Rechavia Berman – GangstaYid

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Neither Two, Nor States, Nor A Solution

Posted by: on: August 3, 2013

The Holy Mideast Peace Process merry-go-round (the second longest running act on earth, the only one older being the occupation it pretends to be solving) is off for another spin. While the POTUS gets to largely keep his personal distance from the mess, he’s still invested to some degree. since Kerry’s prestige, or what’s left of it, is definitely laid on the line here, some of the White House’s is too. And while the US doesn’t have the ability to shape events that it once did, it still has enough clout that most media that wants to be recognized as “serious” has to take the charade seriously. So, let me break down why not only will these talks go no-where, but even if they did it would not lead to any good.

I’m betting you’ve heard all about how the most Netanyahu will be willing to give is still far from the minimum Abbas will be able to accept. Yet the counter for this argument is that the greatness of the opportunity will be forced upon our Bibi, and he will switch the recalcitrant Jewish Home (Settler-religious) party for Labor in his ruling coalition, and pass a deal that will actually result in something the majority of the world would be willing to call a “Palestinian State” and declare the whole bothersome business dealt with, moving on to other crap that needs attending to around the globe.

Further, intimate some reporters, Netanyahu realizes it’s his only way to keep the PM position (without the entire world letting Israel know it’s closed for business till a change in management happens) is to make some kind of deal happen this time, and he is even willing to do what Sharon did and leave the more right-wing-wing of his own Likud party behind and start a new party.

All this, we’re being told, will combine to align the stars as they were in 1977 and 1991-93, and force a real change in the ground rules. A new reality markedly better than the one preceding it.

Fine. Let’s grant that scenario, not even try to explain why it won’t happen. Not even go into whether residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (get to that in a sec) were really better off before Oslo. Flags, trumpets, ceremony galore and even a nice lil wave of Palestinian ex-pats flooding Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, saying “It’ll never be my grandfather’s ancestral home in Yaffa, but let’d build some kind of Free Filastin. Yalla.

Remember Gaza?

First, as promised, there’s the pesky lil problem of Gaza. Sure, Israel would love to cement the land-locked “free” West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip being totally and permanently separate, but it ain’t gonna hold. a) there’s too much connection between people in both places and b) Even assuming the “Dafawis” (Palestinians from the WB) give up on their sea-side brethren, anyone thinking the most densely populated place on earth (the Gaza Strip of course) can be kept forever under a boot like that without exploding is ignorant of the basic dynamics of the world.

So as promised not two but three different political entities: Israel, “Free Palestine” and blockaded Hamas-stan. I think that makes three. So the “Palestinian Problem” (remember when it was the Jewish Problem?) isn’t solved, it’s merely sliced a bit thinner and painted different. And in the spirit of “not gonna even”, I’ll forgo a long explanation about why land-locked, mineral-poor “Palestine” in the West Bank will not really be a “State” but always a glorified autonomy, unless and until it merges with Jordan in a post-Hashemite reality. So only one actual sovereign and viable state.

So far, this was easy. The “Solution” part of the promised trifecta takes more words to explain.

Israel’s other Arab problem

You know who gets screwed the most here? Israel’s citizen-Arabs. The “’48 Arabs.”

As we speak of improving relations between Israelis and Palestinians occupied since 1967, Israel is implementing a policy regarding some of its own Palestinian “equal citizens” that is unmatched in its aggression since the rough and tumble martial-law years of Israeli history’s early third so far. I’m referring to the Prawer plan, which calls for the removal of 30-40 thousand Bedouins in Israel’s south, from one part of the Negev to the other, to be packed from dozens of small utterly rural types of dwellings into the 7 shantytowns Israel has created for the Bedouin population in the 1970’s, into which about half of all Bedouin citizens have since chosen to move. The other half prefer a more country style of living, and since they were already herded into a much denser area than their grandparents used to occupy before the establishment of Israel, they figure said state can and should just leave them be and recognize the few dozen little villages they’ve sorted themselves into since said herding by State.

But the State says no. Although the Bedouins are 25-30% of the Negev’s population, and although the number of of villages (places smaller and less urban than a “town”) for Jews in the Negev is well over 50, the government will only tolerate 11 such for the Bedouin population – the eleven recently-recognized villages in the Abu Basme regional council. How recognized are these eleven? Most still don’t have electricity or running water, and in some attempts to build even makeshift schools are met with SWAT teams and tear gas. The other several dozen thousand Bedouin folk live in places slated for destruction and forced removal.

Now, Israel’s advocates will tell you that there’s compensation involved for those made to relocate, and some cash (about $100M) even slated for enlarging the seven Bedouin towns to which these Bedouins are to be relocated. True, but without even getting into whether the compensation (and the harsh terms for those who don’t take it within a certain time-frame) are fair, there are still two major problems:

1) As stated above, Bedouins (a term roughly used here as equivalent to any non-Jewish , Arab-speaking citizen living south of the Hebron-Gaza line) make up about a third of the Negev’s population. Despite this, they are already only allowed to live in a small corner of it, and have less than one half their proportionate municipal area. True, in the category “local municipalities” (places smaller than a city but densely populated and urban to suburban in nature) half are Bedouin. But there’s only one Bedouin city to more than ten Jewish ones in that area and only 11 places smaller and more thinly-populated places than a town for Bedouins compared to 70-80 for Jews.

2) These people aren’t being moved because the state needs the land for mining, or office parks, or natural reservations or anything of the sort. The state intends for people to live there – just not Arab-speaking ones. Hebrew-speaking ones. Jews. Some will say: Israel uprooted Jews too! From the Gaza Strip when it disengaged from there! Yes, true. However, that was a place Israel decided to cease to control. At least on land. It is one thing to relinquish a territory, and another to say “No, this is still totally part of my sovereign territory, and I totally intend for people to live here, but only a certain ethnicity. In fact it’s so important to me to that they live here and not them, that I’m willing to go through a massive, divisive, potentially explosive process of shipping them out and shipping them in. Instead of just recognizing them where they already are. Even though they and them are all equal citizens, see.”

So we see that Israel is refusing to create or recognize places for this population (Non-Jewish in the Negev) that are either seriously upwardly-mobile OR seriously back-country (i.e. less influential but living on more land per person). The places it does recognize for this population it under-serves and treats as a problem child at best.

And guess what? Negev Bedouins have it better than most Arabs in Israel. For the Bedouins Israel has created 7 and recognized a further 11 new places to live since its founding. For the other 75-80% of its Arab population (about 15% of the total citizenry of Israel) it hasn’t even done that. Not a single new city, town or village for Arabs has been created by the State of Israel since its founding north of the Negev. There are no current plans to my knowledge to do so.

Therein lies the rub

OK, I hear you saying. That’s f-ed up and all, but where are you going with this and how did we get here from the other Israeli-Arab thing? Glad you asked:

You know how Israel in the past 15 years or so has added a condition to its terms for peace – recognizing it as a “Jewish State”? Israel managed to make peace with two of its four Arab neighbors without that particular language. It was simply recognized. But with the Palestinians, it has to be “recognize us as a Jewish State”. Now, please note that no-where does Israel officially refer to itself internationally as “A Jewish State”. Egypt, for instance, is officially The Arab Republic of Egypt. By recognizing Egypt and agreeing to formal contact and non-hostile relations with it, you’re recognizing it as it presents itself – an Arab country. Israel did not choose to call itself The Jewish Republic of Israel. Nor has the government officially announced plans to do so, despite legislative initiatives on its right flank to define Israel as “The State of the Jewish People.” So what gives?

Answer: “Recognize us as a Jewish State” is code for “In return for us giving up on direct, on-the-ground-control of the land in both the West Bank (with land swaps yada yada yada), you agree to leave us the f— alone about anything we do regarding the remaining Ay-rabs under our control.”

After the “immense sacrifice” of giving up the West Bank (lots of territory, few actual people need to move, cause, settlement blocs and land swaps and so on), the absolute last thing the Israeli electorate (the 75-80% of it that’s non-Arab) will be willing to hear is that it needs to be considerate of any more non-Jews.

If Israel is willing to show this kind of aggression towards the part of the Arab-speaking, non-Druze/Circassian citizenry that’s most willing to coexist with the state, even while dealing with pressure about the occupation and all, just imagine what it will be willing to do to Palestinians in the center and north of the country, who mostly don’t serve in the IDF (unlike most of the Bedouins, including the ones from “unrecognized villages,” who do), with a huge “get off my back, I just made historic, heart-wrenching concessions for these @#$%! people already!” card.

Backlash, not a solution

The development needs of ’48 Arabs, already flagrantly under-served, will worsen severely. The discrimination in everything from employment to government funding per capita to municipal territories will get worse for this minority… To retain even the level of inequality today will require an enthusiastic embrace of the state and all it stands for and forswearing any outstanding grievances or identity issues. And the reflexive response of most in Israel (and many around the world) will be “Let them move to the (“free” and “equal”) State of Palestine if they don’t like it.”

Why do I say this? Again: This is happening even now, as Israel is already dealing with pressure over its treatment of millions of Palestinians who aren’t even enfranchised. About a third of the Jewish electorate (at least) already supports some kind of legislation to make it clear that Jewish citizens are more central to the state. That’s before being forced to make any kind of concessions in the sacred West Bank. How does this trend not intensify tenfold after that? Even if only say a few dozen thousand (put of 600 thousand Jews living beyond the Green Line) need to be resettled, how does that not trump any and all needs of ten times that many Arabs? Defiantly so?

So we see that even if every dream of John Kerry’s comes true within the next year or two, we will only be switching a cessation of the discrimination and usurpation of roughly 60% of the total Palestinian population between the river and the sea, on roughly 20% of the land, for the increased oppression of the other 40%, over 78% of the land (the remaining being the “third state” in the Gaza Strip.)

In any event, the wound of 1948 finds no actual solution. The locus of the inflammation merely shifts. And this time, 25 years of progressively preparing the public opinion of the Jewish majority to accept the need for some sort of compromise will only serve as a backlash – equal force, opposite direction. But that’s OK. That’ll take a few more years to blow up. Neither President Obama nor Secretary Kerry will have to deal with that.

 

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Israel’s Government Presents: Ethnic Cleansing

Posted by: on: May 7, 2013

While most Israelis were preoccupied with their army’s attacks in Syria, with the harsh budget, and with the royal family’s extravagant trip to China, something much worse sneaked under the radar: On Monday, Israel’s government passed a resolution, based on the infamous “Prawer plan”, that calls for the forced evacuation (i.e. ethnic cleansing) of some 40 thousand Bedouin citizens of Israel from their homes in the southern Negev region.

Supporters of the plan like to talk about Bedouin “incursions” on public and private land in the Negev. Answering this requires a brief history lesson: In 1948, the leadership of the embryonic State of Israel approached the leaders of the Bedouin tribes within the proposed borders of the state with a proposition: You, the Bedouins, refrain from joining the fight against us or helping our enemies in any way, and in return we Jews, after we win, will honor the status-quo regarding your grazing, living and annual migrating lands. The Bedouins faithfully kept their end of the bargain. In return, the natal State of Israel stabbed them in the back, refused to allow those of them who fled the battles to reunite with their tribes, and evacuated those who didn’t flee from the vast majority of the Negev into a small triangle of land around the city of Beersheba.

Despite this betrayal, most Bedouins became loyal citizens, and many of them serve in the IDF, especially as scouts of matchless skill. These are the facts, so don’t give me any “incursion” crap. Yes, Bedouins tend to make light of real estate and zoning laws (which naturally are made for the benefit of non-nomads). These violations can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis through the courts, and not by racist collective punishment. Furthermore, all the acreage ever illegally appropriated by Bedouins since the inception of the state pales in comparison to the vast areas stolen from them in the early fifties.

Now the Biberman-Bennett-Lapid government seeks to outdo that treachery, and expel tens of thousands of citizens from their abodes. Why? Because it wants to settle Jews in their stead. Such an act has a name under international law. It is called ethnic cleansing, and it is second only to genocide in the list of crimes against humanity.

This may pass quietly. Bedouins are famous for theןר long memories when it comes to grudges. They are perfectly capable of swallowing the bitter pill now only to retaliate in several decades, when it will hurt the most and seem to come out of the blue. But somehow, I doubt it. Resentment over state discrimination within the Bedouin community is close to boiling over as it is and this repugnant step, which is expected to easily pass muster in the Knesset, could well be the last straw that ignites a Bedouin Intifada.

And if that happens? Israel and every last one of its citizens who stood by will have richly earned it. Let every bulldozer driver know, upon arriving to demolish a family’s home, that the bullet in his brain will be utterly deserved. Let every policeman backing up that driver know that he has honestly come by the crowbar to the cranium. Let each and every one of Israel’s ministers most sinister know that if they end up like the odious Rehav’am Ze’evi, that will be nothing but poetic justice.

And those who want justice without bloodshed? Let them form a human wall to block the larceny. Maybe when the racists see that their plan will cost Jewish blood as well, they will have second thoughts. It’s not at all certain, but it’s all we have.

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But Where Is Bibi’s Bomb?

Posted by: on: October 2, 2012

 

Once the ripples of laughter had died down from the smash success of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Road Runner special reboot production, It was only a matter of time till the question begged itself: Why would Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office run the obvious risk of ridicule in order to make its point in this way? By “in this way” I mean that even as we accept the wisdom that says “Hey, he got it talked about”, we must also accept upon further reflection that a less ludicrous choice of prop would still have had  a theatrical effect and gotten  mentioned – without any of the weakening of one’s message. You know – the weakening that comes from being openly declared ridiculous, and from subconsciously rendering your deathly-serious topic synonymous with cartoon connotations.

Bibi’s staff is stuffed with American backgrounds (in addition to his own). It is utterly impossible that no one there heard “beep-beep! Vrooooom!” in their minds as soon as they saw what the boss was schlepping to the big speech. I know his office is all kindsa dysfunctional, but I doubt it’s to  the point where no-one can say anything about something like this. So they knew the risk and decided to go ahead with it.

Then why? What was so important that the Prime Minister’s office was willing to not only endure a shit storm of scorn but purposely create it? Not the Iran thing. We’ve already disproved that. Give up? Look in the Negev, the south of Israel. No, not our own non-NPT-participatin’ nuclear facilities. A bit west of there. A place currently named Umm al-Hiran.

My homie and top notch journalist Noam Sheizaf already cooked the story down to the lean bare nitty, so read that and come back for a sec.

Back? Those of you that are just about facts and analysis have my blessing to bail here and spread the word. For those that want my take as well, I’mma be brief:

Any adult who moves into any sort of settlement built on the ruins of the village of Umm Hiran is a legit target for reprisal by force. Yes I’m talking about the dread, naughty, oh my we must never “take the law into our own hands”. I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about JUSTICE. It’s the law that’s doing this evil thing. And no, just because the king takes the poor man’s ewe – a second time, for fuck’s sake – doesn’t make it right. All you bible-thumpin’ ardent Zionists should take a note there. (2nd Samuel, 12:3, in case you need it. )

Once again: ANYBODY participating in this theft, whether as propagator, executioner or beneficiary and recipient of stolen goods is a legitimate target for reprisal. Those that want to be angels have my utmost respect, but I’m talking of mere humans here. It’s not a threat, either, but merely a prediction and a statement of simple morals. I wish I could say promise I’d fight alongside the Abu al-Qian clan when the dozers come. Chances are I won’t be there, but I’d argue to exonorate anyone charged with anything less than causing permanent disability or death in reprisal of this.

Yeah, I said it. Charge me with incitement, motherfuckers. I double dare you.

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Willard The Dullard and The Glorified Numbers-Runner That Could

Posted by: on: August 6, 2012

Oh Mitten, kitten, what ARE we gonna do with ya? More on that in just a sec, but never mind that right now! Kind words were bestowed upon a certain book faithful readers of this irregular fine and friendly feature may have heard of. It may have taken a few weeks for the first review to clear the bowels of a large media organ, but we couldn’t have hoped for a better one.

“Skewering [Israeli] policy with moral clarity and discomfiting honesty”

“[Israeli Dissidents] offers plenty for more keyed-in readers. […] many of the articles are well-researched, magazine-length pieces of hard-hitting journalism — usually providing far more detail than the mainstream media.”

“Idan Landau’s article on the troubling relationship between the US military industrial complex and aid to Israel is a must-read for anyone interested in the international dynamics that fund the violence here.”

“Landau’s articles on Israeli policies in East Jerusalem’s Silwan and the Jordan Valley are illuminating and incisive condemnations of the occupation’s bureaucracy that will surely leave its apologists speechless.”

There’s more, but my readers be quick on the uptake so y’all get the drift by now. Mightily pleased, although I am willing to lay good money that the one about typical snarky blog posts was directed at someone I know from around the way in the mirror… but I don’t care. As long as Idan’s work gets credit, and the rest of the authors are favorably mentioned, I’z a happy trooper.

So read the whole thing, then read the book if ya haven’t already, and see if you agree with the kind Mr. Davis, whom you should follow for informed ME stuff and general intereting-ness (Yeah it’s a word. I just said it.)

Sales spiked, btw, after the review, but we need more coverage. If you work for a media organ with serious reach or have a following of sufficient size and think the book deserves exposure, please do what you can, and the blessings of the Goddess be with you.

But enough about Israeli Dissidents and its glorious march for now, and let us turn our eyes to the pilgrim’s progress. By now you’ve all heard about the Romney camp’s trifecta of gaffes in England, Poland and the Holy Land. But for those of you who rely solely on me for incisive commentary (bad choice btw. Always vary your intel), I will repeat some of the salient points about the erroneous and offensive remarks Dullard made, mention a the leading explanations for them and offer one I haven’t seen elsewhere as of yet.

Willard, as you may recall (that’s his actual name. Mitt is a middle name), unburdened himself of a certain, um, deterministic worldview, if not a an outright bigoted one, when he said that

“I was thinking this morning as I prepared to come into this room of a discussion I had across the country in the United States about my perceptions about differences between countries. And as you come here and you see the GDP per capita for instance in Israel which is about 21,000 dollars and you compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority which is more like 10,000 dollars per capita you notice a dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States. […]

[Romney then alluded to a point made in “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” a book by former Harvard professor David S. Landes:]

“Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things. One, I recognize the hand of providence in selecting this place.”

Let’s parse this, shall we?

The standard bearer of the Republican party, when asked (by himself) to name the two key causes for the economic disparity between Israel and its occupied Paltustanian Authority, names “culture”, and “Providence”

So:

  1. The reason Israelis enjoy a higher standard of living is that they have the more success-oriented culture, and
  2. God likes them better.
    .
    Now, just to set the record straight, and withholding my usual invective, this pitifully simplistic analysis omits a few key elements:1) Israel controls all of the Palestinian territories. The sham of the Oslo-era A, B and C territories notwithstanding. Israel controls everything that goes in or out of “Palestine” and levies a hefty price for allowing things through. Where imports from Arab countries  (which don’t have trade with Israel but will gladly sell to Palestinians) might adversely impact sales by Israeli manufacturers, they are seldom allowed. Security, you see. Just an example.
    2) Israel controls ALL of the resources of “Palestine” – be they mineral or ethereal. Israel controls the airspace, the frequencies, the bandwith, etc. All that invisible stuff necessary for progress these days.
    3) This deserves its own entry: The WATER (which, even when pumped from under Palestinian land, costs a Palestinian 20 times as much as an Israeli.) Israeli and Palestinian have neighboring enterprises, equally dependent on water. Which of them will more easily turn a profit? The one with the superior (kleptocratic) culture, of course! Not even going into the intentional dehydration of entire areas of “Palestine”. Just on the economic competitive level.
    4) In fact, Israel controls the very soil. Israel operates almost all the quarries, and 94% of the soil and rock quarried in “Palestine” is used in Israel or in the settlements. (Israel’s vaunted beacon-of-the-rule-of-law High Court ruled this perfectly OK, since the Palestinian economy benefits by Palestinians working in the quarries). 

    I mean, just look at all the construction on this side, and over there (as Jon Stewart’s correspondent put it so well) they just choose to live in rubble! Clear case of culture inferiority. Nothing to be done about it

    We’ll stop here, though there is of course much more.     It’s amazing how when you control everything and anything a people do, make them pay 20 times more for their own water, systematically displace significant little chunks of them all the time, and don’t even let them use their own rocks and dirt for construction – those people suddenly don’t seem to have the right “culture” to compete.

     

     

     

     

     

So no, Governor. It’s not all about culture, unless by “culture” you mean rank, vicious, fanatically-inspired colonialism. In fact, if that 10K GNP number wasn’t inflated by donations, it would represent a WILD success under the circumstances. Just as Israel’s Olympic athletes are mostly HUGELY successful when you factor in how little is invested in them. Israel ranks in the absolute cellar of investment in sports per GDP. In the entire world. Countries as developed as New Zealand and as troubled as Zimbabwe invest more. For an Israeli to make an Olympic swimming final means that had his parents relocated to ANY first world country, he would have undoubtedly (barring seriously bad luck absent from the Israeli iteration) had  a medal. For an Israeli to win Bronze is a sure gold for the exact same talent in any OECD country and quite a few more. A GNP/GDP of $10K under the utterly kleptocratic occupation would be astonishing.

Even as it is, there is nothing to worry about the Palestinian “culture” when it comes to making money. Palestinians, and my friends of that nation will forgive me if I mention this, are admiringly / disparagingly known as “The Jews of the Arab World”. Their business acumen built the Gulf countries. Palestinian Hi-Tech, while not as dominant as Israel’s (much of Israel’s Hi-Tech juggernaut is militarily-fueled, btw),is quite nimble, inventive and altogether admirable – especially when it has to operate under uncertain power supplies, at times. Governor Romney would know that had he bothered to make an even perfunctory visit 10 miles away.

So why did Romney – why was he even allowed by his handlers – to say such outrageous, offensive, blatantly ignorant and compromising things? I mean, forget the Israeli issue; Are you REALLY courting the crucial Hispanic vote (Hello, Sunshine State!) by saying that the US’s advantage over Mexico was a sheer result of culture? Aren’t you like half from Mexico or some shit, dipshit? (oops, sorry. I’ll try harder).

The obvious answer, much discussed, is Sheldon (the glorified little numbers-runner that could) Adelson, the man who is determined to out-Soros everyone for all time and sink a rumored $100M (either total or on top of eight figures he sunk into Newt) in the upcomin’ in order to unseat the sitting President.

We’ll get to Sheldon and his troubling and innovative role in the upcomin’, but first my own angle, offensive as it may sound to some truly decent and interesting acquaintances, as to why Romney found it so easy to say such an unnecessarily damaging thing.

Mormons are Philo-semites. It’s a thing with them to feel affinity and admiration towards the Jewish People. Joe Smith intentionally or impromptu-like modeled the forced immigration of his church on the Exodus, and no Christian sect save the Jesuits stresses learning for learning’s sake like Jews do. This is not accidental (Ken Jennings was not a fluke), nor overlooked by Mormons.

Sometimes this admiration can feel icky to Jews. Not just myself, most thinking Jews I know from a broad spectrum of opinions find it anywhere from tedious and perplexing to downright creepy at times, depending on the variety they ran into. Some of the non-thinkers are happy about it, while some of the non and thinkers alike have enough residual yid/yahudi instincts to politely accept whatever benefit but be internally wary.

Oh, and how could I forget. The mormons claim some kind of genetic or cultural link to ancient proto-Judaism because according to their mythology, around 600 BCE a Judean priest (or Levite??) named Lehi escaped the impending doom (fall of the first temple in 586 BCE) and tumbled all the way to the new world, where… (read the Book of Mormon for the rest).

Just wanted to mention this, because I believe it IS a factor. And now to THE factor:

So Adelson wants to invest as much money as he feels like to unseat the President. This, in itself, is legal and one may argue even legitimate. Odious as some (cough, cough) may find it, “Citizens United” is the law of the land in the US. The desire to unseat a sitting President in itself is most legitimate and needs no excuse. Most of the time I’d like to unseat the current bastid myself, if I could see anyone better to the right of of the sadly long-shottish Bernie Sanders (love ya, you curmudgeonly Yankee geezer).

What makes Adelson – and Willard’s subservience to him – unprecedented (on top of his unprecedented meddling in Israeli politics) is that Adelson’s chief motivation for this largesse is the benefit of a foreign power. Think about it. It’s one thing to say “I’m a businessman, my primary political concern is the benefit of my business, so I’m gonna do my tootin’ darndest to make sure there’s a President whose budgets and policies benefit me and mine”. This is what is called “the pursuit of happiness”. It is quite another to say “My chief concern is the benefit of a single FOREIGN nation and I’m going to pour in amounts that have never been poured on behalf of a single issue, to the benefit of that nation and not even pretend to be motivated by US interests unrelated to the welfare of that nation.

Of course, Adelson apologists would insist that he is the perfect patriot who just happens to see US and Hawkish-Israeli interests perfectly aligned. However, those not emotionally invested in Israel – and, shocking as it may sound, not everyone is or can be expected to be – should see that for what it is. There is no such thing as absolute accord between the interests of any two countries.

There are laws against this, and for good reason. Adelson eludes those laws because he is an American citizen and is serving as a willing, voluntary and (as far as anyone can prove) uncoordinated agent on behalf of the current Israeli administration.

However, Adelson-Romney’s conduct bodes very very ill for the American electoral system and American sovereignty. Even if you like what Adelson is pushing for, you can’t seriously believe that there won’t be an Arab Adelson. A Chinese one. A Russian one. (Yo, Mikhail Prokharov, kagdela?)

It also bodes extremely ill for American Jewry to have Israel used so blatantly as a wedge issue, by a man like Adelson. An entire generation of democrats is learning to despise both. Israel’s greatest success over the years was using its influential American minority to attain true consensus-level in American politics. It was never a wedge-issue before because differences were truly negligible. They still are, so the Republicans are going back to their religious roots and thinking up auto-de-fas.

IN FOUR YEARS, OBAMA HASN’T VISITED ISRAEL ONCE!!! screams the Adelson campaign. In 12 years, neither Reagan (Gipper on the Deck! Atten-shun!) nor Bush Sr. (still, a Republican) visited Israel once. So? Nixon did, but only in his second term, and Ike didn’t, and we weren’t around for Hoover. Mmkay?

WTF? Is Adelson insane? Never mind Romney, who’s nauseatingly willing to parrot whatever his moneybags dictates, pretending that once ensconced he won’t pursue what all first-term presidents do (a second term) by the same means that got him there in the first place – only this time with actual policy and soldiers rather than just words.

Does Adelson, for all his prattling about his Jewish pride (he famously said that he regrets serving in the US military and not the IDF. However, he apparently does not regret living the US lifestyle rather than that of the object of his burning loyalty) – does this man really have so little connection to his Jewish roots to not understand how dangerous this is? That there will be terrible consequences for the most successfully integrated yet proudly distinct Jewish diasporum ever should the slightest thing go wrong, and a fall from that crucial consensual status regardless? Does Adelson see himself or his sock-puppet Bibinocchio as the Messiah, so there will be no consequence?

This, Chief Justice Roberts, is what you have wrought. Find a way to mend it, as you will be Chief for a long time to come. As an American, I cannot believe you approve.

I had lots in store to say about internal-Israeli stuff, which is also fascinating in its unraveling into hell (Remember a few months ago when it was “King Bibi”? Well, now folks be wondering what’s ailing the man and how he screwed up so badly, and in last weekend’s social justice protests there was a wonderful sign: We Don’t Want A King, We Want A Leader. The “king” was transliterated from English, as a contempt intensifier).

However, shit be getting long and I owe that stuff to my long-neglected readers in Hebrew first. So comment, share, make some goddamn noise if you learned anything from the above or think others will, and make me want to do the next one afore it get stale.

Oh yeah, y’all recollect this?  Well, seems like we gots ourselves a reader in Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen, who decided to stay on my good side and fessed up the ver’ next mornin’. Apparently Mr. Jawahari has been a very naughty and busy boy, allegedly not only being contacted by a Syrian Mukhabarat agent (plausible), but indeed enlisting with great alacrity and performing dazzling feats of espionage on behalf of his dastardly, horrid handlers, collecting data on tank counts, troops counts, locations of secret installations and whatnot.

Now, the Stasi KNOWS he didn’t do all this shit, save possibly being solicited by a Syrian intel agent. Maybe. So either They want to flip him and are pretending to go hard on him, or (more likely), they are punishing him, either for REFUSING to flip, or for simply not reporting that he was approached by the Syrian (which, had he done and had been found out to have done, would condemn his relatives on the Syrian side to a cruel and unusually grisly demise). I think he’s been allowed counsel by now, but not sure. Will endeavor to find out.

As always, Keyboard Radical and the Holyland Update are not responsible for any conceptions, illusions or sympathies misplaced along one of our tours. We thank you for flying the crazy skies. Please share and comment on your way out.

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A New Way To Break Your Cherry

Posted by: on: May 7, 2012

Y’all know the cute rite-of-passage story about the ancient Greek city of Sparta? How they were supposed to steal something without getting caught, so as to show they could be good fighters, and if they were caught they were punished, but for the operational failure of being detected and not for the moral failure of stealing?

Well, like many other things regarding ancient myths, the underlying truth is…gnarlier, shall we say. Oh sure, the young Spartan hoplite-trainee had to steal, but the real “punished for being caught” test was not to steal – it was to kill a man, or more precisely a Helot.

The Helots were the state-owned slaves of the Spartan regime. In order for all the full Spartan citizens to form that ideal “warrior society” and spend their lives from age 7-60 training for and fighting wars, someone else had to raise crops and clean the streets and the dishes and the homes and so on. Enter the Helots – or to be more accurate, enter the Doric Spartans, who around the 7th century BCE conquer the native Messenians and turn them into “Helots”.

Now, this sort of setup required some serious oppression to keep running. The Spartans’ main answer to this problem was a yearly ritual in which they would go through a ceremony of declaring “war” on the long-vanquished and enslaved population. Call it Operation Cast Helot or something. This prevented the Helot numeric advantage from becoming overwhelming, kept any rebelliousness in check and gave the Spartan fighters their famous battle-tested toughness.

The rest of the year the murder of a Helot was a serious offense, albeit on grounds of damaging valuable state property, and not due to the sanctity of life or any effete claptrap of the sort. So the aspiring young tough-guy was challenged to kill himself a Helot – without anyone seeing, so they wouldn’t be forced to punish him. This random, piecemeal slaughter also had a helpfully chilling effect on the Helots.

The Spartan model, although much appreciated by thinkers of a certain kind throughout the years, has never been precisely duplicated. That said, the notion of running wet training drills on your conquered natives is still with us, as evidenced by the latest little story about the most moral army. You know, the one from The Only Democracy[TM]

A few weeks ago, sharp-eyed consumers of the news noticed a cute little hed on YNET: Duvdevan Soldier Discharged For Kicking Bound Palestinian. Duvdevan is the IDF’s elite undercover unit. Members pass as Arabs and infiltrate organizations and demonstrations (and often incite them to violence and even instigate it). In short, at first blush it seemed like a story about the IDF reacting properly and swiftly to unacceptable behavior. And then you read the actual item.

Turns out the boys were out training in the village of Ramon. What do I mean training? Just that. Sneaking around in local garb in the village, in the middle of the night, trying to blend. Well, not a great day at the office for the boys. They were detected. See, Ramon has a pretty rampant crime problem. Folks there have a short fuse when it comes to their property, the nighttime and strangers.

So the stealthy commando kids are observed near the sheep-pen of the Shawakha family. Four Shawakhas run downstairs; One grabs a tire-iron, another a knife, a third a nice thumpin’ stick. They get to the street and the strangers are coming towards them. Rather than identify, or use their guns to deter, the Cherry Boys* keep walking right up to the local guys. When face to face, one of the commandos finally draws a gun. No warning, no “police/army/intelligence/Israelis”. One of the Shawakhas tries to grab the gun (held by a non-identifying plain-clothed thug and suspected thief) and gets shot in the thigh. Then the soldiers shoot another brother in the stomach. Then more shots are fired. Long after any kind of normal person would be declaring who they are and why they shouldn’t be resisted. One Palestinian dead, one severely wounded. One Duvdevan genius with a cut arm.

After all resistance to the boys in camouflage was subdued, and the Helo—Palestinians had their hands cuffed and their asses sat on the ground, one of the soldiers was still furious at them for not realizing he’s an untouchable, so he kicked one of them in the face. And that, to the Israeli embodiment of MSM, was the story. Soldier Kicks Coolie, Bounced From Unit. Not, say, Army Kills Local In Training Fiasco.

For THAT, the IDF (rightly) discharged him. But the practice of training on unwitting natives in this lovely and not-at-all dangerous manner – that, the IDF informed me, was done by proper procedure and after much consideration of all aspects of advisability.

Luckily, while the IDF has yet to reach the level of wisdom associated with giving a shit about what I happen to think, Israel’s veteran human rights NGO B’tselem speaks more softly but carries a bigger stick. After they sent a letter saying “y’all sure this is the way you wanna be?” the IDF about-faced and announced that its own Investigative MP unit would look into it. Uh-huh.

This ain’t the first time, either. I reported on this 2 years ago.

Then last week it turned out it isn’t just Helots they practice on. The good people of Tel Aviv noticed one fine morning that the air has a peculiar, sharp stank to it – above and beyond your normal megalopolis pollution. The authorities stalled for a good long time, playing dumb, and finally broke down admitting it was them doing some hush-hush crap. Who? What? Here the police, Enviro-Protection Ministry and Homeland Security started playing a lively round of Pass the Buck. I feel so much more protected now, I can’t even tell ya.

Finally, in other “Killin Ay-rabs and Getting’ Away With It” news:

A guy killed a Palestinian suspect he had already apprehended and bound. Claimed “his gun went off”. Court told him to his face it was unconvinced of this version. Sentence: Eight months. This is progress of sorts. William Zanzinger only got 6, and he wasn’t a uniformed fighter in the Hosts of the Lord.

Another guy, Colonel Ilan Malka, was found innocent of all wrongdoing in the piecemeal slaughter of the Samouni Family during Operation Poll Jum— I mean, Operation Cast Lead. The real rundown is over at Idan Landau’s blog, but that’s Hebrew. Long story short: IDF enters this neighborhood in Gaza, called Zeytun, takes over the compound owned and inhabited by the Samouni family, and herds all the surrendered civilians (about 100) into a 200 sq. meter space. The army in this case is a unit under the direct command of Col. Malka. He herded them. He knew they were there. Despite this, when he got reports on suspicious movement in that corner, he didn’t go “oh, that’s where i cordoned my tame civilians, lets make sure it ain’t one of them gathering wood for warmth cause they got no power”. He ordered to open fire. On several distinct occasions. Despite this, the IDF self-investigation finds nothing wrong.

There’s more to come, a quick wrap-up of the no good, very bad, not at all useful month Hasbara has had and a lot more… stay tuned.

Oh, while you’re waiting for part B – y’all seen The Hummus Enforcement Agency yet? Get your pita bread ready and go do so. Seriously.  Bon Appetit!

Oh, almost forgot: MCA, aka Adam Yauch, AKA the ballsiest Jewboy in music, passed away as most of y’all probably know. RIP, great heart.

*Duvdevan means Cherry in Hebrew.

 

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Senior IDF Chaplain: Jewish Morals Condone Wartime Rape

Posted by: on: March 28, 2012

The #2 chaplain in the IDF, who is in charge of all religious education to soldiers, answers a religious law question and comes out flatly for the right of a Jewish soldier to rape a foreign captive

 

You know how old things crop up on the Internet? Well, today something floated to the surface on the Hebrew portion of the net that may hound Israel and the IDF for years to come – if both institutions even have many years left to them.

But doomsaying aside, the public and straightforward halachic opinion issued by Colonel and  Rabbi Eyal Krim, the number two man at the IDF’s Military Rabbinate, back in the bloody days of the Second Intifada and “Operation Defensive Shield” (2002), is sure to create a storm. How big a storm will provide indications both of the current state of Israeli society at large, and of the degree to which the foreign press pays attention and gets the point.

The halachic issue in question is one known in Judaism as that of the “Pretty Woman”. The dilemma here is not whether it’s OK to fall in love with a prostitute as cute as Julia Roberts whom you hired as eye candy for a party, but something far darker.

A translation of the question (politely stated, with the tell-tale religious acronym for “with heaven’s help” at the top) and the answer by Colonel Krim, follows in full (Hebrew original here):

 

Question:

I have read on this site about [the halachic issue of] a pretty captive woman, and the relevant portions from the Torah, yet I am left with a question:

In various wars among the nations, such as World War 1, various nations fought amongst themselves, without any of them being particularly “good” or “bad” for the Jews…

But if an army were to conquer a village and rape Jewish girls there, it would have been justly considered as a disaster and a tragedy to the girl and her family.

Therefore, rape during time of war is considered heinous. So how is it that I have been told by a rabbi that “a pretty woman” is permitted, according to some rabbis, even before the process laid out in the Torah? Meaning he may first give in to his urges and lay with her, and only then take her to his home? And so on.

This seems like a contradiction. After all, if the rape of civilians during war is considered to be awful and forbidden, why should Jews supposedly be allowed?

Are IDF soldiers in our time, for example, allowed to rape girls during warfare, or is this forbidden?

Thank you.

.

Answer:

The wars of Israel – both the Mitzvah wars and the wars of choice – are Mitzvah wars. This is how they differ from the wars that take place amongst the nations of the world, between themselves.

Since war in essence is not a matter for the individual but nations war as wholes, there are situations in which the personality of the individual is “erased” for the greater good. And vice versa – at times we may endanger an entire unit to save an individual when this is required for morale.

One of the vital and crucial elements in war is to maintain the army’s fighting capacity. Thus, he who is afraid and faint of heart returns behind the war, so as not to soften the hearts of his brethren, and the emotions and needs of the individual are pushed to the side in favor of national success at war.

Just as during war the boundaries of risking oneself for others are pushed, so are the boundaries of chastity and kosher diet. Foreign wine prohibited during times of peace has been allowed at time of war to maintain the high spirits of the fighters. Prohibited foods have been allowed during wartime (according to some authorities even when there is kosher food available) in order to maintain the fighters’ fitness, although at peacetime they are disallowed.

Thus war also takes precedence over some coital laws. Although having relations with a gentile woman is a very grave act, it was permitted during wartime (under the conditions it was permitted) due to consideration of the difficulties of the fighting men, and since the success of the collective is our main object, the Torah has allowed to indulge the evil urge under the conditions specified, for the success of the collective.

 

Shalom

Eyal Krim

.

As we Yids say: Oy. I mean, where to start? With the Bronze-Age morality that sees war as a state that suspends all regular notions of justice and decency? To be fair, for that era that was advanced morality. Nobody else prohibited any treatment of war captives at all. Woe to the vanquished was the universal standard, and conquering kings gloried in the trampling of their enemies and rape of their women. The Torah said that even in war actions have consequences, and equaled the penalty of rape at war with that of rape of your neighbors daughter: You had to marry her, and you even had to give her a fortnight month to grieve for her lost family. But what was morally progressive back then is now what we godless buzzkills like to refer to as a war crime. Practiced on a wide enough scale, it can even make crime against humanity.

However, lots of blood has flown out of bodies and been buried in the mud over the millenia since, and at a slower pace, even broadly accepted standards of minimal mandatory morality have risen. Even at war. The entire aftermath and results of WW2, which incidentally featured the greatest slaughter of Jews in history, were a rejection of that notion, which was heartily embraced by the vanquished side in that conflict. If there was supposed to be one group of people that was unanimously, unequivocally against the German variety of the ultra-nationalist plague and all it stood for, it should surely have been the Jews. Or at least so one would think.

Need we go on? Krim is clearly more troubled by the act of having sex of any kind with a goya than by the notion of raping one. Then again, he is only following the inflexible logic of his creed. That IS what the Torah says. The rape is sometimes condoned but consensual relations with a heathen vagina never is.

That such views exist is not surprising. That such views are held by a high ranking military officer, one whose job is to oversee the religious indoctrination forced upon soldiers who come into combat situations in urban areas more than any other in the world, is alarming to say the least, and should lead to deep reflection on the part of Israelis who care in any way about their people’s religion.

Oh, the official response? Glad you asked. When acclaimed blogger (and personal friend, full disclosure) Yossi Gurvitz wrote to IDF Spokesperson’s “New Media” unit to ask whether these statements were consistent with IDF position, and if not what will be done regarding Krim, and how the IDF plans to deal with the possible blowback from this new revelation, he was told that his questions reflected a disrespect both towards the IDF and the Jewish religion, and that therefore the Spokesperson Unit will no longer be replying to his queries on any matter. So there.

In the 19th century, Judaism was faced for the first time in many centuries with a fundamental schism, as educated Jews who had taken advantage of emancipation laws sought to reconcile the good in Judaism with the universal values of the Enlightenment. From this drive were born the two main branches of world Judaism today: Conservative and Reform. The main difference between the two is that Conservative Judaism accepts the overall authority of the Halacha – that 1800 year-old corpus of religious law expounding on the words of the five books of Moses – while giving itself more freedom to tinker with it than is accepted in the Orthodox world. Reform Judaism, on the other hand, allows itself to simply disregard certain portions of halacha that it finds either irrelevant in the face of modern technology or outdated in the face or modern moral views.

One would think that Reform Judaism would be the natural fit for Israeli progressives. But neither Conservative nor Reform Judaism ever made even the smallest recognizable advance within any segment of Israeli society. They have always existed on the margins, discriminated against in the disbursement of religious-affairs budgets, and devoid of any political clout whatsoever (save that which the anti-clerical left was willing to throw them in order to score hits on the religious parties). Even leftists, who often say they yearn for a “humane” Judaism, don’t throng to the two main alternatives. A young Israeli humanist seeking spiritual food is far more likely to either embrace oriental philosophies or to “see the light” and realize why a creed that grants him special and irrevocable privileges is in fact the one true truth.

This is easily understandable. Both reformation movements are uniquely exile-oriented and were designed explicitly to enable Jews to integrate in societies in which they were not the majority and did not call the shots.

However, the rightward messianic and/or fundamentalist drifts of virtually all parts of Orthodox Judaism in Israel means that anyone who cares about the perpetuation of Israeli Judaism, as a faith that can be professed without being automatically suspect by any right-minded person in the world, must create the grounds for the rise of a Judaism that can maintain a by-and-large consistency with basic modern notions of human rights – even if that means devising a whole new form of Judaism, which while speaking of and to the Jew living on his ancestral land and constituting a majority, is still at least as enlightened as the best of “the nations”. Leaving the definition of free, homegrown Judaism to these retrograde troglodytes will lead to Judaism everywhere being viewed on a level akin to that of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Lord’s Resistance Army.

P.S. Yes, I totally ignored the wonderful people of Shomrei Mishpat – Rabbis For Human Rights, who with precious few numbers do great deeds to restore honor and humanity to the name of Judaism. However, those rabbis are mostly Conservative and Reform, and in any event the humanist version of Judaism has been tested at the ballot box more than once over the past two decades. It never managed to get elected to Knesset on its own.

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This Week in Israel: Thugs, Dogs and Pigs

Posted by: on: March 24, 2012

We are defending our very existence; There must have been very good security reasons; She’s a clear and present danger – but I don’t have to prove it in any way; All they want is to kill us; We have no choice

The excuses of occupation, supremacism and herd mentality never change much, nor have they in this particularly disgusting week in the JEWISH state of Israel.

In the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, protests continued unabated against the 2009 theft of the village’s spring, Ein al-Salih, despite the IDF – which abetted said theft by the settlers of Halamish – incessant attempts to intimidate them into just accepting their fate as the Chosen People’s punching bag.

Last night, Friday, marked the first time in over two weeks that the village wasn’t raided well past midnight by the IDF thugs. For 15 straight days the IDF’s brave, moral troops invaded this village every single night, waking up families, tossing their homes, and often confiscating stuff (computers and personal papers) without a warrant or without providing a receipt for the items seized. Seeing as following the Marmara incident several (brave and moral) IDF soldiers were caught looting computers, cell phones and credit cards belonging to the ship’s passengers, one can understand how the lack of a clear signed record of what was taken is cause for concern.

But the abuse doesn’t end here. I already told you last week what happened to Anan Naji al-Tamimi, and this week we got footage of the apparent theft of laptops at the home of one of the Palestinian Gandhis, Bassem Tamimi, who is currently held without charge, trial, or regular access to counsel because Israel can’t deal with his skill at organizing non-violent demonstrations. Ain’t many folks in Nabi Saleh that can get the teenagers to bottle their righteous anger and refrain from showing the invading thugs any physical defiance, thus making the army thugs show what thugs they truly are without even the excuse of kids throwing rocks.

When someone loses patience with this arrogant behavior and arranges a meeting between something heavy and hard and a ransacking IDF thug’s face, the wail will rise instantly: THEY HATE US JUST FOR BEING JEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWS.

Also from the occupied territories this week: The advent of using attack dogs against unarmed protesters, and finally this gutsy kid, who sent a kangaroo military court “judge” into a tantrum by telling him he doesn’t recognize his authority. The judge left the courtroom in a huff, warning the kid he’d screw him at sentencing. Big man, no? Most moral army.

Another lovely story from the Only Democracy this week: About 300 “fans” of the racist football club Beitar Jerusalem, following a victory by their crappy team, swarmed into the Malha shopping mall adjacent to their home field, and proceeded to beat the living crap out of about 10 Palestinian sanitation workers, yelling “Death to Arabs” and so on.

The pogromchiks quickly overwhelmed the mall security, and even the cops who were called to the scene required long minutes before they restored order and stopped the lynching.

Another lovely aspect of this little story is that while it happened last Monday, it was reported precisely nowhere in the Israeli media until Friday, and then only at Haaretz. You know how hasbara parrots love to talk about Israel’s vaunted free press? Bring this one up next time they try it. See what they have to say.

 

And get this: Despite the fact that the blue porkers were undeniably on the scene, they did not detain a single person for questioning. When asked why that is, a pigsty spokesperson replied that “no arrest or investigation took place because no complaint was filed.”

As my boy Bobby would say, bury the rag deep in your face – NOW is the time for your tears.

For one thing, of course, nowhere in world does a cop need a complaint to make an arrest or at least detain someone for questioning when the crime happens in front of their pink squashed snouts.

For another, though, and this naturally caught my eye, the claim that arrests and indictments can’t be made absent a victim’s complaint is false. I myself was convicted of “threats” against Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad (over a blog post, not heavy breathing on the phone…), who did not file a complaint with the police and whom we were not allowed to summon as a witness.

Jerusalem District PD Chief Nisso Shaham is proving that the Kahanists managed to get to him. Said high-ranking porker was marked as an enemy of the Jehovah-nazis when, during the disengagement from the Gaza Strip he was recorded saying “shit on them” regarding the militant settlers and their threats of violent resistance.

When he was appointed Chief of the J-M district, some had naively hoped that a new era had begun for a force that had been accurately dubbed “Kahane’s Police” by songwriter Chaim Cheffer back in the 80′s and hasn’t gotten a damn bit better since. The Judonazis of course raised a big ole wail when he was appointed, but as I say some had hoped Shaham was exactly the sort of guy to blow off their hostility and do his motherfucking job. Did I mention the word Naive?

So now Nisso is cowering from the feared wrath of the racist scum that populate Teddy Stadium’s east-side bleachers, and walking around the streets of Jerusalem with Satan’s spunk dripping from his rectal orifice.

And with that Santorum-like image, we shall now return you to your points of origin, which should be looking really good in comparison right about now or you should be looking deeply into relocation. The Weekend Holyland Update is not responsible for any misconceptions, sympathies or illusions that may have been misplaced on our tours. This tour has been brought to you free of charge courtesy of the pilot’s graphomanic disorder and high-horse syndrome, but feel free to avail yourselves of the “Donate” button over there. Also, you can buy my book, “Jewcy Story: How the Jews blew redemption the last time around” and get 500 fascinating years of Jewish history for the bargain price of $3.

 

P.S. The bit about “She’s a clear and present danger” refers to Hana Shalabi, a Palestinian woman who is currently on her 38th day of hunger strike, in protest of her administrative detention. Israel apparently doesn’t feel it has a case it can actually convict her with even in a kangaroo military court.  Be that as it may, it is really chilling to think that these people, who run our lives and an entire nuclear state,  really wish after narrowly dodging the bullet with Khader Adnan, to wind up with a FEMALE martyr who isn’t the self-admitted spokesperson of a terrorist organization. Israel’s only luck with the Adnan affair was that he sucked as a symbol (what with being a bigshot in a sick demented fanatic group). A young woman, pretty enough even with a headscarf, who isn’t self evidently guilty of at least membership in a banned org and who only demanded the simple right of her day in court and to confront her accusers and their claims? That shit will sell like hotcakes. Makes you wonder if the powers that be don’t actually WANT more Toulouse incidents… (Yeah, I said it. Got a problem? Speak the fuck up).


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Israel: The Bamba Nation That Worships Gandhi

Posted by: on: March 17, 2012

Shortly after Purim, Judaism’s ancient costume festival, the masks came off in a frenzy in three completely unrelated incidents – and I’m not even talking about Israel’s calculated decision to throw a match on a dormant gas keg, throwing the lives of a million of its own people into disarray and giving the other side a free calibration test.

 

First came the ludicrous decision by Israel’s Olympic Committee to throw any shred of self-respect to the wind and not simply accept an ordinary corporate sponsorship, but to make a corporate logo the official Olympic mascot for Israel’s delegation to London 2012. Perhaps so short a time after Israel’s sucker population rose up last summer against “porcine capitalism” wasn’t the best of times to try that one…The collective snort of derision caused the powers that be to about-face in under 24 hours. Pity, tho. The logo in question: (A baby in a diaper with a forelock and a fresh mouth who represents the quintessential Israeli snack “bamba” [a peanut-flavored puff thingy]) is a perfect representation of Israel in its 64th year of sovereignty.

 

Like the logo, Israel is a rather infantile nation. Like the logo, it has a one-track mind (the bamba baby for bamba, Israel for its occupied territories and its trauma-ridden rationale for choking itself on them). Like the logo, Israel is crassly commercial, mercantile and mercenary. Finally, the choice of the bamba baby is a perfect illustration of so many of Israel’s cherished and misguided narratives. You see, although bamba is indeed an Israeliana-laden word, the sad fact of globalism is that Ossem, the long-time purveyor of said peanut-flavored mush, is no longer a plucky Israeli company. It is, rather, a small division of the Nestle Corporation – a firm which, incidentally, did not escape the 1930’s and 1940’s with an unblemished record. Nuff said? So all in all, a most apt capsule of Israel’s true current essence.

 

Then came the big story of the week. Haaretz’s crack reporter Gidi Weitz uncovered that the State of Israel is currently funding the “legacy” of former Minister and transfer-advocate Rehav’am “Gandhi” Ze’evi at twice the amount of a bunch of actual fathers of Zionism and founders of the state (Herzl, Jabotinski, Ben Gurion, and Begin) combined.

 

A bit of background on Ze’evi. First, to dispel confusion, he acquired the moniker after appearing one morning at the Palmach mess wrapped in a bed-sheet, and not due to any pacifistic convictions. He was a long-time military careerist, peaking at Central Command General, where he was known for keeping a pair of chained lions at the entrance to his HQ. Years later a famed actress would claim that as a young soldier she was sexually assaulted by an unnamed famous high-ranking officer, “who thought he could fondle the girls the way he did his lions”.

 

In 1981, shortly after a notorious gangland double murder, “Gandhi” was recorded speaking on the phone with Tuvia Oshri, one of the two men later convicted of the murders. He was asked “Can you come” and answered “If you need me I’m coming.”

 

On the other hand, he was a very well-read man who spoke fabulous Hebrew and did much for the study and disciplines of history and archaeology in Israel. Politically, he is chiefly known as the first and primary advocate of “transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing, although of course called for “in peaceful ways”) as a solution to Israel’s dreaded “demographic problem.” He ended up being shot to death by a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while staying at an East Jerusalem hotel AND blowing off his security detail.

 

In numbers, Gandhi’s legacy gets about 4.9 million ILS a year. Rabin, who was actually PM and was murdered and alla that, gets around 2 million, as does the iconic Likud PM of the 70’S and 80’s, Menachem Begin. The father of political Zionism Theodore Herzl and the father of the Israeli right-wing Ze’ev Jabotinski get 250K each. So these are the express preferences of Israel today, as written in the most indelible ink there is: cash.

 

The third mask-shedding event of the week is still categorized as unproven, despite the first-hand nature of the source. Hosni Mubarak, the deposed tyrant of Egypt, states flatly in his memoirs that he used to pay Israeli politician Binyamin “Fouad” Ben Eliezer a cool $25K/month retainer as an “advisor”.

 

Now it was never a secret that Fouad was a close personal friend of Mubarak’s and an undisguised friend and advocate of Egypt within the various Israeli governments in which he served as Trade, Infrastructure, and Defense Minister. It’s also not exactly news that the guy is not completely free of any rumors of improprieties, so to speak. Still, if this is true it does set a new mark in Israeli decay, I think.

 

Finally, while all this was happening, and while the world gives itself a good close fingernail check as Syrians are slaughtered by their supposedly anachronistic villain dictator, the Israeli occupation of Palestine (the West Bank part of it) continues in full and innovative swing.

 

First to the tried-and-true methods of thuggery. You know how the IDF like to invade homes in villages all over the West Bank at 1, 2, 3 in the morning, pull everyone (including babies) from bed for a lineup, take pictures and often arrest someone for a few hours of friendly interrogation? (if you don’t know about it, you should).

 

So this week on March 11, at 01:45, our brave, brave troops raid the dangerous terror nest of Nabi Saleh – a village that’s only any trouble because settlers stole their spring with active IDF aid – and hit the home of the nefarious mastermind Anan Naji al-Tamimi. 11.

 

The resolute Israeli DEFENSE forces took Anan, blindfolded him and bound his arms, and loaded him onto a jeep. They drove a bit out of the village and proceeded to interrogate him with some “mild violence” (slaps to the back of the head) about his involvement in the use of WMP (Weapons of Mass Petrification, dismissed by the enemies of Israel as mere rocks) in the weekly demonstrations against the theft of the spring at the village.

 

After this time they drove back, stopped about 1 km from the village, removed the blindfold but left Anan’s arms bound, and dropped him off, leaving him to negotiate the 15-minute walk with arms bound in pitch darkness. His wrists were swollen upon his return home.

 

An official response from IDF spokesman has yet to arrive. Unofficial back-channels have yielded this claim: You got the wrong name, he’s 15 and not 11 (plausible from the photo too btw), he was questioned for one hour and not two and was dropped off unbound 300 meters from the village rather than 3 times that far, and this only to avoid re-igniting the village.

 

So according to the IDF, if he was 15 it’s ok to roust him and all his family from bed at 2 in the morning and interrogate him with no guardian or legal counsel present out in the open and then drop him off somewhere other than the front door. Gotcha.

 

Here’s the thing: You do that to ME? To MY boy? Police, IDF, Navy fucking SEALS of the invisible New World Order? Rocks will be the least of your worries from my side. And that’s if the unofficial version is true. If the al-Tamimi version is true? And the IDF don’t lock up the guy that was in charge of it? For his own protection, like? I find him and use a 10 pound tin can to turn his face to mush. But don’t listen to me. Remember Gilad Shalit? Yeah, he’s doin’ it right. Travelling a lot. Getting laid I do hope. Anyway, his dad’s running for Knesset in the Labor party. He said that if he was a Palestinian, he’d be trying to capture soldiers too.

 

Oh, I promised an innovation. Those who survived the holocaust remember with dread the German use of dogs to instill terror in their prey. Those of them still struggling to make ends meet, in the state that uses their name and traumas daily but leaves them less than table scraps are no doubt smiling in the knowledge that their own country has finally learned from those canine-related lessons as well.

 

And on that woof-woof note, we will now return you to you locally scheduled bullshit, which I seriously hope is tame in comparison or you should be looking into relocation. This has been a visit to the precipice of demise, brought to you by The Weekend Holyland Update, in conjunction with Brown Acid Bad Trips Inc. This excursion didn’t cost you a dime, but there’s a collection plate button thingy, if you have a mind. Also, you can buy my book: Jewcy Story: How the Jews blew redemption the last time around.

 

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Lessons Learned And The Coming Theocracy

Posted by: on: July 3, 2011

Hello and welcome to WHU Airlines, flight 070211, taking off to budding theocracy, a lynch averted, racist violence, and sabotage on the high seas indicating a surprising capacity for lesson-learning. Fasten your seatbelts, put on your life preservers and don’t make any wrong turns; the Weekend Holyland Update is now in session:

We’ll start with the hot-button issue most of you are probably following: The new Gaza flotilla has been foiled, for now, by a combination of diplomacy and sabotage. Greece was persuaded (probably through indirect application of monetary pressure given its dire financial straits) to prevent one of the ships from leaving port. Meanwhile, two of the other ships met with mysterious malfunctions, which Israel is smirkingly denying any involvement in while its deputy PM is (in an equally smirking manner) hinting (Hebrew) that it did have a hand in it.

I gotta say that all things considered, Israel has shown quite a capacity for learning from its errors. Had it handled the previous flotilla in the same manner (I mean the sabotage, as the diplomacy was a no go with Turkey at the time. Now the Turks are eager to tone down the hostility, so it did what Israel wanted and declared that the Irish ship, one of those that met with mysterious mechanical malaise, broke down before ever arriving in port), it would have avoided the massive diplomatic nightmare it endured last spring.

So not that I support sabotage, or Israel’s stupid siege on Gaza (which benefits Hamas more than anyone, and Israel understands this full well), but one has to admit that sabotaging ships in port is a significant improvement over shooting people in the back of the head. And since I can see no reason why Israel couldn’t have sabotaged the ships last year as well, I have no choice but to conclude that Israel WANTED the bloodshed last time around, as a sort of stupid, thuggish show of force. Nice to see that they’re capable of getting it through their thick skulls that this might not have been as desirable as it may have seemed at first.

Also important to note that the diplomatic component of this relative success was achieved not by the Foreign Ministry, headed by racist international pariah Yvette Lieberman, but by the PM himself, Bibinocchio, who has been buddying up with embattled Greek PM George Papandreou for a year now, an effort which has now paid off (although reports from Greece indicate that it was the US that ordered them to prevent the Gaza-bound ships from leaving). In other words, the Baron von Bibhausen has totally neutered the country’s diplomatic corps for the sake of his precious coalition.

Now we just have to hope that the people of Gaza, who are getting seriously fed up with the thuggish ineptitude of Hamas, manage to oust the reactionary scum and leave Israel with no reason whatsoever to continue bullying the 1.5 million residents of the world’s largest open air prison. Once Hamas is out of power, even Israel’s bitch, the US of A, will be hard-pressed to justify denying the right of Gazan fishermen to sail to where there’s actually fish in the sea (i.e. beyond a 2 mile strip).

The other big story this week was the detaining for questioning of Dov Lior, one of the leading rabies (not an error) of the jehovah-nazi faction among the settlers. Lior, a civil servant (he is paid by the state both as the rabbi of Qirayt Arba and as the head of an “arrangement yeshiva”, where students study torah and do a shortened military service ) was wanted for interrogation in connection with his endorsment of the nazi-like booklet “The King’s Torah”, for which he wrote an introduction. This lovely text states that not only is it allowed to kill any gentile who is thought to endanger Jews, even those considered “righteous among the nations” for having saved Jews and even babies if one suspects they might grow up to endanger Jews, but that any Jew may carry out these murders, without waiting for state sanction. In other words, what we have here is religious sanction for the killing of non-Jews (up to and including babies) just because some Jew decided they were a threat.

So the judo-nazis who wrote it, as well as those who expressed support for it, were wanted for questioning on suspicion of incitement to violence. But for months, Lior refused to report for questioning, asserting that the Torah trumps the laws of the state.
Eventually the po-lice got tired of being flouted, and not wanting a Waco-like standoff by coming to arrest him in his settler stronghold, they got him in his car leaving Jerusalem. Lior was detained for questioning for all of one hour, which was enough time for his supporters to swarm on the plaza in front of the Supreme Court and throw a little tantrum.

When he was released, the leaders of the jehovah-jugend huffed that he been held in custody, blood would have been shed. The leader of the judo-nazis in Knesset, “National Union” chairman Yaacov Katz, threatened even after his mullah’s release that “we shall settle the score with those responsible for this crime” – the crime of enforcing a legal summons, you see.

Official response was tepid, with both Bibinocchio and his Justice Minister, Yaacov Ne’eman (who was accosted later in the week upon daring to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron for his ministerial responsibility for the arrest) issuing extremely restrained statements about the rule of law. Bibinocchio has, not very long ago, called Lior and his ilk “the elite commando unit leading the nation and paving the way”. (h/t @jinjirrie). Meanwhile, even so-called “moderate” state rabies were aghast at this intolerable enforcement of law on one of their own. When the judo-nazis take over, remember this moment.

Remember how last week we recalled what happened when an Arab took a wrong turn into a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur? Well, this week it happened the other way around, when a Jew took a wrong turn into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, and was set on by a mob. The guy may well have died, if not for the village Mukhtar (leader) who pulled him into his own home, where his three sons stood up to guard the poor guy with their lives if need be. This turned out not to be necessary, as the prestige of the Mukhtar was sufficient to hold the mob off until the police and an ambulance arrived. Lynching and mob violence are despicable no matter who does them, despite the people of Issawiya being targeted for ethnic cleansing along with a number of other East Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, where Arabs are being evicted to make way for settlers, tourism parks and whatever isn’t Arab homes. This poor guy has nothing to do with that and didn’t deserve to be beaten for it.

Meanwhile, all over the West Bank, settlers have been stoning Palestinian cars, torching Palestinian fields and orchards, to absolutely no effective response from the powers that be. When a settler woman from the extremist settlement of Yitzhar reported that she had been mugged in the neighboring village of Hawara (which sounds wrong – what was a settler woman doing alone there?), the leadership of Yitzhar called their Hawara counterparts to threaten that unless the alleged unknown perpetrator was handed over, they could not be responsible for the results. We’ll keep you posted on that.

I knew I forgot something or two: The Israeli Knesset has approved for final vote two particularly disgusting laws. The first will criminalize the boycott of the settlements and allow anyone claiming to be hurt by a call for such a boycott to sue the person making the call for about $9,000. Let me be the first to say that I piss on this law and will continue to boycott anything made in a settlement and call on other to do so at the top of my lungs. The settlers can repo my debts.

The second repugnant piece of legislation will require Palestinians whose homes are demolished by the occupation to pay for the demolition themselves. I could point out that this is eerily similar to the nazis requiring the Jews of Germany to pay for Krystalnacht, but then I’d be accused of Godwinizing the discussion, and we can’t have that now, can we.

And another thing I forgot: In Tel Aviv, the porkers (that’s the police for you law-abiding citizens) have begun confiscating bicycles from refugees and foreign laborers who can’t prove they bought them. Of course they wouldn’t dare do this to Jewish Israelis, because it’s not like anyone keeps the receipt for their bike on their person, or in most cases at all…

The BDS campaign is aiming at Israel’s finished diamond industry, the country’s leading export commodity, claiming that it is exploiting a loophole in the Kimberly Process to combat conflict diamonds despite the fact that the diamond industry donates some $1B a year to Israel’s armed forces. Said loophole is that the Kimberly process only refers to raw diamonds and not to cut stones.

Finally, speaking of the diamond industry, In the coastal city of Natanya, once famous for being a diamond industry hub and now famous for all its crime families and underworld shootings and bombings, a Jewish man stabbed a Palestinian whom he thought was looking at his sister. Cause, you know, gotta keep the untermenschen away from our women!

That’ll do it for this week. WHU Airlines is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments* (and donations, if you’ve a mind) where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

 

* Please do comment. I write for feedback. Thanks!

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They MUST Stop Teaching Their Kids To Hate

Posted by: on: June 26, 2011

Welcome, one and all, step aboard upon the magic carpet, taking you on a fascinating journey to the land of the untenable. Today on the menu we have a pot calling a kettle black, pigs being pigs, a Jehovah patient coming home to roost, a superpower doubling down on a losing investment, a deluded liar being stupider than usual, a laughably obvious pinkwashing attempt, a minor environmental disaster that happened and a major one waiting to. Buckle up your seatbelts and for heaven’s sake, put out your cigarettes, for reasons of clear and present danger.

We start today with Yair Netanyahu, the eldest son of our PM, Binyamin Netanyahu, aka “Nutanyahoo” and “The Baron von Bibhausen”. Turns out that Junior (who is currently serving in the IDF spokesman’s international media division, where he enjoys an unusual amount of leave) has a Facebook account, where he unburdens himself of highly nuanced political opinions couched in elegant and erudite prose (yes, that was sarcasm).

All of Nutanyahoo Junior’s deep thoughts (written under the aliases “Jesse Natan” and “Yair Natan”) have been taken down following the discovery of his page, but here’s what we know:

2.5 years ago, an Arab driver in the mixed city of Acco (Acre of Crusader fame to y’all) took a wrong turn and entered a Jewish neighborhood. Sadly for him, this happened on Yom Kippur, the holiest day to Jews and the single day in the year when even secular Israeli Jews don’t drive (it’s known to the kids as “the bicycle holiday”, due to the streets being motor-free). Anyway, the Arab driver was lynched within an inch of his life and some of the city’s Jews rioted for two days, burning Arabs’ cars and shit.

Following this, the apple of our PM’s eye started a facebook group called “Following the Acre Pogrom – I too am boycotting Arab businesses!”. Where to start? With the victim-at-all-costs use of “pogrom” for an incident where all the bodily harm and property damage happened to Arabs by Jews? The notion of boycotting a population of over a million because of something one person did and not even on purpose? Or the fact that he ended his screed with “besides, I was boycotting those shits even before”?

Another noteworthy gem is to be found in an argument with a Muslim woman, in which Nutanyahoo the younger – the grandson of a highly acclaimed historian – trots out the stupid trope that “The Palestinians are Arab settlers in the middle of our country, who immigrated here from Arab countries only 100 years ago!”. Other gems include the inaccurate statement that “all terrorists are Muslims” and the breath-taking lie that “when we accidently kill a child in Gaza the whole country mourns for the enemy’s child!” (I guess Junior doesn’t read much talkbacks on all of Israel’s news sites, where such incidents are routinely justified and celebrated with defiance). Another post reads “staying (at the base) for the weekend because of the cursed Palestinians”.

The one about the Palestinians being recent immigrants needs answering, since it’s a favorite lie of judonazis and their abbettors, popularized by the ignorant and mendacious Joan Peters. Facts: The absolute lowest estimate for the Arab population of Palestine 100 years ago is around 500,000 people. The absolute highest, most generous estimate of the Jewish population here at the same time is 60,000 people. By 1948, there were 1.2 million Arabs and 600,000 Jews here – a 140% increase for Arabs and a 900% percent increase for Jews. I think it’s clear who the immigrants are and who are the ones who have been here continuously for hundreds of years. I do not see this as an argument against my right and that of my people to be here, but the facts are what they are.

Anyway, the reason I am spending time on the ignorant and ineloquent rantings of a teenager is that if the reverse was written by the son of Abu Mazen? This would be front page news and Nutanyahoo Senior would NEVER shut up about how the Palestinians simply MUST stop teaching their children to hate us if there’s ever going to be any peace. Therefore, I think it’s relevant to wonder about the hatred his son sucks with his mother’s milk. So Bibster, take the beam from thine own damn eye and have a nice big cup of STFU.

 

On Friday, the estimated 35,000 refugees* from Africa living in Israel were supposed to have a rare moment of grace with a lively music/arts and crafts festival marking International Refugee Day. However, on Thursday the jack booted thuggery known as the Israel PD reneged on previous agreements and came up with impossible and unlawful “security” requirements that were obviously meant to cancel the event. To remove any doubt, the pigs offered the refugees and their activist allies to hold an “event” at the tiny park known as Lewinski Garden**, but only if it was limited to 1,000 people, with no stage, PA system, speakers or music. Earlier this week, two corporate entities staged a music concert at the same venue (with a stage and PA system) attended by 3,000 people.

Ironically, this year’s Refugee Day marks the 60th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of Refugees, of which the infant State of Israel was one of the main sponsors. Now Israel hounds its refugees, locks them up, sends them back to harm’s way and won’t even let them dance in the sun one day a year. Fuck Tha Po-lice.

* The 35,000 number is those eligible for refugee status according to every relevant agency and international standard. Israel itself, in all its history, has granted refugee asylum status to a grand total of 200 people. “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt,” anyone?

** no, not named after THAT Lewinsky, you perverts…

 

Anyone who thought that under the Obama administration the US would be any less in the pocket of Israel should check this out. US Ambassador to the UN, the righteous-fronting Susan Rice, spoke somewhere (not sure where, since the video was taken down, wonder why) and said that if the UN recognizes Palestinian statehood at the assembly general (where unlike the security council, the new Rome has no veto power): “this would be exceedingly politically damaging in our domestic context, as you can well imagine. And I cannot frankly think of a greater threat to our ability to maintain financial and political support for the United Nations in congress than such an outcome.” So depsite administrations of both parties professing to support the creation of a Palestinian state, the US would be so offended by the UN doing just that, that it would not be able to continue funding or participating in the organization. Gotcha, Ambassador.

This attitude becomes more understandable when one realizes that the US regards Israel as not merely an ally, but an extension of itself. Did you know that anyone contemplating an attack on your home anywhere in the world, they can use Google Earth to see your house down to the windows and the shape of the cornices? Well of course you knew that, but I meant to say “anywhere but Israel”. The 2007 National Security Authorization Act includes an amendment, known as the Kyl-Bingaman, which explicitly prohibits the collection and distribution of high-resolution images from Israel. When my Palestinian tweet-buddies began passing this tidbit along, I said “what ARE you talking about? I’ve seen my house here in Israel on Google Earth.” But then I realized what the point was and compared the resolutions, and whaddaya know.

2100 years ago, another super-power used its military might to guarantee the interests of a Jewish state. It threatened any would-be invaders not to even think of it, forbade them from trying to evade its customs, and the Hasmonean Kingdom enjoyed the fruits of this deferred check. Eventually, though, Rome collected. Just a lil’ something to ponder. (for more highly relevant historical parallels, or rhymes as Mark Twain would have it, buy my book “Jewcy Story, Volume 1: The unofficial, unorthodox, unabashed story of an unusual tribe” and get 500 years of Jewish history for only $5. And remember – Kindle works on smartphones and PC’s as well!).

 

Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) is trying to pull a fast one. In 2002, the Supreme Court ordered him to register Conservative and Reform converts under “Nationality: Jewish” in their ID cards. Yishai, who as an Orthodox Jew is loathe to do anything that would remotely acknowledge the conversions sanctioned by rival denominations, simply canceled the “nationality” category (but retained a way of distinguishing Jewish citizens from uncircumsized dogs by marking the Jews with a Hebrew date of birth). Now, says Yishai, poor holocaust survivors who for whatever reason need to be re-issued an ID card are complaining bitterly about not being marked as Jews, so he’s putting the category back – but only for those who want it. So the ID card, whose sole supposed purpose is to distinguish citizens from non-citizens, not only continues to distinguish between different classes of citizens, but is now to become an “as you like it” rag.

Yishai, btw, has bigger worries. Legendary former Shas leader Aryeh Deri is making a comeback to politics, and may be eyeing a return to the top spot in his old home. I’m not sure what’s worse for Yishai – to be ousted from the driver’s seat by his old nemesis, or for Deri to form his own party (which unlike Shas promises to be more moderate and peace-oriented) and get more seats than Shas in the next election as a poll published this weekend predicts.

 

Bibi has decided to “get tough” with Hamas over the stalled negotiations for a prisoner swap to bring Gilad Shalit home. Said toughness involves reducing the amenities enjoyed by the thousands of Hamas prisoners in Israel – stuff like being able to complete university degrees by correspondence and such. I can just see Ahmad Jaabari and Muhammad Dif, leaders of the Hamas military wing: “Oh no, brother Mustafa won’t be able to get his B.A.! And they won’t let him play ping-pong! Nothing to be done, gotta let Shalit go….”

The truth is that the leadership of Hamas, particularly the military wing and the political leadership in Damascus, who control the fate of Shalit, don’t really give a rat’s ass about the suffering of their people, or about 1,000 families who could have had their loved ones back many months ago. And for whatever reason (I don’t believe it’s the threat of the German mediator to quit), Nutanyahoo isn’t doing the obvious and publishing the names of those whom Israel has agreed to release, so their (extended) families would know what’s at stake.

Speaking of the scum that is Hamas, it is hilarious to hear them greet Netanyahu’s announcement that he will toughen the incarcerations of their prisoners with screams of “violation of international law!!!”. This from an organization that has been keeping a POW underground without even visits by the Red Cross for 5 years.

 

Israel’s propaganda machine, known as “Hasbara” (a Hebrew word meaning “explaining” that has become a derisive derogatory), has pulled an especially lame one. They released a video, showing a person calling himself “Mark”, who claimed he was not allowed to join the new Gaza flotilla due to being gay. The vid was suspicious from the get-go, since the person who posted it had zero documented online activity prior to doing so. Ali Abu-Nimah and his crew at The Electronic Intifada did some sleuthing (fresh off their success in unmasking the vile Tom MacMaster, aka “Amina, the Gay Girl in Damascus”), found that the vid was posted from an IP at the Israeli PM’s office, and then discovered that “Mark” is actually an Israeli club promoter named Omer Gershon. This is what they call “Pinkwashing”, and much as I am proud that gays aren’t treated as poorly here as they are virtually everywhere else in the Middle East (although things are far from perfect), this is pathetic.

 

A couple of Israelis were arrested and convicted in Poland of stealing “mementos” from Auschwitz. Curiously, not only were they let off with a fine and a suspended sentence, but their names were withheld – not just here in Israel but in the Polish press as well. Gotta wonder if Israel’s Foreign Ministry went to bat for them. If so, that is totally wrong. It should be in Israel’s interest that ANYONE desecrating Auschwitz be punished harshly, Israeli or not.

 

Speaking of the Foreign Ministry – a couple of fascist Knesset members put a bill forward that would tax foreign donations for “left wing” NGO’s at 45%. Of course they didn’t really mean it to pass since you can’t specify that only left wing orgs get taxed and the Judonazi orgs would starve without fundie and Brooklyn Hassidic money. However, they met with an unexpected objection from the Foreign Ministry, which explained that such a law would only further the criticism of Israel’s fading democracy.

 

I almost forgot – read this for a view on some of the least publicized crimes of the occupation, in the Jordan Valley which a shocking 63% of Israelis seem to think is under Israeli sovereignty (it isn’t. It’s as illegally occupied as Nablus).

 

Finally, in another chapter of “Israel and its catastrophic infrastructure”, the world-famous coral reef preserve of Eilat is in danger to a crude oil spill of 1-2 tons. The perpetrators are yet to be identified, much less apprehended. Our EPA claims that cleanup is progressing successfully and that by tomorrow the waters will be clean – which I find suspiciously optimistic, and even so no-one knows what the irreversible damage to the reef will be.

That has already happened. What hasn’t yet is an immense explosion at the Kiryat Atta “gas farm” just north of Haifa, which unlawfully holds many thousands of cooking gas containers above ground, rather than in re-inforced underground pens as required. Next time there’s a war with Hizballah, if those fucks get lucky enough, they’ll hit that and tens of thousands will lose their homes and lives. So it goes in the land of the half-assed “it’ll be ok” mentality.

 

That’ll do it for this week. WHU Airlines is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments* (and donations, if you’ve a mind) where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

 

* Please do comment. I write for feedback. Thanks!

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