Two major economic problems seem to be converging like the perfect storm.
The economic problems facing the EU as a nascent confederation and the economic problems facing the USA.
Pundits believe both problems arose because of greed, corruption, and mismanagement. Greedy bankers, corrupt politicians, lousy managers.
The derivative stuff has been analyzed to death. Regulators either not doing their jobs or looking the other way. Mortgage companies chasing the buck so hard they didn't see they were riding into a barbed wire fence. Heads of companies, and government agencies, who believed Alan Greenspan, remember him, when he said that derivatives were good for the economy.
Greenspan expected the financial market bosses to act like gentlemen. He forgot, they never have. Not in the days of the tycoons like Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan, not in the days of Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers, and not today.
That tsunami of bad loans brought down banks around the world, in the USA, and in Europe. One of the EU's problems today is the debt some of the European banks suffered in that mortgage pyramid scheme.
Worse, though, is the EU's mistakes. A couple of decades ago Ireland was a wasteland. Tractors were small, cars were old, farms were barren, and farmers poor. The Irish blamed the British, claiming that the Brits kept the price of Irish goods below the poverty line. Then came the EU and the ECB, with money to finance projects, allow farmers to buy and sell Irish goods in Europe at fair market prices.
One farmer was visited by an EU representative. The farmer was poor. But his sheep and their wool, and their meat, were being exported to the EU for good money. The EU guy found a stack of checks on the farmers desk. Checks the farmer didn't know what to do with since he'd never really been paid before, at least not by check, by the Brits. After he began cashing the checks the farmer was no longer poor.
Other businessmen applied for EU loans through banks approved by the ECB, banks recommended by government officials. Okay. That's their job, isn't it? Recommend businesses that will grow and boost the economy? Only that's not exactly what happened. Politicians and government officials got kick-backs for recommending banks, or their cronies, for loans. Loans which were never repaid.
Take the case of enlarging the tiny port in the Greek island of Foligandros, in the Cyclades. Only relatively shallow-water ferry boats can come into port. Actually a broad concrete pier about 50 meters long and ten wide.
Eva, the British-born owner of Eva's coffee shop, at the tiny port, said that the EU had lent money to the Greek government, and that government to a bank, and that bank to a contractor, who was going to expand the port, dig down and make the seabed deep enough to accommodate cruise ships.
Foligandros has no airport. has an area of about 32 square kilometers and Is only 10 km long. Has a population of about a 600 people. And 42 small hotels. Tourism is the main industry. Well, that's not true. Tourism is the only industry. In fact, Foligandros, like Greece really has no other industry.
The Greeks don't make cars, washing machines, or plastic hangers, like Turkey. They don't have high-tech or even low-tech. They have tourism.
Athens, according to observers, is a city that services the tourism industry around the country through accounting firms, banks, travel agencies, the airport, the ports, whatever. The schools, from bottom to top, produce people who will either work in the tourism industry, unless they're academics or soldiers, or leave the country. Or go on strike.
On the islands, the taxi drivers, the bellboys, the kitchen help, the cooks and waitresses and maids come from Albania or Bulgaria. Greeks, observers say, don't do manual labor.
Santorini, about 45-minutes away by ferry, has a population of about 14,000 people. In the summer the population can double in a single day when half-a-dozen cruise ships, each carrying over two thousand people, pull into the deep water ports. Skiffs then unload the passengers for their day of shopping and eating and touring, then bring them back. At nightfall the cruise ships bellow a loud goodbye and sail away.
In Foligandros the planned bigger port never got dredged. The contractor went broke. So what happened to the money? The money the EU gave to the government who lent it to the bank who gave it to the contractor? Gone.
This story, we were told, is common. In Ireland, Greece, and probably other countries. The old boys made money for each other and left the well-meaning EU folks with the check.
One analysts says this is the fledgling EU facing growing pains. Unlike the USA, with a long history of confederation, the EU is a relative infant. Should the EU geniuses figure a way to solve the problem of greedy bankers, businessmen and politicians, the EU may not only last, but become a dynamo.
Of course, with the USA as an example, keeping greed and corruption under control is no mean trick. Where were the regulators when the toxic derivatives were flourishing? Or to a lesser extent, when Madoff was ripping off his own people? Did these officials, entrusted with a watchdog role, fall asleep and let the burglars in, or were they paid to take a walk around the block while the house was stripped bare?
Some folks are saying that not every country is ready for democracy, for an EU. Greeks are striking in the streets. One man identified himself as a good tax-paying citizen, a firm member of the middle-class. He was striking because he thought the EU had no business telling him how much tax he had to pay. That was an internal Greek matter. He seems to stick his head in the sand when it comes to admitting that the Greeks borrowed the money and have to pay back the EU lenders.
Will the Greek attitude prevail? Will the hand out for more continue? Will the high unemployment continue? Will the Albanians and Bulgarians keep making money while the Greeks take unemployment checks?
The problems are in the city, Greeks told visitors. The wealthiest people are in the Islands. There is no poverty in the hinterlands, just in the cities. The traditional farms still provide a basic living. The tourist industry makes those involved wealthy. Those involved in services in the cities are the ones suffering, now.
And in some ways that is the same problem in the USA. If a country relies on one industry for income, pundits say, that is a recipe for disaster. In Greece there is not enough money from tourism to support the folks in Athens. In the USA most of the major manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to China, Turkey, and Mexico.
What this means, says one observer, is that both the USA, and those counties in the EU facing problems, have to go back to basics. Create jobs in more creative ways. Open factories. Stress buying local goods. Create an economy that beats with a healthy heart not one supporting a fat lazy body with clogged arteries.
If the EU and the USA don't get in shape, flush out the fat cats who are draining the system by reaping in cash through outsourcing but taking jobs away from those in their own county, corrupt officials knowingly giving out bad loans, okaying phony construction deals, looking the other way when 'derivative' schemes pop up, then the perfect storm may well form, wiping out society as we know it.
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Attacks near Eilat, Aug 18, 2011
Israeli news analysts deduce this:
It wasn't Hamas who has no interest in heating up the border.
A radical Al Qaida-type group that left Gaza, hired Bedoin, crossed Sinai reached the unfenced border
near Eilat, between Mitzpe Ramon and Eilat on a back road near the Great Crater. Opened fire on a private car driven by an Israeli guy with his kids in the back. He hit the gas. Said he saw Egyptian soldiers along the roadside, wondered who they were and what they were doing. The border was only a few yards away. Then the Egyptians opened fire. He hit the gas and took off. No one injured. The Egged bus mostly carrying soldiers from the nearby base on their way to Eilat to catch a bus home for the weekend was then hit. The bus driver also hit the gas. 7 people injured. An army jeep appeared on the scene, and was ambushed with a road-side bomb. Four soldiers killed.Another bus was attacked with an RPG grenade launcher.. Seven Israelis killed all together, nearly forty injured. The army engaged the first group of terrorists that attacked the car and bus, three terrorists killed. One by a suicide bomb. Killed a soldier nearby.
News reports that up to 15 terrorists are still roaming around. The roads to Eilat are closed to prevent more roadside bombs and attacks are expected on that stretch. Fighting between the Israeli army and any terrorists they find is still ongoing, according to reports on the TV just now.
Is this a precursor of what might happen after the September vote?
No fence along the once quiet Sinai/Egyptian/Israeli border that up until now only had Sudanese sneaking into Israel to work, or Bedoin smuggling drugs. The Egyptian uprising resulted in the Egptian security services, according to reports, losing touch with the Bedoin tribal chiefs. The Egyptians have essentially lost control of the Sinai. The Israeli army was supposed to have been covering this open border. The army had been quarreling with the Border Patrol over who was in charge. This sort of attack is a result of that squabble since protecting the border fell between the cracks of a bureaucratic argument.
Analysts now wonder how the Israeli army will strike back, pointing out that once Israel withdrew from Gaza, and the recent lifting of the prohibition of Palestinians entering the Sinai from Gaza, and attack like this was inevitable. The analysts say that a fierce response by Israel against Gaza will not be positive. Only pinpointed attacks against known enemies will work. That and finally building the fence separating Egypt from Israel, a fence that until recently wasn't needed since Egypt and Israel had a peaceful relationship.
It wasn't Hamas who has no interest in heating up the border.
A radical Al Qaida-type group that left Gaza, hired Bedoin, crossed Sinai reached the unfenced border
near Eilat, between Mitzpe Ramon and Eilat on a back road near the Great Crater. Opened fire on a private car driven by an Israeli guy with his kids in the back. He hit the gas. Said he saw Egyptian soldiers along the roadside, wondered who they were and what they were doing. The border was only a few yards away. Then the Egyptians opened fire. He hit the gas and took off. No one injured. The Egged bus mostly carrying soldiers from the nearby base on their way to Eilat to catch a bus home for the weekend was then hit. The bus driver also hit the gas. 7 people injured. An army jeep appeared on the scene, and was ambushed with a road-side bomb. Four soldiers killed.Another bus was attacked with an RPG grenade launcher.. Seven Israelis killed all together, nearly forty injured. The army engaged the first group of terrorists that attacked the car and bus, three terrorists killed. One by a suicide bomb. Killed a soldier nearby.
News reports that up to 15 terrorists are still roaming around. The roads to Eilat are closed to prevent more roadside bombs and attacks are expected on that stretch. Fighting between the Israeli army and any terrorists they find is still ongoing, according to reports on the TV just now.
Is this a precursor of what might happen after the September vote?
No fence along the once quiet Sinai/Egyptian/Israeli border that up until now only had Sudanese sneaking into Israel to work, or Bedoin smuggling drugs. The Egyptian uprising resulted in the Egptian security services, according to reports, losing touch with the Bedoin tribal chiefs. The Egyptians have essentially lost control of the Sinai. The Israeli army was supposed to have been covering this open border. The army had been quarreling with the Border Patrol over who was in charge. This sort of attack is a result of that squabble since protecting the border fell between the cracks of a bureaucratic argument.
Analysts now wonder how the Israeli army will strike back, pointing out that once Israel withdrew from Gaza, and the recent lifting of the prohibition of Palestinians entering the Sinai from Gaza, and attack like this was inevitable. The analysts say that a fierce response by Israel against Gaza will not be positive. Only pinpointed attacks against known enemies will work. That and finally building the fence separating Egypt from Israel, a fence that until recently wasn't needed since Egypt and Israel had a peaceful relationship.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The Chabad Rebbe & The German Officer
"The Chabad Rebbe & The German Officer" a 56-minute documentary film about the rescue of Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, the 6th Lubavitch Rebbe, from war-torn Poland in 1939 by a half-Jewish German spy named Maj. Ernst Bloch working under direct orders of the head of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence, aired on the Israel Broadcasting Authority's Channel 1 on May 1, 2011 at 21:45 to good reviews and good ratings.
However, the film was immediately recorded by interested viewers and dedicated pirates, on their Tivo machines and even broadcast by Erutz 7, the Modern Orthodox Settler website and webcast organization run out of Beit El in the West Bank. Erutz 7 left the film on their website for anyone who wanted to stream or download until the IBA told them to take it down.
Another pirate uploaded the film to a vimeo.com and put up links to a variety of websites. This guy apparently thrives on uploading all sorts of films just for the fun of it. He is not alone. Other pirates crow their accomplishments on the web, for no other reason apparently than to see their name on the web.
After the broadcast we received phone calls from respectable and well-meaning Chabadniks asking if they could put the film up on their websites. We were told the film was no less than a "Kiddush HaShem." A Holy Act. Why? Because it told of the "Nes (miracle)" of the Rebbe's rescue. Their reasoning was that Chabaniks didn't watch TV and only visited certain approved websites. The Israel Broadcasting Authority turned down their request, hoping to somehow make some money back on their investment.
After several days of searching for pirated copies, it was clear that the desire of not so respectable Chabaniks and others interested in the story, weren't going to let the opportunity to see the film pass them by. Pirated copies of the film appeared like wild flowers after a heavy rain.
The IBA and the producers of the film didn't see this film as a holy work. The Chabad organization's JEM (Jewish Educational Media) was singularly uncooperative in the production of the film. The Producer's hoped that should Chabad like the film they'd
order copies, or put the film in their 3,000 Chabad houses, so some of the investment in making the film over a four-year period could be recouped. But as one cynic pointed out, 'Why buy the cow when the milk is free?'
As of now the film has been viewed or downloaded thousands of times, not counting the hundreds of thousands of viewers who watched on TV during the premiere broadcast.
The morality of some Chabadniks downloading the film without permission is not in question. The internet has become a free-for-all where nothing can be sold that can be copied for free. The issue that has plagued Hollywood studios and the music industry has come home to haunt the producers of this film.
Now the issue is, leave the pirated films on-line or spend hours each day to ferret the pirated copies out from every crevice they're hiding in and have them removed?
Whatever the outcome the film has found an audience for this unusual story.
הרבי והקצין ×”×’×¨×ž× ×™
Available in Hebrew by pirates at the website near you.
However, the film was immediately recorded by interested viewers and dedicated pirates, on their Tivo machines and even broadcast by Erutz 7, the Modern Orthodox Settler website and webcast organization run out of Beit El in the West Bank. Erutz 7 left the film on their website for anyone who wanted to stream or download until the IBA told them to take it down.
Another pirate uploaded the film to a vimeo.com and put up links to a variety of websites. This guy apparently thrives on uploading all sorts of films just for the fun of it. He is not alone. Other pirates crow their accomplishments on the web, for no other reason apparently than to see their name on the web.
After the broadcast we received phone calls from respectable and well-meaning Chabadniks asking if they could put the film up on their websites. We were told the film was no less than a "Kiddush HaShem." A Holy Act. Why? Because it told of the "Nes (miracle)" of the Rebbe's rescue. Their reasoning was that Chabaniks didn't watch TV and only visited certain approved websites. The Israel Broadcasting Authority turned down their request, hoping to somehow make some money back on their investment.
After several days of searching for pirated copies, it was clear that the desire of not so respectable Chabaniks and others interested in the story, weren't going to let the opportunity to see the film pass them by. Pirated copies of the film appeared like wild flowers after a heavy rain.
The IBA and the producers of the film didn't see this film as a holy work. The Chabad organization's JEM (Jewish Educational Media) was singularly uncooperative in the production of the film. The Producer's hoped that should Chabad like the film they'd
order copies, or put the film in their 3,000 Chabad houses, so some of the investment in making the film over a four-year period could be recouped. But as one cynic pointed out, 'Why buy the cow when the milk is free?'
As of now the film has been viewed or downloaded thousands of times, not counting the hundreds of thousands of viewers who watched on TV during the premiere broadcast.
The morality of some Chabadniks downloading the film without permission is not in question. The internet has become a free-for-all where nothing can be sold that can be copied for free. The issue that has plagued Hollywood studios and the music industry has come home to haunt the producers of this film.
Now the issue is, leave the pirated films on-line or spend hours each day to ferret the pirated copies out from every crevice they're hiding in and have them removed?
Whatever the outcome the film has found an audience for this unusual story.
הרבי והקצין ×”×’×¨×ž× ×™
Available in Hebrew by pirates at the website near you.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Gaza Isn't Panama
On Wednesday, March 23, at least one woman was killed and over 30 injured, two seriously when a 2 kg pipe bomb hidden in a backpack placed beside a public telephone detonated, at about 15:00, near the number 74 bus stop. The bomb was placed between Jerusalem's Benyenai Hauma national convention center and Jerusalem's Central bus station adjacent to the new train station, still under construction, on the road leading out towards Tel Aviv. This was the first time since 2004 that a bomb exploded in Jerusalem.
The explosion took place in front of a kiosk that fifteen years ago was the site of an explosion of a number 18 bus. In Wednesday's explosion four people waiting for buses were seriously injured, one elderly woman was in critical condition. Others were moderately or lightly injured, all were evacuated to local hospitals.
According to Channel 2 police reporter Moshe Nussbaum, the small size of the bomb seems to indicate that no large Palestinian organization was responsible for the blast, rather a home-grown group centered in one of the Arab villages, towns or even Arab neighborhoods in E. Jerusalem. None of the passengers on the Har Nof bound number 74 bus were injured in the blast. Police Chief Dudi Cohen said he didn't expect a new wave of terror in Jerusalem. Cohen also said there was no prior warning of the attack. He said he didn't see any link between this bomb and one that was discovered at a bus stop in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood a few weeks ago.
Israel has been undergoing an increasing cycle of violence. More than 70 rockets have been fired from Gaza over the last week, including two long-range Grad rockets that fell in Beer Sheva at about 05:15 this morning injuring one man who stood at his window after the early-warning siren sounded and was injured by shrapnel and glass when the rocket fell just outside his house. That blast followed an earlier rocket that fell in the coastal town of Ashdod.
Between the rockets falling in Ashdod and Beer Sheva, seven other rockets fell in open areas of Southern Israel. Hamas sources blame Israel for the uptick in violence after a fringe Palestinian group fired a number of salvos into Israel from Gaza and Israel responded by attacking Hamas operatives in their cars and from buildings where rockets were being launched.
In one IDF artillery attack aimed at Palestinian militants, Palestinian officials say three teens and their uncle were mistakenly killed and thirteen others injured as they played soccer in their back yard in the Gaza Strip. According to the Haaretz newspaper's on-line addition, one of the injured children in the home was brought to an Israeli hospital for treatment.
Hamas claims that Israel overreacted by attacking the men instead of empty smuggling tunnels or vacant ammunition factories. Hamas was bound to respond with increased firepower. Israel claims the IDF mortar strike was launched in response to repeated rocket fire towards Israel. Following the Grad attacks on Beer Sheva several Knesset members called on a Iron Fist 2, referring to Israel's invasion of Gaza Dec 27, 2008.
According to Minister Eli Ishai of the right-wing ultra-Orthodox Shas party, the bombing at the #74 bus stop was just one example of the increase in terrorist activity. He mentioned the murder of the Fogel family in the West Bank family of Itamar last week when a mother, father and three children, one four months old, were murdered by knife wielding terrorists.
Ishai echoed the calls of other knesset members for an attack on Hamas forces in Gaza. The Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad condemned the bombing calling it an act of terror. But he also called for international protection of civilians in the Gaza strip. Israel's PM Netanyahu expressed regret for the Gaza civilians killed in the IDF strike, saying the IDF has opened an investigation into the incident. Ishai also said that Hamas was using civilians as human shields.
Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan told the Associated Press that "Israel is escalating against our people and the whole world should show their responsibility to stop this escalation." Israel's IDF spokeswoman Lt. Col Leibovich said Israel didn't intend to raise the level of tension and hoped neither did Hamas. She added that Israel never operates when civilians are identified.
Yossi Melman, writing in Haaretz, criticized the government for not deploying the expensive Iron Dome anti-missile system to defend against the Grad rockets. The Grad, wrote Melman, was in the air for nearly two-minutes from the time it was fired from Gaza until it landed in Beer Sheva. The Iron Dome can be fired takes only 25-seconds
to intercept a missile.
Melman says there are three possible reasons the multi-billion dollar system, unused, locked up in an Israeli air force base, is not deployed. One, that Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak doesn't want it deployed for his own reasons. Two, that the system doesn't work well and once that fact is known sale of the system to foreign countries would be difficult, and three, that the system doesn't work at all and the parties involved are trying to cover that up. Whatever the reason, Beer Sheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod and even Tel Aviv are now targets of Hamas rockets.
Some observers say that the turmoil in the Middle East, from Syria to Libya, is contributing to the upheaval in Gaza and the West Bank. One commentator said that when the USA evacuated their forces from Panama, the Panamanians turned the huge US army base into the University of Panama. In contrast, when Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip the buildings left behind were used as launching pads for rockets attacking Israel.
The explosion took place in front of a kiosk that fifteen years ago was the site of an explosion of a number 18 bus. In Wednesday's explosion four people waiting for buses were seriously injured, one elderly woman was in critical condition. Others were moderately or lightly injured, all were evacuated to local hospitals.
According to Channel 2 police reporter Moshe Nussbaum, the small size of the bomb seems to indicate that no large Palestinian organization was responsible for the blast, rather a home-grown group centered in one of the Arab villages, towns or even Arab neighborhoods in E. Jerusalem. None of the passengers on the Har Nof bound number 74 bus were injured in the blast. Police Chief Dudi Cohen said he didn't expect a new wave of terror in Jerusalem. Cohen also said there was no prior warning of the attack. He said he didn't see any link between this bomb and one that was discovered at a bus stop in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood a few weeks ago.
Israel has been undergoing an increasing cycle of violence. More than 70 rockets have been fired from Gaza over the last week, including two long-range Grad rockets that fell in Beer Sheva at about 05:15 this morning injuring one man who stood at his window after the early-warning siren sounded and was injured by shrapnel and glass when the rocket fell just outside his house. That blast followed an earlier rocket that fell in the coastal town of Ashdod.
Between the rockets falling in Ashdod and Beer Sheva, seven other rockets fell in open areas of Southern Israel. Hamas sources blame Israel for the uptick in violence after a fringe Palestinian group fired a number of salvos into Israel from Gaza and Israel responded by attacking Hamas operatives in their cars and from buildings where rockets were being launched.
In one IDF artillery attack aimed at Palestinian militants, Palestinian officials say three teens and their uncle were mistakenly killed and thirteen others injured as they played soccer in their back yard in the Gaza Strip. According to the Haaretz newspaper's on-line addition, one of the injured children in the home was brought to an Israeli hospital for treatment.
Hamas claims that Israel overreacted by attacking the men instead of empty smuggling tunnels or vacant ammunition factories. Hamas was bound to respond with increased firepower. Israel claims the IDF mortar strike was launched in response to repeated rocket fire towards Israel. Following the Grad attacks on Beer Sheva several Knesset members called on a Iron Fist 2, referring to Israel's invasion of Gaza Dec 27, 2008.
According to Minister Eli Ishai of the right-wing ultra-Orthodox Shas party, the bombing at the #74 bus stop was just one example of the increase in terrorist activity. He mentioned the murder of the Fogel family in the West Bank family of Itamar last week when a mother, father and three children, one four months old, were murdered by knife wielding terrorists.
Ishai echoed the calls of other knesset members for an attack on Hamas forces in Gaza. The Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad condemned the bombing calling it an act of terror. But he also called for international protection of civilians in the Gaza strip. Israel's PM Netanyahu expressed regret for the Gaza civilians killed in the IDF strike, saying the IDF has opened an investigation into the incident. Ishai also said that Hamas was using civilians as human shields.
Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan told the Associated Press that "Israel is escalating against our people and the whole world should show their responsibility to stop this escalation." Israel's IDF spokeswoman Lt. Col Leibovich said Israel didn't intend to raise the level of tension and hoped neither did Hamas. She added that Israel never operates when civilians are identified.
Yossi Melman, writing in Haaretz, criticized the government for not deploying the expensive Iron Dome anti-missile system to defend against the Grad rockets. The Grad, wrote Melman, was in the air for nearly two-minutes from the time it was fired from Gaza until it landed in Beer Sheva. The Iron Dome can be fired takes only 25-seconds
to intercept a missile.
Melman says there are three possible reasons the multi-billion dollar system, unused, locked up in an Israeli air force base, is not deployed. One, that Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak doesn't want it deployed for his own reasons. Two, that the system doesn't work well and once that fact is known sale of the system to foreign countries would be difficult, and three, that the system doesn't work at all and the parties involved are trying to cover that up. Whatever the reason, Beer Sheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod and even Tel Aviv are now targets of Hamas rockets.
Some observers say that the turmoil in the Middle East, from Syria to Libya, is contributing to the upheaval in Gaza and the West Bank. One commentator said that when the USA evacuated their forces from Panama, the Panamanians turned the huge US army base into the University of Panama. In contrast, when Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip the buildings left behind were used as launching pads for rockets attacking Israel.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Meadow's Piano
-You're kidding.
-I'm not.
-Someone paid $300,000 for a piano? What? Jesus played it or something?
-Hey, it was a 1917 Steinway,
-Hold on, let me look. Says here that, what was it, an M or a C?
-How do I know?
-Look it up.
-An M.
-Let me see that article. You know, you're an idiot; maybe that's why you're still writing for a no readership blog. It was his wife's diamond necklace that sold for $300,000. The piano went for 42 grand.
-That’s still a bundle. Here, the Internet says it's worth maybe twenty-five, thirty tops.
-Yeah, one of his neighbors bought it. Another mogul out on the island.
-That's what it says?
-Yeah.
-Lemme see that laptop. Hmm, nice looking piano, I'll say that for it.
-Here's another ad for one, only $2,500. And look, here's a website, a thread
says, wait, one guy says 'snap it up,' another guy says must be a scam, ‘some Internet scam,’ then, can you believe it, costs like $2,500 just to get it tuned and whatever, if it's in bad shape. Keep the thing tuned and whatever. Oh, and here, says it costs like $5,000 to restring it. Take a look:
‘This Steinway piano was RESTRUNG in April 2008 and REFINISHED in 2005 . The finish is mahogany satin... and the sound is amazing! Truly, one of the best years for Steinway ~*EXCELLENT CONDITION *~ **DETAILS** YEAR BUILT ~ 1917 MODEL ~ M ~ SIZE ~5' 7” . New Mahogany satin finish ( 2005 ) . New strings (2008 ) .New #2 pins ( 2008 ) . New pin block ( 2008 ) . New Steinway decals ( 2008 ) . IVORY KEYS ( EXCELLENT , SNOW WHITE , NO CHIPS OR CRACKS ) . ORIGINAL SOUNDBOARD ORIGINAL %100 STEINWAY ACTION REGULATED (2008).’
-A scam, for sure, they say.
-Well, what're you going to do?
-This guy Meadows, that owned the piano that's being auctioned off. He was into scams wasn't he?
-That's like saying that Bret Favre has something to do with football.
-He stole like what, 50 billion dollars?
-Closer to 60 I think. Didn't exactly steal it, though. Worked a con game. Invested people's money into the stock market, paid them a dividend at the end of the year, kept getting more people to invest in his fund, kept paying out dividends, only problem was he was spending the capital fast as it came in. Paying the dividends with the money the new people invested.
-So he could buy a $20,000 piano and a $300,000 diamond necklace?
-And yachts and houses, and who knows what all. Way beyond my pay scale that kind of stuff.
-Well, he's in jail, now.
-Never got the money back, though. The government. The people he ripped off.
-Yeah. He claimed there never was any money. All on paper, paid out as fast as he collected it, spending a bundle in between.
-You believe that?
-Why not?
-Guy like that, you couldn't believe him he told you he was standing in front of you. Could be one of those sci-fi hologram tricks from out of star wars or whatever.
-That kinda money he could do near 'bout anything. 60 billion dollars. How much is that, anyway?
-60 billion dollars, that’s how much. What kind of a question is that?
-I mean, that number is so huge I can't imagine it. You know, like those school kids in Alabama that couldn't imagine what it meant that 6,000,000 people died in the Holocaust, so the teachers had them collect paper-clips until they had 6,000,000. Then they understood. Each paper clip came with a story of some type, from actors, doctors, people all over the world sent in paper clips, even bought a boxcar used to transport Jews to the concentration camps and put the paper clips in, made a museum.
-So what're you saying, how many boxcars would 60 billion paper-clips fill?
-How much money is it, is what I'm saying?
-A lot.
-That kinda money, you had it, what would you do?
-What do you mean what would I do?
-Go to jail? That kinda money you think you’d just go to jail? Smart guy rips off 60 mil, just says, okay, cuff me, I’ve had enough? You think he’d do that?
-You mean bribe his way out.
-60 billion is a lot of paper-clips.
-Bribe who?
-Whom.
-Yeah, whatever. But he’d bribe everyone he could, that kinda money. It talks, you know, in any language.
-And
-I dunno, disappear.
-But he's in jail. He was on trial. We both covered it. Handcuffs. The works. Put in the van and driven away.
-Maybe it wasn't him.
-Com'on
-No, really, maybe it was like, a double.
-A double? You mean like a twin brother? He had a brother, didn't look nothing like him.
-No, you know, someone with plastic surgery, made up to look like him.
-Just like that? He gets busted, and in comes this guy looks like him? Yeah, I've seen movies like that. Doubles. Guys who look like the president. Take a lot of planning to pull it off.
-Hey, the guy conned people for thirty years. He had to know the day was coming the cops would be knocking on his door. So he has a contingency plan.
-But who's gonna want to go to jail for life?
-Someone gets paid a lot of money.
-And no place to spend it? He's in jail, dummy.
-Yeah, but he's got family, kids, grandchildren. Enough money he could set up a trust fund for them, keep them rich for a couple of generations, maybe more. Give him two or three billion paper-clips. Invest it in Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands, whatever.
-As if it’s that easy.
-Hey, Meadows took the fall for everyone, didn't he? His kids, except for the one with the guilty conscience or thought the cops were on his trail, and who killed himself; his brother, his wife, all got off clean. Meadows pleaded guilty, kept his mouth shut, and went to jail. He could have pleaded not guilty, appealed, would have taken him ten years to go to jail. Why'd he just go quietly? Not stall?
-Because he wanted to protect his family. Keep the investigation from including them.
-Yeah, all of a sudden this scumbag is an upstanding citizen. A community minded individual. Nah, I bet he had a plan, that's why.
-And? What about DNA? You think the authorities didn't double check he was who they thought he was?
-Why would they? They had him. He confessed. He'd never been arrested before. No fingerprints to compare to. He could be anyone. He could be Elvis for all anyone knew.
-And he’s where now?
-I dunno. Anywhere.
-And he had this stand-in all ready?
-Like I said, guy knew he was running a scam. Been doing it for 30 years. Couldn't believe it took that long to catch him. Guy like that, wouldn't he have some escape hatch? Some way out?
-Like having a double?
-Yeah, like having a double, living in some place like, I dunno, an ashram in India, with a beard and a sari. That's his job. Gets a monthly salary, his family gets a monthly salary. Live like royalty. All this guy has to do is lay low until he's called on to go to jail.
-If he's ever called on to go to jail.
- If he gets caught.
-Yep. If. And when. Then Meadows heads out of the country on a boat, gets to I dunno, Cuba, the Bahamas, Curacao, where he's got a plastic surgeon waiting, does his face, a belly tuck, changes his hair, his ears, guy comes out looking forty not seventy, takes over running some business he's started years earlier, or moves into an estate that he never occupied, just rented out, who knows. And he's gone. And then there’s his kid. Committed suicide right? Then was cremated. Pretty convenient don’t you think? No way to check DNA. Maybe he wasn’t him, you know? Another double. This time double-crossed.
-You're kidding, right?
-Nope. Well, maybe about his kid. Maybe.
Pause.
-Wouldn’t he get bored?
-Bored?
-Yeah, guy like that, always playing chess with the law, adrenalin pumping. I mean the guy’s in the game his whole life, like a super salesman, he can't shut it off just because the store closes for the night; he carries on being that super salesman, at dinner, at the club, wherever.
-You're saying?
-He's still a thief. He's still into scams. He can't give it up.
-He's a scam junkie.
-Yeah, a scam junkie.
-Kinda guy who would try to scam anyone.
-Yeah, but it would have to be high-risk scam. Close to the edge. Keep the blood flowing.
-Guy who would try to sell you a phony piano just like the one the Feds were auctioning off downtown.
Pause
-(softly) Yeah, guy like that.
-Lemme see that laptop. Where was the ad for this piano?
-Here, how do we find out where it is?
-Look at this, the end of the thread. Say it was a scam. Our guy trolling for credit card numbers before any thing else. Sucker pays 42 grand for a piano, pays by credit card, say. Then here’s the scammer, he owns the credit card from then on. Buys himself a Mercedes just for the fun of it. And he may get other credit card numbers, too. Steal their identity, just for the challenge.
-Sounds like him.
-But how do we find him?
-Oh, we'll find him. He doesn’t think anyone’s looking for him. Maybe toss him
a credit card as a hook.
-Think there's a reward?
-If it's him? Sure.
-I only hope the reward payment’s not in paper-clips.
-I'm not.
-Someone paid $300,000 for a piano? What? Jesus played it or something?
-Hey, it was a 1917 Steinway,
-Hold on, let me look. Says here that, what was it, an M or a C?
-How do I know?
-Look it up.
-An M.
-Let me see that article. You know, you're an idiot; maybe that's why you're still writing for a no readership blog. It was his wife's diamond necklace that sold for $300,000. The piano went for 42 grand.
-That’s still a bundle. Here, the Internet says it's worth maybe twenty-five, thirty tops.
-Yeah, one of his neighbors bought it. Another mogul out on the island.
-That's what it says?
-Yeah.
-Lemme see that laptop. Hmm, nice looking piano, I'll say that for it.
-Here's another ad for one, only $2,500. And look, here's a website, a thread
says, wait, one guy says 'snap it up,' another guy says must be a scam, ‘some Internet scam,’ then, can you believe it, costs like $2,500 just to get it tuned and whatever, if it's in bad shape. Keep the thing tuned and whatever. Oh, and here, says it costs like $5,000 to restring it. Take a look:
‘This Steinway piano was RESTRUNG in April 2008 and REFINISHED in 2005 . The finish is mahogany satin... and the sound is amazing! Truly, one of the best years for Steinway ~*EXCELLENT CONDITION *~ **DETAILS** YEAR BUILT ~ 1917 MODEL ~ M ~ SIZE ~5' 7” . New Mahogany satin finish ( 2005 ) . New strings (2008 ) .New #2 pins ( 2008 ) . New pin block ( 2008 ) . New Steinway decals ( 2008 ) . IVORY KEYS ( EXCELLENT , SNOW WHITE , NO CHIPS OR CRACKS ) . ORIGINAL SOUNDBOARD ORIGINAL %100 STEINWAY ACTION REGULATED (2008).’
-A scam, for sure, they say.
-Well, what're you going to do?
-This guy Meadows, that owned the piano that's being auctioned off. He was into scams wasn't he?
-That's like saying that Bret Favre has something to do with football.
-He stole like what, 50 billion dollars?
-Closer to 60 I think. Didn't exactly steal it, though. Worked a con game. Invested people's money into the stock market, paid them a dividend at the end of the year, kept getting more people to invest in his fund, kept paying out dividends, only problem was he was spending the capital fast as it came in. Paying the dividends with the money the new people invested.
-So he could buy a $20,000 piano and a $300,000 diamond necklace?
-And yachts and houses, and who knows what all. Way beyond my pay scale that kind of stuff.
-Well, he's in jail, now.
-Never got the money back, though. The government. The people he ripped off.
-Yeah. He claimed there never was any money. All on paper, paid out as fast as he collected it, spending a bundle in between.
-You believe that?
-Why not?
-Guy like that, you couldn't believe him he told you he was standing in front of you. Could be one of those sci-fi hologram tricks from out of star wars or whatever.
-That kinda money he could do near 'bout anything. 60 billion dollars. How much is that, anyway?
-60 billion dollars, that’s how much. What kind of a question is that?
-I mean, that number is so huge I can't imagine it. You know, like those school kids in Alabama that couldn't imagine what it meant that 6,000,000 people died in the Holocaust, so the teachers had them collect paper-clips until they had 6,000,000. Then they understood. Each paper clip came with a story of some type, from actors, doctors, people all over the world sent in paper clips, even bought a boxcar used to transport Jews to the concentration camps and put the paper clips in, made a museum.
-So what're you saying, how many boxcars would 60 billion paper-clips fill?
-How much money is it, is what I'm saying?
-A lot.
-That kinda money, you had it, what would you do?
-What do you mean what would I do?
-Go to jail? That kinda money you think you’d just go to jail? Smart guy rips off 60 mil, just says, okay, cuff me, I’ve had enough? You think he’d do that?
-You mean bribe his way out.
-60 billion is a lot of paper-clips.
-Bribe who?
-Whom.
-Yeah, whatever. But he’d bribe everyone he could, that kinda money. It talks, you know, in any language.
-And
-I dunno, disappear.
-But he's in jail. He was on trial. We both covered it. Handcuffs. The works. Put in the van and driven away.
-Maybe it wasn't him.
-Com'on
-No, really, maybe it was like, a double.
-A double? You mean like a twin brother? He had a brother, didn't look nothing like him.
-No, you know, someone with plastic surgery, made up to look like him.
-Just like that? He gets busted, and in comes this guy looks like him? Yeah, I've seen movies like that. Doubles. Guys who look like the president. Take a lot of planning to pull it off.
-Hey, the guy conned people for thirty years. He had to know the day was coming the cops would be knocking on his door. So he has a contingency plan.
-But who's gonna want to go to jail for life?
-Someone gets paid a lot of money.
-And no place to spend it? He's in jail, dummy.
-Yeah, but he's got family, kids, grandchildren. Enough money he could set up a trust fund for them, keep them rich for a couple of generations, maybe more. Give him two or three billion paper-clips. Invest it in Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands, whatever.
-As if it’s that easy.
-Hey, Meadows took the fall for everyone, didn't he? His kids, except for the one with the guilty conscience or thought the cops were on his trail, and who killed himself; his brother, his wife, all got off clean. Meadows pleaded guilty, kept his mouth shut, and went to jail. He could have pleaded not guilty, appealed, would have taken him ten years to go to jail. Why'd he just go quietly? Not stall?
-Because he wanted to protect his family. Keep the investigation from including them.
-Yeah, all of a sudden this scumbag is an upstanding citizen. A community minded individual. Nah, I bet he had a plan, that's why.
-And? What about DNA? You think the authorities didn't double check he was who they thought he was?
-Why would they? They had him. He confessed. He'd never been arrested before. No fingerprints to compare to. He could be anyone. He could be Elvis for all anyone knew.
-And he’s where now?
-I dunno. Anywhere.
-And he had this stand-in all ready?
-Like I said, guy knew he was running a scam. Been doing it for 30 years. Couldn't believe it took that long to catch him. Guy like that, wouldn't he have some escape hatch? Some way out?
-Like having a double?
-Yeah, like having a double, living in some place like, I dunno, an ashram in India, with a beard and a sari. That's his job. Gets a monthly salary, his family gets a monthly salary. Live like royalty. All this guy has to do is lay low until he's called on to go to jail.
-If he's ever called on to go to jail.
- If he gets caught.
-Yep. If. And when. Then Meadows heads out of the country on a boat, gets to I dunno, Cuba, the Bahamas, Curacao, where he's got a plastic surgeon waiting, does his face, a belly tuck, changes his hair, his ears, guy comes out looking forty not seventy, takes over running some business he's started years earlier, or moves into an estate that he never occupied, just rented out, who knows. And he's gone. And then there’s his kid. Committed suicide right? Then was cremated. Pretty convenient don’t you think? No way to check DNA. Maybe he wasn’t him, you know? Another double. This time double-crossed.
-You're kidding, right?
-Nope. Well, maybe about his kid. Maybe.
Pause.
-Wouldn’t he get bored?
-Bored?
-Yeah, guy like that, always playing chess with the law, adrenalin pumping. I mean the guy’s in the game his whole life, like a super salesman, he can't shut it off just because the store closes for the night; he carries on being that super salesman, at dinner, at the club, wherever.
-You're saying?
-He's still a thief. He's still into scams. He can't give it up.
-He's a scam junkie.
-Yeah, a scam junkie.
-Kinda guy who would try to scam anyone.
-Yeah, but it would have to be high-risk scam. Close to the edge. Keep the blood flowing.
-Guy who would try to sell you a phony piano just like the one the Feds were auctioning off downtown.
Pause
-(softly) Yeah, guy like that.
-Lemme see that laptop. Where was the ad for this piano?
-Here, how do we find out where it is?
-Look at this, the end of the thread. Say it was a scam. Our guy trolling for credit card numbers before any thing else. Sucker pays 42 grand for a piano, pays by credit card, say. Then here’s the scammer, he owns the credit card from then on. Buys himself a Mercedes just for the fun of it. And he may get other credit card numbers, too. Steal their identity, just for the challenge.
-Sounds like him.
-But how do we find him?
-Oh, we'll find him. He doesn’t think anyone’s looking for him. Maybe toss him
a credit card as a hook.
-Think there's a reward?
-If it's him? Sure.
-I only hope the reward payment’s not in paper-clips.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Trees Don't Vote
The recent mega-blaze in the Carmel forest was partly the blame of the JNF.
JNF planted pines because they were fast growing. Trees, according to old Turkish law, were taxed; so many pre-State Arab landowners uprooted their trees to avoid the tax. This was why Israel was partially barren when the State was declared. In Arab custom planted trees are proof of ownership of land. Also, shade and foliage were needed to prevent erosion. Pines were chosen. Recently the choice of pines was questioned since the cones and spurs from the pine are highly acidic and prohibit other plant life anywhere near them.
That said, pines are what were planted, and as most people know pines are used as starter wood for a fire, then cedar or oak or olive wood to keep the fire burning long-term.
The JNF is now out and raising money to replace the pines. The JNF chief was on the air last night saying over 50,000 dunam (about 13,000 acres) of trees went up in flames. The UJA is also running a campaign to raise money for relief. What money and what relief? I didn't look at the JUF campaign pleas, yet. Hopefully they'll pay for fire-fighting planes and fire-trucks. The real problem is the fire department itself. No fire fighters' school exists. Scarce and out-dated equipment, and lack of staff are the norm.
Last night a group of fire fighters appeared on TV sitting around, taking a breather. They responded to the reporters’ questions about salaries, stating that they hadn't received a salary in two months. Another report on another channel had a fire-fighter explaining that many appointments to the fire department are political, either Likud, the ruling party, or Shas, the party that controls the Ministry of the Interior, that controls the fire department, with inexperienced appointees filling positions required by professionals. These and other disturbing facts are now pouring out.
Bit of background. The political struggle going on now to avoid blame for the tragedy is in early stages. As was said above, the fire department falls under the umbrella of the Ministry of the Interior. Shas leader Eli Ishai is the Minister of that department. He is being attacked for not doing anything for the fire department. He claims he did. Memos and such are produced to verify his claims. Commentators say that these 'behind covering' memos are standard procedure. The paper is there but no one does anything about it.
Ishai said he fought for 500 million shekels (about US $138 Million) for the fire department but was only given 100 million shekels (About US$$ 27 million). Truth is he didn't fight very hard. The fire department workers went on strike a while ago, not one minister really paid attention. Following the War In Lebanon II, when a good hunk of the upper Galilee was set ablaze by Hezbollah rockets, and the inability of the fire department to cope with the blaze became evident, a government report was issued stating plainly the fire department was weak in so many areas a disaster was waiting to happen.
But who pays? Trees don't vote. Shas leader Ishai fought for money for Yeshivot, and other ultra-Orthodox causes, but did little or nothing for the fire department. Remember he has one budget for his ministry and that has to be doled out to the elements in his constituency to keep them happy and voting. Like I said, trees don't vote.
A fire-fighter officer told an Israel TV reporter that the money from the Ministry of the Interior for the fire department, the same ministry that funds the local municipalities, is turned over the local government bodies. But these government bodies are chronically short of cash, and use the money for other shortfalls, not to pay fire fighters' salaries, or buy equipment.
This produces a situation where one firefighters' salary, or even half-a-salary, is designated for half-a-dozen towns and villages. So one fire fighter is responsible for 40,000 dunams. But in truth there isn't a fire fighter, just a slot on the books, with the money going elsewhere. Ditto for equipment. The result, an understaffed, under-equipped, under-trained fire department incapable of putting out anything but a simple fire in a forest and much better trained and equipped to put out urban factory and building fires, but even then sorely lacking in the right stuff.
Eli Ishai is a very aggressive and wily politician. When interviewed at the staging location during the mega-blaze, he took the offensive, yelling at reporters that he had done everything he could and more. Later he told the press that he was a sacrificial goat, a poor Sephardi right-winger being lead to the slaughter.
In truth the case against Ishai is not racism but government priorities. The needs of the fire department have been common knowledge for at least a decade, but no one was willing to pay from their budget to upgrade and staff and pay for the necessary equipment. Now Ishai says he's been asking that the fire department be moved from the Ministry of the Interior to Homeland Security, but no one did anything about his request. A request is even on the books for a fire-fighting plane. But no plane was ever bought. In fact, the Army once had a special unit to fight fires, but the unit was disbanded.
Moving the fire department on paper is easy, but assigning a tangible budget is another. Should Eli Ishai manage to move the fire-department to another ministry he will have passed this hot potato to another ministry, but then the question is will another ministry treat the situation any differently?
The answer is 42 and counting. That's the number of people killed so far by this fire. Three others are still in critical condition. The deaths of these hapless victims push a mundane bureaucratic issue into another realm entirely. Someone commented that after the War in Lebanon II heads rolled. Then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was forced to resign as well as then Minister of Defense Amir Peretz; Army top brass retired. This analyst thought the same thing would happen after this tragic fiasco.
Israel's PM Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu, to his credit, was on the case as soon as it was clear that the forest fire was beyond the capabilities of the Israeli fire department. He phoned abroad and over 30 countries agreed to pitch in, sending planes and manpower. Even Greece and Turkey, who hate each other, joined in the effort and worked together. And remember Turkey, at odds with Israel over a variety of issues, also surprised the locals by lending a hand. The Israel government also hired a US based "super-tanker" Boeing 747 capable of dropping 92,000 liters of fire-retardant in a single pass. Russia donated two smaller planes, each with 30,000 liters of material. It was these planes, along with the scores of others from around the world that helped contain the fire.
Now Bibi has gone on TV and committed his government to the purchase of two or three of the fire fighting planes like those sent by Greece and Turkey. Bibi also promises a new renovated fire department. Perhaps he'll actually do something about his promises.
But the problem behind the fire is Netanyahu's government. Eli Ishai represents Shas. That party is like a hungry child devouring whatever comes within reach and asking for more. It is not that the move is on to oust Eli Ishai, the move is really to oust Shas.
The Shas' outlook hurt Israel when a group of Christian evangelists offered to buy modern fire trucks some months back. According to the Jerusalem Post Eli Ishai turned them down because of religious reasons. Analysts say that should Netanyahu reform his coalition and replace Shas with another party, one that has members who pay taxes and serve in the army, then perhaps the massive split forming in Israeli society will be healed.
Meanwhile Bibi Netanyahu is reportedly concerned about keeping the ultra-orthodox parties in place should he succeed in hammering out a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu is counting on the ultra-orthodox, who are being well-paid now from the government budget in the form of subsidies to their yeshiva students and other perks, to vote for his plan when the time comes.
Pundits think that better perhaps would be for Bibi to discard the ultra-orthodox and take his chances with a moderate non-religious party. But, according to informed sources, Bibi thinks of history, and his place in it, and the history books won't write about him for saving trees, but will write about him for making peace. Is this philosophy shortsighted? According to Wikileaks the Americans and many Arab countries consider the Palestinian issue a huge stumbling block to dealing with the Iranian issue that nearly everyone apparently consider highly volatile. The push for a PA/Israeli peace treaty is considered a necessary precursor to dealing with Iran. Should this attitude change, say the analysts, then Bibi would rethink the make-up of his government coalition.
Commentators say that a new coalition would change the way Israel behaves towards its own citizens: forcing the ultra-orthodox to go to work, join the army, pay taxes. This change would, according to analysts, insure Israel's viability financially and defensively for years to come. But can this change be accomplished under US pressure to make a deal with the Palestinians? Apparently Bibi doesn't think so. This means, according to pundits, that Shas and the other ultra-orthodox parties supporting Netanyahu in the Knesset will continue to get their way, receiving money funneled to yeshiva students (many of whom are fictitious, used as a way to gain more money for the yeshivas) rather than the university students or even the fire department.
After 80 odd hours the physical fire was out but the political fire was smoldering. Bibi acted decisively, unlike George W. Bush during Katrina, nor Barak Obama during the oil spill. Perhaps this decisiveness will save his political hide even though he knew about these fire department shortfalls for years.
Eli Ishai has been calling for a commission of inquiry knowing he has the paper to cover his behind. Analysts say these commissions take months to form and a year to study the material and another half-year to reach conclusions that rarely have any real effect.
However, the irascible State Controller Michael Lindenstraus is preparing his own report on the shortfalls that caused the disaster. This may well fan the smoldering political coals and create a new and powerful fire department capable of handling a fire and preventing it from becoming a mega blaze.
Trees don't vote. That's been the problem. But over 40 deaths justifiably have gravitas. Will that bus tragedy change a government?
Time will tell.
JNF planted pines because they were fast growing. Trees, according to old Turkish law, were taxed; so many pre-State Arab landowners uprooted their trees to avoid the tax. This was why Israel was partially barren when the State was declared. In Arab custom planted trees are proof of ownership of land. Also, shade and foliage were needed to prevent erosion. Pines were chosen. Recently the choice of pines was questioned since the cones and spurs from the pine are highly acidic and prohibit other plant life anywhere near them.
That said, pines are what were planted, and as most people know pines are used as starter wood for a fire, then cedar or oak or olive wood to keep the fire burning long-term.
The JNF is now out and raising money to replace the pines. The JNF chief was on the air last night saying over 50,000 dunam (about 13,000 acres) of trees went up in flames. The UJA is also running a campaign to raise money for relief. What money and what relief? I didn't look at the JUF campaign pleas, yet. Hopefully they'll pay for fire-fighting planes and fire-trucks. The real problem is the fire department itself. No fire fighters' school exists. Scarce and out-dated equipment, and lack of staff are the norm.
Last night a group of fire fighters appeared on TV sitting around, taking a breather. They responded to the reporters’ questions about salaries, stating that they hadn't received a salary in two months. Another report on another channel had a fire-fighter explaining that many appointments to the fire department are political, either Likud, the ruling party, or Shas, the party that controls the Ministry of the Interior, that controls the fire department, with inexperienced appointees filling positions required by professionals. These and other disturbing facts are now pouring out.
Bit of background. The political struggle going on now to avoid blame for the tragedy is in early stages. As was said above, the fire department falls under the umbrella of the Ministry of the Interior. Shas leader Eli Ishai is the Minister of that department. He is being attacked for not doing anything for the fire department. He claims he did. Memos and such are produced to verify his claims. Commentators say that these 'behind covering' memos are standard procedure. The paper is there but no one does anything about it.
Ishai said he fought for 500 million shekels (about US $138 Million) for the fire department but was only given 100 million shekels (About US$$ 27 million). Truth is he didn't fight very hard. The fire department workers went on strike a while ago, not one minister really paid attention. Following the War In Lebanon II, when a good hunk of the upper Galilee was set ablaze by Hezbollah rockets, and the inability of the fire department to cope with the blaze became evident, a government report was issued stating plainly the fire department was weak in so many areas a disaster was waiting to happen.
But who pays? Trees don't vote. Shas leader Ishai fought for money for Yeshivot, and other ultra-Orthodox causes, but did little or nothing for the fire department. Remember he has one budget for his ministry and that has to be doled out to the elements in his constituency to keep them happy and voting. Like I said, trees don't vote.
A fire-fighter officer told an Israel TV reporter that the money from the Ministry of the Interior for the fire department, the same ministry that funds the local municipalities, is turned over the local government bodies. But these government bodies are chronically short of cash, and use the money for other shortfalls, not to pay fire fighters' salaries, or buy equipment.
This produces a situation where one firefighters' salary, or even half-a-salary, is designated for half-a-dozen towns and villages. So one fire fighter is responsible for 40,000 dunams. But in truth there isn't a fire fighter, just a slot on the books, with the money going elsewhere. Ditto for equipment. The result, an understaffed, under-equipped, under-trained fire department incapable of putting out anything but a simple fire in a forest and much better trained and equipped to put out urban factory and building fires, but even then sorely lacking in the right stuff.
Eli Ishai is a very aggressive and wily politician. When interviewed at the staging location during the mega-blaze, he took the offensive, yelling at reporters that he had done everything he could and more. Later he told the press that he was a sacrificial goat, a poor Sephardi right-winger being lead to the slaughter.
In truth the case against Ishai is not racism but government priorities. The needs of the fire department have been common knowledge for at least a decade, but no one was willing to pay from their budget to upgrade and staff and pay for the necessary equipment. Now Ishai says he's been asking that the fire department be moved from the Ministry of the Interior to Homeland Security, but no one did anything about his request. A request is even on the books for a fire-fighting plane. But no plane was ever bought. In fact, the Army once had a special unit to fight fires, but the unit was disbanded.
Moving the fire department on paper is easy, but assigning a tangible budget is another. Should Eli Ishai manage to move the fire-department to another ministry he will have passed this hot potato to another ministry, but then the question is will another ministry treat the situation any differently?
The answer is 42 and counting. That's the number of people killed so far by this fire. Three others are still in critical condition. The deaths of these hapless victims push a mundane bureaucratic issue into another realm entirely. Someone commented that after the War in Lebanon II heads rolled. Then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was forced to resign as well as then Minister of Defense Amir Peretz; Army top brass retired. This analyst thought the same thing would happen after this tragic fiasco.
Israel's PM Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu, to his credit, was on the case as soon as it was clear that the forest fire was beyond the capabilities of the Israeli fire department. He phoned abroad and over 30 countries agreed to pitch in, sending planes and manpower. Even Greece and Turkey, who hate each other, joined in the effort and worked together. And remember Turkey, at odds with Israel over a variety of issues, also surprised the locals by lending a hand. The Israel government also hired a US based "super-tanker" Boeing 747 capable of dropping 92,000 liters of fire-retardant in a single pass. Russia donated two smaller planes, each with 30,000 liters of material. It was these planes, along with the scores of others from around the world that helped contain the fire.
Now Bibi has gone on TV and committed his government to the purchase of two or three of the fire fighting planes like those sent by Greece and Turkey. Bibi also promises a new renovated fire department. Perhaps he'll actually do something about his promises.
But the problem behind the fire is Netanyahu's government. Eli Ishai represents Shas. That party is like a hungry child devouring whatever comes within reach and asking for more. It is not that the move is on to oust Eli Ishai, the move is really to oust Shas.
The Shas' outlook hurt Israel when a group of Christian evangelists offered to buy modern fire trucks some months back. According to the Jerusalem Post Eli Ishai turned them down because of religious reasons. Analysts say that should Netanyahu reform his coalition and replace Shas with another party, one that has members who pay taxes and serve in the army, then perhaps the massive split forming in Israeli society will be healed.
Meanwhile Bibi Netanyahu is reportedly concerned about keeping the ultra-orthodox parties in place should he succeed in hammering out a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu is counting on the ultra-orthodox, who are being well-paid now from the government budget in the form of subsidies to their yeshiva students and other perks, to vote for his plan when the time comes.
Pundits think that better perhaps would be for Bibi to discard the ultra-orthodox and take his chances with a moderate non-religious party. But, according to informed sources, Bibi thinks of history, and his place in it, and the history books won't write about him for saving trees, but will write about him for making peace. Is this philosophy shortsighted? According to Wikileaks the Americans and many Arab countries consider the Palestinian issue a huge stumbling block to dealing with the Iranian issue that nearly everyone apparently consider highly volatile. The push for a PA/Israeli peace treaty is considered a necessary precursor to dealing with Iran. Should this attitude change, say the analysts, then Bibi would rethink the make-up of his government coalition.
Commentators say that a new coalition would change the way Israel behaves towards its own citizens: forcing the ultra-orthodox to go to work, join the army, pay taxes. This change would, according to analysts, insure Israel's viability financially and defensively for years to come. But can this change be accomplished under US pressure to make a deal with the Palestinians? Apparently Bibi doesn't think so. This means, according to pundits, that Shas and the other ultra-orthodox parties supporting Netanyahu in the Knesset will continue to get their way, receiving money funneled to yeshiva students (many of whom are fictitious, used as a way to gain more money for the yeshivas) rather than the university students or even the fire department.
After 80 odd hours the physical fire was out but the political fire was smoldering. Bibi acted decisively, unlike George W. Bush during Katrina, nor Barak Obama during the oil spill. Perhaps this decisiveness will save his political hide even though he knew about these fire department shortfalls for years.
Eli Ishai has been calling for a commission of inquiry knowing he has the paper to cover his behind. Analysts say these commissions take months to form and a year to study the material and another half-year to reach conclusions that rarely have any real effect.
However, the irascible State Controller Michael Lindenstraus is preparing his own report on the shortfalls that caused the disaster. This may well fan the smoldering political coals and create a new and powerful fire department capable of handling a fire and preventing it from becoming a mega blaze.
Trees don't vote. That's been the problem. But over 40 deaths justifiably have gravitas. Will that bus tragedy change a government?
Time will tell.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Close The Gates
Barak Obama in his wisdom opened the door to Israel bashing big time.
He did this with the best of intentions, in my humble opinion (well, maybe not so humble).By cosing up to the Arab countries Obama is trying to make it easier to forge a coalition that allows him to neutralize Iran, and perhaps gain a stronger purchase controlling events in the middle east.
However, in order to show he was 'even handed' he had to act the part. This meant smashing and slashing at Israel. Take for example his insulting treatment of Israel's PM Netanyahu a few months ago. This cold-shoulder was not lost on Israel's critics and enemies.
The flotilla is only an offshoot of that policy. Last year the Prime Minister of Turkey insulted Israel's President Shimon Peres in Davos, causing Peres to leave the stage. The bickering between Turkey and Israel are another result of the new US international position. Turkey has its own ax to grind, insulted at being excluded from the EU (Back in the day as a reporter for Israel Radio, any mention of Turkey warranted an angry response from their TA embassy).
Turkey is looking to spread its wings in the region, become an influence peddler, put Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan in the same league as Turkey's famous leader Ataturk.
Erdogan tried to become a mediator between Israel and Syria, but was rebuffed harshly by Israel. This created more Turkish anti-Israeli feeling. It is not coincidence that the flotilla left from Turkey nor that radical Turkish Islamists boarded the boat, some say, with the surreptitious assent of Turkey's intelligence services.
Combine Turkish and US attitudes towards Israel and you get flotillas, pressure to lift the embargo, the world turning a blind eye to Hamas rockets, the fact Hamas is on the terrorist list of most countries, and that Iran backs Hamas.
Netanyahu, by lifting some of the restrictions on the embargo, may deflate the pressure to mount more flotillas.
According to the Israeli media the embargo on sweets and pasta were items imposed while Olmert was Prime Minister and sort of rolled over into the Netanyahu administration.
According to military sources the embargo is necessary to keep out long range missiles and other weapons that can only get to Hamas either by sea or air. Since the airports are closed, that leaves the sea, and so far Hamas has not succeeded in getting weapons through that method because of the embargo. Will lifting of some of the restrictions make smuggling weapons easier? We'll see. Remember that in the old Palmach/Haganah British Mandate days Israelis were proud of how they smuggled weapons into pre-state Israel. Just recall scenes from Otto Preminger's "Exodus" when crates of tractor parts were unloaded to reveal machine guns and rifles.
Partially lifting the embargo has taken some of the steam out of the Hamas strategy of breaking the total embargo. The world's press has picked it up. Headlines appeared on Sky news, BBC and CNN, as well as on the internet.
But Hamas is a wily enemy. They haven't given up their fight, but will keep on. Time will tell what their next
move will be.
Should Obama take a harder line towards Hamas and the militant Arab states, and issue firmer criticism of Israel's enemies, the flood gates opened by his Cairo speech praising Islam and the Arab states might begin to close, bringing the onslaught from all sides to an end. If not, as many are fond of saying, we may be in 1938 all over again.
He did this with the best of intentions, in my humble opinion (well, maybe not so humble).By cosing up to the Arab countries Obama is trying to make it easier to forge a coalition that allows him to neutralize Iran, and perhaps gain a stronger purchase controlling events in the middle east.
However, in order to show he was 'even handed' he had to act the part. This meant smashing and slashing at Israel. Take for example his insulting treatment of Israel's PM Netanyahu a few months ago. This cold-shoulder was not lost on Israel's critics and enemies.
The flotilla is only an offshoot of that policy. Last year the Prime Minister of Turkey insulted Israel's President Shimon Peres in Davos, causing Peres to leave the stage. The bickering between Turkey and Israel are another result of the new US international position. Turkey has its own ax to grind, insulted at being excluded from the EU (Back in the day as a reporter for Israel Radio, any mention of Turkey warranted an angry response from their TA embassy).
Turkey is looking to spread its wings in the region, become an influence peddler, put Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan in the same league as Turkey's famous leader Ataturk.
Erdogan tried to become a mediator between Israel and Syria, but was rebuffed harshly by Israel. This created more Turkish anti-Israeli feeling. It is not coincidence that the flotilla left from Turkey nor that radical Turkish Islamists boarded the boat, some say, with the surreptitious assent of Turkey's intelligence services.
Combine Turkish and US attitudes towards Israel and you get flotillas, pressure to lift the embargo, the world turning a blind eye to Hamas rockets, the fact Hamas is on the terrorist list of most countries, and that Iran backs Hamas.
Netanyahu, by lifting some of the restrictions on the embargo, may deflate the pressure to mount more flotillas.
According to the Israeli media the embargo on sweets and pasta were items imposed while Olmert was Prime Minister and sort of rolled over into the Netanyahu administration.
According to military sources the embargo is necessary to keep out long range missiles and other weapons that can only get to Hamas either by sea or air. Since the airports are closed, that leaves the sea, and so far Hamas has not succeeded in getting weapons through that method because of the embargo. Will lifting of some of the restrictions make smuggling weapons easier? We'll see. Remember that in the old Palmach/Haganah British Mandate days Israelis were proud of how they smuggled weapons into pre-state Israel. Just recall scenes from Otto Preminger's "Exodus" when crates of tractor parts were unloaded to reveal machine guns and rifles.
Partially lifting the embargo has taken some of the steam out of the Hamas strategy of breaking the total embargo. The world's press has picked it up. Headlines appeared on Sky news, BBC and CNN, as well as on the internet.
But Hamas is a wily enemy. They haven't given up their fight, but will keep on. Time will tell what their next
move will be.
Should Obama take a harder line towards Hamas and the militant Arab states, and issue firmer criticism of Israel's enemies, the flood gates opened by his Cairo speech praising Islam and the Arab states might begin to close, bringing the onslaught from all sides to an end. If not, as many are fond of saying, we may be in 1938 all over again.
Friday, June 11, 2010
A Flotilla For Shalit
The Gaza Flotilla incident continues to make news in Israel. The latest revelations were that the Israel Defense Forces captured and then released to men whom, informed sources say, could have been used to negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped four years ago currently being held by Hamas forces in Gaza.
According to the Israeli daily Yideot Achranot “The two were identified as a senior Hamas fundraiser and a Syrian intelligence official serving as the liaison officer for Iranian intelligence in the Balkans.”
One of the men was “Amin Abu-Rashid, 43, a Dutch national of Palestinian descent who lives in Rotterdam, and has the Hamas nickname of "Amin Abu-Ibrahim". According to the report, Israeli intelligence considers him one of the leaders of the Palestinian movement's fund-raising system and the chief Hamas fundraiser in Western Europe.
According to the Israeli paper Abu-Rashid was not only close to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the senior Hamas military commander assassinated in Dubai, but in interviews he gave in January, he said he was planning to confront IDF soldiers. In an interview Abu-Rashid was introduced as the “leader of Palestinians who are European citizens” on the flotilla.
The second man detained was Yasser Muhammad Sabag, a Syrian intelligence officer serving as the liaison officer between Damascus and Tehran's intelligence networks in the Balkans. Sabag has a dual citizenship from Syria and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he now lives..
According to the Serbian news agency FOCUS, Sabag was released by the IDF and returned to Serbia along with a Turkish activist in the al-Qaeda affiliated IHH organization, which organized the flotilla.
FOCUS said “Its safe to say that he was not planning to bring any humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
Friday's Haaretz news agency reported that both the captain and the first mate of the Mavi Marmara, the ship that led the Gaza flotilla, tried to prevent the violent clashes. The captain said that he confiscated iron bars and parts of a steel chain that were cut by activists on the ship.
According to Haaretz. Captain Mehmut Tuval was asked whether or not he knew if the IHH activists were preparing a violent welcome to the IDF takeover, Tuval said that "they were preparing to violence against the soldiers: Yeah from what I was informed.".
The ship's first officer, Gokkiran Gokhan, told his investigators that special power saws were used to cut the chains and bars and that the ship didn’t posses those tools, but were apparently brought on board by the protesters, who also brought along walkie-talkies. The first officer said that a group of protesters had cordoned off a section near a lifeboat and prohibited anyone unauthorized from approaching. He said the IHH group was made up of about 40 people who boarded the boat in Istanbul.
Footage provided by foreign news services shows Israeli soldiers beaten with clubs and bars, pulled below decks, and held captive. Some of the footage shows blood on the walls. Other photographs show a collection of ax handles, iron bars and about a dozen knives collected from the protesters.
According to the IDF the soldiers felt their lives were in danger and opened fire. One soldier said he was under attack by a group of men who had already disarmed another IDF soldier and were approaching with that soldier’s weapon. The IDF soldier opened fire, killing six men in his attack.
Other reports say the IDF had standing orders to do what was necessary to make certain no Israeli soldier was kidnapped, to avoid a repeat of the on-going Gilad Shalit affair.
Israel has agreed to an investigation into the flotilla incident. Still, military sources in Israel have criticized the raid as hasty and unprofessional lacking planning and prior intelligence what to expect on board.
Once the ship was docked in Ashdod Israel media reported that the Israeli authorities found weapons and as much as a million Euros secreted in the cargo.
Other reports say that the violence was planned well in advance by a group of activists who boarded the ship in Turkey bent on a violent confrontation.
The IDF claims the blockade is in place to prevent weapons and materials reaching Hamas. The US has approved this blockade up unil now. The IDF is also using this blockade as a negotiating chip to force Hamas to release Gilad Shalit. So far that tactic has not worked.
The flotilla affair has brought the Gaza blockade into sharp focus. Hamas activists say they will continue to use this flotilla tactic to try to break the blockade.
One Israeli had an unusual suggestion: have a group of activists involved in the release of Gilad Shalit bring a boat to the Gaza shore with Red Cross and other aid representatives aboard all demanding to visit Gilad Shalit, provide him with food and medical treatment, and a visit with a Red Cross representative, Up-until now such a a visit has been denied by Hamas.
Perhaps with a PR move of that nature the captured Gilad Shalit may have a chance to see the light of day, be as much a topic of conversation as the aid ostensibly denied the Palestinians in Gaza.
According to the Israeli daily Yideot Achranot “The two were identified as a senior Hamas fundraiser and a Syrian intelligence official serving as the liaison officer for Iranian intelligence in the Balkans.”
One of the men was “Amin Abu-Rashid, 43, a Dutch national of Palestinian descent who lives in Rotterdam, and has the Hamas nickname of "Amin Abu-Ibrahim". According to the report, Israeli intelligence considers him one of the leaders of the Palestinian movement's fund-raising system and the chief Hamas fundraiser in Western Europe.
According to the Israeli paper Abu-Rashid was not only close to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the senior Hamas military commander assassinated in Dubai, but in interviews he gave in January, he said he was planning to confront IDF soldiers. In an interview Abu-Rashid was introduced as the “leader of Palestinians who are European citizens” on the flotilla.
The second man detained was Yasser Muhammad Sabag, a Syrian intelligence officer serving as the liaison officer between Damascus and Tehran's intelligence networks in the Balkans. Sabag has a dual citizenship from Syria and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he now lives..
According to the Serbian news agency FOCUS, Sabag was released by the IDF and returned to Serbia along with a Turkish activist in the al-Qaeda affiliated IHH organization, which organized the flotilla.
FOCUS said “Its safe to say that he was not planning to bring any humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
Friday's Haaretz news agency reported that both the captain and the first mate of the Mavi Marmara, the ship that led the Gaza flotilla, tried to prevent the violent clashes. The captain said that he confiscated iron bars and parts of a steel chain that were cut by activists on the ship.
According to Haaretz. Captain Mehmut Tuval was asked whether or not he knew if the IHH activists were preparing a violent welcome to the IDF takeover, Tuval said that "they were preparing to violence against the soldiers: Yeah from what I was informed.".
The ship's first officer, Gokkiran Gokhan, told his investigators that special power saws were used to cut the chains and bars and that the ship didn’t posses those tools, but were apparently brought on board by the protesters, who also brought along walkie-talkies. The first officer said that a group of protesters had cordoned off a section near a lifeboat and prohibited anyone unauthorized from approaching. He said the IHH group was made up of about 40 people who boarded the boat in Istanbul.
Footage provided by foreign news services shows Israeli soldiers beaten with clubs and bars, pulled below decks, and held captive. Some of the footage shows blood on the walls. Other photographs show a collection of ax handles, iron bars and about a dozen knives collected from the protesters.
According to the IDF the soldiers felt their lives were in danger and opened fire. One soldier said he was under attack by a group of men who had already disarmed another IDF soldier and were approaching with that soldier’s weapon. The IDF soldier opened fire, killing six men in his attack.
Other reports say the IDF had standing orders to do what was necessary to make certain no Israeli soldier was kidnapped, to avoid a repeat of the on-going Gilad Shalit affair.
Israel has agreed to an investigation into the flotilla incident. Still, military sources in Israel have criticized the raid as hasty and unprofessional lacking planning and prior intelligence what to expect on board.
Once the ship was docked in Ashdod Israel media reported that the Israeli authorities found weapons and as much as a million Euros secreted in the cargo.
Other reports say that the violence was planned well in advance by a group of activists who boarded the ship in Turkey bent on a violent confrontation.
The IDF claims the blockade is in place to prevent weapons and materials reaching Hamas. The US has approved this blockade up unil now. The IDF is also using this blockade as a negotiating chip to force Hamas to release Gilad Shalit. So far that tactic has not worked.
The flotilla affair has brought the Gaza blockade into sharp focus. Hamas activists say they will continue to use this flotilla tactic to try to break the blockade.
One Israeli had an unusual suggestion: have a group of activists involved in the release of Gilad Shalit bring a boat to the Gaza shore with Red Cross and other aid representatives aboard all demanding to visit Gilad Shalit, provide him with food and medical treatment, and a visit with a Red Cross representative, Up-until now such a a visit has been denied by Hamas.
Perhaps with a PR move of that nature the captured Gilad Shalit may have a chance to see the light of day, be as much a topic of conversation as the aid ostensibly denied the Palestinians in Gaza.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Ruling From Afar
Israel has been an independent state since 1948. This 62-year period is the longest in history that the Jewish people have ruled their own country. The combined terms of Kings David and Solomon don’t match that, and Solomon, who consolidated his warlord father’s power, controlled Israel for only 39-years.
After that a succession of conquerors ruled Israel, most often from afar. The most famous were the Persians under Cyrus, the Greeks under Antiochus and the Romans under Titus. The latter resulted in a dispersion of the Jews from Israel and the end of a 1,000-year Jewish kingdom.
Once the idea of resettlement of Israel became a goal, brought about by second-class citizenship in the Russian empire, and the rise of socialism, which arose both independent of and paradoxically part of the same equation, Israel has been essentially ruled by outside powers steering policy.
Both the first and second aliya were as much idealism as escapism. The subjugation of the poverty stricken peasants fostered the taste for revolt; the alternative of starting a new society in an ancient homeland was the escape from tyranny. Nationalism was on the rise. Russian nationalists chose to implement socialist polices in their homeland; some Jews decided to try the socialist experiment in their own land, or at least land that was once historically theirs.
Many of the original settlers were disenfranchised orthodox Jews, today called ‘yotzei em sheala’ (leaving religious life with questions). Like Ben Gurion, the leaders had been raised in ultra-orthodox homes, their lives circumscribed by the rules and regulations set down by the rabbis in the small towns and villages in the Pale of Settlement, just about the only place the Tsar allowed them to live. Poverty was endemic. Work was restricted to agriculture. Oppression was a tight heavy yoke. No wonder many young men and women fled restrictive religious life and sought freedom in socialism and revolution. Those with firm foundations in Judaism sought to transfer this socialism and escapism to a utopian state outlined by the non-religious Viennese journalist Theordore Herzl in his landmark treatise “The Jewish State.”
But starting a country isn’t like starting a dot com company. Money has to be raised. A structure has to be devised. Leaders have to be found. A plan has to be followed. And then there is the question of survival, not only what to eat, but how to defend against hostile neighbors. Defense means weapons and training. Both require funds.
The early Zionists had to be both idealists and materialists. Had to have enough fervor to excite a crowd, keep them excited as they dug in malarial swamps, hacked away at parched earth, built on shifting sands. Yet material enough to realize that schnooring was a necessity. Money had to come from somewhere.
Tzdeka is an age-old Jewish tradition that traces its roots back to the Old Testament. A widow had to be cared for, also orphans, the sick, the needy. Along the way the ethics were refined: a wealthy man who became poor should be supported by the community in the style to which he was accustomed; the Torah scholar must be supported by the community lacking the scholar’s exceptional intellectual skills.
The wealthier Jewish merchants were always solicited for contributions, to the poor and needy, for a synagogue, a mikva, a Torah scroll. When the Jewish State was discussed, the wealthier Jews were brought into the mix. The Rothschilds put up money for farming equipment, a vineyard, financed new towns. An Italian/British financier named Montefiore helped with the foundations of a New Jerusalem. Simple Jews around the world were solicited for their pennies, just as U.S. President Obama appealed to donors for their dollar bills.
The bigger the child, the bigger the problems. The larger the country grew the larger the needs. Pre-state Israel, then named Palestine by the early Zionists, became a receiving nation. Like Jamestown in the British Colony, early agricultural settlements were communal. Most of the Jews lived on handouts from abroad.
Fast-forward a hundred years. The modern state of Israel is the second in hi-tech start-ups in the world with a GNP greater than all the surrounding Arab states combined. A standard of living envied by Israel’s neighbors, who still remain third-world countries. Israel’s intellectual potential was utilized, allowed to flourish, producing one of the economies hardly affected by a near financial collapse around the world.
Even the Arab population living under Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza benefited from Israel’s financial success. As bad as the life is in the West Bank according to Arab sources, the standard of living, if work can be found, is still better than in other countries.
Israel is an independent state, capable of supplying other nations with aide, sending rescue teams to earthquake zones like Haiti and Turkey, supplying food and medical equipment to Thailand, helping out when possible.
But rather than join Israel as it developed, the Arab nationalists of the 1930’s, the Palestinian nationalists of the 1960’s, the Khoumanism of the eighties, the Islamic zealousness of the 90’s, all sought to deny Israel and the Jewish population an existence.
Ideally this enmity wouldn’t exist, but idealism is good in theory, until the bombs go off in the busses, the missiles fall into the settlements, throats are slit all the way through the spinal cord in a grisly decapitation.
Co-existence is a two-sided endeavor. Oil, politics, corruption, greed, all mix together to make the Middle East what it is. While the majority of Israelis abhor discrimination in theory, they still practice it, against their own citizens and their neighbors.
But discrimination isn’t limited to the Israelis. When the Black Plague swept Europe in the 14th Century, the Jews were blamed. No necessity in going on with the list of disgusting accusations that resulted in millions of Jews murdered over the centuries. Frequently this enmity is pure jealousy. Christians angered that Jews refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah; Moslems angry at Jews refusing to follow the ways of Islam. Secularists angered that the Jews were religious, businessmen angry that the Jews succeeded where they failed. On and on, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, once, On and On.
To defend herself Israel became an armed camp. From the early Fedayin to the Hamas , Hezbollah, and Achmenijads of today, weapons were needed for defense, sophisticated, expensive weapons. Israel started by purchasing weapons with donations made by wealthy Jews. Then aligning herself with countries seeking to exert political influence in the region.
The best friend Israel ever had is the United States, a country that recognizes Israel as the one stable Democracy in the region. Not a pure democracy, to be sure. Not an American democracy. But the US has supported and supports other countries with even worse offenses than Israel. Some of them were huge mistakes, like the S. Vietnamese. Others, most in fact, took the money and pocketed it. Not Israel.
So when U.S President Obama decides to push Israel into a peace agreement, the pressure starts to resonate with the historical past, reminders of the rulers who controlled the Holy Land from afar, the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Turks, British.
ADL director Abe Foxman has said that the US is pursuing a mistaken policy in the Middle East, one that was always wrong. One that puts Israel as the key to peace.
When U.S. President Obama decides that Israel shouldn’t build up Jerusalem, that decision may easily be construed as interfering in the internal affairs of another country.
When President Obama, under advice by well-meaning liberals and friends of Israel like Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod, push for a peace conference with the Palestinians, some pundits see this as a means to distract the world from the failures of Obama’s ability to make good on his campaign promises.
When all else fails, blame the Jews, is an old tactic, long practiced, usually with disastrous results for the Jews. Analysts wonder if cynical politics isn’t at work at what is called the lowest point in the US-Israel relations in 35-years.
Whatever the reasons, ruling from afar seems not to have gone out of style, no matter what Washington is saying,
After that a succession of conquerors ruled Israel, most often from afar. The most famous were the Persians under Cyrus, the Greeks under Antiochus and the Romans under Titus. The latter resulted in a dispersion of the Jews from Israel and the end of a 1,000-year Jewish kingdom.
Once the idea of resettlement of Israel became a goal, brought about by second-class citizenship in the Russian empire, and the rise of socialism, which arose both independent of and paradoxically part of the same equation, Israel has been essentially ruled by outside powers steering policy.
Both the first and second aliya were as much idealism as escapism. The subjugation of the poverty stricken peasants fostered the taste for revolt; the alternative of starting a new society in an ancient homeland was the escape from tyranny. Nationalism was on the rise. Russian nationalists chose to implement socialist polices in their homeland; some Jews decided to try the socialist experiment in their own land, or at least land that was once historically theirs.
Many of the original settlers were disenfranchised orthodox Jews, today called ‘yotzei em sheala’ (leaving religious life with questions). Like Ben Gurion, the leaders had been raised in ultra-orthodox homes, their lives circumscribed by the rules and regulations set down by the rabbis in the small towns and villages in the Pale of Settlement, just about the only place the Tsar allowed them to live. Poverty was endemic. Work was restricted to agriculture. Oppression was a tight heavy yoke. No wonder many young men and women fled restrictive religious life and sought freedom in socialism and revolution. Those with firm foundations in Judaism sought to transfer this socialism and escapism to a utopian state outlined by the non-religious Viennese journalist Theordore Herzl in his landmark treatise “The Jewish State.”
But starting a country isn’t like starting a dot com company. Money has to be raised. A structure has to be devised. Leaders have to be found. A plan has to be followed. And then there is the question of survival, not only what to eat, but how to defend against hostile neighbors. Defense means weapons and training. Both require funds.
The early Zionists had to be both idealists and materialists. Had to have enough fervor to excite a crowd, keep them excited as they dug in malarial swamps, hacked away at parched earth, built on shifting sands. Yet material enough to realize that schnooring was a necessity. Money had to come from somewhere.
Tzdeka is an age-old Jewish tradition that traces its roots back to the Old Testament. A widow had to be cared for, also orphans, the sick, the needy. Along the way the ethics were refined: a wealthy man who became poor should be supported by the community in the style to which he was accustomed; the Torah scholar must be supported by the community lacking the scholar’s exceptional intellectual skills.
The wealthier Jewish merchants were always solicited for contributions, to the poor and needy, for a synagogue, a mikva, a Torah scroll. When the Jewish State was discussed, the wealthier Jews were brought into the mix. The Rothschilds put up money for farming equipment, a vineyard, financed new towns. An Italian/British financier named Montefiore helped with the foundations of a New Jerusalem. Simple Jews around the world were solicited for their pennies, just as U.S. President Obama appealed to donors for their dollar bills.
The bigger the child, the bigger the problems. The larger the country grew the larger the needs. Pre-state Israel, then named Palestine by the early Zionists, became a receiving nation. Like Jamestown in the British Colony, early agricultural settlements were communal. Most of the Jews lived on handouts from abroad.
Fast-forward a hundred years. The modern state of Israel is the second in hi-tech start-ups in the world with a GNP greater than all the surrounding Arab states combined. A standard of living envied by Israel’s neighbors, who still remain third-world countries. Israel’s intellectual potential was utilized, allowed to flourish, producing one of the economies hardly affected by a near financial collapse around the world.
Even the Arab population living under Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza benefited from Israel’s financial success. As bad as the life is in the West Bank according to Arab sources, the standard of living, if work can be found, is still better than in other countries.
Israel is an independent state, capable of supplying other nations with aide, sending rescue teams to earthquake zones like Haiti and Turkey, supplying food and medical equipment to Thailand, helping out when possible.
But rather than join Israel as it developed, the Arab nationalists of the 1930’s, the Palestinian nationalists of the 1960’s, the Khoumanism of the eighties, the Islamic zealousness of the 90’s, all sought to deny Israel and the Jewish population an existence.
Ideally this enmity wouldn’t exist, but idealism is good in theory, until the bombs go off in the busses, the missiles fall into the settlements, throats are slit all the way through the spinal cord in a grisly decapitation.
Co-existence is a two-sided endeavor. Oil, politics, corruption, greed, all mix together to make the Middle East what it is. While the majority of Israelis abhor discrimination in theory, they still practice it, against their own citizens and their neighbors.
But discrimination isn’t limited to the Israelis. When the Black Plague swept Europe in the 14th Century, the Jews were blamed. No necessity in going on with the list of disgusting accusations that resulted in millions of Jews murdered over the centuries. Frequently this enmity is pure jealousy. Christians angered that Jews refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah; Moslems angry at Jews refusing to follow the ways of Islam. Secularists angered that the Jews were religious, businessmen angry that the Jews succeeded where they failed. On and on, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, once, On and On.
To defend herself Israel became an armed camp. From the early Fedayin to the Hamas , Hezbollah, and Achmenijads of today, weapons were needed for defense, sophisticated, expensive weapons. Israel started by purchasing weapons with donations made by wealthy Jews. Then aligning herself with countries seeking to exert political influence in the region.
The best friend Israel ever had is the United States, a country that recognizes Israel as the one stable Democracy in the region. Not a pure democracy, to be sure. Not an American democracy. But the US has supported and supports other countries with even worse offenses than Israel. Some of them were huge mistakes, like the S. Vietnamese. Others, most in fact, took the money and pocketed it. Not Israel.
So when U.S President Obama decides to push Israel into a peace agreement, the pressure starts to resonate with the historical past, reminders of the rulers who controlled the Holy Land from afar, the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Turks, British.
ADL director Abe Foxman has said that the US is pursuing a mistaken policy in the Middle East, one that was always wrong. One that puts Israel as the key to peace.
When U.S. President Obama decides that Israel shouldn’t build up Jerusalem, that decision may easily be construed as interfering in the internal affairs of another country.
When President Obama, under advice by well-meaning liberals and friends of Israel like Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod, push for a peace conference with the Palestinians, some pundits see this as a means to distract the world from the failures of Obama’s ability to make good on his campaign promises.
When all else fails, blame the Jews, is an old tactic, long practiced, usually with disastrous results for the Jews. Analysts wonder if cynical politics isn’t at work at what is called the lowest point in the US-Israel relations in 35-years.
Whatever the reasons, ruling from afar seems not to have gone out of style, no matter what Washington is saying,
Thursday, February 18, 2010
A Nuclear Explosion
A nuclear explosion was how one pundit described the recent revelations of fifty-year-old Rabbi Mordecai ‘Motti’ Alon’s sexual misadventures. Rabbi Alon, for many years considered one of the leaders in the modern-orthodox religious Zionist camp, retired from public life three years ago ostensibly because of ill health.
The Takana Forum, a group of highly-respected modern orthodox rabbis and educators, begun in 2006 as a watchdog group following cases of sexual harassment by religious leaders, released information two days ago that Rabbi Alon had not retired because of ill health but had been threatened with the exposure of inappropriate behavior with his students, and other young men, unless he resigned from his position as head of the Yeshivat HaKotel religious seminary in Jerusalem and leave public life.
Takana spokespersons said that the Forum had made an arrangement with Rabbi Alon that if he abided by certain rules, not being alone in the same room with boys being one of them, then they’d keep his alleged proclivities from the public eye. When it became clear that Alon, who had moved to the Upper Galilee village of Migdal along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, had not abided by the agreement, the Forum had no choice but to go public.
Takana said that they’d received scores of complaints about Alon over the years. One report expressly stated a relationship Alon had with a teenaged boy. Alon and his followers have denied the accusations terming them a ‘blood-libel.’ One of the members of Takana has told the media that he’s received threats on his life.
Rabbi ‘Motti’ Alon, one of the leading voices for the Zionist Religious movement, albeit one considered to the right of center, hosted a popular TV show discussing religious themes and was a much respected lecturer.
The Alons are a distinguished family, his father a former Supreme Court Judge and his brother Benny a popular religious leader.
In Jerusalem one is hard put to have a conversation with any modern orthodox individual without the ‘Motti’ Alon story coming up before anything else. One Rabbi, a professor at Bar Ilan, said he’d heard whispers that Alon’s ill health was a nervous breakdown, but nothing about any sexual proclivities outside the norm.
The breakdown, according to one source, was the cover story to keep Alon’s reputation in tack. The religious Zionist camp, one source said, was concerned that should Alon’s sterling reputation be tarnished it could lead to an implosion of the religious Zionist movement.
Religious Zionist, or the Kepaw Serugah (knit skullcap) movement began before the establishment of the State of Israel. The precise start of when religious men began to wear knit skullcaps is unclear, although most sources believe it began with the religious Kibbutzim, when girlfriends and wives began knitting their men skullcaps rather than the black velvet or black cloth ones worn in ultra-orthodox circles.
Modern orthodoxy allowed men to be clean-shaven, as long as they used an electric razor, considered nothing more than a modern scissors, and participate in events where women and men were seated together. The idea was that religious Jews could be part of the Zionist establishment. The Poael Mizrachi movement, begun in Europe, was an early proponent of this philosophy.
The Benai Akiva youth movement was an outshoot of this philosophy. At the outset of Benai Akiva, according to historians, men and women even held folk-dancing sessions together. Lately a more strict approach has been taken with the sexes separate at all events. This move to the right, espoused by Rabbi ‘Motti’Alon, raised the question if indeed there was a future to modern orthodoxy or if it wouldn’t be proven an experiment that failed.
While approximately 13 per cent of the Israeli population consider themselves modern orthodox, many of those are situated in settlements over the green line. These ‘settlers’ now form the core of the religious Zionist movement. ‘Motti’ Alon has long been one of the leaders encouraging, counseling, guiding that movement. The revelation of his alleged homosexuality has rocked that tradition oriented community on their heels.
Questions arise why ‘Motti’Alon’s proclivities were kept secret when it is the victims who suffered from his advances and harassment, not him. Apparently Manny Mazuz the former Attorney General was asked to investigate the matter but declined. One pundit quipped that in Israel if one had ‘proteczia’ (influence) one didn’t need friends. In Alon’s case, said the pundit, he had both.
One observer asked the question why, in a modern world, the case of ‘Motti’Alon’s leanings was causing such a stir. CNN’s business reporter the British Jeremy Quest is openly gay, having even been caught in a public park one night nude with his member tied up by a string attached to a noose around his neck, and drugs nearby. He’s still on the air. Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is openly gay. Gay marriages are on the books in some states in the USA. The modern world is not aghast any longer over gay relationships, so what, asks the analyst, is the big deal over ‘Motti’Alon.
One pundit says it is because boys are involved, innocent under-aged children. This pundit says look at the argument offered by film director Roman Polanski, now on trial for statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. According to Polanski the girl was of lose morals and no one who slept with her knew she was underage. Under that argument, some of the boys ‘Motti’[Alon may have had relationships with may not have been all that innocent either.
But a man like Rabbi ‘Motti’Alon, set on a pedestal above the fray, is not supposed to have these adventures. Much like the Catholic priests who have been the focus of scandals over the decades, men of the cloth are expected to be the guiding light of morality not those succumbing to it.
Another observer goes into the philosophy of charisma. Charisma, said the observer, is both a gift and a burden. Should one allow the gift to go unchecked, using the charisma to influence crowds and individuals to immoral ends, than the gift has become a burden. How many political leaders, religious leaders, and entertainers have become intoxicated with their own press, and wound up going off the rails?
One expert says that it is up to the masses and their representatives to perform ‘due diligence’ when choosing or accepting a leader. In the case of Rabbi ‘Motti’ Alon either his tastes slipped by those supporting him, or he hid those tastes from all but a select few. He should have been found out earlier, says the expert, not wait for the Takana Forum’s discovery of complaints back in 2006.
Rafael Trujillo, the late dictator of the Dominican Republic, was only one in a line of charismatic leaders who used their positions of power for their own pleasure. The list is long and painful, stretching back in history as far as man existed, including the likes of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Rasputin, Papa Doc, David Koresh and the Davidians, and endless others.
The question isn’t what makes these people who they are but why they are allowed to gain power and keep it?
One analysts wrote that in today’s open society where the boundaries of morality are being pushed farther and farther out, Rabbi ‘Motti’Alon could easily come out of the closet, perhaps even set up his own movement with his own rules of behavior that would become a norm. This has happened in the past all too often.
This analyst said that one can only hope that Rabbi Alon’s goals can be tempered to include only the few acres and scarce individuals he encounters in Migdal, along the Sea of Galilee, and not decide he is like another man who wandered those hills, and begin preaching a new message of a new religion, one much more malignant that the last one out of Galilee.
The Takana Forum, a group of highly-respected modern orthodox rabbis and educators, begun in 2006 as a watchdog group following cases of sexual harassment by religious leaders, released information two days ago that Rabbi Alon had not retired because of ill health but had been threatened with the exposure of inappropriate behavior with his students, and other young men, unless he resigned from his position as head of the Yeshivat HaKotel religious seminary in Jerusalem and leave public life.
Takana spokespersons said that the Forum had made an arrangement with Rabbi Alon that if he abided by certain rules, not being alone in the same room with boys being one of them, then they’d keep his alleged proclivities from the public eye. When it became clear that Alon, who had moved to the Upper Galilee village of Migdal along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, had not abided by the agreement, the Forum had no choice but to go public.
Takana said that they’d received scores of complaints about Alon over the years. One report expressly stated a relationship Alon had with a teenaged boy. Alon and his followers have denied the accusations terming them a ‘blood-libel.’ One of the members of Takana has told the media that he’s received threats on his life.
Rabbi ‘Motti’ Alon, one of the leading voices for the Zionist Religious movement, albeit one considered to the right of center, hosted a popular TV show discussing religious themes and was a much respected lecturer.
The Alons are a distinguished family, his father a former Supreme Court Judge and his brother Benny a popular religious leader.
In Jerusalem one is hard put to have a conversation with any modern orthodox individual without the ‘Motti’ Alon story coming up before anything else. One Rabbi, a professor at Bar Ilan, said he’d heard whispers that Alon’s ill health was a nervous breakdown, but nothing about any sexual proclivities outside the norm.
The breakdown, according to one source, was the cover story to keep Alon’s reputation in tack. The religious Zionist camp, one source said, was concerned that should Alon’s sterling reputation be tarnished it could lead to an implosion of the religious Zionist movement.
Religious Zionist, or the Kepaw Serugah (knit skullcap) movement began before the establishment of the State of Israel. The precise start of when religious men began to wear knit skullcaps is unclear, although most sources believe it began with the religious Kibbutzim, when girlfriends and wives began knitting their men skullcaps rather than the black velvet or black cloth ones worn in ultra-orthodox circles.
Modern orthodoxy allowed men to be clean-shaven, as long as they used an electric razor, considered nothing more than a modern scissors, and participate in events where women and men were seated together. The idea was that religious Jews could be part of the Zionist establishment. The Poael Mizrachi movement, begun in Europe, was an early proponent of this philosophy.
The Benai Akiva youth movement was an outshoot of this philosophy. At the outset of Benai Akiva, according to historians, men and women even held folk-dancing sessions together. Lately a more strict approach has been taken with the sexes separate at all events. This move to the right, espoused by Rabbi ‘Motti’Alon, raised the question if indeed there was a future to modern orthodoxy or if it wouldn’t be proven an experiment that failed.
While approximately 13 per cent of the Israeli population consider themselves modern orthodox, many of those are situated in settlements over the green line. These ‘settlers’ now form the core of the religious Zionist movement. ‘Motti’ Alon has long been one of the leaders encouraging, counseling, guiding that movement. The revelation of his alleged homosexuality has rocked that tradition oriented community on their heels.
Questions arise why ‘Motti’Alon’s proclivities were kept secret when it is the victims who suffered from his advances and harassment, not him. Apparently Manny Mazuz the former Attorney General was asked to investigate the matter but declined. One pundit quipped that in Israel if one had ‘proteczia’ (influence) one didn’t need friends. In Alon’s case, said the pundit, he had both.
One observer asked the question why, in a modern world, the case of ‘Motti’Alon’s leanings was causing such a stir. CNN’s business reporter the British Jeremy Quest is openly gay, having even been caught in a public park one night nude with his member tied up by a string attached to a noose around his neck, and drugs nearby. He’s still on the air. Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is openly gay. Gay marriages are on the books in some states in the USA. The modern world is not aghast any longer over gay relationships, so what, asks the analyst, is the big deal over ‘Motti’Alon.
One pundit says it is because boys are involved, innocent under-aged children. This pundit says look at the argument offered by film director Roman Polanski, now on trial for statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. According to Polanski the girl was of lose morals and no one who slept with her knew she was underage. Under that argument, some of the boys ‘Motti’[Alon may have had relationships with may not have been all that innocent either.
But a man like Rabbi ‘Motti’Alon, set on a pedestal above the fray, is not supposed to have these adventures. Much like the Catholic priests who have been the focus of scandals over the decades, men of the cloth are expected to be the guiding light of morality not those succumbing to it.
Another observer goes into the philosophy of charisma. Charisma, said the observer, is both a gift and a burden. Should one allow the gift to go unchecked, using the charisma to influence crowds and individuals to immoral ends, than the gift has become a burden. How many political leaders, religious leaders, and entertainers have become intoxicated with their own press, and wound up going off the rails?
One expert says that it is up to the masses and their representatives to perform ‘due diligence’ when choosing or accepting a leader. In the case of Rabbi ‘Motti’ Alon either his tastes slipped by those supporting him, or he hid those tastes from all but a select few. He should have been found out earlier, says the expert, not wait for the Takana Forum’s discovery of complaints back in 2006.
Rafael Trujillo, the late dictator of the Dominican Republic, was only one in a line of charismatic leaders who used their positions of power for their own pleasure. The list is long and painful, stretching back in history as far as man existed, including the likes of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Rasputin, Papa Doc, David Koresh and the Davidians, and endless others.
The question isn’t what makes these people who they are but why they are allowed to gain power and keep it?
One analysts wrote that in today’s open society where the boundaries of morality are being pushed farther and farther out, Rabbi ‘Motti’Alon could easily come out of the closet, perhaps even set up his own movement with his own rules of behavior that would become a norm. This has happened in the past all too often.
This analyst said that one can only hope that Rabbi Alon’s goals can be tempered to include only the few acres and scarce individuals he encounters in Migdal, along the Sea of Galilee, and not decide he is like another man who wandered those hills, and begin preaching a new message of a new religion, one much more malignant that the last one out of Galilee.
Friday, February 05, 2010
What Were They Thinking?
A recent announcement by Israel’s Ministry of Defense sent the residents of the beleaguered Southern Israeli town of Sderot scurrying to their phones to call the media, and
whomever else they could, to muster support for an initiative to change the Ministry’s mind over the decision not to implement an anti-missile system for the small towns along Israel’s Southern and Northern borders.
At stake was the safety of the citizens of Sderot. The Ministry of Defense decided that the Iron Dome anti-missile system, recently tested successfully by Rafael Industries off the coast of Israel, would be stored at an airforce base in the South of Israel.
The media pointed out that Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, and others in the Ministry’s R&D division, championed the Iron Dome system as a solution to the problems of Sderot’s residents. The Iron Dome, Barak claimed, was going protect the citizens of Sderot from mortars and short-range Katyusha rockets.
Now the Ministry says that the Iron Dome takes nearly 30-seconds to go on-line, about twenty-seconds longer than it takes a rocket to fly the two or three kilometers from Gaza into Sderot. The Ministry also said that the Iron Dome was more effective with larger rockets, like the Iranian made Fajr 5, with a range of 75 kilometers.
Clearly the Iron Dome is a system that is needed to defend Israel’s industrial heartland and major population center around Tel Aviv against Hamas in the South and Hezbollah in the North. In fact, no Iron Dome batteries are planned for deployment in the North at this time, according to the Ministry.
Military correspondent Yossie Melman, writing in Haaretz this week, said that the Iron Dome system was never designed to protect the Northern settlements nor those in the South. Rather it was a nod to Rafael, one of Israel’s major defense contractors, who lost out in the development of the Arrow anti-missile system, designed to protect Israel from long-range rockets flying out of countries like Syria and Iran.
According to Melman the anti-missile Gattling gun and the Nautilus laser canon system, would have been much more effective to defend Sderot, or Kyriat Shmona. Back when these systems were being tested experts claimed that the Ministry of Defense was concerned that should either the Gattling gun or Nautilus alternatives be chosen then the Iron Dome would be put on a back burner. The indications are that the Iron Dome was shoved through under false pretenses in order to throw Rafael work, and not directly for security reasons.
One pundit defended the Ministry’s actions arguing that companies like Rafael must be kept in business because they provide a vital role in developing and manufacturing systems used to defend Israel. The consolation prize of the Iron Dome would insure Rafael’s profitability since each Iron Dome battery will cost the government over $50 million, and dozens of the batteries are needed to protect the country, and form a real Iron Dome. The total cost is now estimated at over $1 billion. One analyst pointed out that estimated budgets are usually thirty-percent below the final cost.
An observer of the defense industries pointed out that if this was a bone tossed to Rafael, he’d hate to see what happened when they tossed them a real consolation prize.
The residents of Sderot have begun a campaign to change the Ministry’s mind, and have the Iron Dome deployed in Sderot rather than warehoused in an airforce base even though sources pointed out to these residents that anyway the Iron Dome wouldn’t be able to protect them, since the system was too slow to stop short-range rockets.
Will the Ministry of Defense now turn to the Gattling gun or Nautilus solution? Pundits speculate that depends on how much pressure Sderot can put on the government.
As for Syria, recently the Syrian Foreign Minister accused Israel of dragging Syria into a new war that would encompass the entire Middle East. Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Leiberman responded that should Syria attack Israel, Syria would be defeated and a new regime would then take over power in Syria.
Both Israel’s PM Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu and Israel’s Minister of Defense Ehud Barak have tried to downplay Leiberman’s threats. Most analysts believe that neither Syria nor Israel are preparing for nor want a war, rather that Syria is blowing off steam. Israel’s Foreign Minister, say these analysts, is talking tough for no good reason other than that’s who he is.
Avigdor Leiberman is still under investigation by the Israel police for a variety of charges, most involved in money laundering of one type or another. The police have been investigating Leiberman for over a decade, and no indictment has ever been issued. Leiberman has called on the government to stop the investigation, saying that a decade is long enough to be harassed by the police.
A few analysts say that the investigation is used primarily to keep Leiberman in line, with the threat of an indictment over his head in case he goes too far in a direction the ‘powers that be’ find offensive. No proof has been given to this cynical observation, other than the fact that the investigation continues with no indictment.
Gilad Shalit is still a captive in Gaza, facing his fourth year of imprisonment. Observers say that as ususal, whenever Hamas feels they’re not getting attention they trot out Shalit and offer to renew negotiations. This policy, observers say, is the same one that PLO founder Yassir Arafat used for decades to keep the ‘Palestinian Issue’ on the front burner of the world’s consciousness. Pundits say that Hamas realizes the tactic worked wonderfully for Arafat, so why not for them. So far, say these pundits, Hamas is correct.
Analysts wonder why the Palestinian issue has such great appeal around the world, when so many other burning problems exist?
Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist organization in Lebanon, is now a part of the Lebanese political establishment. Recently the UN caught Hezbollah with tons of weapons stockpiled in S. Lebanon. Israel used this discovered to claim that Hezbollah is preparing another war with Israel. Hezbollah claims it is Israel preparing for the war. One observer states that Hezbollah has vowed to eliminate Israel, as have both Hamas and Iran. Israel, says the analyst, has never vowed to eliminate any of these forces. So why, the analyst asked, is Israel seen as the aggressor?
Given that Israel is facing long-range threats from Iran, and medium range rockets from Hezbollah and Hamas, it is clear why the Iron Dome is needed. But one pundit asked why Sderot and the border towns in the North should be exposed to danger, using only the early warning system of sirens and bomb shelters, for their safety? What were the defense officials thinking, asks this pundit, when these small communities were ignored?
whomever else they could, to muster support for an initiative to change the Ministry’s mind over the decision not to implement an anti-missile system for the small towns along Israel’s Southern and Northern borders.
At stake was the safety of the citizens of Sderot. The Ministry of Defense decided that the Iron Dome anti-missile system, recently tested successfully by Rafael Industries off the coast of Israel, would be stored at an airforce base in the South of Israel.
The media pointed out that Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, and others in the Ministry’s R&D division, championed the Iron Dome system as a solution to the problems of Sderot’s residents. The Iron Dome, Barak claimed, was going protect the citizens of Sderot from mortars and short-range Katyusha rockets.
Now the Ministry says that the Iron Dome takes nearly 30-seconds to go on-line, about twenty-seconds longer than it takes a rocket to fly the two or three kilometers from Gaza into Sderot. The Ministry also said that the Iron Dome was more effective with larger rockets, like the Iranian made Fajr 5, with a range of 75 kilometers.
Clearly the Iron Dome is a system that is needed to defend Israel’s industrial heartland and major population center around Tel Aviv against Hamas in the South and Hezbollah in the North. In fact, no Iron Dome batteries are planned for deployment in the North at this time, according to the Ministry.
Military correspondent Yossie Melman, writing in Haaretz this week, said that the Iron Dome system was never designed to protect the Northern settlements nor those in the South. Rather it was a nod to Rafael, one of Israel’s major defense contractors, who lost out in the development of the Arrow anti-missile system, designed to protect Israel from long-range rockets flying out of countries like Syria and Iran.
According to Melman the anti-missile Gattling gun and the Nautilus laser canon system, would have been much more effective to defend Sderot, or Kyriat Shmona. Back when these systems were being tested experts claimed that the Ministry of Defense was concerned that should either the Gattling gun or Nautilus alternatives be chosen then the Iron Dome would be put on a back burner. The indications are that the Iron Dome was shoved through under false pretenses in order to throw Rafael work, and not directly for security reasons.
One pundit defended the Ministry’s actions arguing that companies like Rafael must be kept in business because they provide a vital role in developing and manufacturing systems used to defend Israel. The consolation prize of the Iron Dome would insure Rafael’s profitability since each Iron Dome battery will cost the government over $50 million, and dozens of the batteries are needed to protect the country, and form a real Iron Dome. The total cost is now estimated at over $1 billion. One analyst pointed out that estimated budgets are usually thirty-percent below the final cost.
An observer of the defense industries pointed out that if this was a bone tossed to Rafael, he’d hate to see what happened when they tossed them a real consolation prize.
The residents of Sderot have begun a campaign to change the Ministry’s mind, and have the Iron Dome deployed in Sderot rather than warehoused in an airforce base even though sources pointed out to these residents that anyway the Iron Dome wouldn’t be able to protect them, since the system was too slow to stop short-range rockets.
Will the Ministry of Defense now turn to the Gattling gun or Nautilus solution? Pundits speculate that depends on how much pressure Sderot can put on the government.
As for Syria, recently the Syrian Foreign Minister accused Israel of dragging Syria into a new war that would encompass the entire Middle East. Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Leiberman responded that should Syria attack Israel, Syria would be defeated and a new regime would then take over power in Syria.
Both Israel’s PM Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu and Israel’s Minister of Defense Ehud Barak have tried to downplay Leiberman’s threats. Most analysts believe that neither Syria nor Israel are preparing for nor want a war, rather that Syria is blowing off steam. Israel’s Foreign Minister, say these analysts, is talking tough for no good reason other than that’s who he is.
Avigdor Leiberman is still under investigation by the Israel police for a variety of charges, most involved in money laundering of one type or another. The police have been investigating Leiberman for over a decade, and no indictment has ever been issued. Leiberman has called on the government to stop the investigation, saying that a decade is long enough to be harassed by the police.
A few analysts say that the investigation is used primarily to keep Leiberman in line, with the threat of an indictment over his head in case he goes too far in a direction the ‘powers that be’ find offensive. No proof has been given to this cynical observation, other than the fact that the investigation continues with no indictment.
Gilad Shalit is still a captive in Gaza, facing his fourth year of imprisonment. Observers say that as ususal, whenever Hamas feels they’re not getting attention they trot out Shalit and offer to renew negotiations. This policy, observers say, is the same one that PLO founder Yassir Arafat used for decades to keep the ‘Palestinian Issue’ on the front burner of the world’s consciousness. Pundits say that Hamas realizes the tactic worked wonderfully for Arafat, so why not for them. So far, say these pundits, Hamas is correct.
Analysts wonder why the Palestinian issue has such great appeal around the world, when so many other burning problems exist?
Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist organization in Lebanon, is now a part of the Lebanese political establishment. Recently the UN caught Hezbollah with tons of weapons stockpiled in S. Lebanon. Israel used this discovered to claim that Hezbollah is preparing another war with Israel. Hezbollah claims it is Israel preparing for the war. One observer states that Hezbollah has vowed to eliminate Israel, as have both Hamas and Iran. Israel, says the analyst, has never vowed to eliminate any of these forces. So why, the analyst asked, is Israel seen as the aggressor?
Given that Israel is facing long-range threats from Iran, and medium range rockets from Hezbollah and Hamas, it is clear why the Iron Dome is needed. But one pundit asked why Sderot and the border towns in the North should be exposed to danger, using only the early warning system of sirens and bomb shelters, for their safety? What were the defense officials thinking, asks this pundit, when these small communities were ignored?
Monday, January 04, 2010
Old Dogs & Old Tricks
No matter how hard some people try, they can’t blame the recent failed attempt to blow up a Delta plane on any of U.S. President Barak Obama’s policies.
According to an article in the New York Times by correspondent Steven Erlanger, two of the terrorists transferred from incarceration at the Guantanimo, Cuba prison to a high security prison in Yemenite, not only escaped from that prison but went on to become leaders of the nascent Al Qaeda movement in the Arabian Peninsula that was responsible for the recent failed suicide bomb attack by 23 year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallah on a Detroit bound Delta airline. But their release was prior to Obama.
The New York Times article states that the rise of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia came about because the U.S. released a number of Al Qaeda leaders from Guantanimo. These leaders then escaped from Yemeni prisons, or sought refuge in Yemen. In February 2009 23 suspected Al Qaeda fighters escaped from a Yemeni prison. All but a few were recaptured or killed by security forces, but those few became key players in the new rise of Al Qaeda.
One escaped prisoner, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, reorganized the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, focusing on attacks against western targets. Another, Qassim al-Raimi, became a military commander.
In December 2007, years before Obama, Said Ali al-Shihri, a 36 year-old Saudi, was released from Guantanimo after six years’ imprisonment to a Saudi-run rehab program. He went on to become one of al-Wuhayshi’s top aides in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Another released Guantanimo prisoner, 30 year-old Saudi-born Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaysh, also in the Saudi rehab program, is now supposedly the leader of the Al Qaeda religious branch in the new organization. Another Al Qaeda activists, U.S. born Anwar al-Awiaki, arrested and jailed and released from a Yemeni prison, is reportedly the “internet Imam” and the key link to Umar Abdulmutallah.
The 200,000 Somali refugees who fled to Yemen are merging with the thousands of Al Qaeda fighters returning from Iraq, or those on the run from Afghanistan. The failed suicide bomber Abdulmutallah claimed hundreds more Al Qaeda fighters were ready to do what he did.
According to some military analysts, a swap of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas for over three years in Gaza, may have the same negative effect as those prisoners released from Guantanimo. This, according to the experts, is why Israel PM Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, is slow to move on the final implementation of the Shalit deal.
Hamas has placed to names on the list that create tremors in Israeli security circles. The main one is Marwan Barghoutti, the imprisoned leader of the militant Tanzim branch of the PLO, now serving two life-sentences for organizing terror attacks on Israeli citizens.
Some political analysts think that Hebrew-speaking Barghoutti should be released, since he could act as a counter-weight to Hamas, take over the Palestinian Authority from Mohammed Abbas, and be able to come to the negotiating table with the power to implement a peace agreement with Israel.
Others think that should Barghoutti be released he may just start a new Intifada just to show his power, and establish his credentials as a Palestinian leader. These skeptics also point out that of the 1,000 other prisoners; many will resort to terrorist activities and make life unsafe for Israelis who have been enjoying a relatively calm period since the end of the War In Lebanon II.
According to observers these released prisoners may have the same effect on Israel’s security that the release of prisoners from Guantanimo had on the world.
Many critics say that President Obama is too soft on terrorists, willing to talk to them rather than fight them. Israel’s PM Netanyahu has long posed as a leader of the right-wing, firm in his fight against terror. Still, according to Monday’s Haaretz Newspaper, PM Netanyahu has said that ‘a new spirit’ is in the air. Some speculate that he has a plan to announce progress in a peace agreement.
Some pundits believe that Netanyahu and the security establishment is negotiating with Barghoutti, offering to free him if he promises to help bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table, not to the battlefield. Others believe that the security establishment, specifically Shin Bet head Dicter, have been whispering in Netanyahu’s ear, pointing out that the release of the Al Qaeda prisoners from Guantanimo has caused the resurgence of that organization, and a similar release of Palestinian prisoners would have the same effect in Israel.
The press is again talking about a Palestinian state by 2012. This is the goal President Obama has ostensibly set for the final agreement. Israel’s Foreign Minister, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beitanu party, has said there is no chance of a peace agreement within two years. Speaking on Israel Radio Yosi Beilin, former head of the left-wing Meretz party, derided Leiberman, saying that no country’s foreign minister took him seriously, and most avoided dealing with him. Still, there are those in Israel who find that while not politically correct, Leibnerman often has the correct take on the realpolitik.
Whatever the final analysis, it is clear that the call for softening the hard-line attitude to terrorism hasn’t brought any serious progress, at least none that is obvious. Iran is still racing to build their nuclear weapon, Al Qaeda is still planning attacks, Hezbollah in Lebanon reportedly has more rockets than ever before, and Hamas says it has weapons that can reach Tel Aviv and far beyond.
Given the uneasy state of the world one wonders if the Jimmy Carter approach to world peace will work at this time, or if it isn’t more the time to keep a careful eye on the enemies of western democracy, denying them more soldiers, officers and generals. Men who just might decide the time was right to band together with like-minded fanatics and launch a massive attack that will make 9/11 look like a computer game.
According to an article in the New York Times by correspondent Steven Erlanger, two of the terrorists transferred from incarceration at the Guantanimo, Cuba prison to a high security prison in Yemenite, not only escaped from that prison but went on to become leaders of the nascent Al Qaeda movement in the Arabian Peninsula that was responsible for the recent failed suicide bomb attack by 23 year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallah on a Detroit bound Delta airline. But their release was prior to Obama.
The New York Times article states that the rise of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia came about because the U.S. released a number of Al Qaeda leaders from Guantanimo. These leaders then escaped from Yemeni prisons, or sought refuge in Yemen. In February 2009 23 suspected Al Qaeda fighters escaped from a Yemeni prison. All but a few were recaptured or killed by security forces, but those few became key players in the new rise of Al Qaeda.
One escaped prisoner, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, reorganized the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, focusing on attacks against western targets. Another, Qassim al-Raimi, became a military commander.
In December 2007, years before Obama, Said Ali al-Shihri, a 36 year-old Saudi, was released from Guantanimo after six years’ imprisonment to a Saudi-run rehab program. He went on to become one of al-Wuhayshi’s top aides in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Another released Guantanimo prisoner, 30 year-old Saudi-born Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaysh, also in the Saudi rehab program, is now supposedly the leader of the Al Qaeda religious branch in the new organization. Another Al Qaeda activists, U.S. born Anwar al-Awiaki, arrested and jailed and released from a Yemeni prison, is reportedly the “internet Imam” and the key link to Umar Abdulmutallah.
The 200,000 Somali refugees who fled to Yemen are merging with the thousands of Al Qaeda fighters returning from Iraq, or those on the run from Afghanistan. The failed suicide bomber Abdulmutallah claimed hundreds more Al Qaeda fighters were ready to do what he did.
According to some military analysts, a swap of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas for over three years in Gaza, may have the same negative effect as those prisoners released from Guantanimo. This, according to the experts, is why Israel PM Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, is slow to move on the final implementation of the Shalit deal.
Hamas has placed to names on the list that create tremors in Israeli security circles. The main one is Marwan Barghoutti, the imprisoned leader of the militant Tanzim branch of the PLO, now serving two life-sentences for organizing terror attacks on Israeli citizens.
Some political analysts think that Hebrew-speaking Barghoutti should be released, since he could act as a counter-weight to Hamas, take over the Palestinian Authority from Mohammed Abbas, and be able to come to the negotiating table with the power to implement a peace agreement with Israel.
Others think that should Barghoutti be released he may just start a new Intifada just to show his power, and establish his credentials as a Palestinian leader. These skeptics also point out that of the 1,000 other prisoners; many will resort to terrorist activities and make life unsafe for Israelis who have been enjoying a relatively calm period since the end of the War In Lebanon II.
According to observers these released prisoners may have the same effect on Israel’s security that the release of prisoners from Guantanimo had on the world.
Many critics say that President Obama is too soft on terrorists, willing to talk to them rather than fight them. Israel’s PM Netanyahu has long posed as a leader of the right-wing, firm in his fight against terror. Still, according to Monday’s Haaretz Newspaper, PM Netanyahu has said that ‘a new spirit’ is in the air. Some speculate that he has a plan to announce progress in a peace agreement.
Some pundits believe that Netanyahu and the security establishment is negotiating with Barghoutti, offering to free him if he promises to help bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table, not to the battlefield. Others believe that the security establishment, specifically Shin Bet head Dicter, have been whispering in Netanyahu’s ear, pointing out that the release of the Al Qaeda prisoners from Guantanimo has caused the resurgence of that organization, and a similar release of Palestinian prisoners would have the same effect in Israel.
The press is again talking about a Palestinian state by 2012. This is the goal President Obama has ostensibly set for the final agreement. Israel’s Foreign Minister, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beitanu party, has said there is no chance of a peace agreement within two years. Speaking on Israel Radio Yosi Beilin, former head of the left-wing Meretz party, derided Leiberman, saying that no country’s foreign minister took him seriously, and most avoided dealing with him. Still, there are those in Israel who find that while not politically correct, Leibnerman often has the correct take on the realpolitik.
Whatever the final analysis, it is clear that the call for softening the hard-line attitude to terrorism hasn’t brought any serious progress, at least none that is obvious. Iran is still racing to build their nuclear weapon, Al Qaeda is still planning attacks, Hezbollah in Lebanon reportedly has more rockets than ever before, and Hamas says it has weapons that can reach Tel Aviv and far beyond.
Given the uneasy state of the world one wonders if the Jimmy Carter approach to world peace will work at this time, or if it isn’t more the time to keep a careful eye on the enemies of western democracy, denying them more soldiers, officers and generals. Men who just might decide the time was right to band together with like-minded fanatics and launch a massive attack that will make 9/11 look like a computer game.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Talibanization of Israel?
According to Tuesday’s (Nov 8, 2009) Israeli Haaretz newspaper the European Union foreign ministers said today that a way should be found to make Jerusalem the capital of two nations, Israel and a future Palestinian state.
Haaretz reported that “Last week, Israel sternly warned the EU against adopting new language that endorses East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.”
Analysts say that Jerusalem is the hot potato of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. They point to a document drawn up by the Swedish delegation to the EU as incendiary. In that document, delivered by the present head of the EU, a call went out for E. Jerusalem as the Palestinian capitol of Jerusalem. The document also called for a Palestinian state entailing E. Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Israeli sources criticized Sweden for the document. Pundit believe the document only lowers Israel’s regard for the EU as a fair and honest broker in the peace process. The EU ministers insist upon a comprehensive regional settlement as part of the negotiations. The ministers did, however, compliment Israel’s PM Netanyahu on his call for a ten-month freeze on settlement.
The activists in the settlement community did not view this freeze so positively. Protests have been held and demonstrators have resisted the Minister of Defense inspectors sent into the large settlements to record any building activity.
Yesterday the West Bank’s ‘Har Bracha Hesder Yeshiva’ one of the religious seminaries that combine service in the Israel Defense Forces with study at the religious institutions, made the news when the head of the Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, was singled out for censure after publishing a book called Revivim, based on a weekly column of the same name in the right-wing weekly B'Sheva, in which Melamed advocates refusing military orders to evacuate settlements in Judea and Samaria.
According to the Jerusalem Post, the controversy became heated when OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi said that the Har Bracha Yeshiva should be expelled from the hesder yeshiva framework. Other more moderate voices opined for a dialogue to resolve the issues, reminding listeners that the alienation of the settler movement in the past caused such deep divisions in Israel and such animosity that Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated as a result.
Hesder includes about 40 religious-Zionist yeshivot under which religious high school graduates can choose a shortened army service of 18 months combined with with three-and-a-half years of yeshiva studies. About 1,300 students a year enroll in this program.
According to Rabbi Shlomo Rosenfeld, head of the Shadmot Mehola Yeshiva in the Jordan Valley, none of the other heads of the Hesder yeshivot agree with Rabbi Melamed. Rabbi Rosenfeld, who was one of the six Hesder heads to meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday, said the issue had been blown out of all proportion and was ‘behind us.’
But other voices saw modern-Orthodox Justice Minister Yaacov Neeman’s statement that he hoped Israel would one day be government by Torah law as the increasing “Talibanization” of Israel.
Neeman told rabbis and rabbinical judges attending a conference in Jerusalem on Jewish monetary laws that "restoring the former glory, so that the law of the Torah is Israel's law, is really the appropriate way to endow upon us the law of Torah in stages… step after step."
Leader of the opposition, Kadima chair Tzipi Livni, also a former Justice Minister, told Army Radio on Tuesday morning that such sentiments should "be troubling to every citizen in Israel," Other Knesset members called for Neeman’s resignation.
A recording of Sephardi sage Rabbi Ovadia Yosef calling for his followers to ignore Israeli civil and criminal courts and only adhere to Halachic (Torah-based) judgments passed down by religious courts was played on Israel Radio’s Reshet Bet today. The former Sephardi Chief Rabbi also said that there was no halachic difference between gentile judges and Jewish judges deliberating according to gentile laws.
Rabbi Yosef quoted a halacha stating that "anyone who legislates in secular courts is raising one's hand to the Torah of Moses our teacher, he is deemed a wicked person and cannot not be counted in a minyan."
Later Justice Neeman’s office issued a conciliatory statement that said "Minister Neeman spoke in broad and general terms about restoring the stature of Jewish law and about the importance of Jewish law to the life of the country."
Many observers blame the founders of the modern state of Israel for the current crises. David Ben Gurion was in favor of creating a religious and non-religious education system, in which parents could chose which stream to enroll their children.
Over the years this created two separate peoples each with their own values sometimes in opposition to the others. Little cross-culture was observed, in fact, much animosity was created with secular Israelis resenting any type of ‘religious coercion’ encroaching into their daily lives.
The rise in the strength of the ultra-Orthodox parties created a situation where any Israeli government must agree to measures that incense the secular population. Both sides, according to analysts, are always playing for an advantage. The ultra-Orthodox parties are always seeking to garner more of the budget for their organizations, and the secular parties complain that the money belongs to the secular population who serve in the army and pay taxes.
Political experts believe that should Jerusalem be divided along Palestinian and Israeli lines, the ultra-Orthodox population would no longer be able to be as violent and obdurate as they are today since the city would undoubtedly in the end be declared an international free zone. In that case, one observer points out, no demonstrations would be allowed against a parking lot near the Old Citiy’s Jaffa gate.
Haaretz reported that “Last week, Israel sternly warned the EU against adopting new language that endorses East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.”
Analysts say that Jerusalem is the hot potato of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. They point to a document drawn up by the Swedish delegation to the EU as incendiary. In that document, delivered by the present head of the EU, a call went out for E. Jerusalem as the Palestinian capitol of Jerusalem. The document also called for a Palestinian state entailing E. Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Israeli sources criticized Sweden for the document. Pundit believe the document only lowers Israel’s regard for the EU as a fair and honest broker in the peace process. The EU ministers insist upon a comprehensive regional settlement as part of the negotiations. The ministers did, however, compliment Israel’s PM Netanyahu on his call for a ten-month freeze on settlement.
The activists in the settlement community did not view this freeze so positively. Protests have been held and demonstrators have resisted the Minister of Defense inspectors sent into the large settlements to record any building activity.
Yesterday the West Bank’s ‘Har Bracha Hesder Yeshiva’ one of the religious seminaries that combine service in the Israel Defense Forces with study at the religious institutions, made the news when the head of the Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, was singled out for censure after publishing a book called Revivim, based on a weekly column of the same name in the right-wing weekly B'Sheva, in which Melamed advocates refusing military orders to evacuate settlements in Judea and Samaria.
According to the Jerusalem Post, the controversy became heated when OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi said that the Har Bracha Yeshiva should be expelled from the hesder yeshiva framework. Other more moderate voices opined for a dialogue to resolve the issues, reminding listeners that the alienation of the settler movement in the past caused such deep divisions in Israel and such animosity that Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated as a result.
Hesder includes about 40 religious-Zionist yeshivot under which religious high school graduates can choose a shortened army service of 18 months combined with with three-and-a-half years of yeshiva studies. About 1,300 students a year enroll in this program.
According to Rabbi Shlomo Rosenfeld, head of the Shadmot Mehola Yeshiva in the Jordan Valley, none of the other heads of the Hesder yeshivot agree with Rabbi Melamed. Rabbi Rosenfeld, who was one of the six Hesder heads to meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday, said the issue had been blown out of all proportion and was ‘behind us.’
But other voices saw modern-Orthodox Justice Minister Yaacov Neeman’s statement that he hoped Israel would one day be government by Torah law as the increasing “Talibanization” of Israel.
Neeman told rabbis and rabbinical judges attending a conference in Jerusalem on Jewish monetary laws that "restoring the former glory, so that the law of the Torah is Israel's law, is really the appropriate way to endow upon us the law of Torah in stages… step after step."
Leader of the opposition, Kadima chair Tzipi Livni, also a former Justice Minister, told Army Radio on Tuesday morning that such sentiments should "be troubling to every citizen in Israel," Other Knesset members called for Neeman’s resignation.
A recording of Sephardi sage Rabbi Ovadia Yosef calling for his followers to ignore Israeli civil and criminal courts and only adhere to Halachic (Torah-based) judgments passed down by religious courts was played on Israel Radio’s Reshet Bet today. The former Sephardi Chief Rabbi also said that there was no halachic difference between gentile judges and Jewish judges deliberating according to gentile laws.
Rabbi Yosef quoted a halacha stating that "anyone who legislates in secular courts is raising one's hand to the Torah of Moses our teacher, he is deemed a wicked person and cannot not be counted in a minyan."
Later Justice Neeman’s office issued a conciliatory statement that said "Minister Neeman spoke in broad and general terms about restoring the stature of Jewish law and about the importance of Jewish law to the life of the country."
Many observers blame the founders of the modern state of Israel for the current crises. David Ben Gurion was in favor of creating a religious and non-religious education system, in which parents could chose which stream to enroll their children.
Over the years this created two separate peoples each with their own values sometimes in opposition to the others. Little cross-culture was observed, in fact, much animosity was created with secular Israelis resenting any type of ‘religious coercion’ encroaching into their daily lives.
The rise in the strength of the ultra-Orthodox parties created a situation where any Israeli government must agree to measures that incense the secular population. Both sides, according to analysts, are always playing for an advantage. The ultra-Orthodox parties are always seeking to garner more of the budget for their organizations, and the secular parties complain that the money belongs to the secular population who serve in the army and pay taxes.
Political experts believe that should Jerusalem be divided along Palestinian and Israeli lines, the ultra-Orthodox population would no longer be able to be as violent and obdurate as they are today since the city would undoubtedly in the end be declared an international free zone. In that case, one observer points out, no demonstrations would be allowed against a parking lot near the Old Citiy’s Jaffa gate.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Fourth Of July, A Short Story by Samovar Lightfoot
Fourth Of July
Short Story by Samovar Lightfoot
Fourth of July, 1961, Chicago Loop.
Harry was behind the bullet-proof glass. Only two cars had
pulled into the parking lot since he'd started his shift at eight in the morning, relieving Willy Blackman. Willy'd been asleep when Harry knocked on the window, startling him awake. Willy went for his gun, a .38 snubnose special he kept in his belt. When he saw Harry he took his hand off the gun. Willy didn't smile much. A smirk was the best Harry ever got.
After Willy had turned over the change and cash Harry'd need for his shift, Willy'd gone to his canary-yellow Cadillac, and driven out of the lot. Harry'd put the 12-inch portable GE television on the counter, ready to watch the baseball games later in the day. He had a twelve-hour shift to kill.
Harry worked Sundays and holidays. Usually there was no business until later in the afternoon when families came down to the Loop for dinner. The lot had a contract with the Blackhawk Restaurant providing free-parking for the dinner guests, if they returned with a stamped ticket.
A short list of typed names was taped to the wall near the cash register. Most of the names were Chicago big-wigs who parked for free. Some of the names were Mafia dons. When they pulled in they were usually followed by a non-descript sedan occupied by stern-faced men in suits who Harry assumed were the FBI.
Getting up for work wasn't easy. He'd been out on a date until three in the morning. When the alarm went off at seven he thought he'd been shot.
The two cars had come in together, a Plymouth and a Chevrolet; two families heading somewhere, dragging little chldren who protested all the way down the driveway and out towards Randolph Avenue.
Harry'd been working in the parking lot for two years, since he was 15. It was owned by his cousin, part of a chain of about fifty lots. During the summer and on holidays Harry parked cars alongside the men, all black, who treated him kindly.
Cars were part of Harry's life then. Parking them, admiring them in magazines, going to races. He and his buddies, the other four Jewish guys, would sit around and listen to records of the sounds of car races trying to identify the cars.
"That's a Ferrari," Al would say. Al was the genius, a homely Judo champ who was always skipping grades. "Nah, it's a Lotus," Gabe would say. Gabe was the muscular dunce who was always flunking. If tests knew what ADD was then he'd have been on Ritalin and given more time at exams. David wouldn't say anything. He never did. In later years he became a well-respected radiologist, but that too is a solitary profession. David and Harry and Gabe had been on the football team together until Gabe been expelled for misbehavior and wound up in a private and expensive Military school. The last in the group was Earl, a smart, pudgy non-athletic kid who was usually asleep. He was a decade younger than his next sibling, and the spoiled baby of the family.
Gabe and Al had their own car. They were partners. They'd been given the little Morris Minor as a gift by a shady character who'd caught their attention one morning when he'd flown down the street in his red-Ferrari, a car as rare as the abominable snowman in their north-side brown brick apartment building neighboorhod where Chevy's and Fords were the mainstays and a Buick was already a move up.
His name was Dick, and he was some minor hoodlum, hiding out in the neighborhood in a third-floor walk-up. The Ferrari kept in a wooden garage in the alley behind the apartment building. Gabe and Al worshiped the guy, who was handsome, trim, and claimed to race sports cars. He even deposited the Morris Minor on the street, complete with black rollbar and numbers painted on the doors.
The engine block had frozen up. He gave Al and Gabe the car. They rented a wooden garage in an alley a few blocks away and worked feverishly trying to rebulid it. They had dreams for the car, cutting off the old body and replacing it with a fiberglass Devlin, bought from a magazine.
The hauled out the engine, took it apart and rebuilt it, dropped it back in the Morris Minor, and were impatient to test it. The car didn't have any doors or a front bumper. The hood was standing on it's side near the door of the garage. When they tried the key, the engine wouldn't turn over. So they thought of a push to start it.
Gabe and Al pushed he car out of the garage, out to the alley. Al thought if Gabe pushed it, got it going fast enough, Al would pop the clutch and the engine would catch. They tried it until Gabe was covered in sweat and gave up. They couldn't get the car going fast enough.
By then they'd reached the end of the alley, and were near the street. A young guy driving by in an old Oldsmobile saw them, and offered to help. They man handled the Morris out into the street. Gabe and Al sat side by side, and the other guy started pushing. Up to speed, pop the clutch, zip. No luck.
Then Al thought the problem was the carburator. He had Gabe stand on the metal struts that usually held the bumper, lean over into the engine, and play with the choke and carburator while he released the clutch. Again the push, the speed, pop the clutch. Zip.
Okay, Al said, I'll do it. So he switched places with Gabe. Got on the struts, the car behind pushed, the car came up to speed, Gabe popped the clutch, the engine coughed once, twice, backfiring and sending out a plume of black smoke, then the engine froze up, the tires bit hard into the asphalt as if Gabe hit the brakes. Al was thrown twenty feet from the car in a graceful arch landing with a thump as his head hit the cement curb.
By the time Gabe reached him blood was pouring from his ears. By the time the ambulance arrived Al had been dead for ten minutes.
Harry heard the news on the radio. "A freak traffic accident is the only fatality on this July Forth. Seventeen year old Aly Feldman was killed...."
Harry's knees went out from under him. He called his boss for relief, and then rushed to Al's house. Al was an only child. His parents were inconsolable. Al's grandmother kept calling Gabe a murderer.
Two days later Harry was a pallbearer at his friend's funeral.
There would be no more horse-play. No more games. Wearing dark
suits and white gloves, the four friends were no long kids. Death had ended their childhood.
A coroner's inquiry cleared Gabe of any criminal charges.
But Gabe never forgave himself, nor forgot. Some say you never really get past being seventeen. Al never did. The rest of us ran from it as fast as we could.
Short Story by Samovar Lightfoot
Fourth of July, 1961, Chicago Loop.
Harry was behind the bullet-proof glass. Only two cars had
pulled into the parking lot since he'd started his shift at eight in the morning, relieving Willy Blackman. Willy'd been asleep when Harry knocked on the window, startling him awake. Willy went for his gun, a .38 snubnose special he kept in his belt. When he saw Harry he took his hand off the gun. Willy didn't smile much. A smirk was the best Harry ever got.
After Willy had turned over the change and cash Harry'd need for his shift, Willy'd gone to his canary-yellow Cadillac, and driven out of the lot. Harry'd put the 12-inch portable GE television on the counter, ready to watch the baseball games later in the day. He had a twelve-hour shift to kill.
Harry worked Sundays and holidays. Usually there was no business until later in the afternoon when families came down to the Loop for dinner. The lot had a contract with the Blackhawk Restaurant providing free-parking for the dinner guests, if they returned with a stamped ticket.
A short list of typed names was taped to the wall near the cash register. Most of the names were Chicago big-wigs who parked for free. Some of the names were Mafia dons. When they pulled in they were usually followed by a non-descript sedan occupied by stern-faced men in suits who Harry assumed were the FBI.
Getting up for work wasn't easy. He'd been out on a date until three in the morning. When the alarm went off at seven he thought he'd been shot.
The two cars had come in together, a Plymouth and a Chevrolet; two families heading somewhere, dragging little chldren who protested all the way down the driveway and out towards Randolph Avenue.
Harry'd been working in the parking lot for two years, since he was 15. It was owned by his cousin, part of a chain of about fifty lots. During the summer and on holidays Harry parked cars alongside the men, all black, who treated him kindly.
Cars were part of Harry's life then. Parking them, admiring them in magazines, going to races. He and his buddies, the other four Jewish guys, would sit around and listen to records of the sounds of car races trying to identify the cars.
"That's a Ferrari," Al would say. Al was the genius, a homely Judo champ who was always skipping grades. "Nah, it's a Lotus," Gabe would say. Gabe was the muscular dunce who was always flunking. If tests knew what ADD was then he'd have been on Ritalin and given more time at exams. David wouldn't say anything. He never did. In later years he became a well-respected radiologist, but that too is a solitary profession. David and Harry and Gabe had been on the football team together until Gabe been expelled for misbehavior and wound up in a private and expensive Military school. The last in the group was Earl, a smart, pudgy non-athletic kid who was usually asleep. He was a decade younger than his next sibling, and the spoiled baby of the family.
Gabe and Al had their own car. They were partners. They'd been given the little Morris Minor as a gift by a shady character who'd caught their attention one morning when he'd flown down the street in his red-Ferrari, a car as rare as the abominable snowman in their north-side brown brick apartment building neighboorhod where Chevy's and Fords were the mainstays and a Buick was already a move up.
His name was Dick, and he was some minor hoodlum, hiding out in the neighborhood in a third-floor walk-up. The Ferrari kept in a wooden garage in the alley behind the apartment building. Gabe and Al worshiped the guy, who was handsome, trim, and claimed to race sports cars. He even deposited the Morris Minor on the street, complete with black rollbar and numbers painted on the doors.
The engine block had frozen up. He gave Al and Gabe the car. They rented a wooden garage in an alley a few blocks away and worked feverishly trying to rebulid it. They had dreams for the car, cutting off the old body and replacing it with a fiberglass Devlin, bought from a magazine.
The hauled out the engine, took it apart and rebuilt it, dropped it back in the Morris Minor, and were impatient to test it. The car didn't have any doors or a front bumper. The hood was standing on it's side near the door of the garage. When they tried the key, the engine wouldn't turn over. So they thought of a push to start it.
Gabe and Al pushed he car out of the garage, out to the alley. Al thought if Gabe pushed it, got it going fast enough, Al would pop the clutch and the engine would catch. They tried it until Gabe was covered in sweat and gave up. They couldn't get the car going fast enough.
By then they'd reached the end of the alley, and were near the street. A young guy driving by in an old Oldsmobile saw them, and offered to help. They man handled the Morris out into the street. Gabe and Al sat side by side, and the other guy started pushing. Up to speed, pop the clutch, zip. No luck.
Then Al thought the problem was the carburator. He had Gabe stand on the metal struts that usually held the bumper, lean over into the engine, and play with the choke and carburator while he released the clutch. Again the push, the speed, pop the clutch. Zip.
Okay, Al said, I'll do it. So he switched places with Gabe. Got on the struts, the car behind pushed, the car came up to speed, Gabe popped the clutch, the engine coughed once, twice, backfiring and sending out a plume of black smoke, then the engine froze up, the tires bit hard into the asphalt as if Gabe hit the brakes. Al was thrown twenty feet from the car in a graceful arch landing with a thump as his head hit the cement curb.
By the time Gabe reached him blood was pouring from his ears. By the time the ambulance arrived Al had been dead for ten minutes.
Harry heard the news on the radio. "A freak traffic accident is the only fatality on this July Forth. Seventeen year old Aly Feldman was killed...."
Harry's knees went out from under him. He called his boss for relief, and then rushed to Al's house. Al was an only child. His parents were inconsolable. Al's grandmother kept calling Gabe a murderer.
Two days later Harry was a pallbearer at his friend's funeral.
There would be no more horse-play. No more games. Wearing dark
suits and white gloves, the four friends were no long kids. Death had ended their childhood.
A coroner's inquiry cleared Gabe of any criminal charges.
But Gabe never forgave himself, nor forgot. Some say you never really get past being seventeen. Al never did. The rest of us ran from it as fast as we could.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Letter From The Taxman
Sometimes the IRS or Mas Hachnesah (the Israeli equivalent) send out letters to a
taxpayer demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars, or shekels, in back taxes. These
letters are usually a complete surprise and result in the taxpayer quickly contacting
the IRS or Mas Hachnesah.
That was the government’s point: to get the taxpayers attention. Soon it becomes evident that the sums of money the government demanded in the letter were gross exaggerations. Once the dialogue begins between the IRS and the taxpayer the real reason for the letter becomes clear; some issue of back-taxes or another at a sum greatly reduced from the heart-stopping number in the first letter.
Pundits assume that this is the same tactic U.S. President Barack Obama is using with the Israelis when he makes the statement that the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo is a settlement.
Gilo has nearly 50,000 residents serviced by Jerusalem’s bus lines. Gilo residents pay their city taxes to Jerusalem. Gilo students attend Jerusalem schools. For all intents and purposes Gilo is part of the Jerusalem municipality.
During the Second Intifada that began in September 2000, Palestinians perched in nearby Beit Jalla and fired on Gilo. According to Wikipedia, “Between 2000-2002, during the first two years of the Second Intifada, there were over 400 shooting incidents targeting Gilo from Beit Jalla. Although Beit Jalla is predominantly Christian, it was infiltrated by Fatah's Tanzim gunmen, who purportedly positioned themselves in or near Christian homes and churches in the knowledge that a slight deviation in Israeli return fire would harm Christian buildings…. The shooting included gunfire and mortar attacks. Many civilians were injured and homes facing Beit Jalla suffered extensive property damage, prompting many residents to leave. The Israeli government eventually built a cement barrier and bulletproofed the outer row of homes. The shooting on Gilo ceased entirely only after Operation Defensive Shield.”
During that operation the IDF invaded the West Bank, including Ramallah, and captured Yassir Arafat, putting him under house arrest, and effectively ending the Second Intifada.
The head of Tanzim Mawran Bargouti was also arrested during that operation, and later convicted of murder. He is now serving several life terms, but is still talked about as a possible replacement for Mohammed Abbas, the current head of the Palestinian Authority.
Observers remember when sandbags appeared in the windows of Gilo apartments. When the Israeli government set up the wall of pre-fab cement blocks nine-feet tall stretching the entire length of Gila’s frontier with Beit Jala. The wall protected those Gilo citizens driving along the frontier street, as well as the pedestrians, some of whom were taking their children to the local school, and pre-school centers.
Palestinians snipers firing into Gilo from Beit Jala shot Israelis. One case was a 22-year old policeman who was shot in the heart. He languished unconscious in Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem for months, but miraculously recovered. Other shots ripped into a local day-care center. Cars traveling along a road beneath Gilo heading into the Gush Etzion block were fired at indiscriminately until the government put up the pre-fab nine-foot tall concrete blocks there as well.
The Gilo wall still stands. Local artists painted beautiful pastoral scenes on the wall. The government paid to have bulletproof glass put in the windows of those apartments facing Beit Jala.
Calling Beit Jala a settlement isn’t new. During the second Intifada some foreign news services referred to Gilo as a settlement, using statements like “Palestinian guerillas today fired at the Israeli settlement of Gilo,” giving the impression that Gilo was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, on an isolated hilltop surrounded by pastureland, not a part of Jerusalem.
Gilo was captured by Israel from the Jordanian army during the 1967 Six-Day War, and sits over the 1967 ‘Green Line’. Other neighborhoods captured then were East Talpiot in the southeast, French Hill in the Northeast, and Ramot in the Northwest. Back in the 1980’s these new neighborhoods were referred to by Israeli Foreign Ministry officials as the ‘New Wall Around Jerusalem.’ They were meant to do exactly what Gilo did during the Second Intifada, absorb the enemy’s fire so it didn’t reach the center of the city.
Today the combined population of these neighboods exceeds two hundred thousand Israelis who think of themselves as living in Jerusalem. When the U.S. representatives visit Jerusalem, however, they are careful not to venture into these neighborhoods that the State Department has long-considered ‘occupied territory.’
During the Bush administration little mention was made of these neighborhoods being ‘occupied territory.’ Mostly they were considered a natural expansion of Jerusalem. Bush wrote a famous letter to then Israeli PM Ariel Sharon saying it recognized that there had been changes on the ground that needed to be taken into consideration when drawing up final boundaries. Former Premier Ehud Olmert said Bush talked about 1967 plus when talking about borders.
But dissension over settlements always existed even in the Bush administration. According to a Jan 2008 article, the Jerusalem Post reported on an upcoming visit by then U.S. Sec of State Rice saying that the “US has consistently opposed all construction beyond the Green Line, including inside Jerusalem.”
A compromise was apparently worked out with the Obama administration to leave the large settlements, like Ariel, Karnei Shomron, Beit El and Ofra, alone. Lumping Gilo in as part of the definition of settlements was, according to some analysts, meant to get the attention of Israel’s P.M. Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu.
During P.M. Netanyahu’s last visit to the U.S. much was made of the lack of a photo-op at the close of his meeting with President Obama. The Israeli media fell over themselves dissecting the reasons for this apparent ‘snub.’ The consensus was that Netanyahu was not as forthcoming on the settlement issue as Obama expected. And that Netanyahu was in no great rush to negotiate a final peace agreement with the Palestinians, public statements to the contrary.
Today’s Israeli press made mention of the announcement that only 400 Jewish leaders would be invited to the White House for Hanukah celebrations, opposed to the usual 800. “Cold shoulder to the Jewish community” was how the Jerusalem Post described the downsizing of the event.
Some observers say this could lead to a very dangerous situation if the trend to ignore the American Jewish community gathers momentum. By minimalizing the Jewish community’s importance Obama could wind up marginalizing that community. Some in the Jewish Community believe it is only their influence that has kept the Jews in America safe and productive. History has shown, say the oberservers, the difficulties that could arise should the Jews become helpless and vulnerable.
Some time back the Israeli press wrote that Obama’s Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel told the President that the only way to get the Israelis to do anything about peace was to play hardball. One commentator in today’s Israeli papers said that Obama may be paying too much attention to his aides who themselves don’t know what is really going on in the Middle East, just what they think, or want to think, is going on.
Some critics go even further, stating that Obama has assembled a team of sophomoric idealists who have not outgrown their unrealistic concepts held when they were part of the anti-Israeli radical-left back in the 60’s. Today, the critics say, these idealists have aged, grown wealthy, but still hold onto unrealistic goals. The sophomoric approach, the critics say, also applies to the economy. Rather than opt for employment schemes as FDR did during the Great Depression in the 30’s, the Obama administration is looking for ways to cut government jobs, creating even high unemployment. These same critics say that Obama seems primed to make all the wrong moves at the right time.
Moreover, columnists like the New York Times’ Tom Friedman have written on a few occasions that Obama doesn’t have the right take on the Middle East, and that anyway he should be focusing on issues like the economy rather that falling into the trap of thinking he can solve the problems of the Middle East in a few months.
The latest flap over Obama’s people calling Gilo a settlement is in the same vein. No serious politician on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really expects Gilo or any of the other new neighborhoods, the “New Wall Around Jerusalem” to be given up.
Yossie Beilin, one of the authors of the 1993 Oslo Accords, and former head of the left-wing Meretz party, says that Jerusalem is not part of the settlement issue. (Construction within existing settlements was permitted under the Oslo agreements, although the Palestinians later demanded no construction. Analysts say that demand effectively stopped any possibility of negotiations, a situation that continues until today.)
So sending out shocking messages to get attention isn’t always the best way to break a deadlock, or further negotiations. In this instance some say it is more that some college kids broke into the tax authority and started having fun sending out prank letters.
taxpayer demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars, or shekels, in back taxes. These
letters are usually a complete surprise and result in the taxpayer quickly contacting
the IRS or Mas Hachnesah.
That was the government’s point: to get the taxpayers attention. Soon it becomes evident that the sums of money the government demanded in the letter were gross exaggerations. Once the dialogue begins between the IRS and the taxpayer the real reason for the letter becomes clear; some issue of back-taxes or another at a sum greatly reduced from the heart-stopping number in the first letter.
Pundits assume that this is the same tactic U.S. President Barack Obama is using with the Israelis when he makes the statement that the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo is a settlement.
Gilo has nearly 50,000 residents serviced by Jerusalem’s bus lines. Gilo residents pay their city taxes to Jerusalem. Gilo students attend Jerusalem schools. For all intents and purposes Gilo is part of the Jerusalem municipality.
During the Second Intifada that began in September 2000, Palestinians perched in nearby Beit Jalla and fired on Gilo. According to Wikipedia, “Between 2000-2002, during the first two years of the Second Intifada, there were over 400 shooting incidents targeting Gilo from Beit Jalla. Although Beit Jalla is predominantly Christian, it was infiltrated by Fatah's Tanzim gunmen, who purportedly positioned themselves in or near Christian homes and churches in the knowledge that a slight deviation in Israeli return fire would harm Christian buildings…. The shooting included gunfire and mortar attacks. Many civilians were injured and homes facing Beit Jalla suffered extensive property damage, prompting many residents to leave. The Israeli government eventually built a cement barrier and bulletproofed the outer row of homes. The shooting on Gilo ceased entirely only after Operation Defensive Shield.”
During that operation the IDF invaded the West Bank, including Ramallah, and captured Yassir Arafat, putting him under house arrest, and effectively ending the Second Intifada.
The head of Tanzim Mawran Bargouti was also arrested during that operation, and later convicted of murder. He is now serving several life terms, but is still talked about as a possible replacement for Mohammed Abbas, the current head of the Palestinian Authority.
Observers remember when sandbags appeared in the windows of Gilo apartments. When the Israeli government set up the wall of pre-fab cement blocks nine-feet tall stretching the entire length of Gila’s frontier with Beit Jala. The wall protected those Gilo citizens driving along the frontier street, as well as the pedestrians, some of whom were taking their children to the local school, and pre-school centers.
Palestinians snipers firing into Gilo from Beit Jala shot Israelis. One case was a 22-year old policeman who was shot in the heart. He languished unconscious in Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem for months, but miraculously recovered. Other shots ripped into a local day-care center. Cars traveling along a road beneath Gilo heading into the Gush Etzion block were fired at indiscriminately until the government put up the pre-fab nine-foot tall concrete blocks there as well.
The Gilo wall still stands. Local artists painted beautiful pastoral scenes on the wall. The government paid to have bulletproof glass put in the windows of those apartments facing Beit Jala.
Calling Beit Jala a settlement isn’t new. During the second Intifada some foreign news services referred to Gilo as a settlement, using statements like “Palestinian guerillas today fired at the Israeli settlement of Gilo,” giving the impression that Gilo was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, on an isolated hilltop surrounded by pastureland, not a part of Jerusalem.
Gilo was captured by Israel from the Jordanian army during the 1967 Six-Day War, and sits over the 1967 ‘Green Line’. Other neighborhoods captured then were East Talpiot in the southeast, French Hill in the Northeast, and Ramot in the Northwest. Back in the 1980’s these new neighborhoods were referred to by Israeli Foreign Ministry officials as the ‘New Wall Around Jerusalem.’ They were meant to do exactly what Gilo did during the Second Intifada, absorb the enemy’s fire so it didn’t reach the center of the city.
Today the combined population of these neighboods exceeds two hundred thousand Israelis who think of themselves as living in Jerusalem. When the U.S. representatives visit Jerusalem, however, they are careful not to venture into these neighborhoods that the State Department has long-considered ‘occupied territory.’
During the Bush administration little mention was made of these neighborhoods being ‘occupied territory.’ Mostly they were considered a natural expansion of Jerusalem. Bush wrote a famous letter to then Israeli PM Ariel Sharon saying it recognized that there had been changes on the ground that needed to be taken into consideration when drawing up final boundaries. Former Premier Ehud Olmert said Bush talked about 1967 plus when talking about borders.
But dissension over settlements always existed even in the Bush administration. According to a Jan 2008 article, the Jerusalem Post reported on an upcoming visit by then U.S. Sec of State Rice saying that the “US has consistently opposed all construction beyond the Green Line, including inside Jerusalem.”
A compromise was apparently worked out with the Obama administration to leave the large settlements, like Ariel, Karnei Shomron, Beit El and Ofra, alone. Lumping Gilo in as part of the definition of settlements was, according to some analysts, meant to get the attention of Israel’s P.M. Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu.
During P.M. Netanyahu’s last visit to the U.S. much was made of the lack of a photo-op at the close of his meeting with President Obama. The Israeli media fell over themselves dissecting the reasons for this apparent ‘snub.’ The consensus was that Netanyahu was not as forthcoming on the settlement issue as Obama expected. And that Netanyahu was in no great rush to negotiate a final peace agreement with the Palestinians, public statements to the contrary.
Today’s Israeli press made mention of the announcement that only 400 Jewish leaders would be invited to the White House for Hanukah celebrations, opposed to the usual 800. “Cold shoulder to the Jewish community” was how the Jerusalem Post described the downsizing of the event.
Some observers say this could lead to a very dangerous situation if the trend to ignore the American Jewish community gathers momentum. By minimalizing the Jewish community’s importance Obama could wind up marginalizing that community. Some in the Jewish Community believe it is only their influence that has kept the Jews in America safe and productive. History has shown, say the oberservers, the difficulties that could arise should the Jews become helpless and vulnerable.
Some time back the Israeli press wrote that Obama’s Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel told the President that the only way to get the Israelis to do anything about peace was to play hardball. One commentator in today’s Israeli papers said that Obama may be paying too much attention to his aides who themselves don’t know what is really going on in the Middle East, just what they think, or want to think, is going on.
Some critics go even further, stating that Obama has assembled a team of sophomoric idealists who have not outgrown their unrealistic concepts held when they were part of the anti-Israeli radical-left back in the 60’s. Today, the critics say, these idealists have aged, grown wealthy, but still hold onto unrealistic goals. The sophomoric approach, the critics say, also applies to the economy. Rather than opt for employment schemes as FDR did during the Great Depression in the 30’s, the Obama administration is looking for ways to cut government jobs, creating even high unemployment. These same critics say that Obama seems primed to make all the wrong moves at the right time.
Moreover, columnists like the New York Times’ Tom Friedman have written on a few occasions that Obama doesn’t have the right take on the Middle East, and that anyway he should be focusing on issues like the economy rather that falling into the trap of thinking he can solve the problems of the Middle East in a few months.
The latest flap over Obama’s people calling Gilo a settlement is in the same vein. No serious politician on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really expects Gilo or any of the other new neighborhoods, the “New Wall Around Jerusalem” to be given up.
Yossie Beilin, one of the authors of the 1993 Oslo Accords, and former head of the left-wing Meretz party, says that Jerusalem is not part of the settlement issue. (Construction within existing settlements was permitted under the Oslo agreements, although the Palestinians later demanded no construction. Analysts say that demand effectively stopped any possibility of negotiations, a situation that continues until today.)
So sending out shocking messages to get attention isn’t always the best way to break a deadlock, or further negotiations. In this instance some say it is more that some college kids broke into the tax authority and started having fun sending out prank letters.
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