Bush is Optimistic about Democracy in Iraq? Don't Make Me Laugh... 

Oliphant Strikes Again...Right Between the Eyes 

What's a "tsunami"? 

C'est Moi... 

This is from "Punch" back at the time of the First Gulf War...still mostly relevant! 

A very good question... 

We're All Israelis Now

The original article was posted to a list I'm on, and I decided to answer the guy back. I don't think I'll reach as many people, more's the pity, but here goes:

We're all Israelis Now
By Mark LeVine, History, University of California,
Irvine

***Just the way he chooses to spell his name tells me he is ashamed of his Jewish origin. "LeVine" as if he was French or something.

For me, however, the attacks suggested a more troubling
scenario: That like Israelis, Americans would never face the causes of the
extreme violence perpetrated against us by those whose oppression we have
supported and even enforced, and engage in the honest introspection of what our
role has been in generating the kind of hatred that turns commuter jets into
cruise missiles. Instead, my gut told me that we'd acquiesce to President Bush's
use of the war to realize the long-held imperial, even apocalyptic visions of
the neoliberal Right, ones that find great sympathy with its Israeli
counterpart.

****That like Israelis, Americans would never face the causes of the extreme violence perpetrated against us by those whose oppression we have supported and even enforced,"

Right. We declared war on the entire Arab world; we bomb pizza parlors and target rockets on school buses, etc. The Palestinians have no one but themselves to blame for the plight they're in, and anyone who lives in Israel--even the radical Left--knows just how much restraint Israel has demonstrated against the continuing attempts of our "peace partners" to eliminate Israel altogether. When Prof. "LeVine" comes to live in Israel, then maybe I'll listen to what he's saying--if he's still saying it when he has to deal with reality and not just spout the Big Lie put about by the Palestinians.

As I watch George W. Bush celebrate his reelection I realize I never could have
imagined just how much like Israelis we would become. Think about it: in Israel,
the majority of Jewish citizens support the policies of Ariel Sharon despite the
large-scale, systematic (and according to international law, criminal) violence
his government deploys against Palestinian society, despite the worsening
economic situation for the lower middle class religious voters who constitute
his main base of support, despite rising international opprobrium and isolation.
Sound familiar?

***"in Israel, the majority of Jewish citizens support the policies of Ariel Sharon despite the large-scale, systematic (and according to international law, criminal) violence his government deploys against Palestinian society, despite the worsening economic situation for the lower middle class religious voters who constitute his main base of support, "

Ah yes, the terrorist actions of the Palestinians against the civilian population of Israel are just self-defense then? This is the "it all began when he hit me back" theory of the intifada: Israel is the aggressor because they didn't passively run away when we attacked them. BTW, if Sharon had really acted in a large-scale and systematic way against the Palestinians, the terror against us would have ended a long time ago. It is precisely because the most minimal measures possible have been taken--such as targeted killing of major terrorists instead of wiping out the entire neighborhoods they choose to hide themselves in--that has cost Israel a lot of unnecessary casualties amongst her soldiers. Believe me, it's a lot easier simply drop a lot of bombs, "and let the chips fall where they may".

As for the worsening economic situation of the "lower middle class religious voters" (who are NOT his main base of support, btw--those kind of voters support Shas, Mavdal and the other religious parties which are largely to the Right of Sharon's Likud), the intifada is largely to blame for that also, with the collapse of tourism and tourism-related industries which have caused a general contraction in the Israeli economy (along with the coincidental bursting of the high-tech bubble, which couldn't have come at a worse time for Israel)

The majority of Israelis support Sharon because every other way to deal with the Palestinian problem has failed. Barak offered Arafat 98% of what he wanted--far more than most Israelis, even the Left--were comfortable with--and Arafat's response was to unleash the second intifada, which showed Israelis quite definitely that the Palestinians were NOT interested in an independent state unless Israel ceased to exist.

As for the country's "liberal" opposition, it's in a shambles, politically and
morally bankrupt because in fact it was a willing participant in creating and
preserving the system that is now eating away at the heart of Israeli society.
Aside from occasional plaintive oped pieces by members of its progressive wing,
the Labor Party can and will do nothing fundamentally to challenge Sharon's
policies. Why? Because they reflect an impulse, nurtured by the Labor movement
during its decades in power, that is buried deep in the heart of Zionism: to
build an exclusively Jewish society on as much of the ancient homeland as
possible, with little regard for the fate of the country's native
inhabitants.

If the above passage were true, how does Prof. "LeVine" explain that most Israeli Arabs vote Labor? They have their own parties, which rarely manage to get more than 2 or 3 representatives in the Knesset. The truth is that Labor is led by an octogenarian with some fairly ditzy ideas, a massive ego, and a stranglehold on the party apparatus. All the Labor wannabes can't oust Peres because he's politically very agile and they are all warring against each other.

Israel can be faulted--and regularly is, by Israelis--for not doing enough for its Arab citizens. Yet by just about every parameter you choose, from women's rights, to education, to health statistics, Israeli Arabs are in a far better position not only than the "Palestinians" but in most of the Arab world. Prof. "LeVine" chooses to ignore this, and claim that Israel has "little regard" for the "country's native inhabitants" (another lie, btw. He should read Joan Peter's "From Time Immemorial" in which she quotes the UN's own statistics regarding the origin of the "Palestinians" and the length of residence one has to have in order to be called a "Palestinian")

As any native American will remind us, America was built on a similar holy
quest. So it shouldn't surprise us that the parallels between Israel's
mini-empire and America's Iraq adventure are striking.

***Boy, I wish Israel had a mini-empire. We have the same amount of space as Vermont does. We are getting very crowded.

In Israel most citizens know full well the realities of their occupation; even
right-wing newspapers routinely publish articles that describe its details with
enough clarity to make any ignorance willful. This dynamic is in fact why
Israelis have responded to the civil war with Palestinians by increasing the
dehumanization of the occupation, accompanied by a fervent practice of getting
on with life no matter what's happening ten or fifteen miles away in "the
Territories." The alternative, actually working to stop the insanity of the
occupation, would lead to much more hatred and violence within Israel and
between Jews than Palestinians could ever hope to inflict on Israeli society
from the outside. The situation is almost identical vis-à-vis the American
perspective on Iraq. Abu Ghraib?

***No, it's not. Not at all. How about the Palestinians working to stop the insanity of attempting to annihilate Israel, hmmm?

"LeVine" doesn't know what he's talking about. From where I live, the PA isn't even 5 miles away. I live in Jerusalem, and Bethlehem is only about 2 miles from my house. The streets of Jerusalem are filled with Arabs; so are the shopping malls and the open-air market, and not all of them are Israeli Arabs. More than 60% of the patients treated at the two Hadassah hospitals are Arabs (if they are not Israeli Arabs, and don't have the comprehensive semi-national health care Israelis do, they pay cash, which is very welcome to Hadassah, as the health funds take their own sweet time paying their bills) Until the Palestinians made it too dangerous to do so, many Israelis did a lot of their shopping in towns like Bethlehem (better prices). It can't be stressed too much that the chief victim of the two intifadas was the coexistence and level of trust between the Israelis and the Palestinians that was present before the first intifada. No one who comes to Israel for the first time now can believe it, but when I first came to live in Israel there wasn't any "occupation". It wasn't perfect coexistence, but the country was awash with tourists, spending money freely in Arab towns as well as Jewish ones, and everyone was benefitting, and there was a real hope amongst the Palestinians themselves that they would be able to attain the living standards of Israeli Arabs. Oh, there were those who wanted the whole enchilada, and Arafat's siren song sounded sweet to them. The terror the "Palestinians" have been subjected to is not Israeli terror, if truth be told, but Arafat's terror. More Palestinians have been killed as "collaborators" by Arafat's "security police" (30k-strong personal army) than by Israel. I wonder if Prof. "LeVine" knows this)

The numbing acceptance of large scale and systematic violence perpetrated
by the state as a normal part of its exercise of power and the willingness of a
plurality of the electorate to support parties and policies which are manifestly
against their economic and social interests

***What, I wonder, does Prof. "LeVine" have to say about the flight of Christian Arabs from areas that came under Israeli administration in 1967 but reverted to Palestinian domination, such as Bethlehem. It was a Christian town when Israel administered it; now it is a Moslem one. Most Christian non-Israeli Arabs are leaving the region entirely--go to the American consulate any day and see just how many are trying to get visas for the US. A considerable number have quietly become Israeli citizens, so they can go on living here and have some protection against kidnapping for ransom (a favorite activity of one of Arafat's henchmen, Rajoub Jibril, who rules Jericho like a Mafia boss)

(as demonstrated by the increase in poverty and economic insecurity across
the board in Israel

***Poverty is a very relative term. Your average Israeli who feels "economically insecure" has a standard of living which is much more that of the developed world than of the countries around Israel or the Third World generally, and considering how old the modern State of Israel is and how slender its resources, it's an amazingly high standard of living. I feel economically insecure--I cannot, for example, at this point in time be sure I'll have the funds to come to the Malta Siege--but I've got all the appurtenances of modern living, minus a car) What IS true about Israeli life, and Israel isn't alone in this, is that the gap between the lowest income groups and the highest is huge and becoming ever larger. There was a time, in Israel's first years, when everyone was equally poor. Now some are and some aren't. But we don't have people sleeping on hot air vents, or dying of hunger.

In the meantime, the international community, especially the EU,
most assert a defiant tone against US and Israeli militarism and perform the
novel but fundamental role acting as a counterweight and alternative to
America's imperial vision

***LOL.

Mark Levine
Associate Professor of History
Department of History
Murray Krieger Hall
Irvine, CA 92697-3275

***Oh, so he does know how to spell his name? That's nice. Levine, if you're out there--come visit me. After all, you do say "Next Year In Jerusalem" on Passover each year, don't you? Try writing a piece from the perspective of knowledge instead of ignorance, huh?

I'm waiting. Meanwhile, while you're talking about history, Levine, we're making it.:-))

One More Gosling Has Flown

On Saturday, my youngest daughter (who's almost 21) will go to New York, to be with her 24 year old brother, for an indefinite period. She's travelling with a girlfriend, and they want to rent a flat and live the highlife of bachelor girls in the Big Apple. My daughter, of course, being a US as well as an Israeli citizen, can work legally. The girlfriend can't. So there is something of a question mark hovering over their plans.

The Baby really surprised me when she announced she wanted to go to the US. Of all my children, she is the one I thought I'd ultimately have to kick out of the nest: she did Sherut Leumi because she didn't fancy being in an army camp; she wanted to stay at home. And she's the one I'll miss the most--because of the advances in ultrasound technology, she was the only one of my three children that I knew the sex of definitely before birth, and we had the most interesting intrauterine conversations and have been very close ever since.

She's extremely computer-wise, which is one of the main reasons this blog's been in abeyance since July. Sharing a single terminal with someone who can easily spend 16 hours a day on a computer means that Mother practically has to beg to read her e-mail. Hopefully now this will change...but there's still one daughter, Baby's older sister by a year and a half, at home.

Any thoughts on how to get the Curly-Haired Monster to move on, and leave this Wrinkly in sole possession of her computer, her make-up (fortunately I'm three times her size, so my clothes are safe), and her sanity?

The Day After

The dust is settling. The political commentators are beginning to speculate on the changes Bush will make in his Cabinet; my cyberfriends are lamenting Kerry's defeat. I got it partially right--I told everyone that Bush would be re-elected, but I thought he'd get a minority of the popular vote. The fact that Bush took the popular vote, too, is the main one: he now has the legitimacy he lacked in his first term. If, as a cyberfriend wrote, it was idiots and morons who voted for Bush, at least the idiots and morons are the majority, albeit slender majority, of those who managed to get off the couch and go vote. So America is getting the President it wants, if not the President it needs.

The outcome, as an Israeli, doesn't make me too unhappy. I don't like Bush; I think he's got some political smarts, but that he's not really an intelligent man, and I don't think he fully understands how his friends and political cronies exploit him. His fervent Christianity, and the apparent feeling he has that he's a conduit for God's Purposes, sets my teeth on edge. The invasion of Iraq, however sensible strategically--it is geographically absolutely central to controlling the Middle East--was badly designed, fraudulently sold to the American public, and is now in danger of unravelling completely. America, IMHO, isn't any safer than it was prior to 9/11; it's just been lucky.

But--and here's the big "but"-- if Kerry had won, he'd have inherited Bush's mess, both in the foreign and domestic spheres, and he'd have to spend his entire first term coping with the immense deficit, the Iraq problem, etc. It's a thankless job with no guaranty of success. In fact, I think Bush can't tackle the mess he's made (I'm not sure he even wants to try). That means the Democrats will have a much easier task in 2008.

It's my hope that Kerry will run again in 2008, with Hillary as VP candidate. She's young enough to wait a bit, and I'm not sure that America is quite ready for a female US President. Kerry is Quality, and so is she.

Meanwhile, what's going to happen to us? Initially, I don't think there's going to be much change in policy, because of the new joker in the pack: the fact that Arafat's obviously dying. However, if the PA can transfer power without too much infighting, and maintain its hold on the populace, I expect Bush to begin pressing Israel for more concessions "to help the Palestinians" pretty soon. His support for Israel has been a lot more verbal than actual--a fact most American-Israelis who voted for Bush prefer to ignore. The US Embassy is still in Tel Aviv, in spite of Congress decreeing during the Clinton regime that it should move to Jerusalem forthwith.

But if the Palestinian situation, post Arafat, descends into internicine violence, which is a lot more likely, then Bush and Sharon will quietly probably come to some kind of "understanding" and Palestinian statehood and the withdrawal of Israel from Judea and Samaria will be shelved for the time being.

Thus speaketh the Antigonos Oracle. For the moment. Stay tuned...after this message from your sponsor....

The Halacha of the Mangal, Or, Practical Jewish Law regarding The Barbeque

Note: this originally appeared on the Tachlis aliyah list. I never keep old emails, deleting them after about a month, so when there were requests for reposting, I couldn't oblige. My friend Reuven has managed to retrieve it.

Recently, I was able to access all of the e-mails stored since 2000 on my
busted laptop. Occasionally, there are requests for this classic, by Sarah
Meir. If she hasn't posted it in some form to her blogsite, she should. It
deals with one of the more important halachic issues Jews face here, the
Halacha of the Mangal. This is one of those issues where spreading heat is
as important as spreading light. The rabbanit speaks below in response to a
she'elah. The one asking the she'elah is b"h on his way here soon with his
family from Minneapolis.

Reuven

From: "Andy"
>Someone brought up the question of BBQ grills, and I
>had a further question. Sorry if this is hopelessly naive.

Not at all. If you're going to be an Israeli, you have to understand the
central place the mangal (hibatchi-type barbeque grill) plays in our
national life (this is especially relevant since Independence Day is
near. We may not have the Bet HaMikdash currently, but on Yom Atzmaut the sweet
savor of innumerable burnt offerings wafts heavenwards as almost every
household barbeques in honor of the holiday)

> I know Israel is short of wood as a natural resource,
> and thus furniture is often made of chipboard (or is
> very expensive.) I'm guessing that charcoal is
> therefore a similarly scarce resource, whether
> briquettes or hardwood. Is that true?

Charcoal is readily available, but little or none of it is locally
produced. In recent years "fancy" briquets that are pre-treated for
instant lighting are available in Israel, but no true Israeli uses them.
Instead he buys bags of ordinary lumps, which must then be dowsed with
either kerosene or "special" charcoal lighting fluid (kerosene). There
are those who hold that it is permissible to use fire-lighting lumps which
are made of some porous substance impregnated with combustible stuff and put
under the mound of charcoal to be lit, but others do not allow themselves
this leniency.

Once the charcoal has had a match thrown on it, when the flames die down,
the true Israeli haredi(extremely pious) will tear a bit of cardboard off a carton and fan
the charcoal with it violently. There are (!) plastic "fans" one can buy
which imitate the cardboard, but the less observant will actually use
either an electric fan or a hair dryer (if they're barbeque-ing at home.
If you're in the woods, it's all elbow grease). Only the Reform will use
a (heaven forfend!) gas grill which takes all the fun out of the experience
(singed hair, burnt fingers, etc.)

The choice of grill is also extremely important. Americans have Webber
grills. Since all things American are regarded as superior in Israel,
you can actually buy a Webber grill in Israel, but I'll let you in on a
secret: they're never used. A consummate status symbol, they stand in a
corner
of the patio, so all the neighbors can see how sophisticated you are. Ditto
gas grills (if you're an Israeli). What IS in daily use is the "mangal"
which is really just an open aluminum box with four 6" legs and a
removable grill on top. The lazy will put this device on a ledge but the
true-blue
Israeli puts it on the ground so he has to squat, most uncomfortably,
near it, both to get the fire going and to cook the meat.

There is also halacha for the proper way to cook the meat. None of this
turning it over and over so the juices are sealed in and the meat tasty.
No, it should be charred on one side and THEN flipped over to char on the
other, the resulting food having the appearance and appeal of the sole of
an old shoe. I'll let you in on a secret that will impress all your
friends and family with your "klita" (absorption) into Israeli society: cut an onion
in half, stick a fork into the rounded side, and put it in a dish with some
oil. Before putting the meat on the grill, rub the grill with the oiled
onion and it won't stick. One of the great Israeli inventions.

Remember that no Israeli ever cooks anything but meat on the grill, and
always cooks far more than is needed. No "furrin" nonsense with veggies.

Fire up!