negotiate borders? You don't want Olmert's offer of 97% of the West Bank plus land swaps equaling 100% You don't want a land bridge to Gaza? You refuse half of Jerusalem because now you're demanding it all?

Don't make us do this. You've finally got most of the Israeli population, including Netanyahu, believing that a Palestinian state can be worked out. Don't assume that because we're meeting you half-way that we're "weak" or that you can now in bad faith demand more. Listen to the Saudis--they were right when they told you to take Olmert's offer. That offer is off the table now, but maybe you can get something almost as good if you choose to negotiate in good faith unstead of posturing for the street.

You might be able to sell the false chimera of "settlement" victimhood to State, but you won't sell it to Israel. And we're the ones sitting in the disputed territories, not Hillary Clinton. It's time to get real in Ramallah.

*photo credit of Gilo to RomCri at Jerusalem Shots

Checking Back Into The Blogosphere

2009-11-22T21:38:00.002+02:00

In response to friends, relatives and fellow bloggers, no, I haven't died or gone on an extended vacation.

I'm having a hard time squeezing blogging into the daily schedule, which looks like this:

0530: turn off alarm

0540: turn off alarm again

0545: roll out of bed and walk dogs (or in the alternative, The Husband walks dogs and I make coffee and breakfast)

0600: roll out the laptop and go to work

0745: coffee break with Yossi, followed by gym

0930: back to work

1600: turn in the day's work, turn OFF computer--avoid anything electronic for the next hour and let the eyes come back into focus.

1615: take dogs for a walk, stretch the shoulders, enjoy the outdoors for 15 minutes.

1630: help with dinner, catch up with The Guys and their day

1700: two nights per week, go to ulpan (language school); home at 9pm.

1800: on the nights with no ulpan, do homework from ulpan, review lessons, try to retain some semblance of sanity. Quit around 9pm.

9-10pm: veg out in front of television, or in the alternative, fall asleep in front of the television.

The exception to this, of course, is Friday, known here as Yom Shishi, the Sixth Day, or Erev Shabbat Sabbath Eve.

That starts a bit later--0600. Then we do all the same things except work, and I put together a grocery list and take off for Rami Levy, Israel's answer to Costco. You go at the crack of dawn because otherwise there is no parking and it takes you an hour to get through the checkout. From Rami Levy, I go to Ne'eman to buy challah (you want me to MAKE challah? On THIS schedule? You're nuts...), and sweetrolls for Shabbat morning. I also buy wine, run errands, pick up medications if needed, go to the greengrocer (since no one in my family will eat Rami Levy produce), and until HaPoalim closed on Friday, I was also doing banking....

And I stop to see Rosette who every week makes my family a Morrocan dish for Shabbat--this is Yossi's mother, who has adopted me and makes sure my family eats right.

I get home around 11:30 or 12 and start cooking for Shabbat, setting the table, make a dessert unless I've cheated and bought one, put out the blech and the kum-kum and somewhere around 2:30 or 3pm, I'm almost done. Done enough to take a nap when we're not on Winter Hours (Standard Time) but on Winter Hours, benchlicht is at 4:00 p.m., so there's no chance to nap---have to hustle the guys awake and chase them off to shower. I do Minchah while they're showering and vice versa--by the time I race the clock to candle-lighting, they're already davening and I'm lighting.....just in time.

And this is an electronics-free zone on Shabbat---no television, no computer, no blogging. Which is good because by the time Shabbat afternoon rolls around, I'm ready for a nap....

Uh, so, no, I haven't been blogging.....even finding time to read Other People's Blogs has been tough.

I have, however, been trying to improve both my Hebrew and pick up a little Arabic. My ulpan class has interesting demographics: olim from Portugal and South America; a guy who is in the IDF; a nun from Poland who is now stationed in Jerusalem and is trying to learn both Hebrew and Arabic; the usual cluster of Anglo olim and students here for a visit; a professor of art history who is doing her sabbatical year here; a woman who is a social worker specializing in helping people with disabilities and whose career involves traveling to other Middle Eastern countries to facilitate this; and five Arab students who are beating the pants off of us in Hebrew. They are all young--two are social workers, one is an engineer who does something I don't understand with computers; one is a teacher; and one doesn't talk to the rest of us.

So when class first started, we heard some of the "kids" greeting each other in Arabic, and I had to ask, "What does that mean?" Shireen, the teacher, explained it is the same as "Baruch H"S".....and taught me. I can now sort of say al hamdulaleh, and my pronunciation is duly corrected. The question "how are you?" is ma nishmah in Hebrew, but kif halek in Arabic (or kif haleich, if you're asking a guy--spelling doesn't count, ok?)

Laila saidah (good night) is easy because Hebrew and Arabic have the same word for night.

During the breaks, I discovered that we share a common disability. The Arab students want to be more fluent in Hebrew because, like English in America, it's the key to advancement in tests, in government positions, in jobs generally. Moi aussi. Heck, I just want to have an intelligent conversation with my neighbors. I was explaining during a break that despite living in a non-Anglo neighborhood surrounded by Israelis speaking Hebrew, it was still tough to keep up Hebrew because I work all day in English; my colleagues all speak English; my family all speaks English, despite pleas that they speak Hebrew to me, and invariably the English-language stations are what the guys watch on television......and Achlan said she had the same problem--"I study Hebrew, but my family speaks Arabic, all day long my clients speak Arabic, so I work in Arabic, write my reports in Arabic, and go home to dinner and television in Arabic--when do I get to use Hebrew?"

So we are bound by a common goal and a common lament.

Tonight we learned about Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice. It follows the Akeidah exactly but with Ishmael in place of Yitchak, and in Mecca instead of Jerusalem.

But what we have in common is the Sacrifice--Korban in Hebrew, Qurban in Arabic. Like Judaism, which commands tzeddakah for the poor at religious holidays, Eid-al-Adha commemorates the near-sacrifice of Ishmael with lamb or beef--most of which is given to the poor.

Eid al-Adha starts at the end of this week. If I didn't know from my classmates, I would know from the large number of hijab-clad women shopping excitedly at the Jerusalem Mall. Like Rosh HaShanah, it's a holiday where one's husband buys new clothes and shoes for the wife and children.

I don't have David Bogner's talent for posting every day. I had hoped that at a minimum I could post twice a week. That's still my goal--but my exhaustion quotient is reached much more rapidly in my fifties than it was in my twenties, and I still need to squeeze in The Husband's medical appointments as well as The Boy's---we have been successful in getting him new glasses, a new eye doctor and a transfer to adult neurology.

What I really need is either a 28-hour day or the ability to get by on four hours of sleep.

Strike Two

2009-10-05T21:19:00.003+02:00

I have a very good friend who used to bail out on virtually ALL social occasions. She couldn't explain why, and those of us in her circle of friends just gradually came to accept that Kay was a flake. Kay didn't see it that way--she found social gatherings uncomfortable and anything more than two or three people was reason to not show up.

I didn't understand it, but looking at her career, it made sense--she spent all day working as a counselor in mental health and juvenile delinquency settings, and the idea of using her leisure time to navigate through the pitfalls of social gatherings with friends, strangers, friends-of-friends and sometimes relatives was probably unappealing.

I don't have her excuse. I'm two-for-two, having missed the JBlogger Convention because of work (training day--not negotiable) and today missed the JBlogger Picnic which I've been looking forward to for a week.

Unlike Kay, I actually LIKE meeting people, and friends of friends (we'll leave relatives out of it for now, with the exception of my sister-in-law and my cousins, who are gems)and listening to other people's take on things--whether or not I agree with them.

But I got up early (0530) to get started early on work, and skipped the gym so I'd be done by 3pm, all with the intention of swinging over to Gan Sacher with my family in tow to meet with bloggers I already know and hopefully bloggers I haven't met yet.

"You guys ready?" I called, shutting down the laptop.

"Do I HAVE to go?" grumbled the teen. "I REALLY don't want to do this."

"I have a headache," the Husband muttered from the couch.

"Oh, c'mon, I've been looking forward to this all week," I remonstrated. "The weather is great, there's a sukkah, we'll stop and get burgers or a felafal so you don't have to prep or pack."

Mike rolled his eyes at me. "This is not something I really want to do...I'll go if you insist because you're my wife, but I'd rather do a lot of other things."

"I don't want to go...." the Kid announced for about the 17th time [yes, I heard you already...]

"But it's Sukkot, and I thought it would be fun to go out and do something together as a family---I want to go, but I don't want to go by myself while you guys just hang out at home...what do YOU want to do?" I asked.

"I dunno." "I dunno."

Men.

"Look, I've been glued to a computer screen for eight hours, unmoving. My eyes hurt. My muscles hurt. My back hurts. I need to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE AND DO SOMETHING!!" I explained as rationally as possible.

"Well, I understand that," my husband conceded. "What do YOU want to do, other than go hang out with a bunch of people I've never met and wouldn't have a clue how to talk to?"

"Why not? They're olim, like us, and Jewish, like us.....you don't have to talk about writing and blogs. Talk about life." I amended cheerily.

He sank lower in the couch. "I really do have a headache. I don't feel like being social."

Sigh.

We finally agreed on the (ugh) Mall -- I could use my gift card to buy books at Steimatzky's, Josh could go look for a new computer game he wants, pick up some decorations for the sukkah, and we could all sit and have a chat over iced coffees...as a family. Something we don't do often enough any more. School, work, the rush of life going by....

It was fun. Then we came home, made dinner and ate in the sukkah, and my back didn't hurt, my eyes didn't hurt and Mike's headache had gone....

So I'm sorry for acting like my flaky friend, and I realize this is the SECOND Jblogger event I've missed...but shalom bayit was important today.

Chag Sameach!

Offsides

2009-10-02T14:19:00.002+02:00

My parents tell me that when I was very little, toddling around, my father and his friends would gather to watch American football at the house during the Fall while their wives would go shopping. This meant that the men were the babysitters for the afternoon, and the toddlers learned to drink beer, eat chips, and acquired new vocabulary, like "Touchdown!"

I've been a football fan all my life as a result, and one of the nicer things about growing up in the Bay Area was going with my family to watch the Oakland Raiders slaughter, or get slaughtered, on the field weekly during The Season.

One concept I caught on to early in football fandom was "offsides." It's a tactic designed to fake your opponent into a mistake that you can capitalize on by getting him penalized. Two teams line up facing each other, with the team in possession of the ball getting ready for offensive maneuvers. The quarterback is calling a code which will signal the snap of the ball and the start of the play. The idea is to get the ball downfield in your team's possession, into the end zone, and score. The closer your team is to the end zone, the better position you're in for scoring.

"Offsides" is what happens while the count is going down. Usually one member of a team at the far end of the line will act as if the ball has gone into play by suddenly jerking, or lifting an arm off the ground, or moving in a fashion indicative of offensive or defensive behavior. He has to do this without the referee seeing him, or it's all over, because you can't deliberately fake the other team into movement. But if he gets away with this subtle movement, and the opposing team member charges across the line before the ball has been snapped, it's a penalty for that team. This is "offsides" and the penalty is that your team loses yardage and ends up in a poorer field position--making it easier for your opponent to score a touchdown.

There's a tremendous amount of willingness of the western world to hand off the ball to Israel these days. Not only does the West drag its feet regarding sanctions, but there is only lip service paid to anything remotely resembling military action, usually something vague like "all options are on the table," whatever that's supposed to mean. The general consensus seems to be, "Let the Israelis do it," while at the same time loudly warning us not to do anything rash.

Thanks for nothing, world.

Having taken out Iraqi and Syrian above-ground nuke facilities virtually next door, the world seems to think that rather than dirty its hands (and upset its trade balance), Israel should be only too happy to hit Iran's nuclear facilities and make the world safer for western interests. The argument seems to be that it's in Israel's best interest to do so, so why not subcontract the dirty work to us and not risk any blow-back from the Axis of Evil.

This is where the concept of "offsides" stops me cold.

If it's all so urgent and important that Iran be stopped from developing nuclear weapons, which they have openly stated that they intend to use against Israel, then why isn't the United Nations doing something? Isn't that the U.N. Mandate? Or why isn't NATO scrambling? Or any Coalition forces? If Iran's nukes are a threat to world peace, (and they definitely are--if Iran can get away with nuking Israel, no one is safe, folks) then why isn't the world collectively flexing its military muscle and telling Iran to stand down?

This collective pushing of Israel into military action smells like "offsides" to me. That's right -- let Israel take its best shot at taking out the almost impossible to hit, multi-site, underground reinforced nuke bunkers, and then when Iran retaliates with the nuclear device (or two, or three--that's all it would take for a country as small as ours)purchased from or donated by North Korea or the Russian mafia and delivered by its proxy Hezbollah, the world will crack its jaw yawning and utter, "oh, isn't that too bad, but Israel had it coming, after all, the Israelis started it."

I have this sense that we're being faked into moving against an opponent simply so he has the opportunity to penalize us and better his field position for the next play.

If Netanyahu were to ask me (and no, he won't) my suggestion would be that we sit tight. Don't move against Iran. Let them get their nuclear bomb (I personally agree with Bret Stevens--I think they've already purchased a couple from North Korea and have them on ice, so hitting their labs is a waste of time anyway), and then see what they do with it. I don't think even the ayatollahs have the stomach to start a nuclear war, all their bombast to the contrary. Go ahead--get your bomb and explain to your starving people that sanctions, gasoline rationing, food shortages and 300% inflation was worth it, and that's why we stole your votes, by the way.

Let them eat nukes.

Will SOMEONE Please Answer The Bird!?

2009-08-31T18:41:00.001+03:00

I was never a big fan of birds as pets. I attribute this to an unfortunate college roommate who shared a suite of rooms with me and 3 other girls. This girl, who I am ashamed to say I treated very badly in the worst post-high-school I'm-so-cool-and-you're-not way, rebuffing her attempts at friendship, purchased a cockatoo.

It was a beautiful bird.

It also awoke with the dawn, as did this roommate, along with my (room) roommate, both science majors. Science students get up early. Us liberal arts types were more likely to stay up late discussing World Hunger and how to fix it, and then sleep through breakfast.

I attributed my dislike of the bird to the hour it woke me. Six o'clock in the morning is now, after years in the work force, with children and pets, the prime of the morning. Back then, it was unholy.

I formed a dislike for this poor bird, I suspect, in part because of my desire to rebuff his owner. I was too insecure as a first year student away from home to simply accept people for who they were, and accept her puppyish uncool attempts at friendship with an open heart.

It's on that List Of Things I Wish I Could Go Back and Do Over Again.

So for years, based on that experience, I decided birds were noisy, dirty and unpleasant. In fact, this bird was none of those things--he was just a cockatoo and a rather cute, friendly one at that.

Moving from the dormitories to a shared house in our rural college town, I discovered the joy of having a yard and the agony of yard work. I also discovered that birds other than cockatoos get up with the sunrise. One in particular liked to sing up the sun first thing in the morning from the branches of a sapling immediately outside my window. At first, I groaned and buried my head under the pillow...but as the days went by, I noticed something. This bird sang with all his heart. He sang with such energy and joy that I couldn't help but smile, even though he woke me up every morning. I came to expect it, to anticipate his song, and when he went wherever birds go in the winter, I missed his song.

Then, years later, I met another woman who kept finches and canaries. I was entranced by them. They sang. They trilled and sang and the sound made my heart glad. During the Single Years, when I hiked the mountains and coasts of the West, I would often go with my best college chum who herself was a fount of knowledge about birds and their calls. She had an eye and could point out a red-tailed hawk on a fence when we were still a half-mile away. She can tell by looking at the sky if its a hawk, an eagle or a vulture, and taught me how to tell the difference. She recognized the calls of certain birds and told me what they were, whether it was the cry of a golden eagle or the cry of a marsh bird.

I started to enjoy birds. I like to listen to their calls, and watch their antics during mating and their nest-building in the spring.

When we first moved to Jerusalem, one of the first books I bought was a book about birds. I have met the Hoopoo, the bee-eater, the wagtail, the golden-bellied bulbul, and the ubiquitous black-and-tan crows of Jerusalem. I saw a bird at Ramat Rachel that rarely visits Israel, but is known to stray off the Great Flyway down the Rift Valley. I am sometimes humbled by the thought that these avians have been migrating that route probably longer than humans have.

Then we moved here, to the edge of the desert. It's quiet here because we have few trees. It's not like Baka, or Rehavia with their riot of foliage in which birds readily shelter. We have pigeons (two spectacularly beautiful examples of which I think stayed on our roof for a bit, since we heard them cooing up there for a week), and crows, but no birdsong.

Until recently.

It's not exactly bird song. But there is some song amidst the other clamor.

Someone across the street purchased a bird. We've spent weeks trying to figure out which condo the bird lives in, but he is up with his owners with the dawn, and he is happy! He trills the sun up, then starts with the rest of his repetoire. He is some kind of mynah or mocking bird or parrot which mimics human noises perfectly. In the weeks since he's taken up residence, he has broken off his song at times to whistle. He has a collection of various whistles which he has assembled from every dog owner in the area. It must confuse the dogs to hear their owners "whistle" them up and then find out they didn't....

He continually picks up new noises to mimic. A few weeks ago, I couldn't figure out what idiot kept opening and closing his car door. Who would repeatedly hit the electric locking mechanism with its dur-dur-durp crescendo?!

The bird. He now perfectly mimics the neighbor's car door which is electronically locked every night and electronically unlocked every morning....

Recently, because of the extremely warm weather, the windows have been opened to catch the breeze in the late afternoons and evenings. The Husband and I were started to get annoyed that some inconsiderate teen out on the street or in the park was constantly taking calls on his cell phone, and letting it ring and ring and ring...

"...I wish someone would pick up the phone!" I growled. After a few evenings of this, the Husband suddenly started laughing.

"What's so funny? Whoever it is should pick up their phone," I complained, as the ringing went on and on and on.

"It's not a phone," he said, grinning. "It's our neighbor--the bird has learned to mimic a cell phone.'

The next day, the bird rang and rang again. "Someone please answer the bird!" Mike said, only half in jest.

This morning, the bird didn't sing up the dawn. I was plugging away at my computer for an hour before I realized we hadn't heard his morning song. "I wonder if he's okay, " I ventured, a bit concerned.

"His owners probably decided to sleep in, so he's under cover," Mike said nonchalantly.

Sure enough, a short time later, the sunrise song burst full throated from the bird.

I've never even seen this bird. I don't know what he looks like. I don't know what kind of bird he is, but his song makes me glad every single morning, and I listen for him all the time. Every time he sings, he makes me smile. I enjoy his enjoyment of life, and while it seems a little silly to say so, I'm grateful that my neighbors brought him home where I derive some enjoyment from his singing. And even his ringing.

Coming Into The New Year

2009-08-29T21:49:00.012+03:00

Let's see, what's going on in the world?

Gilad Shalit may finally come home. Wouldn't it be great if he could celebrate the Yamim Noraim with his family?

Moody's say Israel has weathered the Financial Meltdown [we'll see if the banks and the government manage to mess it up before this is done...].

Hamas is upping their rocket and missile launches into southern Israel, while executing the Palestinians they don't like at home. Hmmmm...this is hardly even "news" anymore, although the YouTube executions are sort of a coup.....

School is starting on Tuesday, and certain schools in Petach Tikvah are playing like being Jewish is a color....hello, nobody is buying your excuses. BUT the Evil Zionist Settlers have stepped into the breach and proved themselves more menschlich than their counterparts in Petach Tikvah. In the meantime, I'm waiting to see Petach Tikvah's adherents of Jewish apartheid lose their school funding--preferably by Tuesday.

These are the same Evil Settlers who practice this kind of "apartheid." Won't see this in the Aftonbladet.....or Chron or NYT or LA Times, betcha!

Egypt weighed in with "no more Jewish building in East Jerusalem" as a condition for negotiations. [This is going to put a lot of Palestinian wage-earners out of business....maybe they can get employment with the road crews? ]

It's also pretty pointless. The Israeli government cannot stop (nor should it) private building on private land which has already been approved by the Jerusalem municipality. Owners of land, both Arab and Jewish, in East Jerusalem can sell their land to anyone they want--including developers, whether Zionist or Palestinian. Where that land has already been sold and is under development, a foreign government has no business issuing orders to stop "Jewish building." I seem to recall the same kind of laws existed in both South Africa and the pre-Civil-Rights-Act United States. In the latter it was called "segregation" and prohibited non-whites (including Jews) from buying or building in "white" areas; in South Africa, it was called "apartheid." Hosni Mubarak is conditioning peace on an apartheid policy--no Jews in would-be Arab neighborhoods (never mind that before 1948 they were our neighborhoods, too).

Lador is calling for minimum sentences for violent crimes. An excellent idea since we don't get to elect our judiciary, and its continued, misplaced leniency towards violent crime and horrendous traffic offenders is something the public is correctly outraged about. Electing our own trial judges so they are responsible to the public for their decisions would be another good move.

The kangaroo court show trials of Iranian dissidents protesting a stolen election continue, sadly without much vocal support or even notice in the obtuse western elite establishments. Is anyone going to speak up for them outside of Iran? J'accuse, world. {C'mon, Mr. President! You're the leader of the Free World. Stand up and speak out for people who only wanted their votes to count for something!}

And while they are standing trial, the Chinless One visits visits his fellow wanna-be nuclear terrorist to proclaim that "western interference" is the only reason for these protests, and that Iran and Syria must continue their policies together in the region.

And what policies would those be? The establishment of Greater Syria and a Shi'ite Caliphate at the tip of a nuclear weapon? Oh, yeah, and don't forget "Itbach al Yahood!" also, presumably, with your nuclear toys. Hey, Mr. President Obama, you just got slapped in the face in case you didn't notice. So much for holding out the hand of friendship--and meeting the clenched fist. Other countries celebrate the arrival of heads of state with a 21-gun salute. Not coincidentally, this visit corresponded with the biggest bomb and mortar attacks in Baghdad in years, with over 500 wounded and over 100 killed.....I don't believe in coincidence, particularly
al-Qaeda-looking "coincidence."

In the meantime, the Left is lamenting Obama's negative ratings in Israel while excoriating anyone who dares to suggest that the socialist utopia of Sweden may actually harbor antisemitism! Such a surprise! Imagine that, antiSemitism in Europe! Can't be! It's really a Right Wing Plot fomented by Lieberman to distract attention from the Occupation!

Occam's razor, idiots. No conspiracy theory is needed to explain European extreme dislike of Semitic peoples in their midst--it's a matter of historical record. Sweden simply let its benign mask slip. Aftonbladet published a grossly antisemitic article and if the Israeli government can condemn an offensive religious skit, and the Swedish government can block the Mohamed cartoons from the internet, then certainly the Swedes (as represented by their elected representatives) can have the good grace to say that, yes, a blood libel designed to incite hatred against Jews is offensive and we, the nation of Sweden find it reprehensible. Or at least in bad taste. Instead of "We can publish whatever we want [no, you can't--your Constitution prohibits libel, insult and incitement against groups of people] and you thin-skinned Jews will just have to live with it, nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!"

So the Swedish reaction (go read the talkbacks here and abroad) has been along the lines of we-are-the-most-moral-country-on-earth, the embodiment of socialist western humanism, and how DARE you criticize us? And the Israeli and western leftist establishment is rallying to this disgusting perversion of human rights.....a la Stalinism. Good communists justified the Hitler-Stalin pact carving up Poland because Stalin was sacrosanct, the god of communism, and to disagree was heresy.

The same dynamic is at work here: Sweden is the Leftist mythological embodiment of The Good in socialist post-modern society, the role model of multiculturalism, social welfare, and free sex -- so Sweden, the self-appointed moral arbiter of all other nations, is equally sacrosanct and the dirty little secret that Swedes are every bit as antiSemitic as other Europeans has to be buried under heaps of abuse on anyone who dares to utter the heresy that Swedish bigotry is embodied not just in this newspaper article, but in the wide-ranging justifications that Swedes offer to defend it.

By the way, the most interesting posts I've read came from Swedes who hastened to assure me that, no, Sweden isn't antiSemitic at all! Of course if your name is Posner or Cohen, you would never be denied a job or a promotion, unlike if you had a name like...."Mohammed."

They said this. Really. I see...so the bastion of post-modern socialist multiculturalism isn't antiSemitic, it's only Islamophobic. Gee, nice to know that they're prepared to be so selective in their forms of discrimination.....somehow I don't find these admissions reassuring on the issue of racism generally in the Great White Hope of the North, nor does it fill me with confidence that antiSemitism isn't lurking in the dark corners.

But what? Me, worry? Naw, I don't live in Europe, can't do a thing about Iran's nukes, and this week I have more immediate worries.....the Husband went in for a skin biopsy following the sudden appearance of a very strange growth on the back.....the most worrisome part was not one doctor said, "Aw, it's nothing but get it checked anyway." He was shunted from doctor to dermatologist to surgeon in a matter of days (pretty fast for socialized medicine), and we're supposed to get the results in 3-4 weeks. WEEKS?!! I wanted to scream, but no, I was cool because the surgeon was a jerk. Hopefully, his knowledge will equal his arrogance. As a cancer survivor himself, the Husband is a bit concerned about this....my job is to keep him optimistic, and recite Tehillim.

So I am tabling the lesser concerns of war, peace, and world hunger and literacy for now....and just getting through the next month.

“On Rosh Hashanah it is written
On Yom Kippur it is sealed
How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be
Who shall live and who shall die"

Evil is averted by prayer, repentence and tzedakah. The repentence and tzedakah is our endeavor. But while we are Jewish, we are nondenominational in prayer--we'll take everyone's, thank you.

San Francisco Stoplight Rules

2009-08-20T21:59:00.003+03:00

Ages ago, I posted the secret to surviving Israeli traffic: always yield, never hurry.

I need to post an addendum to that advice: San Francisco stoplight rules.

San Francisco is an extremely hilly town with some downright roller-coaster type roads. One of my favorites is Franklin Street heading downhill towards the Gate--can't beat the view or the adrenaline rush.

That said, the two most common forms of accidents (barring bicycle accidents) are (1) people getting killed at crosswalks by vehicles running up on the curb, or alternatively, people stepping into the street at the curb; and (2) red-light runners.

Any native of the area knows, absolutely KNOWS, that when your light turns green, you DO NOT GO. You count "one-Missouri, two-Missouri" while looking left and right to make sure the traffic has actually stopped. To proceed on a green light on the assumption that opposing traffic has actually stopped for the red light is suicidal. I've always blamed it on the hills--there's something about the steep hills that makes braking for a red light unattractive....so drivers just blow through them because they think the impetus of downhill gravity will get them through that intersection before the green-lit cross traffic actually gets into gear.

Nowadays, with instant messaging, car phones, cellphones, CDs and televisions in the cars, it isn't necessarily the hills. All these other distractions make driving anywhere, even on flat freeways in LA, a daily crap shoot.

But today, I saw a reason to add San Francsico stoplight rules.

Yossi was kind enough to give me a lift back from coffee, since I was without wheels. We were talking about something inconsequential as we drove east-bound on the main Gilo ridge road. As we approached the light-controlled intersection that leads out to Gush Etzion, we were about 30 feet behind another car. That other car had the right-of-way because the light was green. Really GREEN--not yellow-about-to-be-green, not green-but-had-just-turned...it was definitively, positively green. The driver in front of us proceeded sedately at the posted limit right into the intersection.

We saw it coming. Barely. We saw a blur of car coming off the Gush road, showing no signs of stopping, and sure enough, he blew through the red light and plowed right into the intersection. And into the front end of the driver who had just entered the intersection on the green light.

The impact knocked the front end off of both cars, and spun them sideways. Fortunately, no one appeared to be gravely hurt -- the at-fault driver got out of his car immediately and approached the other driver who was still seated.

Yossi was already on the phone to the police. He got out of his car and walked up to the cars. I made myself useful by waving on-coming traffic into the adjacent lane, so I couldn't hear the conversation at the scene.

We left, having reported it and seen a paramedic who had been waiting at the Gush bus stop run over with his equipment.

"What did you say to him?" I asked, having seen Yossi direct a comment to the red light runner.

"I told him to be quiet--HE ran the red light so don't berate the other driver," he told me.

"And what did he say?," I asked, knowing that tempers get frayed on the road easily.

"He didn't say anything after that. The ambulance will come for the other driver. He says he isn't hurt, but that's the adrenaline talking--he'll hurt as soon as the shock wears off."

I wasn't even in the accident...but its been replaying itself all day in my head. I'm not sure that there was any way to avoid it, but I've wondered all day if the driver in front of us could have avoided the collision by looking and checking the traffic to his right--even though he had the green light.

Maybe not. But I'm going to start putting my San Francisco-bred instincts to work at the intersections from here on out.

Why Gaza's Borders Are Closed

2009-08-16T15:52:00.003+03:00

For eight years, Palestinians in Gaza fired rockets and mortars into Israel. Hamas sent suicide bombers via various routes from Gaza into Israel, who were sometimes intercepted at the border crossings and sometimes not caught until they were in Israel.

Although slightly dated, this report sums up the game:

Since the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in the summer of 2005, Hamas and its allies have fired more than 6,000 rockets and mortars into Israel.6 The number of rocket attacks increased from November 2007 onward, targeting Sderot and other civilian areas. Palestinian terrorists fired some 200 mortar shells and Kassam rockets at the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza, resulting in substantial damage and injuries to personnel.

During this period there were some 30 foiled attempts at terrorist infiltration, including at least 20 incidents where Palestinians used medical missions to attempt terror attacks. In June 2006, a female suicide terrorist was arrested at the Erez crossing while on her way to carry out an attack on an Israeli hospital. In May 2007, two female bombers received permits but were caught after slipping through security checks.7 On May 22, 2008, a truck loaded with 4.5 tons of explosives exploded just before reaching the crossing.

The ISA published reports on 11 individuals, including those just cited, who used permits for medical care or for family visits to patients already in Israel for the purpose of carrying out terror-related activities. At Erez, three patients admitted under questioning that they had purchased referral notes with bogus medical information from doctors in Gaza. According to the ISA, terror organizations were making a special effort to recruit women, including those who are pregnant, who are less likely to be closely examined and whose heavy clothing more readily conceals suspicious objects.8 PHR-I forwarded these patients for approval, unaware of their true status.

The Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government entered into an agreement about the borders into Gaza, which were staffed by EU monitors and by PA personnel. Hamas' coup d'etat in Gaza and its gangland-style executions of the Fatah opposition ended PA control over the borders, and Israel closed its border with the now-Hamastan entity.

Since then, mortars, rockets and missiles continued apace, oftentimes aimed at the border crossings on those days where Israel was opening them to allow in items like gasoline or medical supplies.

It's been quiet since the Gaza operation last winter. Until this last week. HaAretz reported that Hamastan once again elected to open fire on the border crossings--just as Palestinians needing medical treatment in Israel were crossing into Israel:

On Sunday, Gaza militants fired mortars at a crossing into Israel just as Palestinian patients were being transferred for treatment, a Palestinian official said.

"It's a miracle nobody was hurt," Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said.

Two radical Palestinian groups, the Popular Front and the Democratic Front, said they fired 12 mortars at the Erez crossing. The Israel Defense Forces said about six shells exploded near the Erez crossing as the transfer was in progress.

According to the procedure, the Palestinian patients are brought to the crossing in local ambulances and transferred to Israeli ambulances for their trips to hospitals.

Now I understand the Left wing conspiracy of silence about Israeli victims of Hamastan's sporadic missile fire, but hey! aren't these so-called human rights organizations and NGOs there to protect the Palestinians?

Where's the outrage? Not a peep from Human Rights-When-Funded-By-Saudi-AntiSemites-Watch, or B'Tselem? Did you hear Doctors Without Borders condemning the attack? Or the U.N.? W.H.O.? Physicians For Human Rights-Who-Just-Shot-Themselves-In-The-Foot-By-Putting-Political-Gamesmanship-Above-Patient-Care? I googled for their condemnations in vain.

Don't hold your breath.....

Palestinian Myth Making 101

2009-08-16T15:38:00.002+03:00

Myth Number One: Hamas has never used human shields.

The following is the full text of the comments by Hamas representative Fathi Hamad: "For the Palestinian people death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire life."

Catch it on YouTube:

Then, there's that old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words:

So where is the mainstream media's outrage over firing from a crowd of civilians? What?! They expect that unlike any other attacked country in the world, Israel won't fire back? Hamas is responsible for their dead civilians, not Israel. (Hint: build bomb shelters for your people instead of bunkers for your leaders before you pick the next war).

Nor does Hamas balk at using children. Using human shields is a war crime. Using children as human shields in the hope it will protect you from return fire plumbs new depths of depravity.

Pictures courtesy of PMW and Mere Rhetoric , who did all the heavy lifting--I just plagiarized. It was too good not to share.

Good Fences Make Good Neigbors--Good Roadblocks Make Better Ones

2009-08-13T22:58:00.006+03:00

On July 20, the IDF was putting together a proposal to remove over 100 dirt roadblocks in time for Ramadan this year.

Last month, for the first time in years, a Palestinian could drive from Nablus to Hebron without encountering a roadblock. The roadblocks near Jericho are down so Israelis can now travel through the West Bank to lose their money in Jericho's casino, and Jericho residents can now reach any major town on the West Bank without going through roadblocks.

In May, the IDF began dismantling roadblocks in the West Bank at an accelerated rate. Haaretz reported in June of this year that only 10 manned roadblocks are still extant in the West Bank, and searches are not carried out at every one of them. This is in stark contrast to the last year and a half, when more than 35 manned roadblocks were in operation. More and more, IDF soldiers are posted outside of major city centers to keep Israelis out rather than to check on Palestinians.

Apparently this is part of Netanyahu's policy to take action to improve the day-to-day life of Palestinians in the West Bank in a way that would significantly better the economic conditions in the area. He and Barak apparently believed that lifting roadblocks does not bear a significant domestic political price if there are no terrorist attacks as a result of the easing of restrictions.

That "IF" suddenly changed everything.

If tonight's news announcement is not a false alarm (and since a terror group is claiming responsibility, I believe it's probably true), then all these moves towards slowly draining off the occupation have been for nothing.

Today, a kid in the Air Force was forcibly kidnapped near his base in central Israel.

How would Palestinian terrorists get to central Israel? Hey, look, NO effective roadblocks!!

This terror act, this kidnapping of one of our sons on our own land, is brought to you courtesy of the Palestinian people, whose leadership last week in Bethlehem demanded ALL of Jerusalem, our capital, for their capital; the release of thousands of captured terrorists serving sentences in our jails; the opening of the border crossings of Gaza so as to ease the export of more terrorists to central Israel; and reaffirmed those clauses of the Fatah Internal Order document, which calls for the eradication of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Arab Moslem state, and the rejection of all peace initiatives.

So much for giving peace a chance.

Bring back the roadblocks. No one else's child should become Gilad Shalit.

To Live And Die In Oregon

2009-08-13T16:40:00.001+03:00

I managed to track down the story of the Oregon woman who was denied cancer medication. Here's the short version:

Woman's Insurance Denies Cancer Meds, Approves Suicide Meds

64-year-old Barbara Wagner, whose lung cancer had returned and was deemed terminal, had her claim for a $4,000 a month medication to extend her life denied by the state-run Oregon Health Plan while they approved palliative, or comfort, care only.

The rules governing Oregon Health Plan say that drugs must meet a 5% survival rate after five years to be covered by the plan. The prescribed drug, Erlotinib, has a median survival rate of 6.7 months in patients who had already completed chemo.

The Oregon Health Plan provides care to those whose incomes fall under the poverty level. Coverage is prioritized from prevention through chronic disease management, mental health then heart and finally cancer treatment.

Did you catch the key phrases? The Oregon Plan is to cover poor people. Coverage is prioritized. Cancer treatment is the lowest priority.

In other words, if you're poor, we're denying you expensive medication (meds which another commenter pointed out have a survival rate of 40% after the first year, contra the 5% claimed by the state) but we'll gladly pay for meds so you can kill yourself.

Keep in mind that most of the poor are women, minorities and people with disabilities. Women have always suffered a financial gender-gap due to their tailoring their lives to those of their children and spouses.

The talkback comments are always very illuminating, albeit the would-be masters and mistresses of the universe who opine in that forum are harsh indeed. Most wrote in to say she "deserved" to die because she was a smoker and/or old; that they felt $4000/month for meds was outrageous and the state shouldn't pay it just to extend the old lady's life for 6 months (studiously ignoring the writer who commented that the statistic as reported is incorrect and that survival rate is 40% after the first year); why should some other person die because the state wasted all this money on an old woman with cancer, etc....

I doubt they would comment in this fashion if they were the ones with cancer--or if the patient were a spouse, a sibling, a parent, a child.

That's her picture. Does she look like a woman who wants to die? I didn't think so, either.

Another site had this to say:

Oregon state officials controlled the process of healthcare decision-making—not Barbara and her physician. Chemotherapy would cost the state $4,000 every month she remained alive; the drugs for physician-assisted suicide held a one-time expense of less than $100. Barbara’s treatment plan boiled down to accounting. To cover chemotherapy state policy demanded a five percent patient survival rate at five years. As a new drug, Tarceva did not meet this dispassionate criterion. To Oregon, Barbara was no longer a patient; she had become a "negative economic unit."

Well, we certainly can't have THAT--we don't need any "negative economic units" in our society, now, do we? How disgustingly Orwellian.

Am I the only one who finds this appalling and outrageous?

Searching the web, I found this:

For Barbara Wagner, too, there is something of a happy ending: The pharmaceutical company making Tarceva agreed to donate a year's supply of the expensive drug, and to consider providing further medication free of charge if she is still living and wishes to continue taking Tarceva in a year's time.

In other words, Big Business came to the rescue, not the bloody government!

However, for other patients with advanced cancer, there may be few options. The Oregon Health Plan will not cover chemotherapy unless there is a better than 5% chance it will help patients live for five more years. Patients who don't meet that standard get a letter denying coverage for chemo and suggesting comfort care, including pain relief and, potentially, doctor assisted suicide.

Hence, Barbara is not alone:

Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon's state-run health plan for help.

Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, responded to Stroup's request with a letter saying the state would not cover Stroup's pricey treatment, but would pay for the cost of physician-assisted suicide.

Got that? He's 53. That's NOT old. I understood that the purpose of government's universal health care was to make sure that people, especially the unemployed and working poor, would be covered by health insurance which is currently purchased through one's employer in group plans which many still decline because even the group plan is too expensive.

So here's Randy with prostate cancer and who needs chemotherapy, and the state's insurance plan tells him, essentially, "drop dead."

Eventually the state reversed its decision and paid for chemotherapy because Randy fought this decision.

Whatever happened to "First, do no harm."?

There are a couple of lessons here:

First, don't be poor and live in Oregon.

Second, be careful what you wish for--any government backed universal health care under consideration should be carefully scrutinized. Your life, your family members' lives, may someday depend upon what is written there.

The Beating Heard 'Round The World

2009-08-12T17:31:00.001+03:00

So I'm watching American news a couple of days ago while trying to get over a massive sinus/ear infection.....that's how you know I am sick: I'm watching television. I am treated to the sight of muscled goons pushing and shoving protesters, yelling at the protesters, and threatening worse physical violence to their supporters and People With Videocameras who are filming this.

No, it's NOT Iran. It's the United States. Yep, the Land of the Free.

The "Town Hall" concept predates the American Revolution. Back in the Old Days, white men of property (excluding slaves, women, indentured servants and poor)would have meetings in the town hall on a regular basis to conduct the town's business--everything from the need for an armory to taxes to stray cows on the Green.

Since then, the membership has been expanded to include all citizens, who all feel we have a perfect right to show up and speak our minds about whatever the government (be it local, state or federal) wants us to do. This was so important a concept that the Constitution enshrined it in the amendments guaranteeing free speech and the right to assemble peaceably.

There seems to be a tax revolt brewing, but now those veterans of the Anti-War Movement in the Sixties are old enough to collect social security and have paid all their lives for health insurance. They have a new beef--socialized health care. They have a right to be heard on the government's plan to "socialize" the health care system, which might include cutting health care benefits for elders on a cost-effectiveness basis. One story floating around (I haven't verified it) is that a woman in Oregon in her 60s wants cancer treatment after a lifetime of smoking. I loathe cigarette smoke and I think smokers should quit. However....Oregon has self-insured state-funded health care. What she reportedly got was a denial of her request for anti-cancer medication but approval for the drugs for euthanasia. In other words, you're too old for us to waste the money on, just go die.

So, at a Town Hall meeting last week in Missouri, the place was rigged for a politcal propaganda piece rather than a free discussion of the issue. Heavily muscled union guys in SEIU shirts were whisked in the "handicapped entrance" while average citizens waiting to get in were locked out. While citizen-opponents were deliberately excluded, one half of the auditorium was roped off and "reserved" for supporters of the health care initiative. The only questions permitted during the town hall meeting were plants written in advance on index cards and submitted by the shills in the audience. Citizens who wanted to ask questions weren't permitted to. After the meeting, the SEIU guys confronted Kenneth Gladney, a black conservative from the city, who was handing out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags. This didn’t go over well with the Obama supporters and union thugs who had attended the meeting, so they allegedly punched him in the face, kicked him in the head, and stomped on him on the pavement. His attorney's letter (now all over the internet) said:

Kenneth was approached by an SEIU representative as Kenneth was handing out “Don’t Tread on Me” flags to other conservatives. The SEIU representative demanded to know why a black man was handing out these flags. The SEIU member used a racial slur against Kenneth, then punched him in the face. Kenneth fell to the ground. Another SEIU member yelled racial epithets at Kenneth as he kicked him in the head and back. Kenneth was also brutally attacked by one other male SEIU member and an unidentified woman. The three men were clearly SEIU members, as they were wearing T-shirts with the SEIU logo.

Kenneth was beaten badly. One assailant fled on foot; three others were arrested. Kenneth was admitted to St. John’s Mercy Medical Center emergency room, where he was treated for his numerous injuries. Kenneth was merely expressing his freedom of speech by handing out the flags. In fact, he merely asked people as they exited the town hall meeting whether they would like a flag. He in no way provoked any argument or altercation, as evidenced by the fact that three assailants were arrested. We hope that Kenneth fully recovers from his injuries; however, he is in great pain at this time. We will be pursuing legal action at our discretion. This was a truly senseless hate crime carried out by racist union thugs.

Aside: Hey, Mr. President, where's your outrage now? A black man is knocked down, apparently called N---- (that's what 'racial epithet' usually means), and has the daylights beat out of him for exercising his free speech rights. Do the words "hate crime" mean anything when a conservative is the victim? Maybe you'd like to buy him a beer?

Another Aside: and if you google Kenneth Gladney, you will see that the Left has circled the wagons, claiming that Gladney is a fraud, that it never happened, or if it happened, he provoked it, or if it happened, it didn't happen the way he says it happened ergo he's a liar, and the proof is he'll never file a hate crime report. Guess what? He filed. The moral bankruptcy of the Left in light of their collective snide dismissal of mostly white Chicago Machine thugs beating a black man in 2009 while their black side-kick calls him a "nigger" is no doubt covered in depth by, uh, Counterpunch, right?

Speaking of moral bankruptcy, the Democrats have responded by calling the citizens, most of them Boomer grandparents, "thugs," conveniently by-passing the hired muscle they imported to quell dissent. They are particularly incensed that people bring pictures of Obama to demonstrations with Hitler-mustaches drawn on -- that was okay for demonizing George Bush, but How Dare You!! when it comes to Obama.

Other Democratic rhetoric, especially on the internet, is downright vile: "chickenhawks," "Republitards," "nazis" and "white trash" are just a few. Jeanne Garofalo played the race card (it's on YouTube) calling protesters "redneck racists" who really aren't opposed to the government debt and the potential for health care rationing--it's REALLY about hating Obama for being black. By this standard, any criticism of presidential policies is immediately trumped by the cry of "racism!" Garofalo then snidely dismisses women who protest as suffering from "Stockholm Syndrome," clearly in thrall to their white urban male masters.

One commenter, in contradiction to some of this Democratic libel, posted that "there have been a total of seven people arrested at town halls so far, all (except one reporter) being SEIU/ACORN/Democrat Party thugs. No anti-Obama demonstrators have been arrested." If that statistic is accurate, then who are the REAL thugs here?

Another pointed out, in contradiction to Pelosi's accusation that protesters are the tools of well-heeled rich big business concerns, that that "the pro-healthcare reformers found their "grass roots" activists by placing ads on craigslist for paid positions. So lets see, the real citizens are paid activists, acorn, and unions? The media is silent on all of that."

By the way, since I live in a country with government-back universal health care, I think it's great. But I also think that citizens who are faced with making a transition to such a system, AND PAYING FOR IT, have a right to sound off in public and ask noisy, uncomfortable questions rather than merely posing for photo ops arranged by Democrats pimping this deal.

Another prominent American used to think so too:

“I’m sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we’re Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.”

– Hillary Rodham Clinton

Fatah Shoots Itself In The Foot

2009-08-09T19:38:00.005+03:00

If you do something that damages your chances of achieving what you desire, English has the perfect phrase for it: "shooting yourself in the foot."

I'v watched with equal degrees of horror and hilarity as Fatah shot itself in the foot this week.

These are our peace partners. These are the "moderates."

These are their "non-negotiable" demands, as I've picked up from various news sources:

1. A freeze on all Jewish settlement activity in the disputed territories [but no freeze on Palestinian building, which continues apace].

2. Open the borders of Gaza [to Hamas and its cadres of martyrs ready to engage in more mass murder of Jews in public venues].

When Hell freezes over....

3. ALL of Jerusalem is to be surrendered to the future Palestinian state. Not East Jerusalem. Not parts of Jerusalem. I actually read this twice to make sure I was reading it correctly. All of Western Jerusalem, which is 95+% Jewish, is to be surrendered. Not land over the Green Line. Not mixed neighborhoods. ALL of it.

When Hell freezes over....

And all prisoners must be released [that's Palestinian prisoners--Gilad Shalit doesn't even get a visit from the Red Cross] and Israel killed Arafat [he died of AIDS, according to the Russians] and the conference also endorsed the Aksa Martyrs Brigades as Fatah's official "armed wing." I love this touch -- when was the last time the Republicans or the Social Democrats or any other "political party" had an "armed wing"? Nevermind that the endorsement of this group as Fatah's official armed wing contradicts promises made by the Fatah leadership to the effect that the Aksa Martyrs Brigades have been dismantled.

What?! You BELIEVED the Palestinians when they said they were dismantling their terror apparatus....silly you!

As my Husband the Wit put it, agog with hilarity that this platform saw the light of day -- "oh, yeah, and all Jews should march to the sea, jump in, and while in mid-air, cut our throats."

Does Fatah have any idea how this plays in Israel? How many on the Right are delighted with this platform? Because this makes it very easy, too easy, for Middle Israel to simply shrug and say, "They're being ridiculous. Fuck 'em."

This is not the platform that is going to advance dialogue and the peace process. Fatah couldn't have given a better gift to Netanyahu's coalition -- NO one in the world can take the Palestinians seriously in light of this sabre-rattling. The Fatah platform is now the "obstacle to peace."

So why is there this dichotomy? Why is there the expression of a desire to negotiate, a referral to past offers and agreements, counterbalanced by a conference that sounds like a call to Jihadi crusade?

Because Fatah, now and always, has two faces: one for the international community and one for internal consumption.

The Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs aptly summed up the Two Faces of Fatah:

Will Fatah Give Up the Armed Struggle
at Its Sixth General Congress?

Pinhas Inbari [bakanote: these are excerpts--the entire article can be reached through the links]

•Many observers are watching to see to what extent Fatah's Sixth General Congress will advance or retard the prospects for re-launching the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. In this regard, the crucial question is: Is Fatah going to waive its historical principle of "armed struggle" and devote itself to peace negotiations based on compromise?

•The two relevant documents to be discussed and approved by the Fatah Congress are the Political Program and Fatah's "Internal Order." The Political Program might be seen as reflecting progress in terms of accepting a political solution and rejecting violence - but it falls short of waiving the principle of armed struggle.

•The real problem lies in the Internal Order document, which restores all of the phrases that were omitted in the Political Program. While the Political Program sought to subordinate the struggle to the need for "international legitimacy," the Internal Order is very clear in rejecting all international peace initiatives.

•In the Internal Order document, Fatah retains the armed struggle as a strategy in order to liberate the whole of Palestine and eliminate Israel. Article 12 calls for "the liberation of Palestine completely and the elimination of the state of the Zionist occupation economically, politically, militarily, and culturally."

•Article 13 calls for "establishing a sovereign democratic Palestinian state on the entire Palestinian territory." While the Political Program lists the "one-state solution" as an option in case the "two-state solution" fails, the Internal Order document mentions the "one-state solution" as the only solution.

•Should there be any question regarding Fatah's objectives, Article 17 states: "The armed popular revolution is the only inevitable way to the liberation of Palestine," while Article 19 notes: "The struggle will not end until the elimination of the Zionist entity and the liberation of Palestine."

Two Documents: One for International Consumption and the Other for Internal Use

The two relevant documents to be discussed and approved by the Fatah Congress are the Political Program and Fatah's "Internal Order." The Political Program might be seen by many as reflecting progress in terms of accepting a political solution and rejecting violence - but it falls short of waiving the principle of armed struggle. The document endorses the Arab Initiative, talks in vague expressions of the "right of return" - using a formula "based on UN Resolution 181" and not on fulfillment of this resolution, and offers the model of the "Intifada of the Stones" (the first intifada) as preferred over the model of military struggle.

The principle of the "armed struggle" is mentioned as an option of the past that must be re-examined in comparison to other options of struggle. The model seen to fit our times is the anti-wall campaigns in Nil'in and Bil'in, but "10,000 times as fierce." The political program uses the term "the struggle" (not quite describing it as the "armed struggle") and even the "peaceful struggle." However, there is more than one reference to the term "the struggle of all options," that includes the armed struggle as well. In an interview with Maan News, the Fatah leader in Lebanon, Sultan Abu al-Einein, made it clear that the "struggle of all options" includes the armed struggle as well.

Fatah's Internal Order Presents a Different Face

Developing the Nil'in-Bil'in model of struggle is problematic because it can easily deteriorate into violence, as past experience shows, but the real problem lies in the Internal Order document. All of the phrases that were omitted in the Political Program are present in this would-be "bureaucratic" document. The term "armed popular struggle" appears at the very beginning. While the Political Program sought to subordinate the struggle to the need for "international legitimacy," the Internal Order is very clear in rejecting all international peace initiatives: "The projects, agreements, and resolutions that were issued or will be issued by the UN or group of states or any separate state on the Palestinian problem that waives the rights of the Palestinians on their homeland is null and void."

Furthermore, Article 22 calls for: "objection by force to all political solutions that are offered as an alternative to the extermination of the occupying Zionist entity in Palestine and all the projects that aim for the elimination of the Palestinian problem, or seek to internationalize it or put an outside custodian on its people from any possible party." This article is in contradiction to the call in the Political Program for greater international involvement in the problem and its welcome for the involvement of international forces in Palestine.

Article 9 states clearly that "the liberation of the Holy Land and the defense of its holy sites (that are forbidden to infidels) is an Arab, Muslim, and humanitarian duty."

----------------

Feel free to share these platforms, Stateside readers: the spin in the Chronicle and the total absence of these platforms in both the Chron and the NY Times tells me that the West is getting the left-wing Pallywood spin.

One of my lawyer colleagues once postulated that Fatah was the "moderate" political party of the Palestinians and Hamas were the radicals. "Not so," I told him. "Fatah is just Hamas in suits."

They've proved it this week.

Home "Rip-Off" Center

2009-08-07T12:58:00.002+03:00

If I could, I'd open a Home Depot franchise in Israel, if only to give Home Center some grief.

I LIKE the Home Center at the Malcha Mall. They're pretty no-nonsense, and usually helpful.

However.....there is a notable exception.

Home Center in Talpiot in Canyon Hadar.

Today's was the worst of several bad experiences there.

Home Center at Malcha was out of those drying racks that screw into the wall of your mirpesset. But the staffer told us, "I'm sure they still have them in the Talpiot store," so off we trundled to Talpiot, the place that I suspect invented gridlock.

Once we slogged through traffic and parked, we went to Home Center. Two staffers assured us that yes, this item was still in stock and still on sale. Great!

We find that staff member in charge of this section, and he shows us the dugma (the model). "But it's small!" The picture in the brochure showed something that looked like it was two feet across.

"This is only the display model!" he tells us. He takes Yossi to the shelves and pulls down a box that is two feet in length. "And it's 399 shekels?" Yossi asked, reading the sign on the display. "Yes," the salesman answers.

An aside here: the display has two nearly identical sides, the only difference being that one latched in place with a bolt and the other had a hand crank. There is NO other difference, and nothing on either model that identified them by model number. Prominently displayed on the display item is a sign reading "399 NIS" with the number 600 crossed out. Clearly a bargain!

We go to the checkout stand and the clerk says, "No, it's 600 shekels."

Huh?

I said, "Wait, I'll bring you the sign." I raced back to the display, yanked the sign down, and brought it to the checkout stand, where Yossi is now explaining to the clerk and some slightly-more-senior staffer that not only does the sign say "399 shekels" but the salesman told us it was 399 shekels.

I showed the senior salesman the sign. "Too bad, giveret, that's not the price for this model," he sneered.

"Yes, it is, it's ON the display model," I said, puzzled. "Come, I'll show you," and led him away despite Yossi's protest to let it go.

I show him the display. "That's not the price for the model on THIS half of the display--that's the price for the OTHER model on the other half of the display," he says with a brush-off gesture.

"That can't be correct--look, there's only ONE price on this display." I pointed out.

"Yes, and it clearly says "2002" for the model number," he retorted.

"Okay, so where on here do you see a model number? There isn't one!" I retorted back, getting annoyed. "This can't be legal--you put up a sign on a display with two models, don't distinguish between them with any markings, and then claim the sales price is only for 'the other one'?"

He starts to turn away. "This is called bait-and-switch where I come from, and it's illegal. Are you telling me that your store policy is to allow this?" I called after him.

Now he's angry. "I'm not going to make him a gift of it!" he states, his voice rising. "This is the price--600 shekels."

"Listen, if this were an honest store, you would admit an honest mistake and let the customer have the item at the price advertised--which is the price on this sign," I said, trying to sound reasonable.

"Maybe the clerk made a mistake when he told you it was 399 shekels, but its not my mistake, it's not the store's mistake, so the price is the price." He turned away with that very Israeli I-don't-have-time-to-talk-to-a-mere-woman dismissiveness.

"Really?" I said, raising my voice. "You don't care if people think your store engages in illegal pricing? YOU don't care if your store makes a practice of cheating people?"

We're now drawing a crowd.

"You're not the manager, are you?" He conceded he was not, and when I pressed to talk to the manager, he told me to tell the checkout clerk to call him---and started to walk away, again with a dismissive shrug of the shoulders.

"Maybe the manager would care that his staff is cheating people? Maybe the manager would care that your pricing is illegal? May he should know you treat your customers LIKE GARBAGE!"

"And what are you going to do about it?" he sneered.

I'm going to put it in my blog and tell everyone that the Home Center at Canyon Hadar engages in bait-and-switch tactics, doesn't care about making the customers happy, and treats their customers like garbage -- that's what I'm going to do about it.

I looked at the half dozen people watching this exchange with interest. "Don't buy here--they're cheats and liars," I told them. I have enough Hebrew to tell that truth.

Winston Smith Is Alive and Well and Working in Australia

2009-08-04T16:52:00.005+03:00

Winston Smith was the protagonist of Orwell's "1984," a bureaucrat who enjoyed his never-ending job of historical revisionism to match current standards of political correctness.

He's alive and working in Australia! How else can one explain the bizarre and truth-defying results of the "Global Peace Index" published by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace?

But Seth Franzman says it better than I can. You can read the entire article by hitting the link in the post title, or just keep reading:

"On July 30 The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel ranked 141 out of 144 countries on the Global Peace Index published by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), making Israel out to be less peaceful than Sudan, Iran and Pakistan.

The message of studies such as this dovetails with the false legitimacy of conferences such as the UN's Durban II which claim to be about racism but are themselves racist. Together they are part of the moral bankruptcy behind so much of the rhetoric about peace, racism, war crimes and justice.

The IEP describes itself as a "vision of humanity" that is bringing "a strategic approach to raising the world's attention and awareness around the importance of peacefulness to humanity's survival." It claims to be dedicated to educating people about the "relationship between economic development, business and peace." Like other "indexes" such as the Freedom Index and Property Rights Index, the institute sifts through mountains of data and then reduces each data set into 23 "indicators." The indicators are then divided into three categories; "measures of ongoing domestic and international conflict, measures of safety and security in society and measures of militarization."

There was enough information about 144 countries that they could be evaluated. Such figures as the number of murders per 100,000 people in a given country and the number of deaths in internal conflicts and "relations with neighboring countries" must all be made into numbers. This system, which is popular in the social sciences, means quantifying such abstract concepts as people's "perception of criminality in society."

This is open to a form of fraud. Israelis may think their society is violent, just as South Africans do, but the murder rate here is 2.65 for every 100,000, whereas in South Africa it is 38. Perception of violence says nothing about violence.

Similarly the index measures the ease of access to weapons, military sophistication and number of heavy weapons - all figures which have no connection to actual levels of violence. But perhaps the indicator with the greatest chutzpah is the "potential for terrorist attacks," which actually punishes a country because people might target it. [My Inner Cynic suggests that this 'category' was invented solely to bash Israeli society....I wonder how Iraq, India, Pakistan, and Great Britain were rated in this category?]

In comparing the Sudan, which scored 140 out of 144, the level of idiocy disguised as banality becomes clear. Sudan, which has caused the deaths of more than 300,000 of its own citizens and displaced millions of them to Chad, scores exactly the same as Israel under the category "number of displaced people as a percentage of population." Perhaps the score for Sudan is the same as Israel because Sudan has achieved a complete genocide of its black Muslim Darfuri population and thus there aren't any displaced left? This isn't exactly a measurement of "absence of violence," which is what the Index claims to measure.

Israel and Sudan also score the same under "number of deaths from organized internal conflict," while Israel scores worse under "number of deaths from organized external conflict." Israel didn't fight any wars against an external enemy in 2008, unless Gaza is "external," and then it is not clear what the "internal" conflict is since there is no conflict inside the Green Line. The creators of the index seem to have punished Israel twice for Gaza while giving Sudan a pass, since Sudan isn't at war with its neighbors, it's just slaughtering people within its borders.

This jury-rigged statistical nonsense leads to a morally bankrupt result. The insinuation of the survey is clear: Israel is one of the most violent places in the world. This jives with the typical surveys in Europe where people place Israel on the top of the list of countries "threatening world peace."

By contrast, countries currently involved in mass human rights violations, genocides and even outright slavery can be considered "peaceful." Countries that resemble one large prison, such as North Korea, are positively wonderful to live in, according to the index. Lebanon, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and the Congo, all of which have central governments that barely function, are doing better than Israel. Egypt, where tourists are forbidden from visiting much of the country, where tourist attractions are like armed police camps and where tourists must travel on special trains for safety, is considered 54th out of 144 countries, a prime place to live, "absent of violence." It is 'absent of violence' apparently because neither the media nor foreigners can visit much of it. [Inner Cynic notes that police states like Egypt tend to have an absence of public violence because of ruthless repression, but that seems to go unnoted in this "Peace Index."]

In the 21st century, genocide masquerades as peace. It is tempting to want to boil every country down to a neat number, but when bias and thoughtlessness is built into the system of doing so, the results are no different than Durban II."

--------

The obvious political agenda of this idiotic "study" aside, I know from living in a major metropolitan area in California that these results are total bunk. From a personal, quality-of-life, overall personal-and-family-safety-issue standpoint, I'm much safer here than I was in said major metropolitan area---even though I am living in one of Israel's biggest cities. I doubt women in Pakistan or Iraq or North Korea feel free to go for walks at night, argue politics in their favorite coffeeshop, and no American would yell at other drivers the way drivers do here--because here, it's just an argument. No one is going to pull a gun out of the glovebox and shoot you.

How To Get Your Own Free Personal Trainer

2009-08-01T21:40:00.002+03:00

Anyone with a gym membership, or who at least spends some time in such places, knows that nearly every gym provides a "personal trainer" to design a fitness program for you. This can be a one-time meeting, usually as a courtesy of the gym, or you can pay for the privilege of having your own private coach.

Before I married, I tried this out. It was a lot of work, and I discovered that I could probably have lost the same 5 lbs on my own without the coaching had I just followed the program he outlined for me.

After that, paying for a personal trainer was decidedly not in my budget--stepchildren and new baby were the new priorities.

However, the gym at which I currently wage Pool Wars does have a personal trainer program.

And I've discovered through my almost-daily attendance that, given the right circumstances, a member can get it for free. The secret? Be female, be blonde and be beautiful.

I don't begrudge her the attention--really! I just find myself trying not to fall off the stairmaster because I'm laughing at the site of BOTH trainers hovering over the Blonde Buxom Beauty as she is spread-eagled on one of our new machines, while two other male members of the gym also crowd in to offer their advice. Apparently the site of a slightly sweaty, disheveled Dolly-Parton-esque type lying on her back, breathing heavily, arms akimbo as she tried to push the weight bar of the machine up, caused a rush of male chivalry to "help" her......

Needless to say, most of the rest of our female membership (40+ and paunchy) needs to pay for this kind of "help."

More Desecration.....

2009-07-31T16:29:00.002+03:00

Yesterday I found Elder of Zion's piece about Jewish "desecration" of the Temple Mount. This alleged "desecration" appears to be nothing more than people walking quietly and apparently respectfully through the courtyards of the Temple Mount.

The use of the word "desecration" is a particularly loaded one, especially in a religious context (yes, I am aware that it is specifically religious but it is mis-used for a lot of other contexts).

Desecration: to treat with sacrilege; profane. Synonyms are: blaspheme, defile, dishonor, pollute, outrage.

These are pretty strong, emotionally laden words.

And they're apparently not confined to the Pallywood Propaganda Corps.

Today, we have an equally repugnant claim of "desecration" --from Shas, the smug, self-congratulatory, self-described guardians of the Torah.

"We are in sorrow for the desolate Mount Zion and for the Kotel square which is sometimes desecrated and soldiers who walk there," wrote Shas Knesset faction director Tzvi Ya'acobson in his weekly column in the Bakehila newspaper.

Ya'acobson made it clear in his article that he was talking about the swearing-in of soldiers at the Western Wall.

Reeeaaallly.....some ultra-Orthodox flunky who has never served in the military, never put his life and limb on the line for the people of Israel, and won't let his daughters do National Service and won't let his sons serve, but expects Other People's Children to fight and die to protect him and his children......the presence of our kids being sworn in for army service is a "desecration"?

Who IS this jerk?

Apparently he's no one Shas wants to avow: "Ya'acobson was only a functionary and not an elected official," the Shas spokesman was quick to point out, no doubt rushing to do damage control. They've already lost a lot of their conservative Sephardi working-class traditional (not Orthodox) votes to Likud this time around, and they should be aware that since almost all Sephardi families have kids who go to the military, this is not going to sit well.

WHAT exactly is behind this claim of "desecration"?

"During these types of ceremonies the access to the Kotel is disrupted," he complained. "Hours beforehand the already limited parking is closed to the real visitors to the Kotel."

Ah, now I understand! You can't park! And parking should be reserved only for the "real visitors" i.e. ultra-Orthodox men who want to pray there. Who you apparently believe are the "real Jews"? Maybe we should just fence off the Kotel and designate it the Private Ultra-Orthodox Prayer Room? Would THAT make you happy? And we can issue special stickers so that you, and only you (and other "Real Jews"), can park your cars in the nearby lot and thus be only a short walk to prayer?

I mean, I can understand that an Islamist might view any infidel walking around the courtyards of a place he reveres as "desecration" (I also think he'd be way over the top, nutso, and the PPC throws the word around for incitement purposes) but your beef is the parking situation?! The fact that YOU can't find parking because a ceremony disrupts it is a "desecration"? The fact that they hold a ceremony honoring those who have sworn to die to protect you is a "desecration"?

Never mind that the Temple itself was open to all the nations; or that women and visitors were allowed also to pray there; that Jews of all stripes from around the world made pilgrimmage for centuries to pray here, and still do.

IT'S NOT YOUR F@$#! PRIVATE PROPERTY, YOU LAZY JERK!

Go ahead. Pray there. But if you can't find parking, take a cab -- the solution is not to ban the families of young servicemen and women from being sworn in at the site of our great loss as a remembrance of what is at stake. From the Romans until today, there are enemies who want us dead or exiled -- and the Kotel, as the last ancient remnant of our allegience to HaShem and our prior sovereignty as a people, is a reminder of all we have to lose if they fail.

Those kids have more right to be there than you do.

I'm thinking we should start a petition to limit increased child allowances only to those who do military or National Service......

More Pallywood Big Lies

2009-07-29T16:53:00.004+03:00

Palestine Today has a web-site, and due to a tip from Elder of Ziyon , I went there to see the scandalous photographs of Jews allegedly "desecrating" the courtyards of the Al-Aksa Mosque.

Here we are, fresh of the presses, "desecrating" wildly:

This tells me that one of two things are going on here. Either something was lost in translation from Arabic to English, or (the more likely, I suspect) the mere presence of Jewish tourists quietly walking around the courtyards is "desecration."

It couldn't be (gasp!) antiSemitism? Or a desire, on the eve of Tisha B'Av, to arouse hatred, fear and loathing in the Palestinians and provoke a riot, a la Second Intifada's Big Lie?

Go to his blog for the full set of photos or to Palestine Today, in the link above.

Settlements: The Answer To Khartoum

2009-07-26T23:17:00.005+03:00

After the 1967 war, the Israeli attitude was, "We'll trade land for peace." The Arab attitude (this was before Palestinians described themselves as national entity, so it was a pronouncement of Arab League states) was the Khartoum Conference: "No negotiation with Israel; no recognition of Israel; no peace with Israel." It sort of set the tone for where we are today.

Following this resounding "Three Noes," the lands liberated from the illegal annexation and occupation by Jordan and Egypt (today referred to as the West Bank and Gaza, respectively) were now in Israeli hands. The Israeli response to the Khartoum Conference was a shrug and "OK, you don't want to trade land for peace, keep the peace and we'll keep the land."

I've been trying to point some of this out, piece-meal, to folks in various conversations, letters and blog comments for years. However, Mr. Puder has wrapped it up succinctly. Now that President Obama's approval rating has dropped below 50%, maybe he'll find more pressing things to do than order Israel to please the Arabists of the State Department.

Wrong, Mr. President — Jewish Settlements Expedited Peace Talks

July 26, 2009 - by Joseph Puder

President Obama demands that Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) be completely frozen as a precondition to peace negotiations with the Palestinians. If Barack Obama considers the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria an obstacle to peace, let him study objectively the course of events that took place in the 1980s. He would surely learn that it was the expansion of the Jewish settlements that drove the Palestinians to the negotiating table, which ultimately led to the Oslo Accords.

In the mid-1980s, Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat boasted: “The womb of the Palestinian woman will defeat the Zionist.” Shortly thereafter, large waves of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia arrived in Israel (some of them moved to the settlements) and defused the discussion in Israel over the demographic “time bomb.”

More significantly, in 1988, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) summit endorsed United Nations Resolution 242 and proceeded to declare an independent Palestinian state. The actions of the PNC came at least in part as a reaction to Ariel Sharon’s significant buildup of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. The PNC called additionally for “the annulment of all expropriation and annexation measures and the removal of the settlements established by Israel in the Palestinian and Arab territories since 1967.”

A month later, at UN headquarters in Geneva, Arafat was promised a dialogue with the U.S. if he would “renounce terrorism, and recognize the State of Israel.” At a hastily arranged press conference, Arafat mumbled the words demanded by the Americans, words he was unable to bring himself to utter at the UN session the day before.

Arafat was ultimately driven to do so in recognition of Israel’s establishing facts on the ground and the realization that unless they began to negotiate — preferably with the Americans — there would be nothing left to negotiate over.

The Palestinians and their western sympathizers contend that the “Jewish settlements” are “illegal” according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which sought to protect against future atrocities such as those committed by the Nazis.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention is often cited as the basis by which the settlements are deemed to be “illegal.” However, the wording, which prohibits “individual or mass forcible transfers” and contains a prohibition not to “deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population,” clearly contradicts the fact that those who settled in the land did so voluntarily. Furthermore, the land in question, which had been occupied by Egypt and Jordan since 1948, was captured by Israel in 1967 during a defensive war.

Eugene V. Rostow, former dean of Yale Law School and undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969, noted that “the government of Israel neither ‘deported’ Palestinians nor ‘transferred’ Israelis during or after 1967.” Jewish property owners began to return to their previous homes in Hebron in 1968, acting on their own volition without government authorization.

Rostow also pointed out that the Geneva Convention applied only to acts by one signatory “carried out on the territory of another.” The West Bank, however, did not belong to any signatory power, for Jordan had no sovereign rights or legal claims there. Its legal status was defined as “an unallocated part of the British Mandate.”

Unable to beat Israel on the battlefield, an attempt is being made to delegitimize the state by its actions regarding settlements. Interestingly, the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 by Yasser Arafat do not prohibit settlements.

The settlements have never been and never will be an obstacle to peace. If and when honest and frank negotiations resume and a territorial agreement with the Palestinians is signed, Israel may well dismantle additional settlements in Judea and Samaria. History shows, however, that dismantling settlements and making territorial concessions only makes the Palestinians more aggressive and obstinate.

Israel uprooted Jewish families from their homes in Gaza and Samaria in what became a national trauma. But abandoning the Jewish settlement and their economic assets did not bring peace or reconciliation — instead it brought more violence and more death. For the Palestinians, these unilateral Israeli concessions were a sign of weakness, causing them to launch even more terrorist attacks.

The endlessly repeated refrain about the “occupied territories” is sheer propaganda, since the territories never belonged to Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinian Authority was given control of the areas, and the only reason Israel continues to exert control is in reaction to Palestinian Arab violence.

The real obstacle to peace is the refusal of the Arab world to accept the existence of a Jewish state in their midst. Although it occupies one-thousandth of the combined size of Muslim states, Israel’s existence in the Middle East is, to most Arabs, unacceptable and should be fought to the last drop of (Israeli) blood. The Palestinian struggle is not so much for Palestinian self-determination as it is for the destruction of the Jewish, infidel state.

U.S. pressure on Israel to dismantle the settlements is therefore dangerous because it will bring more violence, more terrorism, and more Israeli deaths. By pressuring Israel on this issue the U.S. will contribute to the creation of an area that will become “Judenrein,” as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and most of the rest of the Arab world are. And this action would certainly be in contravention to the precepts of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

If Yasser Arafat and his minions were able to negotiate with Israel while the Israeli settlements expanded through natural growth, why should Obama take this “holier than thou” approach? The Obama administration’s focus on the settlements is a ploy to appease the Arabs, especially the Saudis.

A genuine Arab-Palestinian acceptance of peace with the Jewish state is what should be the prerequisite for Obama’s demands.

************

So here are my preconditions: Release Gilad Shalit unconditionally as a confidence-building measure and freeze ALL construction if you want a construction freeze. That's right--if WE don't build, then the Palestinians don't build either. The Palestinian complaint is that we're encroaching on "their" land -- what they choose to ignore is that we're building on land that so far, isn't theirs. And so are they. Their building, as much as ours, prejudices final status of these disputed territories. There is no Palestine, yet, and while I believe there should be one, the faster the Palestinians move towards a realistic settlement, the less likely it is that more disputed territory will have Israeli housing on it.

More MSM Shenanigans

2009-07-23T20:25:00.006+03:00

And you wonder why I detest the Main Stream Media and its in-house idealogues?

This story was forwarded to me by someone who lifted it off HonestReporting's site:

******

In recent days, some ultra-Orthodox residents of Jerusalem violently demonstrated against the decision to open a parking lot on Saturday during the Jewish Sabbath, and against the way authorities handled the case of an ultra-Orthodox woman accused of starving her son.

On Thursday July 16, AFP photographer Ahmad Gharabli snapped [a] photo of one such protester.[He's giving police the finger--ed.]

His caption is straightfoward enough:

An Ultra Orthodox Jewish man gestures during clashes with Israeli forces following demonstrations against the arrest of a woman accused of child abuse in Jerusalem on July 16, 2009. Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews clashed with police for a third day in protest at an 'unjustified' arrest of a religious woman and the opening of a parking lot on Saturdays, the Jewish holy day of rest.

On Monday July 20, the same photo appeared in The Australian's coverage of -- the US-Israel disagreement over construction in eastern Jerusalem. The caption's Down Under version doesn't even state what the demonstration is about:

An Ultra Orthodox Jewish man gestures during clashes with Israeli forces following demonstrations in Jerusalem.

So Australian readers could assume this is an example of Israeli defiance of the US. This, despite the fact that the demonstration that the caption refers to has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the published story in The Australian.

Now why would an editor juxtapose a story about Jewish development in eastern Jerusalem with an unrelated image of an ultra-Orthodox demonstrator? What subtle message does The Australian convey here?

******

Subtle? It's about as subtle as a slap in the face. Why would he do this (this is a rhetorical question, right)? It's an editor who has an anti-Israel bias of his or her own, and is violating journalistic ethics by deliberately portraying ultra-Orthodox (too often demonized as "Right Wing Settlers" which is laughable) men in a full-on riot over US demands to stop building in Jerusalem.

You might be surprised (or maybe not) at how much this kind of distortion takes place in the English-speaking MSM. I read The Guardian online; I've listened to BBC's malicious spin on Israel. If I were an Englishwoman subjected to this barrage of propaganda on a regular basis, I would hate Israel. No wonder so many Brits and Aussies do....the distortion by the media amounts to libel, but the thing that makes me truly sad is that they do not portray the real Israel. Israel is portrayed only in terms of war and death, and there is no sense of the vibrancy of the country, of the fierce love of life, of the hospitality, the good works, the caring, the cynicism about politics, the day-to-day encounters between Palestinians and Israelis in the thousands that are normative but never mentioned.

No foreign media covers Seeds of Peace, or Humans Without Borders; no foreign media covers Palestinian-Israeli joint ventures on environmental issues. I happened to be in the chemotherapy unit (I was lost) at Hadassah Hospital the other day, and saw women being treated in the order of their number in line, all of whom apparently knew each other. One couple, a Mitrachi Jew and a Palestinian Arab, came together every week for treatment, and these women, regardless of identities, supported each other.

The western elitists of the press and diplomatic and university circles sneer, a la Walt & Meerscheimer, about how Jews always cry "wolf" (oops, "antiSemitism") whenever Israel is criticized. This is inverse logic. Our accusations of anti-Semitism have to do with a remorseless demonizing of Israel through deliberate lies of commission and omission--this caption in The Australian being a prime example.

Not surprisingly, anti-Semitism fueled by this kind of media coverage is rapidly rising in Europe . Understandably, too, since Europe's endemic Jew-hatred is part of their cultural identity.

There are over 70 conflicts raging in the world right now. Human rights violations of the most egregious sort are taking place: human shields in Sri Lanka; hospital shellings in Sri Lanka; the systematic rape of virgins in Iran so they can be executed for political protest; the burning to death of women in India for failing to bear a son; the countless "honor killings" in Moslem countries; the colonization of Tibet; the mass murder under cover of war in the Congo; Darfur's genocide; torture of political prisoners in Iran.....but the vast majority of news stories these days concern the building of homes along the Green Line in land that was illegally occupied by Jordan and lost to Israel in Jordan's subsequent war of aggression.

Yes, when the building of more condominiums for working class Israelis in Har Homa (land purchased by Jews and later conquered by Jordan) gets more outrage and attention from the U.S. State Department and the French Foreign Ministry, there is something wrong with their priorites. If it isn't simply anti-Semitism, then I submit it is anti-Semitism fueled by something much more malevolent: a willingness to do anything to get cheap oil from the Arab Oil Cartel.

"Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"

....but for cheap oil?

Progress (Of A Sort) In Hebrew

2009-07-22T07:07:00.001+03:00

We moved last November.

I did All The Right Things. I changed my teudat zehut (ok, it took a couple of months), but even before that, I went to the bank. I spoke to a bank officer and gave her the new address of our new condo given to us by the kablan.

Har Homa is a neighborhood of condominium buildings that each straddle two streets. The address the kablan gave us is NOT the address the Post Office uses -- the mailboxes are on the OTHER street. **

This, of course, entails another trip back to the bank. A very nice clerk assures me that I don't need to go stand in yet another line, she can change the address in her computer. So I give her the "correct" address of the alternate (front) street.

After a couple of months, we stopped getting bank statements. No problem. For 6.5 NIS, I can get one every month by (you guessed it) going to the bank AND getting it in English!!

More alarming, though, was the fact that our one credit card bill stopped coming. This was playing havoc with my sleep patterns, stress level and ability to figure out what I was spending every month.

I called the number on the credit card. Another nice person took our new address. Problem solved.

Another month went by -- no credit card statement.

I called again and got another nice person who told me I simply needed to go to the bank (since it is a bank-issued card) and tell the bank.

"But I did that already!" I wailed. After some further discussion, she clarified that doing a change of address for the bank statements didn't necessarily mean the change of address was done for the credit card.

I wanted to ask, "Why not?" but I was fairly sure it was a pointless question.

I went back to the bank. It seems that the nice woman on the phone was correct--the change of address for the bank statements does NOT change the address for the credit card statement.

And since I was there.....I asked why I stopped getting my bank statements?

The bank officer checked. It appeared that the clerk who changed my address did not change my incorrect new address to the correct new address....she changed it to our OLD rental address. I don't blame her, I blame my Hebrew.....

NOW it's all fixed. And today the credit card statement came! That's not what amazed me. What absolutely amazed me is that I opened it AND I COULD READ IT!

Now, my Hebrew is vastly in need of improvement but I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to read how much in debt I am despite my language impairment! I'm going through the bill line item by line item and it suddenly dawned on me --I'm reading this --and understanding this -- in HEBREW!!

That's progress, isn't it?

And from now on, we're paying cash for groceries. THAT's the biggest item on the bill!

** A factoid that is often either unknown or ignored in the frantic blatherings of the MSM and Left when they shriek about the Israeli government approving "300 more homes" etc....300 condominiums works out to roughly 20 high-density condo buildings, which is, let's see, oh yeah, this street. Ten buildings on each side. But these Know-Nothing-Nabobs manage to convey the impression that somehow 300 suburban villas are sprawling across the landscape.

Taxi Tales

2009-07-21T10:04:00.002+03:00

I've known Yossi for almost three years now. He never ceases to amaze me.

As any regular reader knows, he's a cab driver. It's a highly competitive field not because it pays so well, but because in the current economic meltdown, everyone who has lost a job has looked for other work. Many of them went and got a cab license and are now plying the streets with rented cabs.

Yes, rented. Many people don't know it, but unless you've purchased your own car, and bought your own "number," all of which comes to a hefty sum, your only recourse is to "rent" a taxi. There are people who own fleets of cabs that they rent out to drivers. Many of the cab-drivers you see aren't raking it in not only because times are tough, and customers are scarce. They also need to pay for their gas daily and their food (few go home for lunch). Many work 16 hour days, especially if they rent. Why? Because renting a cab costs the driver 300 NIS per day or more.

Which is why Yossi amazed me (again) this week. I saw him coming in early to work last week and today. Very early. I also saw him one day collecting money. I was puzzled, but shrugged it off, thinking maybe it was for a birthday or a Lotto ticket or something. In fact, after asking a couple of people, I found it was an entirely different story.

Yossi has worked at his "station" for 8 or 9 years. During that time, he has watched other drivers fall on hard times. It's a job that takes a high toll from family life. Something like seventy-five percent of cab drivers are divorced....after all, a woman could tire of being married to a guy who's never home. And whose income is dicey at best.

One of the drivers Yossi knows is an older guy in his sixties. Divorced. Rents his cab. Works to make a living hand-to-mouth. Lives in a share rental in the cheapest part of town. Eats one meal a day because that's all he can afford. His money goes to his ex-wife and children. He's the walking definition of "working poor."

He fell behind in his rental payments to the owner of the taxi (a guy who, by the way, gave him months of slack to give him a chance to catch up). Finally, the owner of the cab took it back. The driver was suddenly without a job and without a way of making a living. This driver is in his sixties. We're in a Depression. There aren't a lot of jobs out there. Especially for the elderly. The prospects aren't good, here.

Yossi seems to know everyone in Jerusalem. He took this suddenly-unemployed driver aside and told him he could help. Yossi drove this older gentleman to Wadi Joz, to a man he knows who owns a fleet of rental taxis. Who, as it happens, rents his cabs for several hundred shekels less per week than what the driver had been paying. Because Yossi knows the fleet owner and has been on good terms with him for many years, he was able to persuade him to rent a cab to this now-unemployed driver.

Then Yossi went back to his station. He went from driver to driver and pitched them, telling them that look, next week, it could be you or me that falls on hard times. He got every one of them to pitch in 20 shekels or so, and then went to the station manager. He persuaded the station manager to let the elderly driver return to the station with his newly-rented cab by taking these donations and putting them as a "deposit" towards the month's station fee (yes, the drivers also pay a fee to work at their stations).

"The guy's in debt--he's not reliable," the manager protested.

"But he has nothing without work. And all he's done for the last 15 years is work at this station. Look at him! He's old! What else can he do?" Yossi pleaded. The manager likes Yossi a lot. As a matter of fact, everyone who knows Yossi likes him a lot. He's a mensch.

"What's it to you? The guy's not even Jewish!" the manager replied.

"But I'M Jewish!" Yossi retorted, "And I can't see an elderly man go without eating! I have to take responsibility for this!"

"You'll guarantee him?" the manager asked slyly, no doubt thinking this would make Yossi yield. Not!

"I'll sign for him," Yossi declared, thus guaranteeing that he would be on the hook for any payments his colleague fails to make.

I heard this piece-meal from several people over several days, including the station manager.....and didn't understand it in part because my Hebrew is poor and in part because I couldn't really credit what I was hearing.

"YOU got this guy a new cab and got him back on station?" I screeched quietly over coffee this morning. Yossi looked abashed. "Ma la'asot, Sarah?" he said softly. "I could not turn my back and let him go hungry. I had to do something."

I think this is what in the Old Country we called "doing the right thing." G-d bless Yossi and may Israel be filled with many more like him.

If You Can Tear Yourselves Away....

2009-07-16T17:52:00.002+03:00

....from speculation over whether or not Michael Jackson is another Martin Luther King Jr. or murdered (no, in both cases), the Economy, the Left v Right squabbling going on just about everywhere, vacation plans, the Sotomayor hearings, the British Open, the idiocy of Dudu Topaz or the government, and other nonsense....

You might read this by Shirin Sadeghi. There is still a tremendous struggle going on in Iran for democracy, even of the ayatollish variety, and there is a generation that is paying in blood and torture for the right to be heard. Heard in their own country, and lately, sadly, heard over the random noise of the western media which abandons important issues for political partisanship and pop iconography.

I'm printing it here because most people won't use links. They read and move on. But if you link, at the top of the source page are other resources for more information.

On Friday July 19, a large group of mourners gathered at the Ghoba mosque in Tehran to await a speech about the martyrs of the post-election protests by presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. According to one Iranian blog, 28-year-old Taraneh Mousavi was one of a group of people that was arrested by plainclothesed security forces for attending the gathering.

Taraneh, whose first name is Persian for "song", disappeared into arrest.

Weeks later, according to the blog, her mother received an anonymous call from a government agent saying that her daughter has been hospitalized in Imam Khomeini Hospital in the city of Karaj, just north of Tehran -- hospitalized for "rupturing of her womb and anus in... an unfortunate accident".

When Taraneh's family went to the hospital to find her, they were told she was not there.

According to another Iranian blog which claims to have original information about Taraneh from her family, Iranian security forces contacted Taraneh's family after the hospital visit warning them not to publicize Taraneh's story and not to associate her disappearance with arrests made at post-election protests, claiming instead that she had tried to harm herself because of feeling guilty for having pre-marital sex.

Witnesses have come forward to the various Internet sites who are covering Taraneh's story, stating that she was mentally and physically abused in Tehran's notorious Evin prison and also that a person who matches her physical description and injuries had been treated at the Imam Khomeini Hospital, was unconscious when witnessed and was later transferred out of the hospital while still unconscious.

Taraneh's is not the first allegation of brutal raping of a post-election protester -- according to the UK Guardian, an 18 year old boy in Shiraz was repeatedly gang raped by prison officials while in detention after being arrested for participating in the protests on June 15. That boy's father won't let him back in the family home.

Despite its agitations for reform, Iranian society remains traditional, according to Iranian-British blogger Potkin Azarmehr, and it's the stigma of rape that is being used as a weapon against the protesters. "By killing protesters, the government makes martyrs of them, but by raping them and allowing them to live, it makes them shunned in society," Azarmehr said.

Not that the stigma of rape is exclusive to Iran and other more traditional societies. A friend of Azarmehr's who is presently in Iran told him that he's "sick of hearing that people like Taraneh are better off dead" from friends abroad, just because they "can't handle the fact that she's been raped."

The psychology of threatening protesters and political activists is not a new science. The strategies and ultimate goals are the same for any kind of torture: to humiliate, disembody (through denying the victim authority over his/her own physical self), extract confessions (whether true or false) and ultimately permanently terrorize the victims to prevent further 'disturbances'. The last part often fails spectacularly, as victims tend to feel even more antagonism toward the perpetrators, and even more of a 'do or die' mentality about agitating for change at any cost.

Prison abuse and torture is also about marking these victims as defiled human beings -- it's like a scarlet letter of social isolation against them, to deny them the community support and strength which they need to move past those memories and not be defined by them. This is where others can step in and change the very attitudes toward abuse which so many institutions count on when they commit these crimes.

Taraneh's story must be told and it must be heard. Perhaps her life can still be saved.

Keep her in your prayers and in your hearts.

Pool Wars

2009-07-14T17:53:00.005+03:00

I swim. I have recounted elsewhere my adventures with the Summer Crowd that turns out on halcyon days to swim at my gym.

Well, happy days are here again. Once again, it is July. Once again, the fair weather swimmers are turning out.

We have lap lanes at the pool. However, the large open area which is usually full of splashing children and cooling-off-adults by lunchtime is generally used by serious lap swimmers in the early hours of the morning as an addition to the lap lanes. Despite a lack of floats separating the lanes in the space, it's pretty easy to figure out that there are four lanes, two lanes on each side of the two black lines.

I've been here early mornings enough to know that when all four lanes are full, I need to swim the (more crowded)lap lanes where everyone understands how to swim counterclockwise. The draw of the open area is that when you stake out a lane, you get the lane to yourself.

Most of the time.

Today I was an early arrival and saw that two lanes were open in the Open Area. I staked out one and started the warm-up laps. I was approximately half done with the morning lap routine when something dark and large plowed into sight.

Lo and behold! A large woman in a dark swimsuit doing a "backstroke." That word is in quotes for a reason. She's actually on her back, doing a frog kick and paddling like a turtle with her arms, totally clueless as to her location in the pool and swimming in both my lane and the empty lane next to me.

Ok, not a problem. I can cope by stopping and treading water until her wake passes (as she swims into the third lane over and gets mowed down by a guy doing his power crawl at Olympic speeds). I simply move a bit to the north in my lane to minimize the possibility of more collisions.

NOT good enough. She's decided that the "lane" is the entire space between the two black lines and that she's entitled to all of it. That is, in reality, two lanes that she is now straddling. I understood not navigating well on her back -- but in the alternate lap she did a breaststroke and could see where she was swimming. She planted herself squarely in the middle of the two lanes and proceeded to swim s l o w l y up the middle, effectively squeezing me out of my lane.

I haven't lived in Israel for three years for nothing. My friends in the Old Country have indicated that I'm, uh, "a bit too confrontational" to start with. Moi?!

I am not going to be pushed out of my lane, I decide. I swim straight up the lane while she's coming back on her upside-down-turtle stroke. She's still squarely in the middle of the lane. I swim in my lane, and end up brushing against her as I pass. I kick. Hard. I've always had a strong kick and I really thrashed to make sure I got as much water as possible into the air and all over her.

Return lap. She's now coming down the middle of both lanes doing the breast-stroke, determinedly. I do the crawl right past her, not giving an inch of my lane up.

She punches me!

Listen, I've had enough accidental close encounters in a pool during my life to understand that bumping-in-passing is an assumed risk.

This wasn't an accident. Had the lifeguard seen it, it would have looked as if she just happened to stroke into my ribs in passing. But in the water, there was a level of force beyond mere grazing.

No problem. No more Ms. Nice Guy.

I took back the center of my lane, instead of inching to the side to allow her more room. This meant that on my return lap, I swam right over her since she continued to plant herself in the middle of both lanes -- meaning she was half in my lane. I pull a pretty mean crawl, and it gives me quite a push in the water, especially when I'm, well, pissed off. Excuse my French.

So, I swim smack dab in the middle of my lane and end up doing the crawl over her left shoulder and she flounders on her back.

Ah, but my Opposition has clearly done pool wars before. On her next pass, she reaches out and scratches me with her nails down the ribs. And never breaks stride...I kick harder in passing, trying to get as much water as possible in her face.

But now I have her measure. And now I am determined that I'm not giving one centimeter of pool space.

Neither is she. She has now planted herself so, despite the empty lane next to me, she is three-quarters into my lane on her return. As I head up my lane, I see a kind of Pool-Chicken taking place: which of us will yield? Which of us will give way and either pull up or pull over?

Neither of us, it turns out. She swims right into me.

Enough! I stop. I tread water. I reach with both hands and push. HARD. I SHOVE her into her lane and as she yells, "What's the matter? What are you doing?" I yell back:
"Get out of my lane, you bitch!"

No, its not nice. But it was very effective. She moved into her lane and stayed there the rest of my workout.

Sometimes being "a little too confrontational" isn't all bad.

But the irony in all this is that I go to the pool for stress release. Hah!

My Life As A Critic

2009-07-13T12:18:00.005+03:00

Ever faced a bookshelf in a store or library and wondered, "Do I really want to check that out/buy that?"

I read a lot. Probably a book or two a week. (I have little interest in television besides the news and History Channel.) Fortunately, my employer has just started an in-office library which allows employees to check out books and DVDs. The employees have indicated their enthusiasm by also contributing books we've read and enjoyed, so everyone benefits.

But....what to do when you don't know if you really want that book?

West Bank Mama has introduced me to Goodreads which not only makes recommendations and allows friends to share recommendations, but now offers a reviewing service. I can now write a review of a book, and annoy all my friends by posting it on my blog and Facebook pages.

Here you go:

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is simply one of the best books ever written. It recounts the struggle of medieval not-quite-English-yet folks during the Civil War of the 12th century (think "Cadfael"). The characters and events revolve around the building of a cathedral, through which the author sketches the socio-economic dynamics of life in this one shire. The characters and conflicts are exceptionally well drawn, and the period is fascinating. The social change wrought by war and famine is also riveting: if you ever thought the Middle Ages were stable and boring, you won't after reading this book.

I can't date when I read this book because I read it over again approximately once a year. I just finished this year's read. It's really that good.

****************************

Not very profound, huh? It certainly doesn't do credit to the book. Ken Follett is better known for contemporary thrillers, yet in his Forward to the most recent edition of The Pillars of the Earth, he expressed pleasure and surprise that of all the books he has written, this is the one that seems to have the most universal appeal and is consistently at the top of the publisher's "sell" lists. He confesses to a fascination with Gothic cathedrals......maybe that's why I enjoy the book so much. I share that fascination.