Where AM I?

Last week we all went to Herzliya, to a restaurant called Papagaio. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but not only were we en famille, both daughters and their fiances, and DH, but I very rarely leave Jerusalem. I just never seem to have the time to go anywhere, which is ridiculous, in a country as small as ours.

Besides, I intensely dislike the humidity of the coast, and if I were to go to the Tel Aviv-Gush Dan region, I'd go in December. But who am I to refuse a free meal? (Nurses, it should be noted, never refuse free meals.)

We drove through the chaos at the exit from Jerusalem that is the building site of a very modernistic Calatrava bridge that the city needs like a lok in kop, just as the sun was setting behind the Judean Hills, and everything seemed normal (the road's been improved a bit, I confess) until we got to the Shaar HaGai interchange, where the mountains suddenly change to flat land. What had been fields seemed mostly now to be road construction sites, with unfinished tunnels and flyovers and bridges and the landscape totally ruined in just about every direction. I had hardly taken this in, as we passed the exits to Ben Gurion, when one of the red double decker trains rushed by, and I had the feeling I had been transported suddenly to Queens, or the Jersey approaches to Manhattan. Tony Soprano would feel right at home. The entire approach to Tel Aviv now looks dreary and run down, with large billboards, often almost entirely in English, advertising Sony or Chevrolet. The roads are full of shiny, large cars, and in between hi-rise buildings like the round Azrieli Tower there are strip malls with Office Depots and McDonalds.

The restaurant itself is at the marina, just outside a shopping mall that could have been anywhere in the American Southwest, with its "Mexican Mediterranean" theme. For a fixed price you get an endless amount of 11 varieties of beef which has been grilled on rotating spits "in the Brazilian manner". Except that I ate too much meat and not enough roast potatoes, so that I awoke hypoglycemic and sweating at 4 a.m., it was a pleasant experience--I might think about going again in about 5 years or so.

But I felt so sad, seeing the Israel I made aliyah to disappear under the Trans-Israel Highway and skyscrapers and malls a la East Coast USA. Time was, as you drove from Jerusalem to the coast, Shaar HaGai was an intersection, where (after waiting for an age and with your pulse racing that you could get your car in gear and cross the dual carriageway before some other car came, like a bat out of hell, across your path) you turned left to go to Bet Shemesh. This "intercity highway" was actually two lanes in each direction at this point. As it went around the Taggart fort, dating from the British Mandate, now the headquarters of the Tank Brigade (with a tank up on a high platform, looking very odd indeed) and the Trappist monastery at Latrun, the road narrowed to one lane in each direction. It crossed a ravine by way of a single lane wooden bridge, causing traffic buildups in each direction, then rose out of the ditch by a series of hairpin curves, to enter an area of moshavim, mostly subsisting by selling produce and flowers at roadside stalls.

There was no such thing as an "express" Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus when I arrived in the 70s. There were several varieties of "local" depending on whether the bus stopped at every stop or every second or third stop, or merely when flagged down or a passenger (who then would often trudge a kilometer or more to his yishuv) indicated he wanted to alight. There was no airconditioning--the buses resembled the yellow and black school buses one sees in rural American areas (except these looked a lot more banged up and dirty) and the back third was empty for baggage, goats, chickens, or Yemenites, who felt more comfortable squatting on the floor, apparently, than sitting on the fiberglass (hard to vandalize) seats.

The road was lined with eucalyptus trees, bark peeling, leaves always--even in the winter when it rained--looking dry and tired. Every so often there'd be a black and white sign, like an arrow, pointing to a clump of houses in the midst of fields that, depending on the season, were either plowed earth, green with growing grain or sunflowers, or yellow as harvest approached. "Gezer" was about halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and it was always something of a shock to realize that the modern kibbutz was barely a stone's throw from Solomon's chariot city. A lot of the place names, such as Mikveh Israel, had distinct resonances to any student of Zionist history, not to mention ancient history.

The closer to Tel Aviv and the coast one got, the more the fields gave way to orchards. The Nesher cement factory intersection was where one really felt the approach of the city. And the old central bus station in Tel Aviv! A world in itself. I think I'm the only person around who actually misses the old Central Bus Station in Jerusalem. It was, so, well, Israeli. It was so grimy and uncomfortable, open to the elements, with convoluted railings and splintery benches designed to keep the passengers from mobbing the driver when the bus (finally) opened its doors. But prior to the everyone-has-his-own-car era, the Egged bus co-op was a real leveler of society and you met everyone (and not infrequently their pets and/or farm animals) on the bus. Thank heaven Tverya's bus station still hasn't been "modernised".

I don't mind good highways, and fancy restaurants and malls. But so much of the flavor of Israel is going, soon they'll have to build theme parks to remind us what the earlier decades of the country were like ("Experience life in a ma'abara! Work in the fields by day and dance around medurot at night like a chalutz at the Tzena-World! Group discounts for students and pensioners")

Why I'm a Nurse

MonkeyGirl says it so much better than I ever could:

http://highlytrainedmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/06/just-nurse.html

A New Look

The time has come for a "new look" to the site, hope you all like it. I have been most culpably remiss in posting--why did I think that having a second computer would make it easier to find time to blog, now that I don't have to do the Uriah Heep thing with my daughters, begging for a few uninterrupted minutes on "their" computer?

I am opening a second blog--as yet there are no posts on it--which will be rather more "personal" and try to keep this one for my main interests of midwifery, medicine, politics, and Israel. It will be called "It Ain't Over 'til The Fat Lady Sings". When I begin posting there, I'll let you know.

NHS BlogDoctor

"But you will not convince the nurse-specialists of this; they still
churn out their vacuous botty-wipe when they would be better occupied wiping
bottoms. "

Thus writes "Dr. Crippen" of the NHSDoctor blog. He is a British GP who is deeply, deeply unhappy with the state of the NHS. His attitude seems to be that the NHS would be in fine form if doctors were paid the kind of salaries that US private physicians made, and if it were managed by the CEOs of major industry.


This does seem somewhat contradictory to the original aim of the NHS, which was to provide every British citizen with a high level of free health care, but I can see the allure of it. My own experience of the NHS, in, admittedly, a somewhat ideal situation and over 30 years ago, gave me a lot to think about.


ANY national health service, introduced at a time when the country was bankrupt [as the UK was after two ruinous World Wars, a Depression, and the loss of its Empire] is going to have hard going living up to its promises. Especially at a time when it still had food rationing, for heaven's sake. Moreover, there wasn't then--and there isn't now--any way to adequately budget such an all-encompassing health service for the simple reason that inevitably it will uncover vast amounts of hidden health problems. You don't go to a doctor when you're feeling a bit off-color if it's going to cost you an arm and a leg. But if it's free, you run to him with every ache and pain (real or imaginary) and some turn out to be serious, unsuspected illness. Further, there's no way of knowing what advances there will be in medical science. Heavens, when I was a child, there were hardly any antibiotics besides penicillin, and when I was a newly-graduated obstetric nurse, neither ultrasound nor fetal monitors had yet been invented.


And lastly, the NHS was brought into being by politicians. And every change of government--and sometimes even more often than that--added "reform" which is politician-speak for another layer of bureaucracy. And bureaucracy = inefficiency nearly 100% of the time.


But my year in Cambridge was vastly instructive. The level of care a pregnant woman/newly-delivered British mother and her baby got was immensely better than her American cousin who did everything privately and at great expense (let's not even compare our British patient to those millions of American women who have no antenatal care at all because they haven't got insurance or ready cash). Even in the mid-70s there was moaning and teeth-gnashing by the consultants about the "14 signatures" needed to order a new scalpel, but I couldn't help feeling that some of this was overreaction when I made home visits (home visits!!) to every woman after discharge from the postpartum ward to check her and her baby. American women have no such service at all.


But that's not what I really wanted to address when I began this. "Dr. Crippen" doesn't like nurses who don't stay in "their place". He doesn't like nurse practitioners, calling them "nurse quacktitioners". He obviously feels very threatened by them and wants to maintain his medical superiority at all costs. I noticed this back in the 70s in Cambridge. Doctors did not breathe the same air as us on a social level. Nurses were expected to associate with hospital auxiliary staff, such as ambulance drivers. Our lounge in the hospital had a black and white TV and several tabloids and the Daily Telegraph while the doctors' lounge had a color TV and The Times. (As a Yank who didn't know any better, and since the doctors' lounge was in the part of the nurses' residence in which I lived, I blithely used the doctors' lounge all the time and none of the doctors--the British are so polite--quite had the nerve to ask me to leave it) This was rather odd, because the relationship between the obstetricians and the midwives was actually quite good, on a professional level. The Central Midwives Board's code of practice made us the complement of the doctors, not subordinate to them. As long as our patients were within certain parameters, we were not even obliged to notify a doctor of their existence. But once those parameters were crossed, and we called a doctor, he knew that it was not a trivial call.


What "Dr. Crippen" is actually protesting is not that nurses are too stupid to work in conjunction with, instead of for doctors. What he is protesting is the level of their education, which, for all I know, may be inadequate nowadays. If this is true, then get the nurses' education upgraded! But don't be paranoid about nurses being used as "doctors on the cheap". Nurse practitioners can be an immense asset.

I currently work in the Israeli version of an HMO. Every day I get women who come into my room seeking amplifications and explanations that their doctors either didn't think necessary to give or which they didn't understand. It is part of my job to make sure these women do understand, as well as to screen those patients prior to seeing the doctor. Sometimes they don't need to. Sometimes they need to see the doctor immediately and must jump the queue. The doctors rely on me to be sufficiently able to discern this. That's what I mean by "complement".


I could do more. There really isn't any reason to make a woman wait an hour to get a prescription for prenatal vitamins, but in Israel nurses cannot write any prescriptions at all. As a midwife, in hospital I can do a vaginal exam to determine if a woman is in labor, but I can't do that in a sick fund clinic, although we tell women that they should come to us rather than go directly to the labor unit if they suspect they are in labor, in order to prevent unnecessary trips to the hospital (which charges the sick fund). So when a woman arrives, in obvious labor, I have to have her wait until a doctor is free (and to the great annoyance of the other women, who have to wait even longer to get into the doctor).


When I was a student nurse, I remember being told by a nurse nearly ready to retire of her excitement when, in 1938, a doctor had actually allowed her to take a blood pressure. Now of course, even nurses' aides do it. As doctors get new toys, they generally find that--amazing!--the nurse who was too stupid or uneducated to use the old ones has suddenly had a brain transplant and can cope with the technology. I think it took about 3 years before we were allowed to do anything more than wrestle the tank-sized first models of fetal monitors into patients' rooms. Placing the sensors on the woman's abdomen was obviously beyond our capabilities (although dragging the heavy machine around wasn't) until ultrasound arrived and then the doctors had something new to entrance them and fetal monitoring became a time-consuming burden best left to their "inferiors".


Because I spent some time in medical school, I understand the difference in the mental disciplines of doctors and nurses. Our goal is the same: to return the patient to health; our methods are different. It is truly sad when one group feels threatened by the other, and the other is made to feel inferior to the "superiority" of the medicos. I'm not a "diluted doctor" nor do I want a string of initials after my name for the snob appeal in order to feel less "exploited". I think doctors--some of them, at any rate--actually resent that it is good nursing care which can actually be the determining factor in a patient's recovery. (And let me state that the quality of British nursing care which I saw in Cambridge was truly excellent). So yes, "Dr. Crippen", wiping bottoms is important. But it's not the only thing. When my mother was dying, good nursing care was all that eased her suffering, once the doctors had thrown up their hands. But the kind of care she received could not have been done by stupid, uneducated, indifferent health care workers. It was done by highly intelligent, well-educated nurses, who saw aspects of her situation the doctors never noticed. Without the care and the observations of the nurses, doctors wouldn't have almost any data on which to base their plans of treatments. Lab results and tests only tell you so much.


As part of his blog, "Dr. Crippen" includes a weekly diary of some of the patients he sees. Nearly every week he describes at least one patient who could have been assisted by a nurse, at least partially, and would have helped him spend more time with the sicker ones. He finds this almost frightening, and I really can't understand it. I'm not there to replace him, heaven forbid.

Chelm Comes to Israel

Once upon a time, in Eastern European Jewish folklore, there was a town called Chelm, whose inhabitants were all simpletons. They tried to capture the moon, which everyone knows is made of cheese, in a barrel, and could not figure out why there seemed to be less of it each night, even though the barrel was guarded and no thief could be discovered…

There are those who think Chelm is a delightful fantasy. It's quite real, I assure you, and alive and well in Israel. (After all, if, in the Ingathering of the Exiles, we have Jews from every corner of the globe, why not Chelm?)

I work for one of the Israeli sick funds—our version of an HMO—in the Women's Clinic. And here is what happens to that yearly Pap smear your gynecologist takes:

First of course, the doctor actually gets the necessary specimen, and, after labeling it and putting it in a little plastic or cardboard holder to protect it, gives it to his nurse or office secretary, along with a computer-printed or hand written sheet that is to be given to the laboratory along with the specimen. The nurse or secretary puts both into an envelope, sealing the envelope so the "hafnaya" (the lab form) and the smear itself won't become separated from one another. Then the envelopes are either picked up by a messenger who brings it to our clinic, or the patient does, or, if the smear has been done by one of our doctors, it is given to our secretaries. If the smear is done by a doctor in another clinic belonging to our HMO, then the secretaries there deal with it, but since we are the central clinic, we get the most to process, roughly about 350-400 per month. Not infrequently, especially if the smear is taken by a doctor a long way from our central branch, it can be a week or more before it gets to us.

The medical secretary of the kupah then rips open the envelope, generates what is known as "hithayvut"—authorization (a woman gets one Pap smear a year for free, otherwise she has to pay NIS 25 per smear)—and puts the specimen, the hafnaya, and the hithayvut into ANOTHER envelope, sealing it so nothing goes astray, as before.

Then the medical secretary brings the accumulated envelopes to one of the nurses in the clinic. This is an innovation decreed by the kupah Poohbahs in Tel Aviv two years ago, supposedly for "medico-legal" reasons, but they remain completely obscure as there is no nursing input whatsoever. We merely copy, on our extremely slow and antiquated computers (doctors have Windows XP and Pentium 4 computers; we work on DOS and, if lucky, have Windows 98 and Pentium 2) what the medical secretary put onto the hithayvut page. So if there's any mistake, we just pass it right along. I won't bore you with the number of steps required for this exercise in absurdity* but between opening the envelope (usually not only sealed but stapled several times, which makes opening it without tearing the forms inside a bit tricky), paste a bar code on the hafnaya, write the patient's name (already on the specimen, remember) and ID number on another bar-coded sticker to put on the specimen container itself, and on the outside of yet another envelope, which is sealed with the two forms and specimen inside. This is tossed into a box, which waits about 3 days for another messenger who will take it to the lab. We tell patients that it will take about a month for the smear to be processed, but two weeks go by before it even gets to the lab.

So far, about four, maybe more, persons have handled the smear in its little box. Three envelopes, at least, have been used. Someone ought to do time-motion studies on this little "routine" test. It usually takes the secretaries about 5 minutes to do their thing, and anywhere between 3 and 7 minutes for the nurse—who of course is expected to take care of numerous other duties at the same time, such as antenatal followup for about 40 women a day, fetal monitors, teaching women in our high-risk clinic how to cope with their gestational diabetes and women in fertility treatment how to inject themselves, and give advice on the phone when patients call up with questions. I worked out, once, that it takes one nurse about one hour of each day just to cope with this---well, what can I call it? Exclusively secretarial task. It is a total waste of valuable nursing time, and the patient's smear results are delayed for no good reason. All doctors with the kupah are connected by computer; there is no reason, really, why the smear cannot be completely processed, including its financial authorization, at its point of origin and sent directly to the lab (which is not in Jerusalem, btw) by messenger. The current messenger makes rounds of numerous other clinics to collect specimens on a daily basis, and by next year, when the entire laboratory of the kupah nationwide is relocated to a central site, the messenger service will have to be extended anyway.

It is just stupid. For this I went to nursing school for 4 years. To put bar codes on lab specimens and to unstaple envelopes. Bah humbug.

*Well, if you must know the computer steps involved, they are as follows:
Main menu → sub menu → patient's ID # → code for Pap smear → doctor's name or code # → note if patient teaching done (y/n) → write in "Pap sent to lab" → note whether this is a work accident (y/n) → then press, in sequence: F10, F3, 3, F6, F7, fill in password, type of exam (code), Dr's ID code, date, bar code number. Press Enter three times then F12.

Then go back to the beginning and do it all over again with the next specimen. Assuming the computer doesn't crash, which it often does.

The Congested Oracle Speaks

Between sneezes and coughs, the following bits and bobs have occurred to me. If anything sounds bizarre, blame it on fever...

I never promised you a rose garden...
Reading a message posted on one of my Israel lists, it occurs to me that it is much tougher to make aliyah than back in the late 70s, when I did. The poster writes that she is unable to find many items she is used to, such as particular brands of toothpaste and decaffeinated tea, and the children's favorite all-natural, unsweetened, low cholesterol candies, and many other essential items of civilization like Ziploc bags. My heart bleeds.

Food nostalgia is indeed the last part of one's previous life to relinquish, and it can be painful and long. My poor Dad, z"l, used to shlep cheddar cheese, Hebrew National hot dogs, and maple syrup in his suitcases whenever he visited. Now we have both an indigenous cheese called "cheddar", and you can get the real imported item as well, there are beef frankfurters which are a fair replica (lower fat, though) to the American kind, and at least 4 different brands of maple syrup, (including the real thing), not counting the low-calorie variety.

When I arrived in Israel there were almost no imported food "luxury" items. You could drink Elite instant coffee (called by Israelis "Nes", which means "miracle" and is also a contraction of the word "Nescafe", a generic term for instant coffee), or Cafe Hag (instant decaffeinated coffee and about as tasty as its name suggests), or "botz"--which is Turkish ground coffee which settles to the bottom of the glass (not cup) in a thick mud (that's what "botz" means) after boiling water has been poured on it. "Nes" isn't really coffee, to my mind, rather a coffee-flavored beverage. In coffee houses one could get an "hafuch" or "upside down" coffee which was an espresso with hot, foaming milk poured on top. At home, or in the army (where I understand the custom originated) this could be simulated with "Nes" by putting a teaspoon of water into a cup with the coffee powder and sugar and whipping the mixture into a thick paste before adding the hot water, creating a foam on top. Many a newcomer didn't understand what the early morning sound of a teaspoon beating against the side of a cup was at first.

Now, while we haven't gone to Starbucks extremes (Starbucks did not succeed in Israel; its coffees were too American) we can buy both American and European instant coffees in our supermarkets, decaffeinated in a variety of forms, not to mention espresso and filter blends and all the paraphenalia that goes with it. So much choice!

Too much choice. When I came to Israel, you knew, as you did with so many other aspects of Israeli life, that you were making radical change. A "care package" from the folks back in the Old Country (often still referred to as "home") had coffee and tuna fish in it. As with tokens for public telephones, that is now completely obsolete.

But what I have noticed, over the past thirty years is that those who have the strongest yearnings for certain foods from the US, and who go to the greatest extremes to get them, either bringing giant quantities in their lifts or constantly begging travelers to bring them packages from America when they come, have the toughest time being "absorbed" into Israel. The writer of the post describing all the things she packed into her lift and is trying to work out how to get more when they run out is making a major mistake.

Fixing the Fat
Our local Discovery Channel has been running a series of programs by the BBC Horizon folks about obesity and what has been discovered about it. Lots of investigations into what triggers appetite and how to suppress it, as in leptin production, or non-production, in fat mice, or various kinds of gastric bypass operations, or the checkered history of drugs to suppress appetite.

But none seem to address my obesity problem: I eat when I'm not hungry. For three years I went to Overeaters Anonymous and listened to people relate their struggles with binge eating, but I don't binge. Frankly, I don't know what it means to be hungry, most of the time. I just like to eat. And a nurse--especially in a unit like a delivery room--learns very early to eat whenever it is possible because it may not be possible when you "ought" to eat. Food is definitely a great comfort to me, when I'm anxious or tired. But more than that, I like the taste and texture of what I eat. It is a joy to contemplate a plate of macaroni and cheese, or a full British afternoon tea, or a Chinese banquet. I eat slowly, masticating well, enjoying the sensations. I don't overeat--one serving of spaghetti Bolognese is enough, I don't need a whole potful of pasta--but I look forward to when the clock says it's time for the next meal.

And now that I've got diabetes, this is aggravated. I must eat at specific times because of the medications I take. And since my carbohydrate intake must be strictly limited, of course, I am obsessed with carbohydrates and don't want anything else. Just thinking of dieting makes me so nervous I have go eat something to calm down. Which is why I am leaving this for the moment and going to the refrigerator...

A New Treatment for Obsessive-Compulsives
I've been setting up my new computer, and in particular, reconstructing my iTunes music library. What a job! I currently have 78 GB of music, audiobooks, and radio drama and it suddenly dawned on me what a mechiah it would be for a sufferer from OCD. Endless reorganization of one's playlists. Changing "genre", "equalizer", moving names from "artist" to "composer", etc., etc. I think that, instead of psychotherapy or medication, just give an iPod to every obsessive-compulsive and let them spend the next 10 years or so sorting out their music libraries...

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Invented the Inquisition...

And now the Spaniards, who took the friendly step of forcing all Jews in Spain to convert in 1391, and then expelled them in 1492, have the answer to the Middle Eastern mess:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/789009.html

It really is so simple that it is staring the world in the face: tell the Palestinians to renounce violence and recognize the legitimate right of Israel to exist. Then we can all get on with our lives, to our mutual benefit.

Trying to force Israel to cut its throat by yet more concessions only encourages those committed to Israel's destruction.

What part of "no" don't you understand, Moratinos?

Oh, For a Holocaust!

...of cellphones.

I HATE cellphones. I don't want everyone to know where I am, all the time. As a nurse, I am congenitally unable not to answer a ringing telephone (who knows what emergency is at the other end?) In the bath, on the toilet, sound asleep...

And the way other people behave with them is even worse. Back in the Seventies, when I came to Israel, it often took between 5 and 10 years to get a landline--Israel had barely completed its infrastructure when optical fiber technology came into existence, so the number of lines that could be carried on an old-fashioned cable, the only kind that had been laid, was far less than the demand for telephones--and when renting a flat, being able to advertise that you had a phone was a major selling point. Even though, by the time cellphones became available (at pretty exorbitant cost, initially), the Israeli equivalent of Ma Bell, Bezeq, had pretty much eliminated the waiting period, Israelis had become completely obsessive about telephones. The "security situation" of course plays a part--a car backfires and everyone who hears it begins telephoning all their loved ones to tell them they are OK. (And after every terrorist attack, one of the first things that happens is that the cellphone networks crash from the overload as people in opposite parts of the country begin calling everyone they know to find out that they're all right) It's not by chance that the only place with a higher degree of cellphone saturation is Hong Kong.

And Jews love to talk. And bargains. I have acquaintances who own phones belonging to each of the 4 networks and use them according to the current "special deal" for air time, etc. Bus drivers sell cards for the "pay-as-you go" type. It's bad enough that the buses themselves have exceptionally noisy motors and ventilating systems, and the drivers always seem to have the radio playing at full blast ("public service" so you don't miss a single newscast--another Israeli obsession) but everyone is shouting--and I do mean shouting, over the din--all the current details of their life (and the details of everyone else's) into the phone glued to their ears. Since about 85% of the population is right-handed, this means that in another decade or two we should begin to see a mass epidemic of left-sided hearing loss and maybe brain tumors. And now all the kids are vying with one another for the latest 3-G telephone, so that they can squint at the tiny screen to see their favorite singer's latest video clip or a nude photo of their boy/girlfriends. An optician's dream--an entire generation with eye strain and glasses.

We have long since outstripped the small annoyance of telephones ringing during movies, or in restaurants, or in class. Forget about honking at a pedestrian strolling across the street just in front of your car. He/she is undoubtedly entirely engrossed in a telephone conversation. But then, as you are probably trying to make a U-turn while trying to keep the telephone wedged between your ear and your shoulder (yes! I actually saw a driver do this the other day, totally unable to look right or left but both hands were on the wheel so I guess we have to give the driver some credit) There are, of course, laws preventing the use of a cellphone without a hands-off speaker in a car. As with most laws of this nature in this country, priority goes to trying to keep civilians from being blown up and it isn't enforced.

The Nazis burned books, and then people. There is a film clip, endlessly repeated (especially when there is a discussion of restricting civil rights in some area) of the bonfires they lit and books and "degenerate" art being tossed onto the flames. I think of that brief film segment often. Light the fire, boys, I'm coming with my cellphone, and any others I can grab! (Or maybe we should just lock the developers of the cellphone into a padded cell with speakers in every corner, endlessly broadcasting recorded conversations, such as the details of Uncle Max's hemorrhoid operation, or the color of Diana's diarrhea, or 24 ways to cook zucchini...or maybe just a loop tape of the 50 most popular ringtones...)

Through a Veil, Darkly

Jack Straw has made a measured and sensible statement about the wearing of full-face veils by Moslem women. And, predictably, he's being accused by Moslems of being discriminatory. The networks, notably Sky and BBC World, that we get here, have been leaning over backward to let spokesmen--and even a few women, none wearing more than a hijab or head scarf--claim that Moslem women's freedom of choice is being attacked.

That is a real laugh. The veil is imposed on women by Moslem men who want to keep them subjugated. You cannot drive, wearing a chador or burqa, you cannot work in any of the professions such as medicine or nursing--in fact, you can't really do any useful work at all outside the house (where you can take the garment off) and are completely dependent on your menfolk for everything. It is notable that in the countries where the full face and full body veil are customary, women rarely have more than elementary education (indeed the rate of female literacy is low) and rarely are even allowed to vote. Now, is that discriminatory or what?

Straw described the conditions under which he requests a veiled woman to show her face in a conversation with him. They actually show a rare degree of sensitivity, but I expect very few women take him up on it, because there is another aspect to the Veil--that of fear. Where men demand that their women become non-persons by assuming a garment that ensures their anonymity, they also kill them whenever the men decide their 'honour' has been compromised. The fear of being the victim of an honour killing will make most women completely submissive, as is the state of divorce in Islam, which gives women no recourse at all, and makes them lose custody of their children. All a Moslem husband has to do is to say "I divorce you" three times and you are thrown onto the street in the clothes you wear. Where are the Moslem leaders decrying this form of "discrimination"? Do Moslem women kill unfaithful husbands?

Furthermore, it is worth noting that even the hijab is not enjoined by the Koran, although it has become pretty universal as a statement of female adherence to Islam. But the number of countries where the full-face veil is customary is very small within the Islamic world. Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrian, Turkish, Indonesian and Malaysian women have never adopted it.

I wish Straw had had the guts to say that we belong to a culture where hiding one's face behind a veil, or mask, has very sinister connotations, and is totally unacceptable in civilized society. What is the person hiding? Of course, if he were to do that, undoubtedly he would be the recipient of death threats such as the Pope has received.

It's about time British Moslems woke up and smelled the coffee. Even those born in the UK are really guests there, and if they don't want to join the majority culture, they are quite welcome to leave and try to find somewhere where their religion is practiced the way they like it. Britain, unlike the US, has an established Church, and other religions are tolerated as a courtesy. I really hope that Straw doesn't turn out to be as lily-livered as everyone else who has been criticizing certain Islamic practices. Islam is an intensely intolerant religion, and if ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, this is it.

The Home Front

I haven't blogged much recently, not because there's a war on, but because the new member of the family, Sheleg (Snowy) the Samoyed seems to take up a disproportionate amount of my time. In addition to requiring lots of grooming, he seems to be excessively fond of locating anything in the kitchen with chocolate in it, and maneuvering me into a corner so he can lick all my body lotion off me, or at least the parts he can reach. Arguing with a dog who weighs fifty kilos and looks like he's perpetually smiling is not easy.

The war, the war...I am seized with an extreme weariness and sense of deja vu. The weariness comes from trying to explain, over and over again, that Israel isn't the aggressor, and that we aren't trashing Lebanon because we want "revenge", and that we don't want to "reoccupy" the country. I'm also tired of trying to make people see that Lebanon, as a real country, is a fantasy, and that the Hezbollah could not have been taken care of by a Lebanese "police force". The "disproportionate force" theory, as well as the "it's nobler not to descend to their level" garbage, and the usual assertions that Israel should be morally above such things as fighting for its survival (and anyway what kind of threat can a rag-tag guerrilla group be to the Famous and Invincible IDF?), and that the Islamic extremists (remember, Islam is a religion of peace!) are really interested in a worldwide jihad to end the Infidel Menace once and for all is silly Israeli hysteria to justify our "barbaric" actions makes me just want to spit. Bernard Henri Levy had a marvellous article in the NY Times in which he compared the Hezbollah provocation and the resulting war to the Spanish Civil War, which is a very good point. Islam is getting ready for its all-out assault on The Infidel. This has just been an early rehearsal.

The deja vu comes firstly because of the similarities in the "a plague on both your houses but especially Israel" that excuses just about everything Hezbollah does as being reaction to Israeli aggression, remind me a great deal of the attitude of many Europeans, and particularly the British, in the Thirties. Hitler wasn't serious, of course--what he was proposing was just too silly. In fact the man LOOKED silly, flailing his arms around and shrieking his speeches. So, by extension, the Clown of Tehran today is just ranting nonsense when he goes into one of his anti-Israel, anti-Western tirades.

The second feeling of deja vu has to do with the ceasefire that is supposed to come into effect in a few hours. We've been here before. Lebanon took on itself the responsibility for filling the vacuum left in southern Lebanon by our withdrawal, and look what happened. It will happen again. The UN won't do anything either to prevent it, lest they incur accusations of being "biased" and a tool of the US and Israel--in other words, the current crisis has solved nothing. Even a dimwit like the current Prime Minister of Australia has seen that.

The IDF has a lot to set right, but so does the Israeli government. But the biggest culprits, in my most humble opinion, for this "victory of defeat" is us. Six years ago four mothers, through their crocodile tears and whining, brought about a withdrawal from Lebanon that was actually a rout, and gave the Hezbollah an outright victory. The consequences of the manner of withdrawal from Lebanon--not the actual leaving of Lebanon, which was sensible, at least strategically--was to provoke the second intifada since our enemies concluded we were on the ropes, and now the Hezbollah's thumbing its collective nose at us. We are weak, we don't want to endanger our soldiers' lives. We don't want to go mano-a-mano with real men, Allah's chosen ones.

And to a certain point, this is true. PM Olmert is not a military man. The current IDF Chief of Staff is from the Air Force. It was probably not too difficult to convince Olmert that the war could be conducted exclusively from the air, with no Israeli casualties and, due to precision bombing, reduce the Hezbollah to a few glowing cinders. All the evidence from the Second World War onwards shows that air attacks generally have the opposite effect: they don't reduce resistance, they concentrate it. And it certainly gave the news media a lovely stick to beat us with--all those poor, innocent Lebanese in the rubble! Let's face it: Israelis in bomb shelters just get rather boring after a while.

Olmert is a politician--he doesn't want to have to justify body counts (although he will now) if he could have avoided it, and so, against a lot of military advice, he put the ground offensive off as long as possible and kept it as small as possible. And, to be honest, most Israelis wanted this. We have borne the brunt for so long that we just don't have much stomach for lists of dead soldiers on the nightly news and video footage of distraught mothers and wives collapsing during the funerals of their loved ones. This is the most dangerous thing of all--and Israel ultimately may not be able to survive it, if we suffer a loss of will.

Also, for years, each new budget cut defense spending, on the grounds that the army could thin down a bit; we now had a "partner for peace" and a new war was unlikely, and the draft was now so big that the top age for reserve service could be lessened and the length of yearly reserve duty cut. It has all come home to roost with this crisis in Lebanon. Reservists were being called up and there was inadequate equipment to issue them, or what there was was old. Some accidents are inevitable, but there have been too many this time: too many "friendly fire" injuries and fatalities, and just yesterday a tank, backing up, ran over two soldiers by mistake. Not enough training. There have also been two unexplained Apache helicopter crashes which may have been caused by insufficient maintenance.

All in all, We Are Not Amused. Nor are we, as a people, feeling very good about ourselves or our situation. We didn't even get our hostages back (I doubt they are alive, actually) It's not much fun being the world's guinea pig in a global battle of civilizations; it was bad enough just trying to hang on to our own little corner. Now we've got to convince the West that Islam means business, and I don't really see how it can be done. None So Blind, and all that.