Why does Israel seem to be such a big theme? Good question.

I am visiting Quora from time to time and get some of the articles in my feed. So I have found this long headline today:

Why does Israel seem to be such a big theme on Quora when there are so many other troubled areas in the world?

Normally I would have shrugged the whole off, mentioning the media sickish obsession with Israel in general. But the response to the query, by an Egyptian fellow, deserves to be read. Not that I agree with every single word of it, but... well, just read it.

***

Antoun Khalil, Gastroenterology Resident at Egyptian Ministry of Health (2015-present).

eing from Egypt, which is the biggest country on Israel's borders and historically known as the most influential Arabic state, meanwhile the country with the most bloody conflicts with Israel, I have a point.

All Arabs and I mean “ALL” excluding few christian minorities and few liberals are raised up to hate Israel. They teach this in schools. We were encouraged to paint drawings about 6th of October “Yom Kippur” war and how Egyptian Army humiliated the mystery of the unbeatable IDF! Nobody cares about the peace treaty of 1979, in fact, the great majority of Egyptians hate this treaty and wish if it wasn't held. Israel is looked to as the demon who raped the Arabic land, kills palestenians and conspires to destroy all the arabic world to form their great state from river”Furat” to river “Nile”.

Making this clear, I don't see it strange that Israel has this huge attention here and everywhere else. There is about 400 million persons who hate the existance of Israel. What's making it worse, is that one small state has a better contribution to world's science, industry and agriculture than the whole 23 arabic countries!

Nobody can deny that Arabs and Israeli have a tragic history. I myself feel angry to remember what Sharon had done to our prisoner of wars in 5-days war or the airstrikes on the primary school of Bahr Elbaqar.

But, I see that the past belongs to the past. We are neighbours with a lot of common interests. Israel is the only democracy and the most advanced state in the Middle East and collaboration will benefit Arabs as much as it will benefit Israelis. Then, we may not hear so much questions and debates about Israel.

***

Donald Trump is literally Hitler

When Akaky Akakievich talks, we, the other bloggers, can't do better than just listen.

This essay is one to listen to. So do it.

Returning by Yael Shahar

We know now where grief untold goes; it goes on to haunt future generations. It gets left behind on the grating; it passes unscathed through temperatures that can melt iron and reduce human bone to ash. And somewhere far removed in space and decades into the future, a stranger wakes out of a sound sleep with an inexplicable nightmare and a despair so deep as to negate life itself.

Somehow, and don't ask me how, I knew immediately that the quote above, taken from the middle of the book, will be the one for the post that I'll write. The book, Returning, appeared to have a special significance for me, and this is what is this post about. That and the need to tell you to read this book.

This is in no way a review, I am not a literary critic (an ugly combo of two words if there ever was one). It is also not a spoiler, I know y'all hate spoilers and I am not going there. So, unfortunately, it will have to be more about me and how I got to read the book than about the book itself.

Strangely, Soviet Union, an almost perfect implementation of a party dictatorship and the ideal of a Big Brother's bailiwick, was inexplicably generous where the literature about the Nazi concentration/mass murder camps and, by extension, about Holocaust, were concerned. There were several books in our home, and there was no problem whatsoever to get more from the local library. My parents, not being very much into censorship, allowed my reading material to be my own choice (and my own problem), and for some reason, the books about Holocaust took a significant part of my adolescent attention.

After a while, though, I just couldn't continue reading. Something bad was taking over me. The mix of pain, sorrow and, not the least, hate, became so intense that it impacted me on a physical level. Thankfully, there were no Germans in the vicinity, nor implements of revenge or knowledge necessary to operate these, but the mental scars left by the acquired knowledge remained forever. It took me a special effort to agree to visit Germany many years after that period (on business) and I have never been in Poland. The visit to Yad Vashem cost me more - on several levels - than I care to recall. And so it rolled with me. I wasn't able to read more about the Holocaust, or to see the movies, or to view interviews with survivors - all this was just too much for me.

But when I have seen the first notice about the book going to be published and about it subject matter, e.g. a member of sonderkommando*, my acquired resistance weakened. The subject was new to me. Not that I didn't know about sonderkommandos, but I have never seen one talking or writing about the experience, although I heard about survivors... So the ebook was duly purchased and downloaded.

Now about the book. Actually, it is again about me - reading the book this time.  I don't know whether many of you have undergone a musical ability test. Part of it is when the musician sits at the piano and plays a musical piece, where the melody passes from the lower octaves (left hand) to the higher octaves (right hand) and back. You are supposed to point to the correct hand when the melody jumps over, without delay if possible. When I started to read the book, for a short while I thought that I keep following the melody switching hands. But then - it very quickly appeared to be not a relatively simple fugue but a whole complex symphony that kept me on the edge of my chair for the whole time.

This book is a tough read.

This book is also a rewarding read.

This book is a mandatory read.

And many thanks to Yael.

P.S. And I had my own vision too, here in Israel - but it is another story.

(*) The only spoiler you are going to get from me.

Israel and disproportionate response

It was written by a person named Jonathan Howard in 2014. A good rebuke to idiots, unfortunately I don't have any access to Mr Howard to ask for permission or just to thank him for writing this. Enjoy.

***

For anyone who thinks Israel’s response in Gaza is disproportionate: I agree. It is absolutely disproportionate. So we must ask ourselves: what would a proportionate response look like, exactly?

Every Friday and Saturday, every rabbi in Israel would remind his congregation how important it is to kill all of the Moslems in the world, wherever they find them. Israeli schools would brainwash Israeli kids to die killing Moslems, for the glory of making Judaism dominate the Middle East.

Israeli TV would broadcast threats of genocide to the Palestinians, with the IDF entertainment unit singing specially-written songs in Arabic about how bloody and glorious the massacre will be. (At the same time, they'd go to the UN and accuse the Palestinians of genocide.)

Israeli girls would be killed by their own families if they liked boys. So would Israeli boys.

IDF artillery would shoot rockets into Arab towns without any military targets, with the intention of killing as many civilians as possible, several times a day, almost every day for the last 14 years.

The Mossad would send hundreds of young Jews to blow themselves up in shopping centres, hotels, cafes, nightclubs and bus stops around the world. Israeli municipalities would name streets after the suicide bombers, and the government would pay their families a pension for life. The proud Jewish mothers of the suicide bombers would appear on Israeli TV encouraging mothers everywhere to give up their children for the cause of killing Moslems.

The IDF would bully and threaten the UN to let them store their weapons and explosives in UN facilities. Israeli artillery soldiers would travel around in UN ambulances, kill their own women and children with misfired rockets, then invite the international press to see the dead women and children and blame it on the Palestinians.

They’d put IDF explosives in Israeli homes, and when they blow up in all too frequent accidents, they’d blame the Palestinians and invite the foreign press to come and see the dead women and children.

They’d ban the foreign press from taking any photos of IDF soldiers in uniform, and threaten reporters if they report anything except dead women and children.

The IDF Spokesman would claim that the majority of IDF casualties are actually women and children.

Bibi’s office, and all of the IDF general staff and senior officers, would be relocated to the basement of Hadassah Hospital (confident that the Palestinians generally try to avoid hitting things like hospitals).

Likud would execute members of the Israeli opposition parties if they criticised Bibi’s conduct, taking them out behind the back of the Knesset building and shooting them in the head.

Before running into their bomb shelters, brave IDF soldiers would force Israeli women and children into the firing line, sometimes breaking their legs to stop them getting away, and sometimes chaining them to buildings. Then they'd shoot missiles at the Palestinians, and leg it into the shelter. They'd emerge to find dead women and children, and call the foreign press over to take a look.

The IDF’s Engineering Corps would kill 160 Israeli child slaves during the construction of tunnels. The tunnels would be designed for blowing up Palestinian schools and homes, and for IDF freedom fighters to kidnap Palestinians to use as hostages.

If the tunnel kidnaps succeeded, Bibi would then use the hostages to force the release of the thousands of Jews in Palestinian jails who were responsible for organising the many Jewish suicide bombings. He would give them a heroes' welcome, and put them to work organising more suicide bombings.

The Israeli government would use most of Israel’s public money on terror tunnels and villas for Likud leaders, and put the rest in Swiss and Qatari bank accounts for Bibi and his friends to enjoy. This would sink Israel into poverty. They'd blame the poverty on the BDS movement, and demand more money from the international community to build more tunnels, and more villas for Likud leaders.

They would proudly announce, quoting the Israeli Declaration of Independence, that they're not going to stop until all of the Moslems in the world have been driven into the sea.

And then they'd come for you.

I think we can be thankful that Israel’s response is not proportionate.

The Master and Margarita, a random quote

— Тьма, пришедшая со Средиземного моря, накрыла ненавидимый прокуратором город. Исчезли висячие мосты, соединяющие храм со страшной Антониевой башней… Пропал Ершалаим, великий город, как будто не существовал на свете… Так пропадите же вы пропадом с вашей обгоревшей тетрадкой и сушеной розой! Сидите здесь на скамейке одна и умоляйте его, чтобы он отпустил вас на свободу, дал дышать воздухом, ушел бы из памяти!

- The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator. The hanging bridges connecting the temple with the dread Antonia Tower disappeared ... Yershalaim — the great city — vanished as if it had never existed in the world ... So you, too, can just vanish away along with your burnt notebook and dried-up rose! Sit here on the bench alone and entreat him to set you free, to let you breathe the air, to go from your memory!

Michail Bulgakov, he whose manuscripts don't burn.

And if, reading this, you don't feel the infinity passing by and the air in your lungs pushing out, you really have to read this book. Possibly again.

Harlan Ellison RIP

• The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
• I don't mind you thinking I'm stupid, but don't talk to me like I'm stupid.
• Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled.

Abrasive, enormously talented, somewhat wild: the life was that much better with you around, but your books stay.

RIP. See you later.

The phallus that discombobulated FSB

The story is rather old, but needs a refresher. A rare case when size matters.

The story starts with the Russian art group "Voina" (War):

Voina (Russian: Война, IPA: [vɐjˈna] (About this sound listen), lit. War) is a Russian street-art group known for their provocative and politically charged works of performance art. The group has had more than sixty members, including former and current students of the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography, Moscow State University, and University of Tartu. However, the group does not cooperate with state or private institutions, and is not supported by any Russian curators or gallerists.

The activities of Voina have ranged from street protest, symbolic pranks in public places, and performance-art happenings, to vandalism and destruction of public property. More than a dozen criminal cases have been brought against the group. On 7 April 2011 the group was awarded the "Innovation" prize in the category "Work of Visual Art", established by the Russian Ministry of Culture.

One of the famous actions of Voina was:

Dick Captured by the FSB

During the night of 14 June 2010, Voina painted a giant 65 m long phallus on the surface of the Liteyny drawbridge leading to the Bolshoy Dom, headquarters of the Federal Security Service in Saint Petersburg. This painting was entitled Giant Galactic Space Penis. The group studied traffic patterns at the bridge, and practiced coordinated actions for two weeks beforehand, in a parking lot, because they would have only 30 seconds to complete the painting before the drawbridge was raised.

And the drawbridge was raised!



More about the action in the Youtube description:

June 14, 2010, Saint Petersburg

Security guards are stopping traffic across the Liteyny Bridge, located in front of the local FSB (ex-KGB) headquarters.

Voina members, on foot, bike and in a car, breach the roadblock. Activists rush over with white paint. Voina President Leo the Fucknut is captured and roughed up by the cops.

Onlookers shout, 'It's a Russia Day celebration!'

Menacingly rising, Voina's Dick slowly erected in front of the Federal Security Service building, lovingly nicknamed The Big House by the Russian people.

Some images of Voina's Dick opposing the FSB building has been immortalized on a Norwegian postal stamp. All revenues from the stamp were directed to political prisoners in Russia.

And here is a recording of the preparation of the monument:



Viva Voina!

Like everyone - with a dollop of blood

Igor Guberman - a writer, a poet and a superb storyteller, with an irresistible true story, one of myriad he tells so well.

One day in Berlin, my friend was asked to talk to a certain woman who insisted that she was Jewish and therefore the [Jewish] community should help her. He agreed to talk with her and, first of all, asked, naturally, why was she sure that her mother was Jewish. Because my mother always baked Matzos on Easter [sic!], the woman answered.

"And how did she bake it?" asked the friend.

"According to the law, like everyone else," the woman answered, "she kneaded the dough, added the yeast ..."

My friend straightened up in surprise, and the woman hastily continued:

- And a little blood ...

Yup.

Peter Risdon, RIP

Peter and Kate

It is possible to be a friend with a person you have never met. It is possible to grieve when a malady that knows no mercy takes him away.

Peter's life could provide a writer with not a small amount of inspiration, but I am not going to tell the story here. Peter was a man of uncompromising integrity, and his last years were good and full of happiness, largely thanks to Kate. Till the fate intervened.

RIP, Peter.

My heartfelt condolences to Kate.

Nikolai Berdyaev on freedom and equality

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, a remarkable Russian religious and political philosopher, in one of his lesser known quotes on the subject:

Freedom is the right to inequality.

Equality (if it is understood more broadly than purely formal legal term "equal rights") and freedom are incompatible things. By nature, people are not equal, equality can only be achieved through violence, which will always be an alignment to the lowest level.

It is possible to equalize the poor with the rich, but only by taking away from the rich his wealth.
It is possible to equalize the weak with the strong, but only by taking away from the strong his strength.
It is possible to equalize the fool with the clever, but only by turning the wisdom from dignity into a blemish.

The society of universal equality is a society of the poor, the weak and the foolish, based on violence.

For all those who tend to mix people's equality with people's equal rights.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, RIP

No, the power of his words didn't change history. Poetry and literature never do.
He lived a difficult life, he somewhat compromised with the regime, he too "stepped on the throat of his song" from time to time to sing paeans to the devil.

But he never betrayed his friends.
But he helped many in their hour of need, saving them from under the jackboot.
But he raised to greatness time and time again.

And there weren't many like him

RIP.

Feng-Shan Ho: he who saves one life, saves the whole world

This post is not about some news item. The life and story of the Chinese diplomat is known and his name is in the list of the Righteous Among the Nations. It is just my own way to say that I've learned about the man right now and to say thank you.

After Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany in March 1938, the 185,000 Jews there were subjected to a severe reign of terror, which resulted in intense pressure to leave the country. In order to do so, the Nazis required that Jews have entry visas or boat tickets to another country. However, the majority of the world’s nations refused to budge from their restrictive immigration policies, a stance reaffirmed at the Evian Conference, in July 1938.

Unlike his fellow-diplomats, Ho issued visas to Shanghai to all requesting them, even to those wishing to travel elsewhere but needing a visa to leave Nazi Germany.

Many of those helped by Ho did indeed reach Shanghai, either by boat from Italy or overland via the Soviet Union. Many others made use of their visas to reach alternate destinations, including Palestine, the Philippines, and elsewhere...

May your name be blessed and rest in peace, Feng-Shan Ho.

Hat tip: L.G.

A Christian, a Muslim and a Jew walk into a podcast

Nervana Mahmoud, prof. Matt Sienkiewicz and Ambassador Alberto Fernandez (currently of MEMRI) discuss religion, Middle East, life in an interesting meeting of minds.

Definitely worth your time.

A very short post

Marvellous: "Those Jews have been making false accusations of Jew-hate. No wonder people hate Jews." pic.twitter.com/4aCklV6HqW

— Damian Counsell (@DamCou) May 28, 2016

Howard Jacobson on Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn it’s a classic case of someone who has been brought up just to assume that that case of Israel as an imperial power in the pay of the Americans and the westerns. An oppressive imperial power. He was just fed on that, he’ll never change that. It’s like milk. To ask him to change his mind on Israel is like asking him to approve of people that go to public school. It can’t be done, it’s part of his genetic makeup. But when he came into power and I felt that when I was writing for The Independent, a new kind of thread starting to appear at the bottom of one's articles, a new virulence a new viciousness. It’s as though Jeremy Corbyn unleashed something. It had been there all along but he gave it a new voice.

So true.

More here.

The true definition of "Islamophobia" - attribution issue resolved

Islamophobia - a word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons.

This pithy and sufficient definition of the term was ascribed to the great and late Christopher Hitchens.

Apparently the attribution is wrong - not that it matters much, compared to the overall quality of the job.

About the aftermath of Paris massacre

The thoughts below, were penned by David Sigeti on Facebook. Worthy reading.

I have refrained from posting these thoughts for about a day now, because I wanted to hold off from political debate in the immediate aftermath of the atrocities in Paris. Nevertheless, I think that it is important to make this point before the murders in Paris and the reactions to them by governments all over the world fade from the notoriously short attention span of the public mind.

The reactions of governments, including our own, to the terrorist attacks in Paris have mostly been very good. Expressions of solidarity have been the order of the day, and have been unencumbered by the sort of admonitions that undermine a statement of solidarity. There has been no false equivalencing, no admonitions to "both sides" to "refrain from incitement", no statements that imply that France is about to go on some kind of rampage against either its own Muslim population or Muslims in other countries, and no admonitions to France to exercise "restraint", even though the President of France has vowed to wage a "pitiless" war on the perpetrators of the attacks (an entirely appropriate vow, in my opinion).

But the same can not be said about the reactions of governments all over the world, including our own, to the wave of terrorist attacks in Israel over the last couple of months. In that time period, Israel has seen a number of terrorist murders that amount to about the same fraction of its population as the victims of the Paris attacks amount to as a fraction of the population of France. The statements of the American government in particular have shown nothing like the solidarity that it has shown with France, in the midst of an ongoing campaign of mass murder against Israeli citizens. In the beginning especially, the US made vague statements about deploring "violence" and called on "both sides" to refrain from "incitement", even though there was no incitement coming from the Israeli side at all and the terrorist wave was being openly and massively incited by all the political groups in Palestinian society, including the supposedly moderate Fatah, and by all levels of the leadership of Palestinian society, including the media, the religious leadership, institutions of higher education, professional organizations, and, of course, the Palestine Authority and its President, the supposedly moderate Mahmoud Abbas.

In fact, the early statements from the American government could hardly be distinguished from the disgusting statements by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who encouraged "both sides" to "show restraint".
Although American statements about the terrorist wave improved significantly over time due to domestic political pressure, they never approached the straightforward and plainly stated solidarity that has just been shown with France. Other governments, particularly the British and Canadian, made much better statements, but the international response overall was worlds away from the response to the attacks in Paris.

This is a massive and egregious double standard, especially since Israel is every bit as much an ally of the United States as France is, maybe more so. It is hard to imagine a clearer example of the failure of the Obama Administration to show support for Israel when it most needs it.

There, I said it. We can now return to mourning the victims of the attacks in Paris and discussing what we need to do both to punish the perpetrators and to prevent similar atrocities in the future. Let us just remember the massive and disgusting double standard that has just been shown, not just in attention in the international press but in the official statements of governments, including our own, and allow this memory to affect our thinking about Israel's situation in the future.

John Robert Gallagher RIP - the last will and testament.

From the National Post:

John Robert Gallagher was a Canadian who volunteered with the Kurdish forces in northern Syria to fight ISIL. He was reportedly killed in a suicide bombing Wednesday. This is an unedited essay may contain content objectionable to some readers but is presented in its entirety to fully explain his reasons for going to war.

Read the full text of his essay in the link above. Just in case some politically correct worm decides to remove the article, it is posted below as well.

Read more »

Debra Ann Davis Stanley, RIP - 55 years young

It is always a painful task to talk about somebody's death. It is much more painful when somebody you know and like so much is taken away long before her time, as it happened to Debra, wife of my friend Dick Stanley aka Texas Scribbler and mother of Jack, apple of her eye.

Well, Debra, I don't have the right words to say, no one has. Rest in peace.

Dick, our thoughts are with you.

More about Debra from her colleagues.

A. Jay Adler's works in Footnote

A person I deeply respect said once that every Jew has a story to tell. She meant a story different from the others, I haste to qualify.

Our stories are vastly different in many cases indeed, although some - tangible and intangible - points of two different stories might be common. Another differentiating attribute of the stories is our ability to tell them. Mostly we are unable to, taking the stories with us wherever and whenever we go.

A. Jay Adler, though, in a small collection of his poetry and prose in Footnote: a Literary Journal of History, shows exceedingly well that he is more than able to tell his story. As he is doing in his superb blog the sad red earth.

Otherwise than saying that the reading was compelling and that I was engrossed* by everything offered by AJA in this, sadly limited, collection, I am not a literary critic and am not going to make a monkey of myself, especially not in a language that is not my mother tongue.

As for the common points of the stories: there are precious few between AJA's story and mine. I shall mention only the common name of our grandfather, which I have (in a way) inherited. Of course, I shall leave it to you, the reader, to find out - but first go and purchase Footnote: a Literary Journal of History. The expenditure will not set your finances back more than that you spend on a burger. And, knowing y'all, I can tell you that the journal will be much healthier and much more enriching than that other choice.

So what are you waiting for?

(*) And the reasons I am posting this two months or so after purchasing and reading the journal were out of my control, my absence from the blog being the witness to that.