The Dust Is Settling

Right now, there are two subjects that bore me silly. One is anything to do with Ariel Sharon's condition, which, if not permanently vegetative, is certainly currently vegetative. What the doctors knew (or did not know) and when they knew it really doesn't interest me any more--it's all irrelevant. I hope he gets pneumonia soon and dies, since the living death he currently is in has only one advantage: he's not suffering. Give him a grand funeral and let's get on with the business of everyday living in Israel, or in other words, back to the battlefield.

The other topic is the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections. Was it really the incredible surprise the journalists and politician are claiming? If so, I am the only unsurprised person around, which I find a bit hard to believe. It was inevitable. The only way Fatah could have won was to rig the ballot and stuff the ballot boxes. The only people who loathe Fatah more than the Israelis are the Palestinians, because of the corruption and the internal terrorism of Arafat's machine.

Hamas has two options: one hard, one easy. It doesn't take a lot of savvy either to guess which one they will take.

If they really want the best for the people, they will (probably violently because I don't see any other option) disarm Fatah gunmen, and the other militias like Al Aqsa, crush corruption, begin concrete improvements in Palestinian life, and show their constituents and the rest of the world that they are responsible and mature. If they do this, it doesn't really matter whether they officially "renounce terrorism" and "recognize Israel's right to exist". But taking the road of internal reform is dangerous and difficult. It's so much easier to let the existing mess simmer on and try to shift the Palestinians' attention to the external enemy once again--make a scapegoat of Israel for all their own, and the previous regime's, shortcomings. In Abba Eban's memorable phrase, they will once again not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Frankly, the Hamas victory will have less long-term impact on the Middle East and world politics than the pundits think. The big change will only come when the West can get its mind around the simple but unthinkable fact that it is at war with an implacable enemy who will not be appeased: Islam. This is so politically incorrect for a civilization which insists on religious tolerance at all costs that it will take a lot more September 11th-like attacks or Iran will have to nuke Vienna or Paris before it can get its act together and finally see that the entire Islamic world is its adversary.

Sharon's legacy to Israel is the disengagement from Gaza and the security fence. Israel is withdrawing, with great pain, to defensible borders and hunkering down. The euphoria I remember so well in 1978 with the first Camp David talks has given way finally to a grim realization--which should have come much earlier--that at least another generation will have to pass before the Palestinians realize they have no option but to live with us.

In a small way, I think there is reason to hope. The average Palestinian man and woman in the street has actually made a statement by voting Fatah out of power--that it wants constructive change, clean government, a better life. To interpret the election results as a victory for radical Islam is mistaken. It was a vote against a regime that caused its own people simply too much suffering, not a vote to go to war again. One hopes the leaders of Hamas have the sense to see it.

HaShkedia Porachat...(The Almond Tree is Blooming)

Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev'ry Sunday a treat for me.
All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

I don't think Tom Lehrer had Jerusalem's parks in mind when he wrote that, and now that I think of it, I don't see many pigeons in Israel's parks, possibly due to the very large number of feral cats rather than poison, but spring is definitely the loveliest time of year in Israel and we are wallowing in the throes of it right now.

Most unusually, the weather is fine for Purim this year. Usually, for reasons known only to the Most High, Purim, Lag b'Omer, and Independence Day tend to be cold and rainy, even though it's nearly summertime by Yom Atzmaut. Everything is green and blossoming. The wildflowers (protected by law--how many countries protect flowers ?) are scattered over the hillsides, which have, even in the Jordan Valley (where it never rains) a velvety cover of delicate grass. Brilliant scarlet poppies, shy anemones, rare blue-black irises, jonquils and narcissi, peep out of the foliage, soon to wither and scorch in the Mediterranean sun. Soon, everyone with allergies will begin sneezing (the olive tree is especially tiresome in this respect and most immigrants to Israel from colder climes are completely unprepared for olive pollen and react violently, myself included) and hacking. For most, it's a small price to pay for the mild weather and the (comparative) lushness of the countryside. It fades all too soon.

Purim is a harbinger of Passover, and so most women are somewhat ambivalent about its arrival. The Seder night is exactly one lunar month away, and the Pesach cleaning now moves into high gear. If there are traditional practices that just about every Jewish Israeli adheres to, no matter how secular, it is the Passover Seder and rituals associated with death and mourning. Depending on one's ethnic background, the cleaning can mean a total house painting, a virtual disassembly of cupboards and appliances associated with food production, literally shaking out every book to discover any hidden crumb, total change of dishes and utensils, boiling water poured over every surface that can sustain it; plastic put over every surface that can't. This year, since the Seder is on Saturday night, there are additional halachic problems. I hate the whole business, frankly. The Seder may be uplifting, but the weeks before it give me radical anxiety and stress.

So I guess I ought to make hay while the sun shines (sneeze!) and enjoy Purim and the spring. Indeed, I shall. I've reassembled the porch swing, and will shortly remove myself to it, accompanied by some crocheting and my pocket PC, to which I've added a number of mp3 files from a site I've recently found, called Nonags (www.nonags.com). You have to take out a subscription, which is $25 a year (special deal is currently available--40% discount for a "lifetime" subscription) and it gives you access 300 GB of audiobooks, plays, and old-time radio shows for download. The stuff is fantastic! Everything from classical BBC drama to The Lone Ranger; poems by Edgar Allen Poe read by Basil Rathbone to Burns and Allen (which I'm downloading to my computer as I'm writing this); the unabridged reading of Dr. Zhivago to Amos 'n' Andy. Bill Clinton reads My Life (surprisingly well) and there are recordings of radio programs featuring all the greats of the Swing era, like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. For someone like myself who grew up in the Golden Age of Radio, it's a mechiah.

In spite of this being a post about Purim, I haven't really written much about it. I suppose this is because my kids are now adults, and I don't have to figure out any more how to make costumes warm enough for them not to get pneumonia but creative enough to maintain my "reputation" as an "arty" person. The Adloyoda parade in Tel Aviv resumed this year after a couple of years when the intifada interfered with it (interestingly, maybe because everyone still jumps at the noise, there seems to be less fireworks than I remember), but Jerusalem has always been more subdued. From Taanit Esther this year to the end of Shushan Purim it's a full 4 days, which has always seemed odd to me, coming from a place where Purim was barely a day. Which neighborhoods of Jerusalem celebrate Purim proper and which celebrate Shushan Purim has resulted in a logistical nightmare for those giving mishloach manot. Fortunately, everyone I know lives close enough to me that I don't have to figure it all out, although I was paid a visit by two young men from Gush Katif who wanted me to accept one, complete with a CD explaining why I should "join myself" to the settlers there. Does Gaza come under the category of a "walled city in the time of Joshua"? I forgot to ask them. I also forgot to tell them that this family supports disengagement. Ah well...

A Purim sameach to all of you, and an easy preparation for Pesach!

(Sneeze!)

Hot Licks

This appeared on a local message board recently:
I need help with my washing machine. Is there anyone who can repair it? It's licking water from the filter.

Immediately the image of a large red tongue, reminiscent of the logo on a Rolling Stones album, protruding from the open door of a front-loading machine, swam in front of my eyes, even though I realized it probably was only a typo.

Not so simple to understand was a certain newspaper column where the writer expressed the "furlong" hope that Bush's next term would bring some order to fiscal chaos. "Furlong" isn't a commonly used word, unless you're a patron of the Sport of Kings--it's rather up there with "sennight", a word I loved using for its shock value. "Say what?" (Interestingly, "fortnight" is not so obscure. Probably because one can say "week" instead of "sennight", but "two weeks" takes longer)

After a moment, I realized that the Tyranny of the Spell-Checker was to blame. No one knows how to spell any more, and everyone's got a spell-checker in their computer. Bah humbug.

Ever since I discovered that the "auto-correct" feature in Word was changing the name of a beloved literary character from Lymond to "lemonade" I have banished auto-correctness to the furthest circle of Hell, but since Baby, my 21 year-old daughter is sending me emails from New York, I've been thinking a lot about spelling. She's a native Hebrew-speaker; we don't speak English at home because my husband doesn't understand it; and she spells phonetically. She often gets quite simple words wrong, while succeeding admirably with rather difficult ones (she probably looks those up). Also, in contrast to native English-speakers, whom I encounter in my many lists literally in the hundreds every day, she rarely makes some of the most common errors, such as distinguishing between the three "to's".

Americans seem not to know whether something is lost or loosed, whether they are lying down or have laid something down (ditto confusion over "rise" and "raise"). The young generation of Israelis, I've noted, share an equal confusion over whether one has given birth (ללדת) or one has begotten (להוליד) which surprises me. One hears "hi holeeda" (she has begotten) all the time, when it should be "hi yalda" (she gave birth). Dunno why.

I won't even go into the Misuse of the Apostrophe, which is massive. It's bad enough no one seems capable of spelling correctly any more, but doesn't anyone study grammar? Following a particularly complicated explanation of an NFL rule being challenged in a recent Monday Night Football game, Al Michaels added "Parse that!" which sent John Madden into gales of laughter. At least he understood the phrase. Because the answer is no, grammar isn't fun, so it's been dropped from the curriculum.

In my day, we had spelling bees at school and they were occasions of terror for most of my classmates. But we not only learned to spell, we learned how to use a dictionary--the kind that you turned the pages of (Gosh! I've just ended a sentence with a preposition--two smacks on my palm with a ruler). I remember the amazed exclamations when I taught my kids how to use theirs--the teacher had never bothered. Nowadays of course, you have an electronic one, or use the internet. If it's not fun, it's not taught, these days, and no one really liked diagramming sentences, apart from a few obsessive-compulsives, any more than anyone liked reciting the multiplication tables or lists of State capitals. (Tell me how many you remember and I'll tell you approximately how old you are. According to the National Geographic, one-third of todays US high school students don't know that Washington, DC is the national capital)

Once, one's fluency in one's language was regarded as an essential asset. There was a plaintive message, from a cybercorrespondent on a list that helps potential immigrants to Israel, lamenting that he can't get a resume or CV written in decent English, without spelling and grammatical mistakes any more, from applicants with half a dozen degrees to their credit. My friend wondered why the applicants didn't think it detracted from the impression they were trying to make (would you hire a dyslexic to be a proofreader?) I replied that they probably would care, if they knew they were making mistakes. But today's world is so visual, they probably don't. What with emoticons and a whole phalanx of abbreviations like BTW, YMMV, IIRC, etc., even cybercommunication isn't contributing to better expression (quantity over quality? Hmmm...)

Spellers and grammarians of the world, unite! You are needed as never before, to rescue communication before it deteriorates into a series of cyber-grunts! (And yes, there are two "M's" in "communication")

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.:-))