Total number of comments: 185 (since 2010-02-05 01:15:38)
Shunra
I am a Hebrew/English translator and interpreter. I live and work in the U.S. Justice and peace in Palestine may be the pivotal point for the liberty of the entire world.
Website: http://hebrew.shunra.net
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Showing comments 185 - 101
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The American concept of "white" is an imaginary one - imposed on people arbitrarily, as happens to fit in with the imposer's agenda at that moment.
A list of groups that were considered "non-white" in the U.S. includes Irish and Italian Catholics, Arabs, European Jews, Asians, and Africans. It's entirely arbitrary, born of the desire to dominate others.
It is not a reality. The sooner we stop counting and referring to this imaginary classification, the sooner we can step away from the racism ingrained in America.
The Nakba is so large a crime, so terrible an ongoing disaster that regular words have not unraveled it and made it right.
Maybe poetry will.
Thank you for the beautiful poem, Refaat.
What a chickenhawk that man is: *he* dodged the draft, he wants Israelis to do the work for him.
Also, for the record: there are NO draft dodgers in Israel. There are people who go AWOL (relatively few), there are refusers (like dear Noam Gur) and there people whom Israel's army exempts.
The whole draft-dodging discourse is perplexing for that reason - what does he want, for people to do military service even if they've been excused by Israel's (despicable) army?
Precisely.
Now imagine what it feels like to have some ability to think about reality, and every time you mention the forbidden subjects - you're told you're crazy. And if you insist, you get shunned.
...which is why Hogue sounds the way she does. Engaging with reality is severely punished in her milieu.
She is sharing, SamuelT, her immense privilege.
Playing hide-and-seek is not a problem at all - but playing hide-and-seek in the safety of an ethnically-cleansed enclave is sinister and twisted, and it's not me who's doing the twisting.
The *actual* people of the *actual* country are the ones who live there. Neither she nor I will decide what the people there do.
You have an awful lot of compassion for the privileged, wealthy, white American woman, SamuelT. For her comfort she is willing to sacrifice the Palestinian families (displaced from her playground) and the very playmates, the very cousins she "teachers how to play", in her insufferable arrogance.
As it happens, my family consigned me to the role of "cousin in Israel" for quite a few young Americans. I know how little they thought of the situation and their requirements of the people who lived there: we were supposed to become brave and sexy soldiers, and give our lives (if necessary) so that our American cousins would have a playground.
Thanks, but no thanks. Neither I nor the friends I grew up with deserve the role assigned by the bankrollers.
Elliott - yes, it's the ideas of Rabbi Kook that Rechlevsky exposes in his book. Taking over from the donkey is a big part of the book, and there's also the whole issue of hipuch-ha'aderet (turning the coat/the world inside out).
About the change due to Jews having power: we're seeing more and more of this lately, codified into law. Israel's Ministry of Justice held a seminar on Lo Tehunam.
My understanding of it is that the conduct of the settler-orthodox is in direct contravention of the 13 Principles stated by Maimonides. They may be in violation of the 10 Commandments (the 1st one, in particular, with their land-worship). Moreover, they're doing what antinomian followers of messianic ideas everywhere have done, and violating laws for the express purpose of manifesting the true messiah.
The antinomian aspect is not a coincidence. There is a persistent legend stating that the messiah will arrive when either all Jews do Jewish law to the letter - or all Jews *break* Jewish law (Shabtai Zvi's messianic experiences involved expressions of this legend, but were far from the only case of this).
The bottom line is that the settlers have a scary framework, lots of political power, and access to nukes. Even if they split off from Judaism (which seems likely), putting down their arms and walking away from their privilege will be neither easy nor straightforward - but it is increasingly necessary.
Elliott, Citizen,
Sefi Rachlevsky's book, Hamoro Shel Mashiach (never translated, more's the pity - it is one of my dreams to get to translate it) covers the Jewish thought angle.
To summarize his argument (trampling on nuances left and right): the Jewish religion in Europe maintained the tension between a miserable life and the concept of chosen-ness by means of having a sort of switch between legal systems. Judaism was a fiery religion, full of absolutism and revenge, but somewhat like Walter Mitty, it was only practicable "when the Jews had the upper hand". ACTUAL daily life was conducted under "mipnei darkei shalom" (to keep things peaceful).
And example is about doctors: it is forbidden for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jewish patient - but, just to keep things peaceful, that prohibition is lifted. But, if someday "the Jews have the upper hand" - why then, then a Jew won't have to degrade himself by treating a gentile.
Jewish practice is packed with these - and one of the problems at the moment in Israel is that there are influential rabbis saying: "hey, the Jews have the upper hand. This. Has. IMPLICATIONS!" - and have been handing down laws and instructions relating to that.
Rechlevsky's brilliant book points this out, and talks about the flipping of the legal system inside out. His book is of crucial importance for understanding the philosophical/theological background for everything that's going on there at the moment.
Thanks, Citizen.
I remember how the immigrants often spoke good English (or pretty good English), because they'd spent a lifetime expecting to emigrate to the U.S.
A dear friend had piles of English children's books which she carefully saved from her daughter's childhood - so her yet-unborn grandchildren could enjoy them, too. There was no question in any of their minds that it would happen, someday - even though they'd been frustrated in their attempt to break away in '90, when they made the move.
Spectacular LOL there, neighbor.
Do I look like your personal research department, Oleg?
I gave you a link. I gave you enough to start with, including an interview with a man who said he financed guards to make sure your family didn't get to a free country.
That's enough to start with. That's why I suggested tzeh ulmad.
As to asking about whether I'm a man or a woman... ROTFL.
Thank you. You & I traveled a somewhat similar path out of there.
I left in '01. I had never intended to stay that long, but originally I was not planning to leave before my son was older. As it happened, things got so bad, so racist, so crazy, that I knew I could not raise healthy children there.
How uncultured of you, Oleg, to change your argument midstream.
You accuse me of smoking something, presumably mind-altering, I cite personal communications & bring one link - now you fault my link?
I'm done with answering you. צא ולמד
You might read this story in The Marker link to themarker.com
before you laugh quite so loudly.
There was also a fairly prominent documentary about it in 1999 or 2000 or so (it was broadcast on Israeli television) and I believe there were some items written about it here and there in the Hebrew press. The English press in Israel hasn't been interested in the story.
And I don't read Russian, so I don't know to what extent it was covered there.
I hear from friends in Germany that quite a few made it there, too. The calculation (which was not wrong) that Germans would not want to be visibly expelling Jews. And there was the whole unification thing: people from the former USSR could have had contacts of various kinds in East Germany.
I've heard of quite a few living in the UK, as well. I have no numbers in either case, it is all anecdotal.
Moreover, as Oleg points out, leaving then and there was a very good idea. As the former USSR collapsed, conditions became deathly for many of the people who lived there. Health insurance was tied to factory jobs, but when the factories closed down or laid people off - they were left with nothing. No wages, no healthcare, no way to heat themselves. For a while, men's life expectancy was in the mid fifties. (This sounds awfully similar to the U.S.'s trajectory these days. I hope it doesn't get this bad here.)
Anyhow, then there was "shock therapy" and the oligarchs took over the resources; and force was used to pacify riots, both real and potential. The former USSR was not a safe and stable place to raise children.
Seeing all that, it is not at all surprising that Oleg's family (representing a cohesive demographic group of people who got a Get Out of the USSR Free card) are grateful for having been spared all that.
And they are definitely not going to volunteer to give up what they've clawed out for themselves with hard work.
And I think that's why Israel tried to force refugees into it. Refugees (goes Israel's diabolical reasoning) have their back against the wall, you can count on them to fight. Israel has built itself up on the shoulders of refugees with their back against walls, regardless of what they initially wanted. And after a few years of buy-in (trapped by "generous loans" in the 90s, by a demolished Europe and head-prices paid for immigrants in the 50s, and similar arrangements for the Ethiopian immigration) - who'd throw away those years of tears and pain and effort?
Israel is culpable for putting people in that situation, again and again, and using their desperation to steal land and all other resources from Palestinians. It is a diabolical plan.
Klaus, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the lengths to which Israel went to prevent the emigration of Soviet Jews to anywhere BUT Israel.
A documentary I saw in about '99 or 2000 had footage of the armed guards, carrying automatic weapons and standing grimly in the transit airports to prevent USSR Jews from making it to the West.
Friends who moved from from the USSR to Israel in the large wave of immigration (89-91) corroborated that. Their impression was that many people would have wanted to move to the U.S. if that were possible, or to Germany. But Israel's hiring of armed guards made that impossible.
Ah, he did a lovely job as Inigo Montoya.
My point is, though, that his job is to entertain - and hers is to lead political change. He's doing her job. She's not reciprocating.
And he - who went so far as to attend Aish Torah school for tribe-based hatefulness and scripture - speaks far more to the basic values of humanism. More power to him.
Now this man, an entertainer of some sort, speaks of his fear of signing a petition against settlements.
His position does not require enslavement, conscription, destruction, desolation. And he, unlike the woman above, is not using the people in Israel/Palestine to prop up his need for a back-up fantasy land.
That woman is despicable. For her kicks, for her pleasure of playing hide-and-go-seek in Jerusalem, how many children have been displaced? How many families torn apart?
That woman - pretending to be a progressive, negotiating with banks for the environment - cares not a whit for the actual people in the actual country. She wants to play hide and seek with her cousins there, but when she goes home and they spend years conscripted in the service of her dream - she sends money.
So it's not even for the benefit of the Israeli Jews she speaks up.
And for what? For J-Street? For two states, with ethnic cleansing for all?
What a failure of humanity.
There are many possible solutions for the problems on the ground in Israel/Palestine. NONE of them gives the American Jewish community a free pass to exile, imprison, conscript, and buy off people for a game of hide and seek. That is Just. Not. ON.
Linur's just over fifty, I think.
Her age explains that black chasm quite well - I'm about half a decade younger than she is, and I went through the same sort of public education. The chasm was masterfully placed into the soul of every schoolchild.
The point was to generate some form of national cohesion in a colony newly repopulated by immigrants from everywhere, whose highest common denominator was the name of the religion they practiced (but not the actual practice).
Being in a hurry, they used the good ol' unifying trick of building up the entire outside world as enemies.
Holocaust stories were deployed as a primary weapon against a sense of safety. Linur and I are of the generation that got forcefed fear. The very image of a train going through a forest came to mean instant threat not just to oneself, to one's entire family, nation, and way of life.
As Seafoid points out waaaaaay up at the top of this conversation, actual survivors of the Holocaust did not get much understanding or acceptance (Israelis were angry at them for not being militant enough and not defeating the Nazis without outside help. The survivors were shamed, teased mercilessly, and often treated brutally) before the Eichmann trial and before it became obvious that they were worth a pretty penny to the country in compensation monies from Germany.
But once the Holocaust was deemed useful, it was worked over and honed into a narrative that placed each and every one of the people living in the Jewish side of Israel in imminent danger of suffering the worst horrors of war.
So, a black chasm opened up in the souls of people so educated. Each person dealt with it a little differently. Many got overdosed at some point (mine was the Column Of Fire TV series, in 1981. That was when I first heard Israelis make black humor Holocaust jokes, too - it may have been something of a turning point.)
Many people decided that it was actually a realistic fear. I've seen Israeli mother discuss the exact mechanisms for hiding, if the Nazis take over and compare their children's relative Aryanness - which they figured would help keep them safe. Note that this was in the early nineties. There were no Nazis left by then. But the chasm in the soul was growing wider.
Linur is not atypical, I'm afraid. And her description is not an unusual one. The unusual part is that it was broadcast on the radio.
Thank you, Shingo. Exactly that.
Oh, that's an excellent book (or at least, the Hebrew edition is.)
I'm having a tiny bit of translator's envy right now: I'd have LOVED to translate that, or anything else by Oz Almog. Almog is a sociologist of Israeliness, and his magnum opus (to date) is an astonishing book that takes apart Israeli culture from 1967-2002 (or so) and is worth its considerable weight in insights.
You're very welcome - truly, I believe sunlight will disinfect the culture where I grew up better than any other method.
Right , I had forgotten she wrote about that.
In practice, it's a mechanism of national psyche-molding which stalks the edges of a nation campaign to induce PTSD.
And it is very, very effective.
Israel has started celebrating its six-week cycle of historical reenactment. Last week was Passover, this week (today) Israeli Holocaust Memorial day, next week Memorial Day (for war casualties, mostly soldiers) and immediately thereafter, Independence Day, then a week later Jerusalem Day, celebrating the 1967 occupation of Jerusalem's walled city.
So Israelis are thinking about the Holocaust even more than usual this week.
Will do!
I'm glad to have the opportunity to shed some light on this.
Especially 'cause my family is about half-blonde... ...I'll be sure to tell the fair-haired, blue-eyed members of my household how dangerous it is to get anywhere near Linur and her color-coded revenge fantasies.
Revenge is not only wrong, it is evil.
A desire for revenge is normal, understandable, and one of the most dangerous parts of being human. We've put society in place, and ever increasing systems of law and custom at every level, explicitly for the purpose of avoiding the perils of revenge.
I don't care what confessional faith your avengers consider themselves to be part of - wanton violence is criminal, and needs to be stopped forcefully if we desire a sustainable human society.
This has nothing to do with the caricature of pacifism you gratuitously include in your comment.
You've got the sense of the translation of those phrases, Seafoid, but the exact words of the first one ("smoch alai") mean "you can depend on me" (or "trust me").
It is so common a phrase in Israeli Hebrew that there's a whole cultural tradition deriding it: "tarbut ha 'smoch'" means "the culture of people who say 'just trust me'" - and it's not a compliment to these people.
So it's a powerful group of powerful people, seeking to recruit masses in order to out-powerful AIPAC.
Find for people who want to be used as pawns and counters in the game. Self-respecting humans will organize elsewhere.
64 years of occupation.
In 1948-1966 the Palestinians in Israel (who get called "Arabs") were under military rule. That was ended (officially) in '66, just in time for the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but many parts of that military rule remain (notably, the way that school staff is vetted by the Shabak.)
I don't see a condemnation from her. In fact, she doesn't even sign her own name to the letter - perhaps because even her milquetoast " [t]his kind of attack is counter to her personal values and the goal of civility on campus" will be deemed detrimental to fundraising.
University presidents are a money-grubbing lot. I ascribe her apparent moral cowardice to a fear of possible donor response. Shame on her for letting that "Kapo" slur stand in her back yard.
Gur did not, in fact, call the Jews involved in the UPenn BDS conference Kapos.
He went one better and called them Capos. I actually wrote a blog post about it.
You'd think he'd know how to spell his own chosen libelous claim - but, apparently, not.
Perhaps, in such a case, one should steal quietly into the office of a psychiatrist? (there was a lovely story about that in Fantasia 2000, back in the 80s.)
Personally, I'd avoid breaking in to people's homes and stores, actually, Avi.
My initial working assumption is that if I hear a statement from Israel, it's probably incorrect (either intentionally or otherwise).
I see no reason to change my assumption in this case.
Yup. PR boon for Israel. Yet another clue as to the affiliation of the perpetrators.
Only if Ayalon lives in Pi Glilot, where the infamous 8200 signal intelligence unit is stationed.
While El Al and the stock exchange are certainly symbolic for Israelis (and possibly for U.S. Jews), they don't (as far as I can tell) carry any special relevance in the mechanism of occupation nor in the daily oppression of people purportedly having full citizenship.
It reminds me very much of the choice of National Enquirer for the oh-so-scary anthrax attack, in October 2001 (just after 9/11) - the clue for that being an inside job was, for me, the choice of a target that was a significant gadfly in the U.S. but basically unknown outside it. Too perfect.
As to Kershner, I find her assessments exactly as impressive as her journalistic integrity - not at all. It seems to me that she thinks like an Israeli or American (as the "hackers" seem to be), not like a Palestinian nor like someone with solidarity for Palestinians.
That's an odd choice of targets, isn't it?
Wouldn't you think a serious hacker would put out of commission sites that have more to do with the actual business of occupation? Like, say, the pretty-much unprotected sites of settlements, the online forums where price-tag attacks are discussed, and the sites that post the Jewish-law justifications for attacks on Palestinians?
There is something very Israeli about the whole way this is done, and I don't just mean the fact that the IP addresses doing the DDOS were from Israel (which, apparently, they were, according to reporting in Haaretz.)
False flag own-goal? Lying is, after all, Israel's first weapon.
Yossi is indeed a great reporter, and a continual thorn in the side of the Israeli military spokesfigurehead's side (he asks hard questions, relentlessly), but that doesn't sound like incitement.
The lawfare group that (purportedly) set into motion his investigation on charges of incitement and sedition, wants him silenced because having someone committed to finding and publishing reports of true facts (rather than wishful theories, like great tracts of land being given to mythical forefathers by disembodied voices) will get in their way of their entire way of life.
It seems to me that someone powerful wants to chill dissent. Yossi, being a very clear speaker in a very contentious region, would make a perfect warning - he'll be vindicated, but not without being dragged through irksome procedures and forced to expend large amounts of money on his own defense. Most people around him will be unwilling to risk that - and speech of a very important kind may well be chilled.
Haaretz' reporter Barak Ravid has the most information about the case being made against Yossi Gurvitz in his blog, here.
The lawfare group that filed the spurious complaint with Israel's prosecutor appears to be accusing Yossi of sedition. Good thing he's a historian, he'll have come across the uses of such accusations.
Another case of "that thing you call Judaism in the U.S. is very different from the thing you call Judaism in Israel": are there any rabbis in Israel who own dogs? I kind of doubt it.
If I had a dollar for every time I was asked if I'm Jewish (I'm not) based on my profession (I translate Hebrew-English) I would be able to quit that profession and not get into that conversation in the first place.
French translators aren't asked if they're Catholic; Dutch translators don't get the Calvinist guilt thing laid on them. Hebrew? I keep having to remind them that there's no such thing as a Jewish gene.
I swear, I will NEVER translate Yiddish. NEVER!
(And apparently we're pretty close to being neighbors, Mooser. I'm a ways northwest of you.)
I think that the disaster came into being in 1948 - beforehand it was a threat, because the Zionists had only the power and force of a civic (and quasi-military) group. As of 1948 they wielded the full power of a state, including the power to make arbitrary laws to dispossess or imprison Palestinians - laws which were indeed made, and used.
The idea of a Jewish state is indeed disastrous, I think, for the simple reason that the religion is too large and varied to fit into the confines of statehood and must perforce collapse under the weight of its own contradictions (a process we are seeing at the moment). But the adoption of a disastrous idea by even a large group of people is not, in itself, a disaster. The EDL/BNP/JDL and their ilk can all exist in this world without being disastrous. It is only when a madman shows up in Norway, machine-guns blaring, that we cannot - as a world, as a global civilization - contain them.
Hence, 1948 counts in my mind as the beginning point of the disaster, with the years before that being merely a tense lead-up full of thugs-in-the-name-of-Judaism but not a foregone inevitability.
Israel's been a moral disaster for more than 44 years, Phil.
Military regime for Arabs was in place between 1948 and 1966. To this day the schools (inside Israel, not in the settlements) are segregated by ethnic origin, and Arabic schools have their staff vetted by the Shabak.
The Orr commission report (following the police killing of peacefully demonstrating citizens inside Israel in October 2000) highlighted a plethora of institutionalized inequality by the state and its forces, at all levels. As far as I can see, NONE of their recommendations were put into place.
Inside Israel. Not in the settlements. INSIDE Israel. This started in 1948, not in 1967.
Thanks for running this story (which the UK media rejected, to a man) - I think it's important.
Gould's posting in the US and the possibility of ties between the (now-defunct) UK charity Atlantic Bridge and the US entity (Atlantic Bridge Inc.) and the Israeli entity (Atlantic Forum, initiated by Uzi Arad after a stint at the Hudson Institute) seems well-worth investigating.
Could it be a vast and treasonous conspiracy?
The word choice in the Hebrew report in Haaretz hints that the offices are in a residential building, and that the attack constitutes a threat on people residing there.
And, as was suggested on Twitter, it seems highly unlikely that the same police force that attacked activists in Anatot would give any kind of serious energy to investigating this sort of thing. After all, no one was hurt...
Probably not Yossi Shushan, 'cause it says "Yossi M." rather than "Yossi Sh." :-)
A go-to source for all things UK is Craig Murray's blog.
Here's his latest post on that subject: link to craigmurray.org.uk
Also, Stephen Newton's reporting on this subject: link to stephennewton.com
I've done a tiny bit of digging into it, and discovered that there are several "Atlantic Bridge" organizations: Atlantic Bridge (in the UK, now disbanded), Atlantic Bridge USA Inc. (in the US; it's a tax-exempt charity), and "Atlantic Forum for Israel", which seems (according to Wikipedia entries) to involve a lot of the same people, but was started by Uzi Arad (former general, I think), following a stint at the Hudson Institute.
I fondly hope that the scandalous - and possibly treasonous - scheming will hop across the Atlantic over this convenient bridge. If things are as they appear (and they may or may not be), there is a vast conspiracy aiming to keep the world at war constantly, for the benefit of profiteers.
Representing Israel is what's reprehensible.
Sarah Besbes is courageous and honorable.
I entirely agree with you, Dan. In what way was Israel not an aggressor in the '67-'73 period?
I'll venture a guess: everything it was doing couldn't be "voiced" then.
This is in living memory, distinctly in living memory. What actually was going on in '67-'75 or so? How many homes demolished (*by* vile Israel), how many settlements built, how much pure destruction was wreaked in those years, when Israel was still sowing the devastation it is now reaping?
Time to hit the history books - before the history books hit back.
The quote from Goldstein's mom encapsulates the problem with what American Jews are trying to do. The mom says: "It makes me feel absolutely terrible when you stridently voice criticisms of Israel."
Let's unpack that: it's not that she disagrees with the criticism. It's not that she's engaging with the actual argument: no. It's that there is a tribe-wide taboo against SPEAKING any criticism.
And the taboo is enforced by an odd hostage-taking mechanism: the mother holds herself hostage, and if her daughter "voices" (SPEAKS, damn it!) any criticism of Israel, the daughter will have "made her feel terrible".
Bit of a hideous guilt-tripping mechanism, there.
This was the exact argument made by the Port Tosnwend Jewish community when I was part of making a bid for our Co-op grocery to join BDS. People were disgusted that the subject was even being discussed (and said so to us, to the Co-op Board, to the local newspaper) - and then came, as a group, to the Co-op Product Review Committee to tell us how much they were all crying (implication: how much we all MADE THEM CRY).
The guilt-trips booked by these weak-spined wannabe-liberals are being used in order to prevent any conversation about the ongoing destruction of Palestine, the land grabs, the displacement, and the daily killing of Palestinians.
Truth and reconciliation would be a good idea. But they'd have to start with truth, not silencing.
Wait, is that vile excuse for a human being blaming the Iraq war on his then-infant daughter?
Is that going to stand in a court of law? "Sorry, your honor, I helped lie a nation to war because that little baby girl _made me do it_"?
I do declare, that beats the whole discredited only-following-orders defense.
Also, the document for Bronner is made by "Elie". Possibly this guy?
link to lonestar.co.il
Moreover, the CV for Bronner is still there.
link to lonestar.co.il
Henry's list is exhaustive, but I'm here to plug the iSi - it's great, and we've been using one for years, very happily.
Talking about it (incessantly, and well after having left the religion - which has a big chunk of the problem) has gotten me just about nowhere.
I've been vilified as a troll, dismissed as "overly emotional" and "overly idealistic", told that I am a self-hating Jew (I am neither self-hating nor a Jew), and my particular favorite: I was told that I am a crypto-anti-Semite.
That "crypto-anti-Semite" is a such a beauty! How can one fight charges of being a crypto- anything? Obviously, since it's a "crypto" form, it's encrypted from me, as well - so, what am I to say?
I decline to be silenced, but by now, anything I say meets glazed eyes (if I'm lucky) or drawn swords (if I'm not).
There are none so deaf as those who will not listen.
Not one person would answer that question honestly.
However, Ben Gurion knew about the holocaust. He ignored the report because it was stated in Yiddish - which he referred to as "a jarring jargon".
Zionism is not, as far as I can tell, a particularly positive force for Jews. Not in the way it treated Jewish dialects (Yiddish, Ladino, etc.), not in the way it treated the existing traditions and communities of Jews who moved to Israel, not in the way it has entrenched itself as a modern-day Sparta, where every (Jewish) child born is destined to be a soldier, nor in the way it refuses any kind of practical resolution to its 63-year-old genocidal ethnic cleansing problem - which pits each civilian against a large and appropriately angry multitude of dispossessed human beings.
Even for parochial tribalists who measure every possible action against the crooked standard of "is it good for the Jews?" that should be enough to make a case against Zionism.
Unfortunately, thinking seems to be overly hard for a lot of people. Alas.
The map in her tweet doesn't seem to acknowledge the occupation in any way.
People objecting to BDS seem to think that it's a whim, or a way of punishing Israel, or just an angry move.
It is none of those things. It is a response - to a call put out by Palestinian Civil Society (numerous organizations inside Palestine). The call is not to do any of the silly things that the sad excuse for a rabbi recommends. The call is specifically to boycott Israeli products, divest from investments in Israel, and impose sanctions on Israel - until a specific list of demands is met.
That's why the "why don't you also boycott China?" arguments are spurious. If Chinese Civil Society calls for a boycott, I'll consider it.
If Palestinian Civil Society were to ask that I stop using computers, I'd consider that on its merits. They didn't.
It behooves those of us who have heard the call to refrain from breaking solidarity, same as we would with any other industrial action or civil society action. It's not about *JEWS*, it's about Israel.
The Hebrew headline mentioned only "sin", which strikes me as an important statement. Sin? Doesn't that ignore human laws and customs and leave things in the realm of divine rules.
The problem with doing so is that the divine laws are a) outdated bye several millennia, and b) include an implied contract with the deity, whereby if the rules are followed - various favors will be granted in return. This has not ended well, historically (see: destruction of temples 1 & 2, and series of wannabe messiahs.)
I kind of can't resist revealing the Hebrew meaning of the phrase Anglo-Saxon (transliterated into Hebrew): someone who comes from an English-speaking country. Generally used to describe Jews who came from the U.S.
Your best bet for that is your local mycological society. Second best would be asking the local extension offices of your state u (the same people who give instructions about preserving foods.)
And mushroom foraging is absolutely, wonderfully delightful. It's like getting gifts from the world as you walk through it, or being on first names basis with nature. Fungal foraging for the win!
Who is the readership for the Atlantic?
ואידך זיל גמור
The function of journalism is to enhance shareholder value.
This is a broken profession reflecting a broken culture.
I was very heartened to see Abir Kopty's #Tent48 part of the encampment (via Twitter). I think it was well-received.
BDS is a crucial support for Palestinian civil society. It will also help Israeli protesters apply pressure on Israel's government, but that is just a welcome side effect and not the reason that it is right to commit to BDS.
In a way this feels like the pivotal days of F.W. De Klerk's rule, with things going very fast and history applying much-needed pressure. If Netanyahu becomes Israel's De Klerk and gains historical importance for that reason - so be it.
I glad to say you'd lose your bet. I've been discussing this (at length) with various protesters in Israel, and at least some of them have been committed to the struggles in Bil'in, Nebi Saleh, Al Arakib, and Sheikh Jarah (to mention a few.
Is that a mainstream position? No. But what we may possibly be seeing now is a chance for a broad restatement of the principles underlying the state. And if there *is* such a broad restatement, we may possibly see a restatement along the lines of equality for all.
That's a lot of hedging and "may possibly" and hopefulness, I know. But up until July 14th I had seen no way forward but an ocean of blood. Now I do see a possible way forward. I will seize that hope, for now.
Dan, you've got it exactly right.
(I was traveling this weekend, and missed the DK travesty.)
Matthew Freud's religion means nothing
The fact that he has a PR firm - and that one of his other famous relatives is Edward Bernays, father of the "science" of propaganda and inveterate liar-for-gain - *that* matters.
Religion??? I couldn't care less. Bernays is directly liable for my mother's death (smoking-induced lung cancer; Bernays was instrumental in making women's smoking socially acceptable in the U.S., using Freud's insights to lie people into submission), and was involved in lying nations into war more than once. If a Freud touches it, whatever it is needs to be discarded with the other toxic waste.
He's apparently a big part of the Tel Aviv GLBT clubbing scene. That part, at least, seems to have been adopted from his real life.
The NYT had it as "Zippy" rather than "Zizi". Being a professional pedant (translation requires it...) I just wanted to keep the distinction between Zippy & Zizi.
I see the name confusion as yet another piece of the puzzle. I don't know where it fits, though.
Oh, and there is no way that "זיזי טריפו" could legitimately be translated from Hebrew as "they dream". They dream would be "הם חלמו" or some variant on that.
Well, you know what people say about Hollywood.
All the Hebrew sites have it as זיזי טריפו... ...but what's another identity confusion in this story?
I'm pretty sure his club is Zizzy Trippo (although I'd have spelled that Zizzi Tripaeu... it has a French ring to it.)
Oooh, he's in keyboard drag!
FWIW, a television report about the Za'atar-collectors is how I found out about the existence of the spice - in the early 1980's. The ban was in place at that time, too, and Israeli "inspectors" would go out into the fields and harass Palestinian gatherers.
While the duties in both positions are middling-unpleasant, but you have to do one out in the heat & dust, the other in an air-conditioned bus.
The A/C versus sleaze curves intersect at about 22C and after that the sleaze loses every time.
One of the irritating things (to me, anyhow) about the program is the way the Israeli conscript soldiers are diminished from humans into props, for the entertainment (and hopefully "romance", by which they mean rutting) for the uber-entitled youngsters.
Let me unpack that: the Israeli youths are conscripted, trained, and become theatrical objects for the titillation of the Birthright-trippers. What's in it for them? Well, it's a lot more fun than oppressing Palestinians! So they have a vested interest in titillating Americans *really well*. And hey, maybe there will even be a romance, which is suitable for the hormone-inundated, bored-to-tears young adults in the Israeli army.
If it were not a conscript army, so be it. But to steal two-three years of they own citizen's lives to cast them in the role of playthings to foreign would-be donors? How vile of the Israeli government. Just another aspect of its total disregard for all humans under its control, its cynical instrumentalization of people.
I am - yet again - disgusted with Israel.
Update! Israeli journalist Yossi Gurvitz has obtained a response from the Israeli Army spokesperson about this video. The Israeli army categorically denies that Ofan is a soldier in its ranks and that the video is a provocation.
Here's Yossi's commentary, which distances the military from the Jewish-supremacists, and makes clear just how crazy those Jewish-supremacists are.
Netanya has quite the reputation for being a mob headquarters, with Russian & French gangs on the ground there.
Between that and an incredibly lackadaisical attitude about safety regulations, it looks like the explosion has nothing to do with the broader issues of the Middle East.
Work-fatigues, not their finery. The existence of the beard and sidelocks and the length of the hair are kind of unusual, but maybe they're allowed to keep those.
There are indeed. That's actually tragic, because the ones who are *not* nutcases were lured across the border into the Occupied Palestinian Territories by a combination of lifestyle promises and soaring housing prices inside the 1948 territories.
The thing is, once they bought into the whole settlement paradigm (because that's the only place they could afford land), they start responding as if someone is threatening their homes. Because someone is. The fact that the Israeli gov't stole the land from the Palestinians before selling it to the lifestyle-settlers is glossed over in the memories of the lifestyle-settlers. They feel that they ought to be within their rights to trust their own government. They were not, of course.
Transcription & translation via @amirshal, video link initially via @noamr, confirmation via @itamars.
This was a full-on twitter-based cooperation, and I got to edit the translation and send it it.
Now, how'z about them racists???
I found that I can't talk while reading. I swivel my chair around so my back's to my screens (plural. Source & target language screens.)
Maybe I'm odd, but if I'm going to spend my time talking, I want to *be* there for the conversation. Otherwise, why bother?