Nushworld

Kate Winslet at the Golden Globe Awards 2009

2009-01-14T06:41:00.003+02:00

"Well done Winslet. I told you, do a Holocaust movie and the awards come, didn't I?
- Ricky Gervais

Being a Jew, I'm not sure what I think about that. But it's got me thinking: Is that really the only way people can win a Golden Globe award these days? Either way, I can put that comment behind me and say that Kate Winslet looked absolutely stunning at the awards show. I think I'm going to go see her movie, The Reader.

I'm Back (with a bang)

2006-12-18T11:07:00.000+02:00

Not my bangs mind you...

On the radio today they have been advertising that there will be a special campaign on the roads today due to the ridiculous number of road accident related deaths since the beginning of the year. The radio is constantly reminding us that the police will be out in force all day today and that more than 400 people have died in traffic accidents since the beginning of the year, which is since September, Rosh Hashana the Jewish new year (so the radio claimed but I have since had it pointed out that it cannot be so).

However, in the 1 hour and twenty minutes it took me to get to work this morning. I passed 3 accidents and not a single police car.

Way to go!

Lest We Forget Darfur

2006-10-10T10:44:00.001+02:00

It is reported that Eli Wiesel is to receive an honorary knighthood next November in recognition of his services to Shoah education in the UK.

While it is important for us to always remember and educate about the Holocaust, we as Jews need to remember that everyday there are people suffering at the hands of tyrants around the world. If we don't speak up, if we don't pressure our governments to do everything in their power to try and stop these people, whether in Iran, Iraq, Darfur, Cosovo or wherever in the world it is happening, then we are no better than the Germans and its' allies were in the 1930's and 40's.

As Eli Wiesel said:

"How can a citizen of a free country not pay attention? How can anyone, anywhere not feel outraged? How can a person, whether religious or secular, not be moved by compassion? And above all, how can anyone who remembers remain silent? As a Jew who does not compare any event to the Holocaust, I feel concerned and challenged by the Sudanese tragedy. We must be involved. How can we reproach the indifference of non-Jews to Jewish suffering if we remain indifferent to another people's plight?"

www.israelfordarfur.org

CALM: How can anyone equate Suicide with Intent to Kill others?

2006-10-09T14:46:00.000+02:00

People have now started calling them "Homicide Bombers" because the intent to kill others is more prevalent than the intent to commit suicide, which in the case of these men, is the consequential result. Now we have a legitimate reason to change the name... Well done CALM!

Rachel at Rachelnorthlondon.blogspot.com has an excellent piece about this latest scandal in the british press!

Sunday, October 08, 2006
Homicidal not suicidal
''Controversial posters featuring the aftermath of the London bombings are to appear next week as part of a charity's attempt to stop the number of men who commit suicide each year reaching four figures. The billboard-sized posters feature the image of the devastated No. 30 bus which exploded in Tavistock Square, killing 14 people including Hussain the bomber, and injuring over 110. It has the strapline ''Last year, 4 suicidal British men got our attention. Unfortunately, 973 others didn't. Help stop suicide. Text CALM to 80082''.
( Brand Republic 6/10/05)

The Evening Standard have just rung me up wanting a reaction. I explained, as usual, that I can't speak for all survivors, only for myself, and that I probably wasn't going to be able to muster the reaction of gibbering weeping outrage that they were looking for. But, okay, having seen it, I think that advertisement, whilst achieving one of its objectives of grabbing coverage and raising awareness, is a dud.

This advertisement, whilst achieving one of its objectives of grabbing coverage and raising awareness, is a total dud. For a charity, CALM ( Campaign Against Living Miserably) to use the 7/7 bombers' deaths in an anti-suicide billboard campaign is wholly counter-productive. As well as being in poor taste and upsetting to bereaved families and survivors of the London bombings, it is also misrepresentative, and it is likely to alienate and distress those whom the advertisements are aimed at.

It implies that the London bombers primary aim was suicide, rather than homicide. It infers that they were simply feeling suicidally depressed, like 973 other young men who committed suicide last year. It seems to be saying that the 4 bombers could have been stopped from committing suicide, perhaps if they had been made aware of the charity paying for the ads. But there is no official evidence to support the idea that the young men who killed 52 and injured almost 800 last summer were depressed. In fact, the Official Account of the July 7th bombings describes the young bombers caught on CCTV as ''hugging, seeming happy, even euphoric'' before they killed themselves.

Khan's gang of four were nothing like the target audience for this campaign - young British men who are suffering from depression, and who are thinking about killing themselves.

Okay, the bombers were technically suicidal, in that they were intending to commit suicide, but they were intending to commit suicide as a weapon, to turn themselves into human bombs in what their alleged ring-leader called a ''war''. For them, suicide seemed to be a means to an end - to a gruesome notoriety, an eternal heavenly reward, and a political act of retaliation for what they saw as the sufferings heaped upon the Ummah ( the global Muslim faithful) by the UK and US foreign policy.

What comes across from the Official Report is a picture of 4 highly radicalised young men in a small terrorist gang who were deeply immersed in extremist Islamist thinking and who saw ''martyrdom'' as ''evidence of a supreme religious commitment''. Unfortunately, their warped interpretation of their religion made their planned suicide seem heroic and praiseworthy to them - a way, Mohammed Sidique Khan said in his video statement released after his death ''to raise me amongst those I love like the prophets, the messengers, the martyrs and today's heroes like our beloved Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri...''

Perhaps early therapeutic intervention could have changed their course. Perhaps texting the charity or a chat with a mental health cousellor might have stopped the death-cult gang mentality taking hold in these four British men. It's rather hard to know, as we haven't had much experience of the effect of counselling on radicalised terrorist cells plotting destruction and mixing home-made explosives in their bathtubs.

There is a world of difference between a young man contemplating ending it all, and being a suicide bomber who sees vengeful suicide-homicide as ''martyrdom''. If I was young man who was depressed and feeling suicidal, I would not like to be compared to a suicide bomber. I would be very upset at the stigmatisation. It's bad enough being depressed without people thinking you're contemplating killing innocent commuters as well. Depression is not the same as terrorism, for heaven's sake. Khan and his fellow-terrorists are not remembered as young men who tragically committed suicide. They are remembered for being mass-murderers. It is deeply offensive to make any comparison between the 973 young men who killed themselves last year, and who did not come to the charity's attention until it was too late, and the perpetrators of the worst act of terrorism on British soil.

And what's with the ''Last year, 4 suicidal British British men got our attention'' strapline? The bombings certainly got our attention. That seems to have been one of the bombers' political aims. But is suicide all about ''getting our attention''? That seems to me to demonstrate a woeful lack of comprehension as to what drives many people to commit suicide. Being unable to bear the pain of going on living is the most common reason left in suicide notes. Depression is an illness that can make life no longer bearable. I am shocked that an anti-suicide charity is running with the ''suicide = attention-seeking'' line.

The more you look at this advert, the more of a mess it is. It's a bad ad, and it's a damn shame, because the numbers of suicides in young men is a big, terrible issue, and it needs to be talked about. The charity's aims are praiseworthy. Anything that might stop young men killing themselves in anger and despair is a good thing. But O&M, the ad agency behind the campaign, and whoever signed this off, have made a bad mistake of judgement. The suicide of nearly a thousand young men each year is shocking enough. Why court this controversy with a picture and strapline that don't even make sense in the campaign's context?

British advertising has a reputation for being some of the best in the world. What a pity that this ill-conceived, thoughtless campaign is going to grab headlines for all the wrong reasons. Attempts to save young lives should not resort to linking to mass murderers in their advertising campaigns. They shouldn't need to.
posted by Rachel at 12:14 PM 1 comments

Open letter to Jerusalem Post

2006-10-04T08:12:00.000+02:00

(Background information. JP distributed a booklet that covers such subjects as Common-law Relationships and all the legal ramifications, the children of these "relationships", including artificial means needed if for some reason "natural" doesn't seem to be working -{ wonder why?}, Same-sex relationships beautifully illustrated with a picture of a Catholic actress, and such other happy Jewish subjects)

It is a sad day when your newspaper can see it as proper to distribute a booklet such as the New Family "guide book for cohabitation" that came with the paper last week, especially in the days immediately preceding Yom Kippur. Maybe your reasoning is that it's an advert and covered by your usual disclaimer that content of paid material is not your responsibility, but that's a weak excuse in this case.

It's especially sad that a publication that could have made such a strong case to right a specific wrong in Israeli society - the domination in marriage law of the Orthodox courts - has allowed itself to be hijacked into a polemic justifying, indeed, praising, the destruction of the family as a basic fundamental component of society.

A clue to where this travesty get's its morals from comes in columnist Irit Rosenblum's opening statement. "The definition of 'family' underwent a global earthquake some 200 years ago when the Western world began to worship the individual and individual rights on the altar of social progress". Her word-picture is exactly right - worship at an altar, which calls to mind sacrifice, blood-letting and pain. "Individual rights" has turned into an iconic catch-phrase which seems to trump all other moral and social concerns. And what has been sacrificed at her altar is the idea of a target, a "golden fleece", to which people should aspire. She tells us that rights to marriage in Israel are improperly restricted. She's absolutely correct, but the solution is not to do away with marriage, as she is advocating, but to correct the law to remove the restrictions.

To extend her argument. Anyone should be able to "cohabit" with whomever they want. It's purely a matter of "individual choice". If that's OK, then anyone should be able to imbibe whatever chemical substances they want - dope, smack, coke - it's their choice. Next, anyone should be able to have sex with whomever (or whatever) they want - it's their right. The slippery slope leads to the total breakdown of society, till we end up with a collection of individuals who have no absolute standards by which they can interact, other than "it's right for me!".

Marriage between consenting men and women must remain the target to which we want people to aspire. It carries within it the future of an ordered, functional society. The law should allow for other choices, but they are not the norm and there should be a clear, positive message coming out of our publications, courts and schools that point to the desired outcome instead of elevating the alternatives.

Pluto! Pluto! Home, boy. Home!

2006-09-29T16:39:00.000+03:00

Pluto is shrinking. Used to be a full-grown planet, certified member of the Solar System, up there with the big boys. Able to stay up late, drink beer with his mates Saturn and Jupiter, all that stuff.

Now, Pluto is nothing more than an "object", only allowed to play with Eris (aka Xena), Sedna and other kids we've never heard of.

This is it. Pluto is shrinking, and it's all because of Global Warming. As always, Gore has it right! We must stop it before the next smallest planet is also lost.

Mickey Mouse - Down Pluto!
Al Gore - Up Uranus!!!

A new Eurovision song contest

2006-09-29T13:18:00.000+03:00

Welcome back, Kotter!

The Europeans have done it again. They announced that they are restarting direct payments to Palestinian families before ramadan. (Deutsche Presse Agentur Published: Monday September 25, 2006 )

Any possibilities that one or two of the 40K "families" they're slushing has a Kalashnikov or two stashed away in the cupboard, looking for a friendly Jewish head to bury it's bullets in?

Anyways, to celebrate the PC "vision" of the Euro bureaucrats, I would like to start a new competition to compose song lyrics that set out in clear terms the reality that these guys simply cannot see through their blinkers.

Please try to keep it clean, just as I have done.

My first submission (to the tune of Clementine):

In a cavern, in a canyon
sewing burkhas for his kit.
Sits the leader of al Quaida,
nothing wrong, he's fighting fit.

He's the victor, he's the winner,
mighty ruler, wise Caliph!
So how come we never see him?
Could it be he's just scared stiff.

Tells a young boy
"It's the greatest joy,
kill yourself and take a Jew.
When you die and get to heaven,
Lots of pretty girls, just for you".

Chorus:
Oh, great leader, clever mullah
Pray to allah for such luck,
when you finally get to hell there's
one old virgin left to ....

Nothing to write about - too much time!

2006-09-28T17:31:00.000+03:00

STOP REVERSE THAT!

Too much to write about - not enough time.

Nushwolrd is on Hiatus in the UK and brain freeze has sent it. Wish I could say it is from the weather - but just been too busy to write and surprisingly it is not cold here.

Topics I promised myself to write about:

I just arrived in the UK from my 1st ever trip to Germany - The places is... well... full of Germans! need I say more? I didn't like it one bit because I could not separate my thoughts from those of the Holocaust and I did not enjoy being there.

I tried one night to pick up a wireless network from my hotel room. I swear that there was a wireless network I picked up called "SS". Co-incidence - I think NOT!

On the hot water tap in my room there was a red symbol that I had to do a double/tripple take because it so resembled the swatstika.

My German colleague kept telling us that the bus was coming to "transfer" us to our next destination.

and... the final straw... We walked through the center of Munich one night where they were filming a scene from a movie set in WWII. The street was lined with cars from the 1930's era, uniformed SS men walking around. I swear if anyone had walked up and asked to check my papers - I would have had to be flown out of there in a straight-jacket.

What I really couldn't get over - is that I was the only one (almost, there was one other person who piped up about it) out of a group of 6 Israeli's who seemed to be totally affected by my thoughts and memories of the holocaust. In fact, when we all went out to eat one day, and some of my colleagues ordered the Pork special, I honestly couldn't help wondering 'is this what 6 million Jews died for?' Perhaps I am niaive, but it just seems such a shame, and this is not the first time I have thought this too.

Sooooo I am not sure I will be too keen to jump on a plane back to Germany any time soon. Would rather go to East Jerusalem anyday!

Daft Parents and their Poor Children

2006-08-29T21:05:00.000+03:00

I realize that I may be getting myself into serious trouble with this post, but I simply can't hold back any longer.

Yes - this post is dedicated to all those Anglo parents living in Israel who get carried away with themselves by foisting the most hideous names on their newborn children. Monstrous carbuncles of the first order! Is there something in the water? I can only imagine that they believe that through bestowing weird and wonderful names upon their offspring, they are somehow immersing themselves in the holiness and beauty of the Land of Israel. No doubt, they think they are clever. I think they are deluded and even pretentious. They despoil the aural landscape.
We are simply astounded by some of the grotesque names that our friends have given their children! They are trying too hard. I will concede that this phenomenon is not unique to Israelis - I daresay that these Anglo parents are actually adhering to a global trend- indeed, they are following in the footsteps of celebrities such as Paula Yates, Woody Allen and, of course, Frank Zappa. Lest we forget, Zappa named his son Dweezil and his daughter Moon Unit. Allen named his son Satchel - now that's what I call child abuse! Yates called her children Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and wait for it.....Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. Nebbich!

I would like to quote some of the names that our neighbours have given their children, but with the Days of Awe just around the corner, perhaps it would not be a good idea. I think that the culprits know who they are. I only hope that these misguided parents beg their children for forgiveness. The poor little kids are the victims of over-imaginative minds, and they are now scarred for life!

global warming - a cure for gore?

2006-08-29T10:52:00.000+03:00

Once upon a time, there was a man who was Vice President of the USA. Being vice president meant that he was, literally, one breath away from being the real thing. If Clinton stopped breathing, he was IT!

So, I think he should promote this solution. All mammals breath in pure, clean, cool air, and breath out hot, fetid, saturated mist. This obviously contributes to global warming. And which mammals contribute most - humans of course. Do the arithmetic - 6.5 billion people, average mass 50Kg = 325 MEGATONS (nice word that, it will get the attention of environmentalists and peaceniks alike) of air-polluting flesh. By contrast, there isn't even one megaton of elephant around.

Now, the proposal is for all humans to stop breathing. Stop spoiling the atmosphere with your unwanted heat. Leave the Earth the way you found it - pure and clean. I'm sure Gore of all people can see the merits of this argument - it has a much stronger scientific basis than all his other stuff, and it's at least as doable as his other suggestions!

Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it.

2006-08-27T13:28:00.000+03:00

The story is told that Hitler, during the disaster that we now call the battle of Stalingrad, forbade his generals to read, or even possess, the memoirs written by Armand de Caulaincourt, adviser to Napoleon during his own catastrophic invasion of Russia 120 years earlier. (I'm indebted, as always, to my literary hero Herman Wouk, for teaching me this and so much more about the last war from his majestic books). Reading this work, the madman reasoned, would open his army's eyes to the possibility of defeat, and his crooked mind couldn't countenance such things.

Why is this relevant today. Because there's an old saying - "Generals train to fight the last war". But probably more importantly, politicians plan for the last war. So we need to see what went wrong in the last war in Lebanon, and make sure we get a set of politicians that understand where, why and how we failed, and prepare for round two.

To do this, we need a thorough, independent and strong investigation. Its purpose is not to point the finger at who made mistakes last time (although hopefully that will happen too), but to tell us how to prevent the same, and worse mistakes, happening again. Every citizen of Israel should be crying out to the heavens for this investigation, and should make sure they understand what it says, because the next government we elect MUST do better than the one we've got now.

Come and join us for a few coldies.

2006-08-26T22:44:00.000+03:00

Oh, the nostalgia! the nostalgia!!!

greatest athlete ever???

2006-08-23T14:54:00.000+03:00

ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski has a column in which he makes the following statement ...

Tiger Woods is the greatest individual athlete of our time. OK, of all time.

Now, I'm not going to say anything bad about Woods, who is a phenomenal sportsman, but I think Gene's going over the top. You can see why, when you see who he's comparing Tiger to -

"one-namers (Pele, Babe, Jack), your initialers (MJ), your nicknamers (The Great One, The Greatest), your oldies (Jim Thorpe, Willie Mays, Joe Louis), your Olympians (Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis), your netters (Martina Navratilova, Pete Sampras), your others (Lance Armstrong). "

With just one exception, they're all Americans, and they're all involved in sports that are popular in America (and in some cases, nowhere else).

I have a strong recollection of an article in Time Magazine s few years ago, titled "and quiet goes the Don" published shorlty after Sir Donald Bradman passed away in Adelaide. That writer makes my point much better that I can, when he says that if Tiger Woods keeps winning like he had until then for another 15 years, then maybe he could seriously be considered a rival, but until that time, there simply is no other individual in any sport, any time, anywhere, who comes near the perfection of the Don.

Think about ... a life-time batting average of 99.94 runs, in a career spanning 20 years! The next best is Greg Pollock, with average of 65, but over a much shorter period. Where else will you find a sportsman that is 50% better/faster/stronger than his nearest rival, ever! To come even close, Woods would need to be winning consistently with scores in the 50's. It's like running the 100 meters in 7 seconds, high jumping over 3 meters - and not just once, but over your whole career.

This will be a hard point to sell to the Yanks, who don't understand any sports that aren't played on their home turf, and who are also convinced that they have it right, even though they have to split the country into pieces in order to have a "World Series" contest in baseball. But truth is, the Don was so far ahead of anyone else that it's difficult to see even Woods taking the title off him.

Anyone else got opinions on this?

trust the BBC

2006-08-22T22:34:00.000+03:00

We should be grateful for the services provided by the Beeb. Just today, they have given a fascinating story that tells us volumes about the nature of Israel's battle.

First, notice the picture - a young child posed next to an armed but unexploded bomb. Now, in the real world, what's your first reaction to walking into a room that could at any moment be blown to smithereens ...
1. Run for your life or
2. Pick up your children, and run for their lives or
3. get your kids to stand close to the bomb, posing while the photographers get the right shot.

When we say that the Islam is a religion with a death-wish, why does the West continue to doubt it. A picture is worth a thousand words, and who would doubt the Beeb!

Second, read this bit ...
The eastern Mihaniya area, where Um Ali lives, is also largely destroyed, mostly the result of aerial bombing and artillery fire from over a hill which separates Bin Jbeil from the Israeli border less than 5km (three miles) away....There was also house-to-house fighting here, after Israeli troops entered Mihaniya and were engaged by Hezbollah fighters at close quarters.

But hang on, weren't we told, endlessly, that Israel was deliberately attacking civilian/residential areas that posed no military target. Why then was Hizbollah fighting "house-to-house" - everyone else says they weren't ever there, but who would doubt the Beeb!

So be grateful to the BBC, because they time and again show themselves for what they are - unredeemable anti-Semites who wouldn't know the truth from a bucket of their own turds.

Errr Derrrr!

2006-08-22T12:28:00.000+03:00

In this article from CNN, US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton said.

"As long as Hezbollah fighters remain armed," the international peacekeeping force and the Lebanese forces "would be vulnerable."

No shit Sherlock...

So why didn't you shut up and let Israel do the job for you - you pansies!

Hizbullah have perfected time travel

2006-08-22T10:35:00.000+03:00

Browse your way to Hizbullah's Iran-based website, and you'll see this fascinating picture, together with the claim (non-Arabic readers will have to trust my sources) saying that it's a photo of them destroying an Israeli warship in their victorious war last month.

Now look again. Israel doesn't have destroyer-class vessels. This picture shows all guns have been removed. And the Australian Navy shows the same picture, dated 1998, of the decommissioned HMAS Torrens being used for submarine target practice off WA coast (hats off to Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun).

So here's the story. Either Hizbollah are blatant liars (what??? never!!!) or they've discovered the secret of time travel, picked up an Israeli destroyer (which doesn't exist yet), moved it back in time to 1998, disguised themselves as RAN sailors on a RAN sub, and sank it. For my money, I'll believe the latter, just like all the 1.5 billion followers of the religion of Peace do.

the crystal ball is still working

2006-08-21T09:22:00.000+03:00

Sometimes, the naiveté of both our media and our Government astound me.

Headline on front page of today's Jerusalem Post - Annan to give UNIFIL "teeth". And the gist if the story is that Israel's good and true friend, in response to persuasive arguments by our Foreign Minister, is going to amend the rules of engagement to include "opening fire on Hizbullah where necessary".

I didn't know crystal balls could laugh, but mine does. Sure, UNIFIL will get orders allowing it to open fire on Hizbullah. And the moon is made of green cheese!

This "persuasive argument" by Israel's FM comes exactly one day after we sent our brave troops into Lebanon in what even JP describes as a "brazen Israeli commando raid into the heart of Lebanon". Now, what do YOU imagine is uppermost in Coffee Anal's mind, that he's going to write rules allowing UNIFIL to shoot at Hizbullah, or he's going to say something like "UNIFIL can resist any violation of the cease fire agreement, by any party, with force of arms"?

And what is that rule other than a mandate for UNIFIL to get in our way when we decide to try and stop Hizbullah re-arming and redeploying. What is this rule other than a carte-blanche for Hizbullah to go back to the good-old-days of the past six years, except now we have another enemy to contend with.

I've said it before, it's time for Egghead Omlette and his Merry Men to be shown the door.

an excellent post-event analysis of the fiasco in Lebanon

2006-08-20T01:08:00.000+03:00

As I've been saying here, the time is rapidly approaching when the people of Israel should get their chance to show Egghead Omlette and his band of merry men the door. There's a great summation of my feelings in this piece posted tonight in The New Republic, and I urge all to read it. Especially, take note of the closing paragraph ...

"Whether or not Hezbollah won this war, Iran did. It encouraged and supported Hezbollah in this catastrophic mischief, and it emerges from the adventure satisfied with its ability to hurt Israel and damage regional stability and thwart American strategy. At this moment, therefore, it is important to remember that Iran is not only Israel's problem. It is also America's problem. Indeed, it is the West's problem. There is no figure in the world right now--not Osama bin Laden, not Nasrallah, not Ayman Al Zawahiri, not the Sunni insurgency or the Shia death squads in Iraq, not the cells, Al Qaeda or otherwise, in any European or American city--that represents the Islamist danger more perfectly, with greater ideological and physical force, than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And he has been enjoying his summer immensely. "

was I right, or was I right !

2006-08-17T11:47:00.000+03:00

10 days ago, I made a prediction here about the likely outcome of the arrests in Britain ...

"My crystal ball tells me that within a matter of days, many left-wing pollies (I think I see the names Galloway and Livingstone, but there are more I can't read) will start a campaign for the immediate release of all prisoners, for an apology from the Home Office, and for an official complaint to the Pakistani government about the torture of the British citizens innocently going about their business in Lahore. Furthermore, they will demand that any evidence gained from following up the interrogation in Pakistan be ignored as "tainted evidence" since the techniques of "interrogation" do not conform to the British standards required for a court case."

So go have a look here in today's Guardian (hats-off to OpinionJournal - still the bechmark) ...

"Reports from Pakistan suggest that much of the intelligence that led to the raids came from that country and that some of it may have been obtained in ways entirely unacceptable here. In particular Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies. The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know - torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all." If this is shown to be the case, the prospect of securing convictions in this country on his evidence will be complicated."

blame Canada? no need - there's always Bibi

2006-08-17T08:12:00.000+03:00

It's time for the Establishment to start doing the only PR thing they actually know how to do - shifting the blame onto some-one else. Instead of Egg Omlette standing up like a mensch and saying "the buck stops here, it was on my watch, I resign", we're starting to see the spin-doctors coming into play, and telling us that he did a WONDERFUL job, and if anything was even slightly wrong it was because of Joe Shmo or, as we now hear, Benyamin Netanyahu.

The case in point is an article in the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday August 16, titled "Cost of a tragically botched war" by Jonathan Lipow, who is described as "an economist". He says, basically, that we lost (I agree), and that it's all Bibi's fault.

"It's one thing to shave NIS 1 billion off a 33 billion budget given six months of advanced warning" says he, "It is quite another to shave off a billion 6 months into the current fiscal year when that money has already been allocated or spent. Faced with the need to slash spending fast, the IDF did the only thing possible - it cut readiness and training expenditures". So lets see, the IDF has been under notification by the Treasury that they have to review expenditure for at least 3 years, but not in the last year, since Bibi wasn't Treasurer for most of it. They had to find (incredible!) THREE PERCENT, so in anticipation of this they, by all accounts from reservists, stopped training 3 years ago (they being both omniscient and flawless predictors).

What else is Bibi's fault? The economy is stagnating. Unemployment is standing at the "staggering" level of 9 per cent, stuck there for four months (during which Bibi, again, was not Treasurer), having [start sarcasm] rocketed there from the much better level of 11 per cent [end sarcasm] when Bibi took the reins. Lipow rabbits on in this vein for 4 columns of drivel, all saying the same thing, basically that anything that went wrong in the war was due to the financial catastrophe that Bibi nurtured (average 6% GDP growth, lowest inflation, declining unemployment, etc,etc,etc).

Oh, and it's not all Bibi's fault. The head of the Bank of Israel also gets his, because he raised interest rates by one half a per cent. Clearly, this has ruined our economy. After all, the exchange rate, in a time of war, actually improved! What other sign do we need that Fischer was Bibi's accomplice in spoiling Omlettte's victory.

Let's keep an eye on this game - looks like it's only the opening shots in a long campaign to pull the wool over our eyes - again.

Has Sharon left the building?

2006-08-16T18:21:00.000+03:00

I have it on good authority (although I still hope it is not true) that Sharon has just passed away. Apparently there is a media block on the story until further notice.

Sorry to be vague but I will update if anything worth updating develops.

**UPdate**

Seems not to be true - my hopes were right and my source is crap!

Coke! Just for the Taste of it?

2006-08-15T13:22:00.000+03:00

"COCA-COLA yesterday hit back at claims that its soft drinks in India contain unacceptably high levels of pesticide residue by publishing a British laboratory report showing that they are safe to drink. "

Surely ANY level of pesticide residue is unacceptable?

Read the full report.

My response to the Auschwitz Holocaust museum

2006-08-14T18:35:00.000+03:00

I do not think very much of the response I received after sending an email in response to this article:

Herein my response to the Museum:

Dear Teresa,

Thank you so much for your reply. However I still strongly feel that the suitcase needs to be returned to the original owner's son. You claim in your letter that a great part of your resistance in this case is due to the fact that the suitcase was on loan. But what would you say if Mr Michael Levi-Leleu had visited your exhibition and seen the suitcase - would it make his claim any more legitimate. Furthermore you also claim that this is not the first time that the museum has dealt with a situation like this - but that normally, with dialogue, you are able to convince the claimant to leave the item in your possession. What would you have done if you had indeed managed to hold negotiations with Mr Levi-Leleu and failed? Would you then have returned to him the suitcase?

The fact remains that although education and preservation of the remnants of the camps seem to be your claimed purpose - and I quote "the view of the Museum's Board of Directors is that it certainly understands, most profoundly, the feelings of the families of victims of the Shoah. Nevertheless, the Museum has a responsibility towards what is left of the camp." The camps existed as extermination centers for millions of Jews, gypsies, dissidents and others. The pain suffered by the families who lost loved ones and suffered horrible conditions themselves for so many years at the hands of the Nazi's is no excuse for depriving any living person a remaining physical memory of their loved one. It just shows that you really do NOT understand, most profoundly, the feelings of the families of victims of the Shoah. If you did then there would be no question that this suitcase needs to be returned immediately.

You offered Mr Levi-Leleu a photograph of the suitcase. Perhaps this is what you should do yourselves, give him the suitcase back and put a photo of the suitcase on display, or even better turn this into an educational and PR success. Make the right choice and return the suitcase, document its return in a video and (if he agrees) interview Mr Levi-Leleu about his memories of his father. THAT is education.

Send an email to the Museum

The Auschwitz Holocaust Museum Responds to my letter

2006-08-14T18:25:00.000+03:00

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your e-mail. For us, this case is also difficult and extremely painful. Putting aside the legal aspects, we are faced with a conflict between natural and understandable emotions of the individual, and a complex unity, whose primary and universal goal is to preserve collective memory of the European Jewry’s tragedy through education and material testimony. The lawsuit, which we did not want, is now in progress.
In response to your questions we would like to provide you with a statement of the Museum’s standpoint.
In the autumn of 2003, a representative of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC), Paris, visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim. During this visit, for the first time, he made the request to borrow an exhibit for a planned permanent exhibition in Paris entitled “The Fate of Jews from France during World War II”. The exhibit he asked for was a suitcase that had come from among the transports deported to KL Auschwitz from the occupied French territories.
The suitcases of those deported to Auschwitz which are today in the possession of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum are among the most valuable exhibit-relics of its collections. They constitute a small remnant of the personal effects left behind by the victims of the KL Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers which the Nazis did not have time to recycle for their own purposes in the Reich. The names appearing on some of the suitcases are, at the same time, one of the few proofs of the death of individual people in KL Auschwitz. In the Museum’s collections there are just a handful of suitcases, whose characteristics, such as inscriptions on them or attached labels, indicate that they were brought to Auschwitz by deportees from France. For this reason, the Museum initially rejected the above-mentioned request, and offered a photograph of such a suitcase instead. The French party was not satisfied with such a solution and continued asking for an original suitcase, declaring at the same time that it would be borrowed from the Museum only for the period of the exhibition opening, i.e. the first half of 2005.
Considering the fact that one of the basic tasks of the Museum is to spread knowledge of KL Auschwitz, as well as the fact that the opening of the exhibition in Paris coincided with the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, and that the exhibition was to be presented in the capital of France, the Museum decided to change its initial decision.
In the second half of 2004, the Museum chose a suitcase for the purpose. This was inventory number PMO- II-1-1786. It carried a paper label bearing the following inscription: “Boul. Villette, Paris” (typewritten), “Pierre Levy”, “48 Gruppe 10” [?] (handwritten, barely legible). The suitcase was then subjected to conservation, and the necessary formalities for the loan were prepared. Signing of the Loan/Borrowing contract and the physical taking possession of the exhibit by the French party took place in January 2005. The contract stated that by the end of June 2005 the suitcase would be returned to the Museum in Oświęcim.
At the end of May 2005, the French party informed the Museum that a person claiming to be the son of the original owner of the suitcase had been in touch with their institution. In order to respect the feelings of this relative of a victim of KL Auschwitz, the CDJC therefore asked for a change to be made to the contract such that the suitcase could remain in Paris for a “long-term” period. In making this request the CDJC told the Museum that if the Museum would agree to this it would help them to “persuade the family into not demanding its [the suitcase’s] restitution”.
The Museum raised the matter at the meeting of the International Auschwitz Council on June 21, 2005. The members of the Council, consisting of 25 experts from many countries around the world (among others, from Yad Vashem), expressed numerous doubts about CDJC’s request and expressed the view that the suitcase should be returned forthwith to the Museum. However, at the request of the French member of the Council, it was finally agreed that a temporary extension of the contract should be made. In its reply to the CDJC, the Museum thus declared that for the sake of maintaining good mutual relations, and to avoid any sense of bitterness, it was willing to extend the deadline for returning the suitcase until January 2006, stressing that this was the final date for the return of the loan. The Museum also asked for the address of the victim’s relative in order to establish contact with that person and to explain the role of the exhibits and collections of the Museum in its educational mission about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
Unfortunately the Museum has never received the address, nor has this relative at any time contacted the Museum. It has therefore not been possible to engage in a dialogue about this matter. The Museum has had experience in the past of claims made by former prisoners or relatives of victims to claim ownership of objects from its collections, and in such cases – by clarifying the purpose of the Museum and its collections -- it has always succeeded in negotiating with such people and dissuading them from pursuing such claims.
At the end of December 2005, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was informed by the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris about a decision that had been taken allowing a distraint to be made on the suitcase-exhibit being displayed at the exhibition organised by the Memorial de la Shoah (Shoah Memorial) in Paris. The proposer of this distraint was Mr. Michel Georges Adam Levi-Leleu, residing in Paris, the son of Pierre Levi, whose name corresponds with the one inscribed on the suitcase’s label. Shortly afterwards, the Museum received a summons from a court in France, where Mr. Michel Georges Adam Levi-Leleu claimed the right to the suitcase. He did so regardless of the letter in which the Museum had explained its opinion and had stressed the utmost importance of the integrity of its collections and of the authenticity of the site of the former KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. A similar letter was written to Mme Simone Veil by Prof. Władysław Bartoszewski, a former prisoner of KL Auschwitz, co-founder of the Council for Aid to Jews (“Żegota”), former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, Citizen of Honour in Israel, and the Chairman of the International Auschwitz Council. At present, the case is in progress, and is due to be held in September this year.
The Museum has been considering its position and has taken advice from the International Auschwitz Council and its Board, the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. se In any case, as time goes by, the memory of what happened at Auschwitz and the educational activity promoted by the Museum will increasingly rest on what physically remains of the camp, as well as the grounds on which it stands. The plunder was originally made in criminal fashion by the Nazis: every object had its owner before the war. But in terms of preserving memory and promoting education, dispersing these physical remnants today is a road to nowhere. The Museum believes that such difficult questions should be the subject of negotiations and dialogue; it is neither appropriate not productive to settle such matters through the courts. In this particular case, the claimant has not so far demonstrated any interest in dialogue, and for the first time in the Museum’s history, we have been sued. We are afraid that, whatever the outcome, the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of this case may be the tightening of restrictions on the Museum’s willingness to lend objects at all, anywhere, to the detriment of Holocaust education worldwide.

Yours sincerely,

Teresa Świebocka
Deputy Director of
State Museum Auschwitz - Birkenau
in Oświęcim POLAND

Message Lost in the Storm

2006-08-14T15:14:00.000+03:00

A few days ago, I wrote about Panorama - the flagship news programme of the BBC, which reported last week on the sinister fundraising activities of the Islamic charity Interpal.

The message of my original posting on the Panorama expose' was lost amidst the incendiary blog debate that followed. Quite simply, I stated that although the BBC has a reputation (among Jews) as an anti-Israeli media outlet (not without some justification), it has attracted opprobium from others for being too kind to Israel. Don't take my word for it. Bermants Blog has also commented on this, and has drawn my attention to the Panorama feedback .

Here's one example from the feedback: I have always thought that the BBC is a reliable source of news and reflect the situation where ever as it is, last night it was very disappointing, panorama was very baised to the Israeli side of the story, and did not even get close to the facts.

I find it tiresome to hear Foreign Ministry officials moaning continuously about BBC hatred of Israel (Gideon Meir is the worst offender) - see the Jerusalem Post. It might sound like a cliche but there is some truth in it - "Media Bias is in the Eye of the Beholder".

I believe that it would be counterproductive for Israel to start another anti-BBC campaign, as it probably won't make an ounce of difference to the Corporation's coverage - and as I have already pointed out, there are plenty of people out there who feel the Beeb is soft on Israel.

I will give Shankar Vedantam the last word. In an eye-opening article in the Seattle Times, the journalist described how Pro-Arab and Pro-Israeli audiences were shown the same news clips of Israeli troops in Lebanon in 1982, and how the audience reactions diverged:

Partisans, it turns out, don't just arrive at different conclusions; they see entirely different worlds. In one especially telling experiment, researchers showed 144 observers six television news segments about Israel's 1982 war with Lebanon. Pro-Arab viewers heard 42 references that painted Israel in a positive light and 26 references that painted Israel unfavorably.
Pro-Israeli viewers, who watched the very same clips, spotted 16 references that painted Israel positively and 57 references that painted Israel negatively.

Both groups were certain they were right and the other side didn't know what it was talking about. The tendency to see bias in the news, now the raison d'etre of much of the blogosphere is such a reliable indicator of partisan thinking that researchers coined a term, "hostile media effect," to describe the sincere belief among partisans that news reports are painting them in the worst possible light.

get the full story on Reuters & AP photo doctoring

2006-08-14T09:58:00.000+03:00

An excellent analysis on what the news media have been up to, on Aish website.

we learn something new every day

2006-08-13T23:32:00.000+03:00

Perusing the thousands of blogs posted about the war in Lebanon, I learned something worth sharing.

Israel is the only country in the world that has more trees today than there were 100 years ago!

This fact came up in the context of an environmental blog dealing with the oil-spill coming from the Lebanese power station bombed in the opening day of the war. Environmentalists are pointing the finger at us, but ignoring the enormous damage done to out forested areas by Hizbolla rockets.

All credit to KKL/JNF for giving us this unique gold medal!

Holocaust Museum double standard

2006-08-13T16:17:00.000+03:00

I read a story on YNet news and Times Online about a French man, Michael Leleu Levi, who claims that the Auschwitz Holocaust Museum have his fathers' suitcase, he is seeking legal action to get it back.

How can they NOT return the suitcase to him? It is unacceptable when Nazi looted art and other items turn up in museums around the world and the museums do not return them to the claimants. Just because they are a holocaust museum does not mean that their cause is any more important than the standards we expect of other museums holding looted artifacts, nor does it make the claim of Mr Levi any less important. This is the only remnant of this man's father and if he wishes to have it returned then they need to do that.

So... they will have one less suitcase in their exhibition, surely that is less important than the connection that Mr Levi feels (whether logical or not) to his father's suitcase.

Please return the suitcase to Mr Levi, why should he have to go to court to get back what is rightfully his. It is bad enough that Jews all over the world have to fight museums and private collectors in legal battles to claim back the things that were stolen from their relatives.

Send the museum an email

AbbaGav outdoes himself

2006-08-13T04:37:00.000+03:00

Abba Gav is normally very funny. His comedy blogging about Oprah in Jenin is a jem.

BUT THIS is is funniest yet - sad but true.

enjoy...

You think Jew hatred is dead?

2006-08-12T23:04:00.000+03:00

This was posted on The Guardian website earlier today (scroll down to the comment by langenkraut), and nobody has objected to it as offensive or unsuitable...

"OBL had nothing to do with 9/11 and of the 19 mickey mouse arabs who supposedly carried it out almost half are known to be still alive. If we had some investigative journalism in the mainstream media this would have been looked in to long ago along with endless other facets of this case.

As Robin Cook pointed out a few months before he so conveniently died, Al-Quaida is nothing more than a database of useful idiots. OBL has been set up as the boogey man that everybody has to be afraid of.

Perhaps he had something to do with the earlier attacks but I doubt it. They all stink of Zionist false flags. The official story about 7/7 is also absolute nonsense.

Zionist false flags go back at least 50 years and before that they bombed the British out of Palestine before attacking the local Palestinian population. Well actually they did both at the same time. The bombing of Arab buses began in 1939:
See:http://guardian.150m.com/palestine/jewish-terrorism.htm

In 1967 unmarked Israeli planes attacked the unarmed USS Liberty and tried to sink it. This was an attempt to provoke the US into attacking Egypt. Over 170 US sailore were killed or injured. The captain of the ship is still alive and together with his surviving crew is trying to get justice. President Johnson covered the whole thing up.
See: www.ussliberty.org

Now why were the British in Palestine in the first place? They got allocated Palestine at Versailles in 1919. 80 per cent of the delegates at Versailles were Zionist Jews. Not present, but manipulating proceedings through their many agents, was the Rotshchild family. Their main agents present were the Warbourg brothers.

The Warbourg Merchant Bank based in Hamburg is the biggest merchant bank in the world. Max Warbourg of the Reichsbank, the German Central Bank owned by the Warbourgs and other Rothschild Cabal members, was in the delegation advising the German Government. During the war he had advised the Kaiser.

His brother Paul, of Kuhn Loeb in New York, and of the Federal Reserve, another Central Bank owned and controlled by the Rothschild Cabal, was advising the US delegation. It was here that the Germans found out what was behing the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. In this declaration the UK Government made it known that it recognised the rights of Zionist to have a homeland in Palestine.

How come the Uk government had time for this when a war was going on? A war that they would have lost had the US not intervened? In late 1916 with the Germans offering peace negotiations the Zionist Jews approached the UK Government and offered to get the US in the war in return for a promise that they could have a homeland in Palestine. The UK agreed and after the US entered the war the Balfour Declaration was issued.

The Zionist controlled media in the US changed from supporting Germany to attacking it and inventing lots of wild stories about them being canibals and so on. In the White House, Colnel House, President Wilsons main advisor and a Rotshchild agent began working on the President. The banking families also increased their lending to the British and decreased it to the Germans.
It was also in 1917 that the British Royal Family changed its name from the House of Hannover to the House of Windsor, just in time for an allied victory."

is Bernard Lewis wrong?

2006-08-11T12:55:00.000+03:00

I never thought I was capable of improving anything Prof. Lewis wrote, but today I think I can.

In an analysis of the significance of the forthcoming key date of August 22nd, he says ...

In this context, MAD (mutual assured destruction), the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead – hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

Can I suggest a better version of the final sentence ...

For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is a description.

is my crystal ball working?

2006-08-11T09:35:00.000+03:00

The date and time of this posting is important. It's August 11 2006 06:26 AM GMT.

News this morning about the Muslim terrorist plot to explode multiple airplanes over the Atlantic included the bit about how the unravelling of the plot started with the arrest of some 10 Muslims in Pakistan, including two British Muslims, who gave up information of the plot while under interrogation. Subsequently 21 Muslims have been arrested in the UK.

My crystal ball tells me that within a matter of days, many left-wing pollies (I think I see the names Galloway and Livingstone, but there are more I can't read) will start a campaign for the immediate release of all prisoners, for an apology from the Home Office, and for an official complaint to the Pakistani government about the torture of the British citizens innocently going about their business in Lahore. Furthermore, they will demand that any evidence gained from following up the interrogation in Pakistan be ignored as "tainted evidence" since the techniques of "interrogation" do not conform to the British standards required for a court case.

Who's prepared to bet me that my ball is wrong??

All I can say is - thank G-d for the Pakistani interrogation techniques.

There was something in the air tonight...

2006-08-10T12:16:00.000+03:00

Fernando! should be the new code-name for the current UK and US terror investigations - especially after Scotland yard arrested suspects and upped the terror alert at all international airports - and after US authoritied arrested 2 suspects in Ohio...

I can't help wondering where those missing Egyptian students really are.

If you are planning a flight in the next few weeks - maybe now is the time to cancel... *hint*

Told you so!

2006-08-10T10:36:00.000+03:00

Further to my earlier Post about Malaysia sending foreign troops to Lebanon.

Told You So! (As per Ynet News)

"Malaysia urges nations to break ties with Israel over offensive in Lebanon
Malaysia urged countries Thursday to cut off diplomatic ties with Israel to show they care enough about the lives of Muslims under attack in Lebanon.
"This is one incident in history where the world seems to close its eyes ... As if the lives of Muslims or the Arabs or the Lebanese are not as important as others," Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told a news conference. "Definitely the view of (many in) the international community is that Israel has breached international law," Syed Hamid said. "If that is so, it is only proper for countries ... to cut diplomatic relations with Israel, especially countries in the Middle East." (AP)

is the gap between Europe and America bridgeable

2006-08-10T00:17:00.000+03:00

In today's issue of The Economist, there's an editorial that outlines the differences between American and European views of the war in Lebanon. Although the body of the article (see it here) seems to make a clear case of the strength of US pro-Israel sentiment, it also makes some disturbing conclusions, amongst them that this support is wavering ....

There are growing worries both about Israel's conduct of the war and its wider impact on the Middle East. Many of these anxieties are expressed by the “realist faction”. Chuck Hagel, a Republican maverick, has given warning that America's relationship with Israel “cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships”. Richard Haass, a State Department official under George Bush senior who now heads the Council on Foreign Relations, has laughed publicly at the president's “birth of a new Middle East” optimism about the crisis. Some of the worries extend to conservatives. Tony Blankley, a former press secretary for Newt Gingrich and a fire-breathing columnist for the Washington Times, says that “We ignore world opinion at our peril.”

I found this paragraph disturbing. Do the Europeans (and The Economist is one of the most reliable, level-headed and "unbiased" commentators in Europe) see American domestic support slipping, in which case they will go even further over to the pro-Arab stance that has dogged all steps to bring a concerted effort to bear on the menace of radical Islam forces now breaking out.

So I went browsing to find out what I could about these American voices that are pushing US policy aware from solid support for Israel in our hour of need. And what do we find?

In the Washington Times, by no means a strong pro-Israel medium, Tony Blankly says ...

In the short and early middle term, a policy of appealing to the hearts and minds of the Arab street ... will be indistinguishable from a policy of appeasement to radical Islamist sentiments. (Of course, "leaning on Israel" is always well received on the Arab Street.) And, oh dear, that last phrase: "We have to make up [for not spending so much blood or treasure as over the past few years] with diplomacy backed by a hint of steel." More likely a hint of lavender. Somehow, I doubt that Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Hamas and their fellow cutthroats are going to take the "hint."

Reading these assessments from someone very high up in the Bush foreign policy hierarchy, it is hard to take in the distressing conclusion that even now, after all we have seen and been through these past five years, it is still believed that we can somehow finesse radical Islamist terrorism with sweet talk. This is going to be a bloody fight to the death between civilization and Islamist barbarity -- made more bloody the longer we wait to take the threat seriously.

Maybe the gap between Europe and the US is unbridgeable. It certainly looks that way if conservative views like The Economists can so completely mis-understand the thinking of US policy makers. And we have today seen a radical split between what was hoped-for as vital alliance between US and France in steering the Security Council along a neutral path. Now France is parroting the Arab line, that Israel must pull out before any peace settlement can begin. Let's hope the bridge allows one-way traffic only, and the US doesn't go against the tide and join Europe in is appeasement strategy.

an important read to understand where "militant Islam" comes from

2006-08-09T23:23:00.000+03:00

I have just finished reading a marvellous paper by one of the foremost writers in the study of Islamic terrorism Most importantly, it was written 6 month ago, but it could just have well been penned this morning, clarifying as it does the origins, methods and aims of the movements behind the current war in Lebanon. Read it and you will come out with a much deeper and clearer understanding of the fight we have on our hands today, and why Israel must get the backing of the whole free world as the first line of defense against a vicious, evil enemy.

THE RADICAL POLITICS OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM by Daniel Goldhagen

The most telling paragraphs, for me, were these ...

Political Islam is on the march in the three loci of politics: the street, the halls of power, and the field of battle. Its targets are both domestic (to suppress freedom and dissent within Islamic countries; sharia is already becoming the rule in Gaza) and international (to spread its sway and impose its orthodoxy abroad). While its international power is still circumscribed, political Islam's ambitions are extensive, violent, and frightening-- with its members sensing its growing potential (fueled also by America's geostrategic weakening in the Iraq quagmire). Political Islam's leaders and masses watch a Western world in evident disarray about what to do regarding each aspect of this partly coordinated, partly fortuitous offensive. We must consider that we are witnessing the beginning of political Islam's intensifying social and political mobilization into a new multipronged, intercontinental intifada.

and these ...

Political Islam is a transnational movement. Precisely because it cuts across countries and includes political movements and groups that, on some matters, are antagonistic to one another, it can seem somewhat amorphous and diffuse. But its common ideological foundation--and its overarching set of concerns--give it a shared purpose for which its adherents can singly, and in concert, work. Political Islam, which erases the distinction between politics and religion, includes all those in power or aspiring to power who want politics to be merged with, and subordinated to, Islam in a domestic and (for many) ultimately global rule of fundamentalist versions of Islam (which differ from the more tolerant, pluralistic forms that are widely practiced, including by most Muslims in the United States). As Hamas's Musa Abu Marzook, its deputy chief leader-in-exile, said on Israeli radio this month, one of the principles it will never compromise is "government according to the laws of the sharia." Political Islam also includes all those in power or vying for power (including secular leaders) who use an intolerant version of Islam as a political ideology to mobilize Muslims at home or abroad for aggressive political action. These actions are typically directed at those bucking the political Islamic line, especially abroad against non-Muslims, derogatorily called "infidels," against whom it is lawful, even normative, to act in ways that would be criminal if done to Muslims.

By identifying political Islam (a term preferable to Islamofascism, militant Islam, Islamic fundamentalism, or others because it is not Islam itself but a political Islamic movement with a coherent and distinctive political ideology and goals), we emphatically do not implicate all Muslims or all Islam. The phenomenon includes only Islamic-grounded political regimes, organizations, and initiatives that share (whatever their other-- sometimes internecine--differences, Shia versus Sunni, Arab versus Persian, et cetera) a common ideological foundation about Islam's political primacy or its need to systematically roll back the West. It is a conviction that the modern world is fundamentally corrupt and must be reshaped, often through the annihilation of others. Therein, political Islam resembles the international communist movement in its heyday. Political Islam is many things: totalitarian, aggressive, conquering, cocksure about its superiority and destiny to rule, intolerant, bristling with resentment, and only tenuously in touch with aspects of reality. But what marks it most distinctively are two things: its religious consecration of its tenets, emotions, and goals, which are putatively grounded in Allah's will and to which slavish (indeed literally mindless) devotion is due; and its cult of death, which produces its extreme danger and has three central components.

First is the willingness to die (or at least to let political Islam's duped minions die) for the greater earthly and heavenly glory of political Islam and for a martyr's place in paradise. This is rhetorically and behaviorally manifest throughout the movement, including in the well-known glorification of suicide bombers' deaths by the videotaped killers and their families, and in public ceremonies and speeches of political leaders, including Mashal's broadcast to the world in the wake of Hamas's election victory: "Today, you are fighting the army of Allah. You are fighting against peoples for whom death for the sake of Allah- -and for the sake of honor and glory--is preferable to life."

Second is the well-established willingness to slaughter entire categories of opponents and the drive to attain the weaponry to do so.

And third is the unabashed rhetorical ease and lurid excess of trumpeting fantasies of killing opponents, starting with Israelis, for any real or imagined bucking of political Islam. (In December, according to a poll conducted for the London Times, 37 percent of British Muslims said that British Jews are "legitimate targets as part of the struggle for justice in the Middle East.")

More than the members of any other major modern political movement, political Islamists, including their highest leaders, exhibit an archaic bloodlust of the kind quoted above, repeatedly speaking with evident relish and unmatched openness of killing their enemies, decapitating them, playing with their blood and body parts, and watching them suffer.

Galgalatz - I have no words!

2006-08-07T23:21:00.000+03:00

Ok maybe a few!

On Galgalatz (Israel's Army Radio Music Station) tonight they played a new song that is a culmination of several well-known artists, titled "Kol Hakavod L'Tzahal". I did not catch all the names of the performers, but Ivri Leeder and Shlomo Artzi, both favorite artists of mine, appear in the song.

All I can say is WHY? It is soooooooo bad - would not surprise me if some of our soldiers throw themselves in front of their own tanks to avoid listening to it. Not to mention the fact that it is an exceptionally obnoxious thing to sing "well done IDF" when so many people are dying on both sides.

Israeli's need to grow up!

Yuck (Ushyman requests permission to puke)

NB: No amount of googling could find me a link to the words or any information about the song. I will update if/when I find some.

15 French NGO workers killed in gun battle between army and terrorists

2006-08-07T17:16:00.000+03:00

Kofi Annan demands immediate cease-fire, calls for emergency Security Council session.

Actually, I made the second bit up. There's been deathly silence from the UN, from the European Union, WCC and all the other vocal critics of Israel.

Why ???

Because the victims were killed in a battle between Sri Lankan forces and Tamil "rebels". Obviously, dead Lebanese civilians are much more important than dead Sri Lankan aid workers. If I wanted to give an illustration of my earlier point about why the liberal West hates Israel, I coudn't have made up a better story than this, but unfortunately it's true. I'm not holding my breath waiting for Annan to stand up and demand UN action to stop the fighting in Sri Lanka (or Somalia, or Tibet, or Congo or ......).

Give the BBC Credit Where It's Due

2006-08-06T15:45:00.000+03:00

It's all too easy to attack the BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. I don't deny that its reporters have a tendency to dwell overlong on Israel's bombing of Lebanon, without focusing sufficiently on the barbaric tactics of the Hizbullah.

The trouble is that many of those who attack the Beeb for bias against Israel don't even watch BBC News in the ordinary way. BBC reporters such as Fergal Keane and Jim Muir have asked searching questions about Israel's tactics in Lebanon, but the Beeb has asked similar questions about US and British policy in Iraq. In fact, those of us with good memories of the 1980s will remember how Tory Party Chairman Norman Tebbit hit out at the BBC's Kate Adie for her coverage of the American bombings in Libya, in 1986.

The problem with many who attack the BBC for its Anti-Israel bias, is that they look too much like 'single-issue fanatics'. They would be more effective if they attacked it for its general flaws - the best example of this is the BBC's inability to use the word "terrorism" - whether it is carried out in Israel or India.

When the BBC does report in Israel's favour, the Arab side complains. Well, let's give the BBC credit, for a change. About a week ago, their flagship news programme, Panorama, broadcasted an excellent expose of the British-based Islamic charity Interpal, and its covert efforts to fund the Hamas. In fact, the programme is far more effective and credible than organizations such as Honest Reporting in highlighting the sinister Jihadi nature of the Hamas.
You can watch the programme online, and I urge you to do so while you still can.

Is this World War III? Not Quite Yet...

2006-08-04T15:40:00.000+03:00

These last five years have been fun, haven't they?

September 11th, 2001, Islamic Suicide bombings in Madrid, Bali, New Delhi and London, to name a few cities, Israel at war against a Shia Proxy of Iran and Iranian threats to wipe Israel off the map, as Tehran works full speed to acquire nuclear weapons. It's not surprising that we hear people voicing the notion that World War III has arrived.

Not surprising,maybe, but we haven't got there...At least, not yet. Last week, Martin Ivens discussed this question at length in an excellent article in the Sunday Times. Mr. Ivens compares the West's confrontation with militant Islam to the East-West conflict of the Cold War. He warns against the danger that many made in the cold war when they were "seduced by the notion of a monolithic satanic enemy". This was the mistake that the US Government made during the Vietnam War, when all Communists were placed in the same boat. It is forty years since the Vietnam War, and it seems so absurd now that the Johnson Administration saw Communists of all stripes as a monolithic threat - this is what struck me while reading Henry Kissinger's seminal work, Diplomacy. By the early 1970s, Nixon took the opportunity to exploit Sino-Soviet divisions, through his visit to China. Nixon's realpolitik prevailed over Johnson's righteous anti-communist crusade.

The domino theory which was in full sway during the Cold War seems to be back. We are back to spheres of influence, once again, as Iran attempts to build an arc of Shia influence in the Middle East. Still, I feel that we would all benefit if we rejected knee-jerk hysteria, and looked at the world in a more level-headed manner. Yes-fundamentalist Islam is a huge threat to the west. Yes - Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a very dangerous man who must be contained at all costs. Having said that, we need to adopt a subtle approach in analyzing this problem - something which the Bush Administration has neglected, up until now. Just to quote Mr. Ivens:

Bashar al-Assad of Ba’athist Syria is allied to theocratic Iran by opposition to Israel and America, not ideology. Israel does face real Islamist enemies who would like to see it “wiped off the face of the earth”, but the Palestinian issue has its own dynamics, its own rights and wrongs. Nor is a Sunni Muslim the same as a Shi’ite.

To fight a new cold war against militant Islam at home and abroad takes skill and cunning; it means striking a balance between restraint and the use of force, between security at home and the protection of ancient liberties from the security state. This is the warning from history about the cold war. Some highly principled people then, as now, were seduced by the notion of a monolithic satanic enemy. Some cold warriors saw a single enemy made in Moscow, not realising that Mao’s China and even Tito’s Yugoslavia had their own ambitions. Third World dictators allied to the Soviet Union had their own agendas, too.

Disagreements about how to fight such an enemy are inevitable. Without the benefit of hindsight, if you supported the successful Korean war should you have automatically advocated fighting the communists in Vietnam? If you did should you have tried to play on Sino-Soviet divisions? ....Apply the analogy to the Middle East, Al-Qaeda, the Iraq war, the Iranian nuclear programme and the Ba’athists. When to fight and when to contain? Are we uniting our enemies instead of dividing them? We urgently require a synthesis of idealism and realism.

The urgent task is to deal with Blair’s “arc of crisis” in the Middle East. Perhaps we should first find out if we can separate the Palestinians from some of their “friends”. Is Hamas’s leadership in Gaza and the West Bank irrevocably opposed to the existence of Israel or could it be detached from its military leadership in trouble making Syria? We should find out fast.

We need to exploit the divisions in the Arab World. We know, for instance, that Jordan and Saudi Arabia were very critical of Hezbollah's provocations, and weren't afraid to say so. Syria's Bashar Assad is a nasty piece of work who sponsors and shelters terrorists. Still, for all that, I don't think it would be a bad thing if the US opened a dialogue with Assad - at the very least, this could be an opportunity to drive a wedge between Damascus and Tehran. Syria is a major problem for Israel and for the west, in general, but Iran is a far greater danger. In order to deal with Iran, we might have to "sup with the devil" (Assad) as the saying goes, and "use a long spoon". I suspect that the White House is unearthing some long spoons, as we speak.

Just what Israel doesn't need!

2006-08-04T11:32:00.000+03:00

According to this report on Ynet News, Malaysia have pledged 1000 troops for the international force to defend Lebanon. Yeah - that's just what we need - 1,000 Jew hating Muslims guarding the border between Lebanon and Israel. Unless things have dramatically changed in Malaysia over the last few years - I seem to remember that when flying from Australia to Israel we weren't allowed/able to go via Malaysia because of their rampant anti-semitism. In the airports there were signs saying "No Phylacteries Allowed". Are these the people we want involved in our protection - what's next - Darfur?

No Thanks!

Don't believe me...

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is hardly a key player in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but his address at last week's Islamic leadership conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia, immediately attracted a press spotlight to what might otherwise have been another ho-hum gathering of kings, emirs, presidents, and other mostly unelected leaders.
"The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million," Mahathir said to the gathered leaders at the Organization of Islamic Conference summit, "but today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." Press reports indicate he was met by a resounding ovation. What exactly the audience was applauding - indeed, what exactly the Malaysian premier, whose country chairs both the 57-member OIC and the 117-member Non-Aligned Movement, intended by his remarks' remains in hot dispute.

full report here!

A load of Tisha B'Av croc

2006-08-03T15:37:00.000+03:00

When I ventured out last night I was quite surprised to see many people wearing their bright colored Crocs on Tisha B'Av.

I always thought that the purpose of not wearing leather on Tisha B'Av was because it was considered a symbol of luxury and comfort.

Crocs - though made of synthetic materials - should for all intents and purposes fit in to the 'suitable for wearing on Tisha B'av' category. However, I think all too often these days we follow these kinds of rules without thinking very much about the true meaning behind them.

Claims that Crocs are the most comfortable shoes that people have ever worn should, in my opinion, rule them out of the 'suitable for wearing on Tisha B'av' category. Afterall, comfortableness seems to be the only redeeming factor that these ghastly shoes have.

Standing ovation for Tony Blair

2006-08-01T23:58:00.000+03:00

If you didn't catch Blair's UK Foreign Policy speech to the US World Affairs Council, then I urge you to READ IT NOW.

Well done Tony Blair for finally confronting the Muslim Extremist issue facing the whole world today. Well done Tony Blair for finally criticizing the UN for it's ineffectiveness at protecting the interests of the countries it claims to defend.

...and most importantly well done for this...

"However, there was one cause which, the world over, unites Islam, one issue that even the most westernised Muslims find unjust and, perhaps worse, humiliating: Palestine. Here a moderate leadership was squeezed between its own inability to control the radical elements and the political stagnation of the peace process.
When Prime Minister Sharon took the brave step of disengagement from Gaza, it could have been and should have been the opportunity to re-start the process. But the squeeze was too great and as ever because these processes never stay still, instead of moving forward, it fell back. Hamas won the election. Even then, had moderate elements in Hamas been able to show progress, the situation might have been saved. But they couldn't.
So the opportunity passed to Reactionary Islam and they seized it: first in Gaza, then in Lebanon. They knew what would happen. Their terrorism would provoke massive retaliation by Israel.
Within days, the world would forget the original provocation and be shocked by the retaliation. They want to trap the Moderates between support for America and an Arab street furious at what they see nightly on their television. This is what has happened.
For them, what is vital is that the struggle is defined in their terms: Islam versus the West; that instead of Muslims seeing this as about democracy versus dictatorship, they see only the bombs and the brutality of war, and sent from Israel.
In this way, they hope that the arc of extremism that now stretches across the region, will sweep away the fledgling but faltering steps Modern Islam wants to take into the future."

...and this...

"And most contemporaneously, and in some ways most perniciously, a very large and, I fear, growing part of our opinion looks at Israel, and thinks we pay too great a price for supporting it and sympathises with Muslim opinion that condemns it. Absent from so much of the coverage, is any understanding of the Israeli predicament.
I, and any halfway sentient human being, regards the loss of civilian life in Lebanon as unacceptable, grieves for that nation, is sickened by its plight and wants the war to stop now.
But just for a moment, put yourself in Israel's place. It has a crisis in Gaza, sparked by the kidnap of a solider by Hamas. Suddenly, without warning, Hizbollah who have been continuing to operate in Southern Lebanon for two years in defiance of UN Resolution 1559, cross the UN blue line, kill eight Israeli soldiers and kidnap two more. They then fire rockets indiscriminately at the civilian population in Northern Israel.
Hizbollah gets their weapons from Iran. Iran are now also financing militant elements in Hamas. Iran's President has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". And he's trying to acquire a nuclear weapon. Just to complete the picture, Israel's main neighbour along its eastern flank is Syria who support Hizbollah and house the hardline leaders of Hamas. It's not exactly a situation conducive to a feeling of security is it?"

I am speechless - I have tears in my eyes and in my heart - because I never thought I would hear any foreign prime minister voice so succinctly the exact feelings that every Israeli, Jew and logical person around the world has fought to make heard for so long. Thank you Tony Blair for finally making the most brilliant speech in Israel's very short 58 year existence.

Kudos to the London Times

2006-08-01T22:46:00.000+03:00

It is good to see that the London Times has resisted the knee-jerk reaction to the tragic events in Qana. Here are a couple of excerpts from an excellent editorial in today's newspaper:

There will never be peace in the region as long as Hezbollah, backed by its sponsoring regimes in Iran and Syria, is allowed to threaten Israel militarily. A ceasefire that left Hezbollah claiming victory on the battlefield would hugely strengthen its fighters as well as those of Hamas, draining authority from the Lebanese Government and Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, while unsettling further Western-friendly regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Defeating Hezbollah, though, would strengthen the arm of those Arab leaders who see the benefit of an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution while also curbing the regional influence of Tehran and Damascus.

There are wider reasons why the emotional impact of the past 48 hours must be placed in the right framework. The criticism that Israeli attacks aimed at Hezbollah are disproportionate is lazy and facile in several ways, especially in implying a moral relativism between the two sides that does not exist. This is not the contest between misguided equals that many in the West seem to see. One is the region’s lone democracy, which for much of its existence has faced a very real existential threat and would like, if possible, to live in peace with its neighbours. The other is a terrorist organisation, bent on preventing such a future. ...

Hezbollah is not an emancipation movement. It represents a virulent stream of extremist Islam, characterised by misogyny, homophobia, utter intolerance of difference even within its own religion and a belief system rooted many several centuries past. Whether Hezbollah intended to spark such a ferocious response from Israel is uncertain. That it has been planning this war for some time, though, is clear from its arsenal and fortifications.

News from a war zone will always be grisly, and 21st-century communications bring into the living room the human horrors of armed conflict. But these should not deflect from the clash of values and competing ideologies behind the pictures. It may reassure many in the West that such a threat seems comfortably far away. But the consequences of the current conflict stretch far beyond the region, and they have to be faced.

I also recommend that you read David Aaronovitch in today's Times. Here's an excerpt:

Today, on the website of Hezbollah’s own propaganda agency, al-Manar, you can find the boast that on one day at the end of last week: “Islamic resistance fighters launched barrages of rockets at northern Israeli settlements . . . According to Israeli media, some 20 settlers were injured in today’s attacks.” “Settlements” is Hezbollah for towns and villages, and “settlers” is Hezbollah for civilians. So when a 240lb Hezbollah rocket slammed into the Israeli countryside last week, it should have prompted the thought that when the Israelis miss their targets they hit civilians and when Hezbollah misses, they don’t.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah (thinks, how exactly did he become leader of Hezbollah?) is a prolific speaker, but is credited with meaning what he says. Nasrallah believes that the Jews “invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities”. That Israel “is a cancerous body in the region” that “must be uprooted”. More magnanimously:
“ Let us spare bloodshed. Let the Yemenite Jews return to Yemen, the Moroccan Jews to Morocco, the Ethiopian Jews to Ethiopia, the European Jews to Europe, and the American Jews to America.” Though even that is generous because: “Anyone who reads the Koran . . . sees what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history . . . Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer.”

This is the chap with the long-range missiles (getting longer range) sitting on Israel’s northern border. And while Hezbollah might bring out the Lebanese flags for the press in Beirut, in their southern fastnesses the only banners are theirs. And what do we say, knowing this? That Bad Blair should lean on Worse Bush who should put the squeeze on Murdering Olmert and it’d all be over. That’s the new orthodoxy.

Good on ya!

reply to Ian Black - The Guardian

2006-08-01T18:43:00.000+03:00

first, read this ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1834637,00.html

My reply to him today.

I have to take issue with your equating the abduction of Israeli soldiers by Hamas and Hizbolla with Israeli actions is seeking, and arresting, "wanted men". If you need any single major point of difference, it is to be found in your own words. Israel knows who it is trying to capture, and has reasons for wanting those specific men. Hamas and Hizbolla want any Jew they can get their hands on. This is self-evident in the very first event that kicked off this sorry story. Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier AND a civilian on the same day. Sadly, the civilian was deemed to be "worthless" as a bargaining chip, so they murdered him (may his memory be a blessing).

Don't let your sense of "fair play" blind you to the facts. This isn't a game. We don't walk off the field afterwards saying "it matters not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game". This is a life-and-death struggle for the survival of Israel and its citizens against a vicious killer.

ravings of a paranoid ..... OR .....

2006-07-31T23:00:00.000+03:00

OK, try this for size.

Either ...
Israel Defense Forces are totally inept, if not stupid, and are targeting known UNIFIL/civilian sites

OR ...

As is well known, IDF relies on a lot of covert information-gathering to find out what's going on behind the lines. We know this because they are so successful at catching suicide murderers before they get to their targets. They MUST have sources inside the various organizations we are fighting. Now what if Hezbolla are using this fact to plant false information with the expectation that Israel will probably act on it.

Imagine this scenario .........

IDF gets "inside information" that Hezbolla forces are occupying a specific site in Qana, maybe even that it's being used as a command-and-control center. At the same time, Hezbolla moves hundreds of civilians (at gunpoint) into the building, and keeps them there. Now Israel, believing the information, targets the building, and you know the result.

Is this paranoid, or is it a more likely scenario than the one Kofi Annan will have us believe, that Israel is deliberately aiming at the civilian population. If anyone goes for the latter argument, then tell me one thing, why have we only managed to kill 500? Why not 50,000?

Why are we soooo bad at Hasbarah?

2006-07-30T15:48:00.000+03:00

Time and time again Israel is slammed for it's actions. Today after 50+ people (mainly women and children) were killed in Qana there was outrage around the world and many more calls for an immediate ceasefire. Israel is once again being hailed as the unprovoked aggressor and embarrassed into cautious fighting - which does nothing but jeopardize the lives of it's brave soldiers.

One should start by asking, what could we have done differently in order to save the lives of innocent people in Qana today.

Should we have warned the residents that we were going to attack and told them to evacuate - check
Should we have used extreme caution in trying to pinpoint exactly where the rockets were being fired from yesterday - check
Should we have bowed to International pressure preventing us from expanding ground operations and use air force instead- check

Perhaps we should be shouting these questions:

Why aren't the foreign media and the so called International peacekeepers following up on many claims that Hizbullah fighters are trying to prevent (and even killing in some cases) residents of Southern Lebanon towns who are trying to flee?
Why were there so many civilians still embedded in towns such as Qana and why weren't they doing more to stop the Hizbullah fighters living amongst them from firing rockets?
If the Lebanese government is so adamant that they too wish to disarm Hizbullah but have never had the power to do so, then why don't they attack from the North and help Israel to destroy the terrorists?

When Israel is slammed for doing what it can to protect itself, when it is raked over the coals for "regretfully and not intentionally" killing innocent people in order to realize this goal. WHY are we unable to clearly and forcefully state our cause, hold our ground and still come out smelling like roses?

Today Israel invited leaders from the UN into it's situation room. Perhaps we should do that some more - invite the leaders of some of our biggest critics to sit in the situation room with us. Let them share in our frustrations and work with us to decide how to deal with the rocket attacks up North. Let them see what it's like to decide that Qana is a legitimate target - only to find out that 50 civilians were killed in the attack. No country is perfect, and Israel is under an awful lot of pressure to conform to so many different critics. The best thing that could happen to us right now would be silence, if everyone would just shut up we would be able to get this over with as soon as we can. Our sons, cousins, nephews, friends and colleagues would be able to return from the army, our Northern residents would be able to come above ground or go back home. But most importantly - innocent people would be allowed to go about their normal lives here and in Lebanon.

Just shut up and let Israel do what Israel has to do and UNIFIL, UN, and Lebanon have been too chicken to do themselves.

Wake up and smell the roses! (written by someone who believes in Peace, who believes the Palestinians have a right to their own state, who does not think it is a crime for Israel to give up land for peace, but who is realistic to know that we have to protect our right to exist as a Jewish homeland without the threat of terrorist attacks)

just a reminder of UN position on Shebaa Farms

2006-07-26T16:00:00.000+03:00

Since they are now starting to talk about making the "return" of Shebaa Farms a condition to any ceasefire, it's worthwhile remembering what the real UN postition on this subject is, since I'm sure they'll conveniently forget this when it comes to putting pressure on Israel to make a deal.

Letter dated 26 October 2005 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council, pursuant to the request of the Security Council expressed in the presidential statement of 19 October 2004 (S/PRST/2004/36), that I continue to report on the implementation of the resolution to the Council every six months.

Many Lebanese continue to maintain that Hizbollah is in fact not a militia, but a "legitimate resistance movement," fighting for the liberation of the Shebaa farms area from Israeli occupation. This interpretation of the status of the Shebaa farms, as I have repeatedly outlined not only in my previous reports on the implementation of resolution 1559 (2004) but also elsewhere, continues to stand in stark contrast to the position of the United Nations (see annex). I confirmed in my report to the Security Council of 16 June 2000 (S/2000/590) that Israel had fulfilled as of that date the requirements of Security Council resolutions 425 (1978) and 426 (1978) that it "withdraw its forces from all Lebanese territory". The Council endorsed this conclusion in the statement of its President (S/PRST/2000/21) of 18 June 2000. Both the Council and I have repeatedly stated the position that the Shebaa farms area is not part of Lebanon. Therefore, any Lebanese "resistance" to "liberate" the area from continued Israeli occupation cannot be considered legitimate. In addition, even if the Lebanese claim to the Shebaa farms area were legitimate, it would be the responsibility of the Government of Lebanon only to address this claim in conformity with international law and relevant Security Council resolutions.

We was robbed!

2006-07-25T22:30:00.000+03:00

Throughout the "liberal" media, the calls that Israel should be condemned for "disproportionate response" and "crimes against humanity" have been growing to a deafening roar. Clearly, there is consensus that Israel is going all-out to massacre civilians in Lebanon, and does not discriminate between military and civilian targets.

Given that in 14 days of fighting, about 400 deaths have occurred in Lebanon (although there's no clear distinction between Hizbollah fighters and Lebanese citizens), we can reach a very important conclusion - Israel should demand full refunds for all the military hardware it has bought and uses in this conflict, since it is clearly not performing up to specifications.

To take a simple example. The F15 fighter which is the backbone of Israel's air attack, is designed to carry the following armaments :
20mm 6 barrel cannon with 980 rounds of ammunition, capable of penetrating several inches of hardened steel
up to 12 air-to-ground missiles with sophisticated electronics to ensure accurate targeting
up to 15 tons of "smart" bombs.

Using one of these aircraft in a densely populated area, I think it is reasonable to estimate that it should have a kill-ratio of between 500 and 1000 people for one full load of munitions. Anything less than that would be a very poor return on investment. Since Israel freely admits to having flown over a thousand sorties over Lebanon, we should expect that about 50,000 and 100,000 people should have been killed by airstrikes alone. Add to this the tens of thousands of artillery and mortar rounds that the rest of the world say have been fired directly into densely populated areas, and any reasonable audit should expect that anything less that a quarter of a million casualties amongst the Lebanese is a sign of very poor planning by the Israeli command.

Clearly the equipment we have bought, that for all this effort has only managed to kill 400 people, is defective, does not meet it's design standards, and we should demand a refund!

Kim Howells - Surgical Strikes can wait

2006-07-25T22:26:00.000+03:00

British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has criticized Israeli actions in Lebanon. Mr Howells told journalists Israel's air strikes over the past 11 days were "not surgical strikes".

It's sometime necessary to bear in mind that not everyone who speaks English has the same cultural background as ourselves, so the words they use may not mean the same for them that they do for us. In the case of Howells, it's important to understand what a phrase like "surgical strike" means in the context of a British Labour MP. After all, under the Labour government ruling Britain for the last 10 years, waiting lists for NHS patients seeking surgical procedures have nearly doubled. Under his party's leadership, people desperately in need of, for example, breast surgery, are experiencing an average delay of 107 days - that's nearly 4 months - in order to receive their life-saving operations. (To prove that I've not taken a "worst case" scenario to illustrate my point, the waiting time for colorectal surgery - an even more life-saving procedure - is 112 days and in some areas patients who can live that long have to wait 6 months.)

So, what does a "surgical strike" mean to Kim Howells. It means delaying taking any action until there's a better chance that your patient will die from "natural causes" than that he or she will be saved by the operation they need. For him, this is a positive outcome, since no doubt the death of Jews is a regrettable but unavoidable consequence of appeasement, just as it was in 1939.

For us in Israel, we'll do without the benefit of Howell's expertise in managing crisis situations. We'll take the action that we need to save our own lives, and not rely on his approval or otherwise, thank you very much.

From Jerusalem to Haifa

2006-07-21T13:39:00.000+03:00

A few days ago I blogged that my family were coming from Haifa to Jerusalem for the week. This weekend we are to go up to Haifa for the Bar Mitzvah. Given the news of the last 20 min I am not sure how wise this is. I promise to write a full report on the weekend when I get back.

Let's all pray for a quiet weekend.

N

The Ultimate Weapon against Hezbollah - Barry Manilow!

2006-07-20T15:42:00.000+03:00

The IDF would do well to check out this article from the London Times of July 18.

Yes - force the Hezbollah to listen to Barry Manilow for hours on end. That will show em! In Edmund Blackadder's words - that would be "a fate worse than a fate worse than death!"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2274211.html

Up to a hundred hooligans had been gathering in the streets of the town and the council was concerned that their roaring engines and loud car stereos were giving its citizens sleepless nights and damaging trade for local restaurants. The council responded by erecting loudspeakers in the worst-affected streets. Bill Saravinovski, deputy mayor of Rockdale, said: “Barry’s our secret weapon. He does seem to be working.” A CUNNING scheme to prevent groups of boy racers plaguing a residential area by blasting them with Barry Manilow songs has met with a mixed response. The local council in Rockdale, near Sydney, has hailed the plan as a success.

Mr Saravinovski said that only the residents who lived closest to the loudspeakers were badly affected. But he admitted: “I am not disputing what the residents are saying. I myself can’t swallow some of Manilow’s songs, like Mandy.”

The Manilow playlist relies on the classics such as Copacabana, Mandy, I Write the Songs, Can’t Smile Without You and Looks Like We Made It. Research said to have been conducted in the United States for the FBI in the early 1990s suggested that the extended playing of Manilow’s songs could force people to flee. The FBI reportedly threatened to play Manilow at loud volume outside the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, in 1993. However, the siege ended before the plan could go ahead.

The Blacktown council in West Sydney, on the other hand, claimed success when it used Manilow’s music to prevent youths from loitering around a railway station.

The only problem with this scheme is that it could easily be defined as a war crime.

Not a dry bone in the house

2006-07-19T14:39:00.000+03:00

I just couldn't resist. Thanks Yaakov!

Is there a Hebrew phrase for "foot-in-mouth disease"?

2006-07-19T12:56:00.000+03:00

Abba Eban was a sophisticated, Oxbridge-educated man of great wit and charm, and unbeatable knowledge of Western diplomatic niceties. When he said "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity", he knew he was speaking to similarly inclined Western ears, and they nodded appreciatively, understanding the nuance and subtlety of what he was saying.

Unfortunately, today his most famous witticism has been heard by non-Oxbridge, simple, non-English speaking Israeli politicians and military men, on whom subtlety and nuance are completely wasted. They have made a simple connection - Palestinians always miss opportunities, and Palestinians are vastly superior to Israelis when it comes to public relations and garnering support from foreign governments, media and NGOs. Therefore, for Israel to catch up, it's our duty to start missing opportunities.

A case in point - rarely if ever has Israel had such positive responses from the rest of the world than in the first few days of the current battle in Gaza and Lebanon. G8 leaders, western media, almost the whole world recognized that Hamas and Hezbolla had overstepped the mark by kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers inside undisputed Israeli territory. While there were some mealy-mouthed words about "proportionate response" and "respecting civilian rights", the overwhelming feeling was that Israel has every right to go after the kidnappers and murderers. And as long as we spoke in public about "bringing our boys home", we had this support.

Compare that to now. The Israeli spokesmen are talking about "a few more weeks are needed to dismantle Hezbolla" and the hostages are hardly mentioned. Now the world is going back to the old pattern.

The New York Times today writes ... "The asymmetry in the reported death tolls is marked and growing: some 230 Lebanese dead, most of them civilians, to 25 Israeli dead, 13 of them civilians. In Gaza, one Israeli soldier has died from his own army’s fire, and 103 Palestinians have been killed, 70 percent of them militants. The cold figures, combined with Israeli air attacks on civilian infrastructure like power plants, electricity transformers, airports, bridges, highways and government buildings, have led to accusations by France and the European Union, echoed by some nongovernmental organizations, that Israel is guilty of 'disproportionate use of force' in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and of 'collective punishment' of the civilian populations."

Next, we'll see resolutions in the UN Security Council condemning Israel for its aggression against peace-loving Lebanon, which will only fail when (if?) the US vetoes it. And watching the White House briefing yesterday, it's obvious that the US government has run out of breathing space from the East Coast media, who are now asking their standard questions about US bias against the Arabs, about the influence of the "Jewish lobby" in steering foreign policy, and all the usual rhetoric that they trot out when dealing with Israel-US relations.

This is a plea to anyone to speaks in the name of Israel. Keep your foot out of your mouth. We are fighting in Lebanon for one thing - to bring our boys home safely. We are fighting in Gaza for one thing - to bring our boy home safely. No negotiations that do not start with that as unconditional prerequisites are tolerated, but no "secret agendas" -- PLEASE!.

Time to choose our spokespersons carefully

2006-07-18T17:55:00.000+03:00

There is a tendency in crisis situations to let any old idiot speak on our behalf.

Yesterday I watch Bibi Netanyahu do just that. And while I admire the fact that he would not be drawn into a conversation, prompted by the presenter, as to whether or not he thinks Olmert is doing a good job. I have to admit it is a little bit, actually a lot, hypocritical to have him say "We withdrew from Gaza, we withdrew from Lebanon and now this is what we get."

My memory is hazy at the best of times, but I sure as hell remember that he wasn't one of the "we" agreeing to withdraw from Gaza, he was in fact the only one to resign from Government at such a critical time of the disengagement. So to use it now as moral grounds for fighting the war that we find ourselves in at the moment, OK.

But for Bibi to use it, well... seems a little hypocritical.

A war we don't want for many reasons

2006-07-18T09:53:00.000+03:00

A very good friend of mine has written a heartfelt blogpost about the situation, with the simple plea that she does not want to send her man, any man to war.

It is so easy to understand and sympathize with her plea. As our PM Ehud Olmert succinctly said last night it in his address to the nation, "we don't want this war".

I was just saying to my husband last night that I am so grateful that he does not serve in the army, for that matter neither do either of my brothers. But I had to admit I felt a little guilty about saying/thinking/feeling that.

anybody out there remember 1967 ??

2006-07-17T22:23:00.000+03:00

There's talk now about an international stabilization force to be sent to the Israeli-Lebanese border to help end the fighting. Sounds good, doesn't it. The forces come in, and separate the two warring sides, and peace and tranquility reign. Does this sound in any way familiar?

In 1956, after British, French and Israeli troops invaded Egypt, the solution proposed was to station neutral UN forces in Sinai to keep the peace. For the next 10 years, the Egyptians sponsored fedayeen fighters to cross over the border and attack Israeli positions at will. The UN forces did nothing.

On May 15, 1967 President Nasser sent columns of tanks and troops across the Suez Canal and into Sinai all the way to the Israeli border. The following day Nasser ordered UN peacekeeping troops to leave the border region and they complied immediately, whereupon official Egyptian radio announced:

"As of today there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain anymore to the UN about Israel. The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which shall result in the termination of Zionist existence." (source : http://world.std.com/~camera/docs/backg/cdavid.html"

Before we agree to any such proposal by the UN, let's keep this history in mind. If the "peace keepers" will allow themselves to be bypassed at will, if their presence there is simply to act as a shield behind which Hezbollah can re-arm at its leisure, and worst of all, if the physical presence of foreigners will force Israel to hold back from responding to Hezbollah attacks, then we would be foolish, in fact criminal, to repeat the mistake of 1956.

Why do Western Liberals hate Israel

2006-07-17T17:48:00.000+03:00

It's been a great mystery for decades. Given the obvious differences in world-view between first-world intellectuals who classify themselves as the intellectual elite, and the third-world despots who rule the Arab world, where does the bias and animosity toward Israel that they have in common have its foundation. Israel is a democracy, with many shared values in step with Europe, while the "Arab street" is a narrow-minded, rigid and uncompromising autocracy clearly dedicated to imposing its own (or its leaders') outlook on the rest of the world. How did we get to this situation, where the whole gamut of "advanced" organizations, from the World Council of Churches to the BBC to the range of European and American university faculties, which have completely different agendas and world views, come together on the single subject of evil Israel.

I have an idea about this that I haven't seen enunciated anywhere else, and for that reason alone, it's worth considering, since nothing else has accounted for this mystery (maybe I've been watching to many episodes of House MD, which follows this story line in all episodes).

Think back to the last time these various groups came to share an outlook so forcefully. Or rather, think first of the numerous instances where situations that clearly required a meaningful response from the "left-wing intellectuals" evoked nothing but a yawn. Chechnya, Bosnia, Rwanda, Tibet, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, North Korea, Eritrea, Congo, almost all the West African countries, Zimbabwe. The list is long, but not one of them, despite their death-tolls in the tens and hundreds of thousands, ever extracted more than a mild level of interest or rebuke. Just to put it in perspective, in the last 6 years of "savage fighting" between Israel and the Palestinians, about 3o00 people have died. In Chechnya in the same time, 20,000 out of a population on barely one million have died.

So, what's the difference between Israel vs the Palestinians and all these other conflicts. In one word, it is Race. All of the other wars are perceived to be between people of the same race. Whether it's "white" Serbians slaughtering "white" Bosnians, or "black" Ethiopians slaughtering "black" Eritreans, or "brown" Sri Lankans slaughtering "brown" Tamils, there's considered to be no racial element in the fighting. But Israel is (or rather, is perceived to be) a "white" country, while the Palestinians are "coloured". Now the massive chip on the shoulders of the European intellectual kicks in.

Europe has, deservedly, a conscience born from the centuries of racial subjugation and discrimination that they collectively perpetuated on the rest of the "undeveloped" world until the middle of the last century. Anything that today even slightly smells of racism ignites a flame in the guts of the left-wing that overwhelms any rational argument. Having a background of unmitigated cruelty and selfishness, which has never been completely expunged, they have lost all capability of examining this subject impartially. Thus, Israel is in the wrong no matter what we do, and the Palestinians and the Arab “brothers” are in the right, despite the manifest contradiction between this approach and the “facts on the ground”.

I have more to say on this subject, on how the chip on their shoulder got to be so big, but that's for later.

Telling it like it is - at last

2006-07-17T17:44:00.000+03:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071700187.html

President Bush should know that in Russia, someone is always listening. In this case, it was the rest of the world!

During a lunch with other leaders at the Group of Eight summit on Monday, Bush was caught on a live microphone talking in tough, occasionally profane terms with British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the latest conflict in the Middle East. Bush criticized the position taken by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and said he would soon send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region.

"What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over," Bush says with his mouth full as he buttered a piece of bread.

So glad the French lost the world cup!

2006-07-17T12:03:00.000+03:00

Didn't really care very much until NOW!

From Haifa to Jerusalem

2006-07-17T11:49:00.000+03:00

I never thought that Jerusalem would be considered that "safe" in war-time. But as I write this my sister-in-law and 3 kids (from Haifa) are making their way down South to stay with us until Thursday, afterwhich we will all go back up North (g-d willing) for my oldest Nephew's bar mitzvah this weekend.

Everything has been meticulously planned, he is meant to be called up to the Torah at Ahuzah shule and then a big family luncheon, culminating in a big party outside on Sunday night. Who knows what will now be, we may end up having the bar mitzvah in Jerusalem instead, but it won't be the same for him. He won't have all his friends there, he won't have the big party, and there won't be as many presents (a fact I am sure he is most upset about). Whatever happens I am sure we are all going to try and make this the best bar mitzvah no matter what. At least he will have quite a story to tell for the next 30 years.

So many people and things are affected by what is going on, and all we can do is take each day as it comes.

THE LIFE-OF-RUBIN BLOG

2006-07-17T11:44:00.000+03:00

THE LIFE-OF-RUBIN BLOG

Has a great link to a Norah O'Donnell interviewing John McCain.

It still amazes me how realistic the foreign press have remained (on the whole) during the last week.

destruction destraction

2006-07-16T13:07:00.000+03:00

Am I the only one who cannot concentrate or do any work today? I am waiting to find out if my nephews and neice from Haifa are coming to stay with me, but the waiting is a killer because I cannot seem to concentrate on work.

Anyway Miriam from bloghd had a baby girl on Friday :) She is very cute. See for yourselves.

Mazal Tov

The happy (and a little jealous) sister-in-law

My take on the Gaza situation

2006-07-12T12:04:00.000+03:00

Rumor of the past few hours is that after heavy katyusha and mortar fire up along the Northern border, 2 more soldiers have been kidnapped by Hizbullah.

So here we are having a problem in Gaza... Hizbullah has to get involved and start trouble up North... and the rest of the world looks on and says nu nu nu Israel for being aggressive.

What are we meant to do? What would you do if it was your child kidnapped and held for ransom? are they being fare to the kidnapped soldiers? If they are wounded - are they getting medical attention? Would the same be said of any Palestinian captured by Israeli's?

I don't have any answers - I am just frustrated and confused because I truly believe there must be a peaceful solution. But how can you make peace when there are people on both sides who are not prepared to compromise.

Why don't the majority of Palestinians realize that Israel is willing on the whole to compromise, surely a status-quo of relative peace and non-violence would bring about the release in time of the Palestinians who are being held in Israeli prisons. Surely the answer is not more terrorism, violence and war.

Let's pray for a safe return for all the soldiers and all Palestinians prisoners.

So Farewell then Top of the Pops

2006-07-06T15:24:00.000+03:00

I will always associate Top of the Pops with the Six Million Dollar Man. Why, you may ask?

Well, back in the mid 70s, on Thursday evenings, when I were a wee laddie, I would be watching the Six Million Dollar Man on TV. Seconds later, my big sister would walk into the lounge and turf me out, because she wanted to watch Top of the Pops! I was most upset.

The irony is that a few years later, as the 1980s came along, I became obsessed with the pop charts, and Top of the Pops was part of that obsession. In fact, to this very day, I still watch TOTP! So I was saddened to hear that the BBC is going to axe the show at the end of July. What a shame!

The truth is, I felt that TOTP lost its purpose, when they started tinkering with the format, and introduced acts from outside the charts. The whole point of the show all these years was to reflect the songs that were moving up the charts. These days, maybe 2 out of the 9 or 10 songs featured will be chart acts. What is the point of that?

Well, for those nostalgia freaks out there (and I am one of them!), you can watch hundreds of archive TOTP appearances on Youtube.com and pretend that nothing has changed. Is it any surprise that I never do any work?

And you thought Ali G. was funny?

2006-07-05T17:55:00.000+03:00

Check out this guy. If you don't laugh I will eat my own....

www.ahmed-ahmed.com

YAY I win!

2006-07-01T21:32:00.000+03:00

I love the ad in the right-hand-corner!

oops... they did! Do I win 100 pounds?

Unfortunately this does not mean the end of football on the TV every night. I am just glad that it only happens every 4 years.

Date Trivia

2006-06-20T12:55:00.000+03:00

Has anyone else noticed that today is

20062006

:) cool!

Pictures of Scotland to come

I deserve a medal

2006-05-31T23:51:00.000+03:00

I already have the chest to pin it on.

I have now been in the UK for 48 hours and I still have not been to the shops or spent any money. I know, I know a world record for me.

It's not that I don't want to, need to , crave to shop. It's just that we are here for 2 weeks and I am scared that if I go now I will spend all my minus limit and have nothing left for the next 2 weeks.

Sooo while I am not spending money I do not have.

I will tell you that the taste of England is sooo good and I am not even English. The first things I HAVE to have when I arrive are a light Ribena, packet of Salt and Vinegar chips and a crappy tabloid magazine. Once I have had those things - there's really not that much else to do except ::sigh:: relax and freeze my arse off.

In case you aren't jealous enough. We are off to Scotland on Sunday for the 6 day continuation of our round-the-world honeymoon trip. Even though it has been 2.5 years since we got married and 2 years since we went on the first leg of our honeymoon. Hey you only live once.

AI Withdrawal

2006-05-29T13:35:00.000+03:00

Am I the only one suffering American Idol withdrawal?

I think I will treat myself to a trip to England as compensation. Ok maybe I was going anyway - still I am suffering.

:)

A profound observation

2006-05-22T08:33:00.000+03:00

My husband in all his wisdom - after his team Arsenal lost the Eurpoean cup to Barcelona - said!

"In the ordinary way, I don't mind Barcelona winning. Just not when they are playing Arsenal"

NO SHIT!

A shoe fetish me thinks!

2006-04-24T18:52:00.000+03:00

My Gym instructor is an idiot! He annoys the hell out of me most of the time. Today more than anything. So here is my little revenge.

When I am training and he sings along to the music he ALWAYS makes up the words and sings what, and I quote, he "thinks are the next words that are coming"... Some of his little gems include;

"And it seems to me, you lived your life like a sandal in the sky.
Never knowing who to sing to, when the train went by."

"Roxanne, you don't have to put on your high heals."

"Beep bop a doodah she's a lady, beepop a doodah I don't mean racey"

"Unregrettable, that's what you are, unregrettable so near so far. That's why darling its incredible that some of us are so forgettable mumble mumble blah blah blah...."

"So good, so good I've got shoes" ba ba ba bamp

I kid you not!

2006-04-23T08:57:00.000+03:00

This is a true story and one that can only happen in Israel!

A friend went into his local supermarket. He arrived at the toiletries isle to find a guy standing there shirt open using one of the roll-on deodorants on his armpits. He returned the deodorant to the shelf, buttoned up his shirt and walked away.

Bucket to puke in if you please...

Matisyahu to win American Idol 6

2006-04-16T15:39:00.000+03:00

Okay so maybe not to win American Idol! But I did think this interview in the Times was worth reading. I particularly like this bit.

Of course, there have always been Jewish performers in rock, from Bob Dylan to the Beastie Boys, but few as overt or as orthodox as Matisyahu. Now that Madonna has transformed the Talmudic mysteries of kabbalah into an off-the-peg celebrity cult, some media commentators are even hyping a new generation of cool Jewish rockers, citing novelty acts with names such as 50 Shekel and 2 Live Jews. But Miller winces at notions of a unified “Hebe hop” or “Hasid house” movement

I think PP and I should start our own new "Hebe-hop" band called "Habanot" our first album will be "Give it back"

with the title song - "It's only Land"

Other hits will be...

"Fell Between the Chairs (not the cracks)"

"Straight Straight until the End"

"On the Face"

..more to come

Only in America :)

2006-03-30T09:31:00.000+02:00

Hat Tip Stuey

Can't do anything right!

2006-03-27T12:52:00.000+02:00

Someone I know sent the following letter to the JPOST letters editor. They published it and took out the MOST important point of the letter, in fact changing the point of the letter. Can't they do anything right!

Sir,
Caroline Glick tells us (Column One, March 24) that only Binyamin Netanyahu is "capable of rebuilding Israel's standing in the intenational community."
Glick's cringeworthy praise of Netanyahu in your newspaper is moving dangerously close to a parody of the Soviet-era Pravda. Perhaps she has given too much away by informing us that she was studying at the Kennedy School of Government in 1999 - the year in which the Israeli electorate booted Netanyahu out of office, in the wake of his divisive conduct and policies. I can
only assume that Glick was out of the country at the time, and missed this unique event.
For the sake of transparency, Jerusalem Post readers might care to note that Ms. Glick has served as a foreign policy adviser to Netanyahu, and is no doubt waiting for her just rewards, in the event that he notches up an unlikely election victory.

Sincerely
Zahava Flax

Doesn't say much for Glick's journalistic integrity, or the Post's for that matter.

A good idea for Simchas.com

2006-03-26T11:19:00.000+02:00

Friends of some shabbes guests of ours have come up with an idea to start a sister site to Simchas.com.

Tsores.com is where you can post all the bad things that keep happening to you. So that you can warn off other people.

I wish this had been around after our wedding. The safe the hotel gave us was broken and many of our cheques and cash presents were stolen. The hotel were so disgusting to us, tsores.com would warn everyone away from getting married there.

While I am on this topic - what about a JFriends.com for couples who's friends have all left the area and want to meet other friends...

OK back to work now

Galgalatz praisworthy - I THINK NOT!

2006-03-21T12:22:00.000+02:00

I was really impressed that while listening to Galgalatz on my way to work this morning they played 4 really good english songs in a row, with no talking in between or over the top.

Then I realised my radio was tuned to 99esc - a radio station I have never heard of and don't know who added to my stored radio stations - but whoever you are THANK YOU.

99esc forever!

From Israel to Egypt via Vegas - I stayed here

2006-03-13T11:11:00.000+02:00

Colarado River - it's not that close!

2006-03-13T11:08:00.000+02:00

Eagle Rock! can you see it - the eagle that is?

2006-03-13T11:05:00.000+02:00

Joshua Tree Close Up

2006-03-13T11:03:00.000+02:00

Excalibur Hotel

2006-03-13T11:02:00.000+02:00

Fountains #2

2006-03-13T10:56:00.000+02:00

YEP! You guessed it

2006-03-12T13:45:00.000+02:00

I have not been writing for some time because I was away in Vegas on a business trip. Now Vegas is not the sort of place you want to be stuck for more than a week. It has to be, without a doubt, the most revolting place I have ever been. Everything is so huge and wasteful. The hotel I stayed in "Luxor" was so big that everything took a minimum 30min to do. Whether ordering coffee or navigating yourself through the casino to get to the car park.

The only things I really enjoyed about Vegas was the Bellagio fountains and my 1 day Hummer tour to the Grand Canyon.

I am not much of a gambler, but I am happy to say I walked away a couple of hundred dollars up. Which of course I later spent shopping at Old Navy :)

More to come when I have some time....

Bellagio Fountains

2006-03-12T13:44:00.000+02:00

Joshua Trees

2006-03-12T13:43:00.000+02:00

It's so grand #2

2006-03-12T13:42:00.000+02:00

It's so grand #1

2006-03-12T13:36:00.000+02:00

A song so relevant

2006-02-09T09:57:00.000+02:00

You know when you hear a song and you think it must be about you...

I am sure anyone living in this country can relate.

HARD-FI
Cash Machine
Go to a cash machine
To get a ticket home
Message on the screen
Says don't make plans, you're broke
No, no this can't be right
I know that time is tight
I've only just been paid
Three weeks five days, til I'm seen
Right...
No...
I scratch a living, it ain't easy
You know it's a drag
I'm always paying, never make it
But you can't look back
I wonder if I'll ever get
To where I want to be
Better believe it
I'm working for the cash machine

I try to phone a friend
My credit's in the red
I try to skip the fare
Ticket inspector's there
No no, this can't be right
I live an honest life
It seems like sometimes
You don't cross the line
You don't get
By...
No...

I scratch a living, it ain't easy
You know it's a drag
I'm always paying, never make it
But you can't look back
I wonder if I'll ever get
To where I want to be
Better believe it
Yeah...

What am I gonna do
My girlfriend's test turned blue
We tried to play it safe
That night we could not wait
No no, this can't be right
She said it would be alright
I can't afford to be a daddy
So I leave tonight...
No...

I scratch a living, it ain't easy
You know it's a drag
I'm always paying, never make it
But you can't look back
I wonder if I'll ever get
To where I want to be
Better believe it
I'm working for the cash machine
Cash machine
Cash machine ...

There's a hole in my pocket, my pocket, my pocket
There's a hole in my pocket, my pocket, my pocket
There's a hole in my pocket, my pocket, my pocket
There's a hole in my pocket
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Let's hear it for Mark Steyn

2006-01-22T14:52:00.000+02:00

There are many columnists whose contributions I like to read. Some, like JP's Jonathan Rosenblum and Caroline Whatshername, are there to make me smile on a down day, letting me remember that I am far from the stupidest person in the world. Those two prove that not only horses lose their "horse-sense" when wearing blinkers. But I have to say that Mark Steyn, in any of the multiple modes he writes, is in a class on his own, because he not only says things that are interesting and thought-provoking, but he actually says what I am thinking, usually in much more articulate and witty ways.

This week has a case in point. ( see http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1136361101756&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull) He sets about debunking the "proven fact" of global warming, taking on the whole industry that has built itself around this self-perpetuating myth. And the best thing he says goes to the very root of the problem, because it talks not about the merits or otherwise of the various sides of the argument, but about the motives of the protagonists. To quote ... "activist lobby groups ought to close down the office after 10 years. By that stage, regardless of the impact they've had on whatever cause they're hot for, they're chiefly invested in perpetuating their own indispensability. "

This phrase tells the whole story about global warming propaganda. And it's also applicable in so many other areas. Any "special interest" group should be forced to declare, as part of their publications, how many employees it has, and to what extent they derive their daily sustenance from their participation in these activities. Let's face it - if someone sent you an article claiming that cigarettes don't cause cancer, wouldn't demand to know how whether he was being paid by the tobacco industry? (Of course, the issue cuts both ways; anyone writing about global warming who works for the oil industry should say so.)

I can declare that my investment in oil is zero. I run a tiny, gas-sipping car. I haven't bulldozed any forests in the last 100 years. So when I say that the "evidence" for global warming is more polluted than the atmosphere that they are telling us to worry about, you can take my comments or leave them, but there's no agenda behind my words.

Look at the picture at the start of this piece. It's an example of the "scientific proof" of warming. This is a graph of CO2 levels over the last 650 thousand years (don't ask me how they measured 649850 of those, because that's a whole article on its own). Now, let's hit the panic button. We're in an upsurge. These upsurges happen rythmically, and the current one is pretty much in-phase. It's gone higher than the last one, but not by that much - last peak was around 300, we're now at 370, so it's about 25% up, but those previous levels are far from accurately determined, whereas ours today are spot-on, so who can confidently say that this actually has meaning.

Well, to tell you the truth, the GW industry can say it, and it does ... "Compared with other factors that influence climate (including solar variation, volcanic eruptions, and pollutant emissions such as sulfur dioxide), human activities-primarily burning fossil fuels and deforestation-have been a major contributor to climate change over the last 50 years." (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/hockeystickFAQ.html).

Pardon the scepticism! Come knocking on my door again, when you've got another job, and a somewhat better product to sell.

Janglo have lost the plot!

2006-01-10T12:59:00.000+02:00

I have always found Janglo very helpful. I have appreciated the hard work that the moderators put into screening all the messages that get posted there. I love that it is for the most part non-political. But it seems that they have now lost the plot...

There's this post! I wonder what "political content" was edited out exactly. I do object and I am angry!

Hebron's Jewish Community leadership has called upon Jews to flock to Hebron in order to protect the Mitzpe Shalhevet neighborhood from destruction. The Jewish Community of Hebron is calling upon the public:
And if that's not bad enough... Then there was this post! I think it is very irresponsible for Janglo to post Mr. Bassi's address and this is not the first time they have done so.

80% of Gush Katif refugees are unemployed! 1100 Gush Katif families with no housing solutions!!400 families are still in temporary housing!

Still not convinced - think I am overreacting? How about this post? It may not say it overtly but there is no denying what this message is all about!

Rav David Bar Hayim will deliver his weekly shiur at Beth Midrash Machon Ben Yishai on:SHOULD ONE PRAY FOR AN EVIL PERSON WHO FALLS ILL?(Separate seating provided for men & women)

And on a different if not related note - I found this post equally as disturbing.

A wheelchair is needed for my 14-year old grandson who was expelled from Gush Katif. The boy has CP and has limited use of his left hand and Leg. I would like to borrow it or buy it for a reasonable price. Thank you,...

For goodness sake! What difference does it make to the purpose of this person's request, whether or not his grandson was "expelled" from Gush Katif. If his grandson needs a wheel chair he needed one both in the occupied territories and outside. The issue is that his grandson needs a chair not that he was expelled (relocated).

My point is... Janglo needs to stop letting these silly biases into the message posted or I won't go there anymore - and I am sure I am not the only one who feels that way!

IPOD Meme

2006-01-10T10:33:00.000+02:00

These are the fifteen songs that my IPOD Shuffle threw out - totally undemocratic, of course, as there were a few doubles there. At least you know it was done fairly! Here goes:

The Kinks – Everybody's Gonna Be Happy [The Complete Collection]
Scheherazade/Festival of Baghdad – Rimsky Korsakov – Conducted by Seiji Ozawa and the Chicago Symphony
Coldplay – Amsterdam [A Rush of Blood to the Head]
Charlatans – A Man Needs To Be Told [Wonderland]
Athlete – Shake Those Windows [Vehicles and Animals]
The Stone Roses – Elizabeth My Dear [The Stone Roses]
Gorillaz – Dare [Demon Days]
The Magic Numbers – Try [The Magic Numbers]
They Might Be Giants – Hearing Aid [Flood]
U2 – Miracle Drug [How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb]
Johnny Cash – A Boy Named Sue (Live) [The Essential Johnny Cash]
Travis – The Humpty Dumpty Love Song [The Invisible Band]
Johnny Cash – It Ain't Me, Babe [The Essential Johnny Cash]
The Arcade Fire – Rebellion (Lies) [Funeral]
The Kinks – All Day And All of the Night [The Complete Collection]

http://bloghd.blogspot.com/ - you have been tagged, and it is now your turn!

iPod MEME me me!

2006-01-04T18:06:00.000+02:00

I am breaking the blogosphere MEME rules and I am going to pass on a MEME to my husband that I saw blogged on "The View From Here". I am sure you are not meant to tag someone else to a MEME but hey - who says rulz weren't meant to be broken.

So Ushyman, who loves his iPod more than life itself - or me for that matter, you have been tagged to give an iPod MEME. That means you hit the shuffle button on your iPod and list the first 15 songs that come up. G-d help me if any of my Boney M comes up - you will never forgive me.

Best Google Logo Ever

2006-01-04T14:22:00.000+02:00

I love the Google Logo. I love that it changes every day. I love that when you click on it it takes you to the Google Search explaining what the logo means. But today is the best Google logo ever. In memory of Loius Braille.

Great Business Model!

2006-01-03T19:39:00.000+02:00

I am trying to find a company to make customized chocolates for a promotion we are doing at work. I found a few great links in Google - but was completely annoyed that many of the links are to companies that no longer exist.

Most annoying though was this link. The Chocolate Dreams company seem to have shut down operations because their daughter is getting married. Oh well! I guess I will go home now - I have a birthday in June and I can't do any work until then - so much planning to do - you know!

The Ultimate Sanction

2006-01-02T20:25:00.000+02:00

I read this morning that President Ahmadinejad's rabid anti-Jewish rhetoric has had unforeseen consequences. Apparently, the Iranian national football team has found that it is unable to arrange friendly matches, ahead of its participation in the 2006 World Cup Finals. Nobody wants to play Iran.

Interestingly enough, Wolfgang Overath, a German footballing legend, former Worldcup winner and Chairman of Cologne FC, has stated that Iran should be expelled from the World Cup. This got me thinking - perhaps countries such as Britain and the United States should forget about reporting Iran to the UN Security Council , and try instead to threaten Iran's expulsion from the World Cup. Just imagine how the Iranian population would react to Iran being kicked out of the World Cup! Ahmadinejad would be overthrown before you could say Felix Magath!

Well, we can always fantasize can't we?

Disaster in the Ushyman Household

2006-01-02T17:30:00.000+02:00

Friday afternoon, there I was doing my household chores, when the wife lets out a agitated cry. OH NO, she screams!

I shuddered to think what had happened. What was it? Had the roof caved in? A terrorist attack, perhaps? An earthquake?

No. None of the above.

She had just heard the announcement that was too awful to be true - James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" was declared the 2005 Song of the Year by Israel's radio station Galgalatz.

You'll be pleased to know that my wife is now slowly recovering, helped somewhat by the news that James Blunt was "only" No. 4 in the British best-selling singles of 2005.

Sounds Familiar

2005-12-28T22:44:00.000+02:00

I would like to quote a few lines from a difficult story in yesterday morning's Times newspaper about the Security Fence:

TO REACH the baked earth of his mustard field each day, Mohammed Safiqual Biswas must pass coils of barbed wire and armed guards and show his identity card at a security check. The problem is not where Mr Biswas has come from, but where he is going to.... Mr Biswas and his village of 2,000 people will be sealed off from their own country. More than 1,300 miles of the barrier has been erected in the six years since building began.....a 12ft double fence packed with razor wire.

100,000 citizens live and farm on a 150-yard patch of land hugging the international border known officially as “the zero line”, and they live on the wrong side of the fence’s designated path. Entire villages, including schools... and mosques lie in what will effectively become no man’s land.

Sound familiar? Yet another condemnation of Israel's "apartheid fence"!

Well actually..there's a catch. The Times article isn't about Israel at all! It's about India's construction of a 2,500 mile steel barrier along its border with Bangladesh to keep out terrorists. Indeed, the article continues, while the world’s attention has been focused on the Israeli security barrier sealing off the West Bank, India has been building a far longer fence to keep out Islamic militants.

Bearing in mind the close ties between Israel and India, Israel's officials will not be rushing out to single out India's construction of a barrier to justify the building of their own security fence. Even so, Israel's friends around the world would do well to use the Indian case in order to emphasize that other democracies around the world are doing exactly what Israel is doing to defend their populations.

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing The Guardian, the Independent and the Stop the War Coalition focusing their energies on the Indian Government's security barrier. I may have to wait a very long time.

Modern Orthodox - what?

2005-12-28T09:49:00.000+02:00

Paul of Bloghd fame was surprised to find that he was labeled "Left Wing Modern Orthodox" when he took the orthodoxy test.

I am more surprised to find that I have only been labeled "Modern Orthodox" without the "Left Wing"part. I can only assume it has more to do with my views on feminism in Judaism than whether or not I am politically left leaning.

Not sure how much stock I put in the results - but Kudos to LamedZayin for a great time waster!