Thursday, November 2nd One of the things I like best about this country is that we are all equal in the eyes of the government: no matter where you are politically, you are bound to get exactly the opposite of what you voted for. We all get sold down the river together! If you are a right-winger who wants the entire Land of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates and voted for Kadima out of loyalty to Arik Sharon whom you believed would get you just that, you got disengagement from Gaza and the West Bank, and a government with labor and Olmert. If you are left-wing and loyal to Labor and social welfare issues and voted for Peretz, you got Lieberman sitting happily alongside him in the government, and social reform at the bottom of the agenda. And now you even lost a good guy like Ofir Pines. And if you voted for Lieberman, well then you know that your party is in power, but who knows what you'll get glopped together with all those people on his left-hand side. But if you're like Lieberman, that shouldn't bother you - as long as you're in power, you'll be feeling OK – to heck with your platform, original agenda, or what they originally promised you. I think they should change the saying "If you will it, it is no dream" to "If you want it, you'll get exactly the opposite." Any plan in the Middle East is sure to backfire in one way or another. Look at the disengagement two years ago - and whoops, here we are back in Gaza! Look at the road map. The road map? What's that? It is not clear to me just what we are going to accomplish in Gaza this time besides get more people killed. We have lost one soldier already. It seems that a lot of innocent people are being punished because of a minority who are actively launching missiles, digging tunnels, and smuggling weapons. We just don't seem to be getting anywhere. Meanwhile, Iran tests a new Shihab-3 missile capable of reaching 2000 kilometers or more, and capable of carrying…yipes, we won't get into that. If Bush won't wake up because of the threat to us, maybe he'll wake up because of the threat to American troops in Iraq. Or maybe not. The war is too economically worthwhile for him to give it up. It looks like the rains have settled in for the weekend. Occasional cloudbursts move over Ben Ami turning the yard into a yucky muddy mire, and my dogs Saoirse and Nuala happily come into the house, shake water off themselves onto the floor (which I just washed) and track paw prints into the kitchen. Rotem wants to come to Ben Ami and puddle jump with me. I have promised her a pair of boots for the occasion. Wednesday, November 8th I have no further comments at the moment. And my rabbits, Tzfoni and Tzfonit, who are here to reflect my moods, are doing just that. They are too ashamed to want to come out...
Monday, November 6th
at all. And then I realize that the reason that I write is because I am worried, and writing seems to be the only thing that helps. Reading the news on the Internet, which seems to have become a compulsion, does not. HaAretz predicts that we are going to go to war with Syria next summer. Great. Has the government forgotten that Assad approached Olmert with an offer to sit down and talk? Any offer like that should be grabbed at no matter how tenuous it seems. If people devoted a quarter of the effort to getting ready for peace as we are to getting ready for war here, maybe we wouldn't have the next one looming around the corner. Yesterday I read David Grossman's speech which he delivered at the Rabin memorial rally, and I kept placing my mouse on certain passages, intending to copy them into my blog and quote them as a reflection of what I feel. In the end, I gave up - I wanted to copy all of it. It is so eloquent, so very representative of the way that I feel, that all I can say is: I recommend that you read it - all of it, if you have not done so already. If only this speech would reach a lot of people who picture all of us as aggressive, eager to oppress the Palestinians, eager for war and unwilling to talk to our neighbors. If only it would reach the government in its appeal to approach the Palestinians. I don't believe Olmert has the courage or the wisdom to do it. In his speech David Grossman asks: "When was the last time a prime minister formulated or took a step that could open up a new horizon for Israelis, for a better future?" Never before has this country been in such danger and never before have we had worse leaders who are more inept, more disconnected from the people, and less capable of getting us out of the desperate situation we are in. They have no vision beyond keeping themselves in power and preparing for the next war, which they seem determined to bring upon us. This is what is making me feel so hopeless and nervous. Hooray! The Gay Pride March is given the go-ahead! Good for them. Good for the police for not giving in to the threats of these religious fanatics from Meah Shaarim. They may not be willing to admit it, but there are certainly a lot of gay people in the Orthodox community who would love to join in the fun! Thursday, November 16th There is no limit to what I will do for my granddaughter. I actually, really, truly, walked down a major thoroughfare in Ramat Gan yesterday afternoon singing "We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz," over and over again. I no longer care what people think. If Rotem wants to hear the song "about the picture by the gan" – a poster advertising the children's play "The Wizard of Oz" – she'll hear it. And I no doubt will end up singing it until I am hoarse. Talking about going to see the wizard… I wonder what Olmert has up his sleeve now. He left Ben Gurion rattling sabers at Iran, Sneh says that "the last resort is not out of the question" and Netanyahu has really gone over the deep end entertaining American Jews by chanting mantras about another Holocaust and threatening that we will take on Iran alone. Bibi, are you totally off your rocker? You were crazy enough to say you remembered the Brits in Jerusalem in 1948. How old were you then? Two? Three? Right. You really remember. I strongly dislike this Holocaust comparison that seems to be running rampant in the past two days. It is a good trigger to get people very emotionally riled up, whether they are Israelis, American Jews, Christians, or Moslems, and keeps people from thinking coldly and logically about what has to be done. I think Mr. A from Teheran should be taken seriously, but the world today is not 1938, and he is not another Hitler. Hopefully the world today is a lot smarter, a lot better informed, and a lot more cautious. It infuriates me to think that the world (supposedly, hopefully) will not permit us to go gentle (?) into that good night merely for reasons of economics, oil, a democratic foothold in the Middle East, or preservation of other moderate Arab regimes, as much as for the reason that it would abhor a nuclear war with all its consequences. If that is what our fate depends upon, than it is more than a little ironic, and a slim thread to hang upon indeed. It would be nice, as my parents' friend George says, if the US bond with Israel rested upon more than just vital interests. All we need are a few people with sense in their heads who want to go talk to whoever is going to be in charge over in the PA and stop the Quassams, then get some of the moderate Arab states to simply lose interest in fighting us and, in doing so, isolate Iran with its fundamental extremist rant. Then get the US to really start working on shaking themselves out of dependence upon oil, and we'll have Iran wondering how to buy their next cup of coffee instead of squandering their endless profits on their war machinery. It would also be nice if the regime in Iran fell before they attain nuclear power. Probably even nicer for the people there as well. From my mouth to the ears of....G-d? Allah? Anyone listening up there?? Meanwhile, all we can do is empathize with what people in Shderot and Beit Hanun are going through. We lived with rockets for 33 days. They've lived with them for over a year now. HOW ABOUT A HUDNA??? I really must get to work. I am writing about a GPS navigator for mobile phones. What will they come up with next? Tuesday, November 21st Be warned. I am going to be ironic, cynical, tongue-in cheek, despondent, and angry. Anyone who doesn't want to read my banter - go over to my Irish music site, it's a lot more cheerful! Sorry, everyone. I am sick at heart, I am worried, and I just can't seem to muster up any type of optimism. It seems that the Palestinians are wisely adopting Ghandi's non-violent methods of protest to get what they want. If our air force wants to bomb a house belonging to a Hamas activist, they simply climb up on the rooftops by the hundreds, form a massive human shield, and force us to call off the strike. This is obviously a weapon that they have to prevent us from bombing that we do not have to prevent them from shelling us, because nothing seems to stop the Qassams from coming. They would not stop if confronted with a human shield. Bradley Burston in HaAretz writes: This is the place where peace plans come to die. He's damned right. The way things are going here, any peace process will get driven into the ground before it even gets its wheels turning. Today I went into my favorite spice store in Nahariya to get some things. The news was on about the latest Qassam strike on a factory in the Western Negev. I pay, we listen and comment. My usual interjection: Let's talk to them. Call a Hudna. Call a cease-fire. Answer: "Have you ever tried to talk to an Arab? There's no one over there to talk to. All they want to do is kill us." And blab la bla. I try time and time again to get some dialogue going in cyberspace, but there are more nuts on the talkbacks than there are rational people who are interested in quarrelling with people. Many are from abroad and think that this is one big computer game over here. Go back to your playstations, guys, this is for real. Endgame. If the Internet could spark at hatred, we'd have blown it up by now. People's talkback guidelines, in addition to what Burston says: Refute the other side's history and past. It is irrelevant. Let it be known that YOUR side were in this Land first and has priority, while the other side has no claim. Let it be known that THEY shot at YOU first. Let it be known that THEY are aggressors, while YOU are only defending yourself. Use generalities about people on the other side: ALL Palestinians…ALL Israelis… Implant the excuse deep down: there is no one over there to talk to. Use superlatives. Talk only in black and white. Play on emotions: the refugees, the Holocaust, and always hit below the belt. Mantras that keep both sides going strong at each other : Everybody wants to be a human shield. As Jabotinsky said, it's good to die for one's homeland. Or: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Bullshit. Homemade weapons can't kill anyone. Katyushas are just firecrackers and Qassams are just flying pipes. There are no Israeli civilians. We are all conquerors and militants who carry weapons. Give the Palestinians an inch and they'll take a mile. Give them Gaza, they'll go for Tel Aviv. There are no moderate Palestinians who do not actively support the Hamas - even three-year-old children. Our mistakes can be forgiven because we really didn't mean to fire at women and children. That makes us more moral than they are. Zionism is a synonymous with imperialism. Islam is a synonym with violence. And today's famous saying of Bracha Ben-Avraham: All roads lead to Rome. All rivers flow to the sea. All weapons tunnels in Gaza eventually lead all the way to Iran. Peace, guys.
we woke up this morning to a cease-fire! Another delicate cease-fire indeed. Deja vu? This is my cartoon from August 14th at the end of the Second Lebanon War. If I had drawn another one today, this is what I would have drawn all over again. As I feared and wrote in answer to the question in HaAretz, will the cease-fire hold?" the extremists are not all willing to obey. If only Olmert will show some restraint and wisdom and not shoot back, maybe we can start hammering together an agreement. Here's what I wrote about the cease-fire agreement in HaAretz in response to the question: Will a cease-fire with the Palestinians hold?: One of the biggest obstacles in negotiating a cease-fire is that the Palestinian people are divided in their political leanings, and no one party or person represents the entire people. If we negotiate with Fatah there is no guarantee that any agreement will be honored by all of the various factions in the street. The question is: will everyone – including the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad – honor a ceasefire? One person with a rocket launcher who does not obey could torpedo the entire fragile agreement.
apathetic to the loss of human life - even those who are not of the mentality of simply hoping that the Palestinians will go away, or worse. There is nothing worse than hearing daily reports of people being killed to make people desensitized to loss of life, make people become less and less involved, more apathetic, and more complacent with the present situation. We have so much work to do here. So much trust to be regained, both with the Palestinians and with our own army and government - that if we become lethargic we will truly be on the road to becoming no better than our enemies in our considerations for human life. It seems that for every step we take to getting some sort of trust established to get even one step into the Road Map, we end up getting thrown another ten steps backward. I don't know how we will ever repair the damage done to the relations between the Palestinians and us. Maybe we can do it in less time than it took the Protestants and the Catholics in Northern Ireland to drawn up an agreement. And that took them a mighty long time. And we are back at square one. The house is finally back in some semblance or order after Yael and Rotem's visit. Here she is ready for a hike in Ben Ami. Wednesday, November 29th My fears on Sunday that a single person with a rocket launcher could torpedo the entire fragile cease-fire agreement seem to be well-founded. Rockets continue to fall, the army continues to act in the West Bank, and militants display what are either a new type of rockets or cardboard decoys of rockets. Nobody trusts each other yet. The most cynical quip is: "We cease, they fire." Indignant enraged Tzfoni and Tzfonit reflect my fury at seeing Olmert against a huge blowup of Ben Gurion. My first instinct is to scream: "HOW DARE YOU!" upon hearing this bungling, self- indulgent idiot compare himself to Ben Gurion. Does he think history will remember him as anything but an inept, egocentric farce? Ben Gurion was not devoid of mistakes: he even failed to take into account that there were Arabs in Palestine, failed to see what letting the religious into the Knesset would lead to. But the man had initiative, had an agenda, an ideology, and a vision, which he worked to fulfill, and he stuck to his goals. More than I can say for Olmert. He's like a chameleon, changing colors at every opportunity. He does not even have the charisma to make those people who will not want to give up territory follow him, as Sharon did. Why is it that I just can't convince myself that he is sincere? The only fun thing will be to see how Lieberman handles this promise of "lots of territory, lots of concessions" that Olmert made to the Palestinians. Maybe he'll walk out??? I have a fantasy: Like the guy in the film "Back to the Future" who asks "Who's the president of the US?" and our time traveler replies, "Ronald Regan!" Yeah, right. BG sits up in his grave and says" "Who's the PM in 2006? at this time of existential danger and dynamic processes going on?" and gets an answer: "Some twerp named Ehud Olmert, who got the job by accident after Arik Sharon went into a coma." At which BG says, "Yeah, right!" and wisely elects to go back to sleep. Meanwhile as the PA police fail to nail down rocket launching crews, the Tel Aviv police fail to nail down serial rapist Benny Sela, who seems to have holed himself up somewhere. Here is the newest bumper sticker: (For those of you abroad: Uri Geller looks for the rapist. He can find oil and gold, what's the problem in finding a piece of #U*()?" Good news! A medal for Israel: my friend, Noa Fitlik, (the dancer on the far right) - champion Irish dancer, comes home with several medals in hornpipes and reels and overall 7th place in the Dublin championship for dancers over age 16! Good for you, Noa! |
