Pedestrians Beware! Should be a sign posted every ten meters in China. From the hamlets to the major metropolis, a person on foot is about as safe as a quail during hunting season.
China has many advantages over other countries when it comes to transportation. A train ride taking over fifty-hours from one part of the country to another costs about $50. A ten-hour bus ride between cities might cost $5. The local citizens benefit from these subsidized forms of travel. Tourists pay a higher rate.
Streets and roads in the cities are wide, well paved, and well-thought out. Intersections have traffic lights. During rush-hour traffic cops in white helmets stand around directing traffic. What is unusual in Chinese cities is traffic lanes for bicycles and slower-moving motorbikes. These lanes are usually separated from the main traffic flow by a low cement barrier. Crosswalks are clearly marked with white stripes.
That’s the infrastructure. Throw into the mix the jillions of vehicles and pedestrians, mix them up together, and you get a jumble of cars, trucks, bikes, and people all competing for the same space. An intersection becomes an exercise in grim, teeth-clenched determination. Once the light turns green, or even before it does, traffic hits the center of the intersection from every direction like a fullback hitting the line. Then it is usually the biggest that wins. A Mack Truck wins over a bus, a bus over a pick-up truck, a van over a car, a motorbike wins over a bicycle, and pedestrians are simply a nuisance that better be light on their feet or have good health insurance.
Crossing the street on foot in any Chinese city one has to look all ways simultaneously, because traffic obeys no laws once the light turns green. Any path which leads across the intersection is fair, even if it means crossing over into the on-coming traffic, going into the bike lane, or sometimes even on the sidewalks. Driving in China makes the car chases in Hollywood movies look tame.
A passenger car sees a hole in the traffic and swerves left into the intersection like a halfback carrying the ball on Monday Night Football. From the other direction a young woman on a bicycle may be pedaling across the street on the wide white pedestrian crossing lines. The car races towards her, nearly clipping her wheel. The woman would have been under the car had she not stopped, putting down her foot on the pavement, grimacing in resignation that she’d lost the contest.
But she doesn’t yell. One doesn’t see angry fist shaking wild eyed angry drivers or pedestrians yelling. But one does hear a lot of horns. Chinese drivers love their horns, or bells, in the case of bicycles, or buzzers, in the case of motor scooters. Although some motor scooters have replaced with buzzers with car horns, one suspects in order to be taken more seriously.
The Chinese blow their horns as they drive, sometimes when no one is within hundreds of yards of them.. One observer said they use the horns to save wear and tear on their brakes, but that couldn’t be true, because Chinese drivers play chicken every second they’re behind the wheel.
A good driver in China is one who can bull through a traffic jam, ignoring any on-coming traffic, bicycles, or pedestrians, who better move aside or get hit. And sometimes they do get hit. Once in a while one sees two cars blocking traffic, the drivers examining the damage. If an ambulance wanted to wend its way through the traffic, the sick person would die before reaching the hospital, even if it was only a block away.
Some of the intra-city roads were fantastic, six-lane super-highways and toll roads that stretched flat and endlessly into the horizon. Others were trips into Dante’s inferno. The “National Highway” between Quilin and Yangshu was a disaster waiting to happen. Although it was a toll-road, it was only two-lanes, one in either direction, not that that mattered because drivers used either side depending on circumstances. Both lanes thought were with potholes or had sections missing asphalt. To make matters worse the road wended itself through towns and villages busy with markets, causing the traffic to slow to a crawl in front of a vegetable stand because a clot of shoppers had spilled over onto the road.
The distance between Quilin and Yangshu was only about 80 kilometers, but took over two-hours of bone jarring nerve-rattling travel. As on all roads in China, from city streets to super-highways, chicken is the name of the game, and manual dexterity a necessity. If possible, that means if no cement barrier exists, the driver feels free to cross a solid white line as if it wasn’t there, or swerve onto the shoulder, even if it is on the on-coming traffic side of the road And the two-lane country roads were the rule in China not the exception. And all were clogged with everything from foot traffic, bikes, buffalo, to slow-moving trucks.
The Chinese version of a farm truck only ran at about twenty KPH (about 15 MPH). This was a vehicle whose drive-train was a strong belt running from the motor to a big front wheel; behind it a cart steered with a rod, like a rudder on a sailboat. Sometimes the cart was enclosed. Sometimes a traveler would see the same motor and wheels out in the fields with a plow attached to it. After a while one understood those signs on European and US highways forbidding certain vehicles from the roads, and setting a minimum speed-limit.
The way the drivers overcame these obstacles was to drive around them, preferably at high speed, and with the utmost discomfort to the passenger. If a passenger didn’t have complete faith in the driver then heart attacks and strokes would be commonplace. The drivers all knew the rules of the game. A taxi or limo or van driver spent his waking moments sitting around eating and smoking and waiting in the parking lot for the tourists to see the sights or behind the wheel.. Once on the road these pleasant mild-mannered men and women become road racers zipping around a truck, racing to fill a gap to the next slow-moving vehicle, slamming on the brakes, peeking around to see how close the next car was, and speeding into the next gap. This went on for the entire trip, except for stops at putrid, hold your nose, toilets..
The fact that roads had white lines, solid or broken, didn’t matter a whit. Neither did the shoulders. Where ever the driver could aim his vehicle to keep it moving was open game. Any lesser-included, smaller trucks, bikes, pedestrians, had better scatter. And what was amazing was everyone knew these were the rules, and accepted them.
On the highways the police drive late-model Toyotas, and were occasionally seen giving out traffic tickets. More often they stood around looking at an overloaded truck that overturned when the driver misjudged a pothole. One Chinese observer said that the recent bad winter had created sever problems in China which filtered down to the roads.
Snow had closed roads, and jammed up railroad lines. Coal and other supplies were stuck back in their loading docks. When the snow melted the government gave the nod and trucks were encouraged to overload their cargo beds to take up the slack in supplies needed in the cities.
It was not unusual to see trucks so heavily loaded their springs were useless, and the beds nearly resting on the wheels, the load piled four feet above the bed. These top-heavy vehicles didn’t make turns well, and easily tipped over.
The country roads further exacerbated this phenomenon. Some provinces were wealthy, had industry that paid taxes, and allowed for good roads. Others were poorer, in a money crunch. Those were the provinces that had roads with potholes the size of craters caused by a falling meteor. Those were the provinces where the overloaded trucks could be found on their sides like beached whales.
The road from Lijian back to Changdu (or Chungking, one forgets,) ran through towns and villages, and was wide enough for four lanes, but there wasn’t enough asphalt down on it to paint a white separation line. The top layer of ashpalt had disintegrated, and what was left was mounds of black tar and gravel near deep gouges on the ground. A vehicle literally had to swerve horizontally from one side of the wide road to the other to avoid these craters. Some of the overloaded trucks didn’t make the turns and toppled over. That’s when one saw the police, standing around, staring at the truck.
When the driver of one taxi was asked why on the way to Lijian, a jumping off point for the ride up to Mt Emei 10,000 feet in the air, one was told that the super-highway was longer, and only used one –way; the pot-holed cratered road was used on the way back. And even more astounding was both were toll roads that charged the same fees.
Okay, so you’re going to avoid all of these things, and rent a car, drive sanely, brave the elements, be an adventurer.. Forget it. The signs, when there are signs, are in Chinese. Some are in English, but only near the major cities and major airports. So you may be able to get out of Beijing, but then you could wind up in Tibet before you realized you’d taken a wrong turn. And these days you don’t want to wind up in Tibet.. Asking directions won’t help, either because most Chinese people’s English vocabulary ends with “Hello.”
Of course the signs weren’t always intelligible, either. One sign wired to a railing at the side of a steep cliff said, “No Falling Allowed.”
So, I guess you’ve figured that riding on the roads in China is not for the faint-hearted nervous passenger, or a back seat driver. Those folks best to stick to big busses, trains and planes. Or, take a lot of tranquilizers.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
No One Ever Heard Of Israel
Traveling in China as an Israeli is a strange experience. Usually when traveling at some tourist location, be it a guest house, a hotel elevator, or walking the Great Wall of China, the question always arises: “Where are you from?.”
Whenever an Israeli answers, “Israel,” there is usually always a reaction. Sometimes the conversation zooms away onto the other travelers trips to Israel, or wish to travel to Israel, the travails of Israel; the dangers or lack of danger; the political situation: but sometimes a pregnant silence is the beginning and end of the subject, which then politely switches to something else. Anything else.
These reactions are common with Europeans and Americans. The pregnant pause indicates a suspected anti-Israeli bias. But in China, among Chinese, the pregnant pause indicates a complete and utter lack of knowledge of the subject matter. Most Chinese have never heard of Israel, pronounced Isaleah in Chinese.
“Where are you from?” they ask. “Israel,” you answer, and they look at you like dumb cows waiting for the electric shock then the hammer to the brain.
“Israel,” you repeat. Then you get, “Ah, Italia” When you shake your head, they get that glazed looked. Some say, “Middle East,” and nod a few times. If you try to elaborate, saying, “Jewish,” and point to yourself, they stare at you. Should a point of illumination occur, you see a glimmer of recognition, a light in their eyes, and they smile (the Chinese love to smile, and have great smiles) and say, “Ah, Jud High” which means Jewish in Chinese. And then inevitably you get, “Einstein. Very Clever.”
The traveler at that point wants to be polite, and not bring up the fact that the word Jew is about the only thing they have in common with Einstein.
Sometimes the Chinese interviewer then brings up another famous Jew, “Marx.” But only those who have been to university. A few even mention “Mosizes” Moses. And then a discussion starts about which culture is older, the Hebrew or the Chinese. In fact, you explain, believe it or not, the Jewish culture, that means Abraham in about the year 2000, and Moses in about 1400, and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., actually predate most of China’s golden age.
One learns that the Emperor Chin unified China in the 3rd century B.C. The Great Wall was then just a jumble of protective fences around various warlord’s holdings. He fought them all, defeated them all, killed so many he became a mass murderer by today’s standards, ( he reportedly killed all the thousands of workers who constructed the world-famous Tera Cota soldiers, so he would have company in the after-life) and connected the wall into one 1,000 kilometer structure stretching as far as the eye could see.
One explains that by then the Hebrew tribes had been unified for 800 years and the Temple had been built, destroyed, and rebuilt. Moses was writing in Hebrew long before the Chinese. These facts come out in discussion with the Chinese guides, all of whom studied at some college or another, a few at universities. They are of course duly impressed by the rich Jewish/Hebrew culture. But these educated guides and waiters with college degrees are rare.
One o guide was from a province in the far West of China along the Kazakhstan border. He explained that China had fifty-five ethnic minorities. The explanation came as the travelers under his tutelage toured a Buddhist temple in Kunming, a city of approximately 8,000,000 people. The Buddhists, he explained, were an ethnic minority. He said that only three religions are recognized by the Chinese authorities, Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism.
Jews are not on the list. Neither are Moslems, or Kurds, or Mongols, or Yugurs. The guide said his parents were Moslem, but not fanatic. He said he wasn’t observant, but still only ate Hallal (non-pork dishes) and abstained from alcohol. He mentioned that some of the men in his province had joined up with Al-Qaida. So all wasn’t perfect in China when it came to minorities.
“Anti-Semitism doesn’t exist in China,” said Dvir Ben Gal, an Israeli who has lived in Shanghai for six or seven years, and gives tours of ‘Jewish Shanghai.’ The fact that the Jews aren’t officially recognized in China has created some difficulties. Dvir has made it a pet project of his to salvage all the Jewish headstones he can find in Shanghai. He wants the government to establish a memorial to these Jews, but the government refuses. It’s all part of the Jewish problem China faces: Jews aren’t officially recognized in China. The tombstones are a sore subject. Don’t even think about mentioning the bodies in the lost cemeteries. “We concentrate on the living, now,” Dvir said, quoting a local Rabbi. “It would endanger our relationships with the Chinese to bring up these topics.”
Back in the mid 1850’s, after the Opium Wars, the British and French took over Shanghai. They couldn’t decide which country should issue entry permits, so they decided amongst themselves that no one would, thus Shanghai became an open port. “Back then, no one paid much attention to what the Chinese wanted,” said Dvir.
The fabulous, informative, five-hour tour he lead began at the “Peace” hotel along the river in downtown Shanghai. An impressive art-nuevo building, the Peace hotel was originally called the Cathay, a word for China. The hotel was built by an Iraqi Jewish immigrant to China named Sasson. The 11-story structure is closed for repairs these days, but still that’s where the tour began. And with it an explanation of how the Jewish Iraqi businessmen like Sasson and Kadouri, who came to Shanghai and started their vast fortunes essentially built up Shanghai into a modern commercial center.
Along the way they also built impressive buildings, like a 255 room mansion, nationalized by Chairman Mao and turned into a Children’s Theater smack dab in the middle of the “People’s Park.” Then there was Ohel Rachel, and Ohel Moshe, synagogues put up by the Sassons, Kadouris, or Waldoons, in memory of a father, mother or other relative.
Ohel Moshe became a shelter for the Mir Yeshiva when they fled Europe during World War Two. And Ohel Leah became a storehouse for Chinese debris. Lately Ohel Moshe was turned into a museum, some say because the Chinese were concerned that the spillover from the much-anticipated Beijing Olympics would sour Jewish visitors to Shanghai once they realized the shape of former Jewish landmarks.But it is not a synagogue. No Sefer Torah is allowed in it, nor are prayers. The museum shows a short film on Jewish Shanghai, but mostly it focuses on who the Jews were before they arrived in Shanghai, centering on Krystalnacht and the Nazi period.
Dvir pointed out that no mention is to be made of the fact that the Chinese destroyed Jewish cemeteries first in the white heat of the ‘cultural revolution’ and then in the rush to build skyscrapers, tossing the tombstones into slimy swamps, or using them in one form or another. Once Dvir began to unearth these tombstones he realized that the government was embarrassed by this cavalier treatment of the Jews’ ancestors remains, since the Chinese really do revere their own ancestors. One could see graves, actually small mounds with headstones, out in the fields all through the country. Only in the large cities was cremation enforced.
Dvir said that he wanted Ohel Moshe to be the venue for a memorial to the Jews whose graves were desecrated, but the government said no. There is also a Jewish Ghetto in Shanghai, written about by many people. Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal lived there for nearly eight years as a refugee. The Ghetto began with White Russians fleeing the Communists, then filled up with European Jews fleeing the Nazis. During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai more trouble befell the Jews once the Nazis decided the Japanese had to herd all of Shanghai’s Jews into the Ghetto. The ultimate Nazi plan was to exterminate Shanghai’s Jews, but the Americans dropped an atom bomb on Japan and the war ended before the Japanese got around to adhering to Nazi directives.
Today the Jews of Shanghai, who number several hundred, meet five times a year in Ohel Leah, in the People’s Park, to celebrate Purim, Israel’s Independence Day, and other events. The Jewish population is made up of businessmen, hi-tech people serving a few years in China, and ex-patriots teaching English. The main focus is Beit Chabad, which amazingly attracts up to 200 people for a Friday night service, and full meat meal. Most are tourists, or businessmen traveling through, but some Israeli hi-tech people who are residents, while not religious, said they come to keep connected to Judaism and Israel.
When asked why the congregation couldn’t get possession of Ohel Moshe or Ohel Leah the traveler is told, “Jews aren’t recognized. And the government can’t give away land to private people.” About Jewish recognition, one was told, “If they recognize the Jews, then what about the other fifty-odd ethnic minorities. In China everything is connected to something else. Give the Jews a building, what about the Baptists, or the Moslems?” While the Jews have synagogues, like Beit Chabad, and the Moslems Mosques, neither is officially recognized. And when it comes to minorities, the list is long and the Jews are nowhere near the top in importance or numbers.
Beijing even has a Kosher restaurant, a Chabad congregation, and even a liberal one, a mix of Conservative/Reform and Reconstructionist congregants. In total about 4,000 Jews live and work in China. Peretz Rodman is the Rabbi of the Liberal congregation, and visits his ‘kehila’ from his home in Jerusalem several times a year. Lately he has begun conducting Sunday school lessons using long-distance Internet learning.
The Jews in China are comfortable. The old-line families, the Sassons and Kadouris moved their businesses to Hong Kong, or London, after the Communist revolution, but are still doing business n China.. In the long history of China, Jews and Chinese, hardly crosses paths hence there is no animosity. Some scholars postulate that Confucius, who predated Buddha, actually espoused some teachings that had distinct Hebrew tones to them. Confucius was known to be a voracious reader and scholar with far-reaching interests so who knows. Whatever the reasons, Jews are accepted in China without prejudice. To the Chinese, the Jews and Israelis are just another brand of white man. And that, for Jews, and Israelis, is something rare indeed.
Whenever an Israeli answers, “Israel,” there is usually always a reaction. Sometimes the conversation zooms away onto the other travelers trips to Israel, or wish to travel to Israel, the travails of Israel; the dangers or lack of danger; the political situation: but sometimes a pregnant silence is the beginning and end of the subject, which then politely switches to something else. Anything else.
These reactions are common with Europeans and Americans. The pregnant pause indicates a suspected anti-Israeli bias. But in China, among Chinese, the pregnant pause indicates a complete and utter lack of knowledge of the subject matter. Most Chinese have never heard of Israel, pronounced Isaleah in Chinese.
“Where are you from?” they ask. “Israel,” you answer, and they look at you like dumb cows waiting for the electric shock then the hammer to the brain.
“Israel,” you repeat. Then you get, “Ah, Italia” When you shake your head, they get that glazed looked. Some say, “Middle East,” and nod a few times. If you try to elaborate, saying, “Jewish,” and point to yourself, they stare at you. Should a point of illumination occur, you see a glimmer of recognition, a light in their eyes, and they smile (the Chinese love to smile, and have great smiles) and say, “Ah, Jud High” which means Jewish in Chinese. And then inevitably you get, “Einstein. Very Clever.”
The traveler at that point wants to be polite, and not bring up the fact that the word Jew is about the only thing they have in common with Einstein.
Sometimes the Chinese interviewer then brings up another famous Jew, “Marx.” But only those who have been to university. A few even mention “Mosizes” Moses. And then a discussion starts about which culture is older, the Hebrew or the Chinese. In fact, you explain, believe it or not, the Jewish culture, that means Abraham in about the year 2000, and Moses in about 1400, and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., actually predate most of China’s golden age.
One learns that the Emperor Chin unified China in the 3rd century B.C. The Great Wall was then just a jumble of protective fences around various warlord’s holdings. He fought them all, defeated them all, killed so many he became a mass murderer by today’s standards, ( he reportedly killed all the thousands of workers who constructed the world-famous Tera Cota soldiers, so he would have company in the after-life) and connected the wall into one 1,000 kilometer structure stretching as far as the eye could see.
One explains that by then the Hebrew tribes had been unified for 800 years and the Temple had been built, destroyed, and rebuilt. Moses was writing in Hebrew long before the Chinese. These facts come out in discussion with the Chinese guides, all of whom studied at some college or another, a few at universities. They are of course duly impressed by the rich Jewish/Hebrew culture. But these educated guides and waiters with college degrees are rare.
One o guide was from a province in the far West of China along the Kazakhstan border. He explained that China had fifty-five ethnic minorities. The explanation came as the travelers under his tutelage toured a Buddhist temple in Kunming, a city of approximately 8,000,000 people. The Buddhists, he explained, were an ethnic minority. He said that only three religions are recognized by the Chinese authorities, Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism.
Jews are not on the list. Neither are Moslems, or Kurds, or Mongols, or Yugurs. The guide said his parents were Moslem, but not fanatic. He said he wasn’t observant, but still only ate Hallal (non-pork dishes) and abstained from alcohol. He mentioned that some of the men in his province had joined up with Al-Qaida. So all wasn’t perfect in China when it came to minorities.
“Anti-Semitism doesn’t exist in China,” said Dvir Ben Gal, an Israeli who has lived in Shanghai for six or seven years, and gives tours of ‘Jewish Shanghai.’ The fact that the Jews aren’t officially recognized in China has created some difficulties. Dvir has made it a pet project of his to salvage all the Jewish headstones he can find in Shanghai. He wants the government to establish a memorial to these Jews, but the government refuses. It’s all part of the Jewish problem China faces: Jews aren’t officially recognized in China. The tombstones are a sore subject. Don’t even think about mentioning the bodies in the lost cemeteries. “We concentrate on the living, now,” Dvir said, quoting a local Rabbi. “It would endanger our relationships with the Chinese to bring up these topics.”
Back in the mid 1850’s, after the Opium Wars, the British and French took over Shanghai. They couldn’t decide which country should issue entry permits, so they decided amongst themselves that no one would, thus Shanghai became an open port. “Back then, no one paid much attention to what the Chinese wanted,” said Dvir.
The fabulous, informative, five-hour tour he lead began at the “Peace” hotel along the river in downtown Shanghai. An impressive art-nuevo building, the Peace hotel was originally called the Cathay, a word for China. The hotel was built by an Iraqi Jewish immigrant to China named Sasson. The 11-story structure is closed for repairs these days, but still that’s where the tour began. And with it an explanation of how the Jewish Iraqi businessmen like Sasson and Kadouri, who came to Shanghai and started their vast fortunes essentially built up Shanghai into a modern commercial center.
Along the way they also built impressive buildings, like a 255 room mansion, nationalized by Chairman Mao and turned into a Children’s Theater smack dab in the middle of the “People’s Park.” Then there was Ohel Rachel, and Ohel Moshe, synagogues put up by the Sassons, Kadouris, or Waldoons, in memory of a father, mother or other relative.
Ohel Moshe became a shelter for the Mir Yeshiva when they fled Europe during World War Two. And Ohel Leah became a storehouse for Chinese debris. Lately Ohel Moshe was turned into a museum, some say because the Chinese were concerned that the spillover from the much-anticipated Beijing Olympics would sour Jewish visitors to Shanghai once they realized the shape of former Jewish landmarks.But it is not a synagogue. No Sefer Torah is allowed in it, nor are prayers. The museum shows a short film on Jewish Shanghai, but mostly it focuses on who the Jews were before they arrived in Shanghai, centering on Krystalnacht and the Nazi period.
Dvir pointed out that no mention is to be made of the fact that the Chinese destroyed Jewish cemeteries first in the white heat of the ‘cultural revolution’ and then in the rush to build skyscrapers, tossing the tombstones into slimy swamps, or using them in one form or another. Once Dvir began to unearth these tombstones he realized that the government was embarrassed by this cavalier treatment of the Jews’ ancestors remains, since the Chinese really do revere their own ancestors. One could see graves, actually small mounds with headstones, out in the fields all through the country. Only in the large cities was cremation enforced.
Dvir said that he wanted Ohel Moshe to be the venue for a memorial to the Jews whose graves were desecrated, but the government said no. There is also a Jewish Ghetto in Shanghai, written about by many people. Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal lived there for nearly eight years as a refugee. The Ghetto began with White Russians fleeing the Communists, then filled up with European Jews fleeing the Nazis. During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai more trouble befell the Jews once the Nazis decided the Japanese had to herd all of Shanghai’s Jews into the Ghetto. The ultimate Nazi plan was to exterminate Shanghai’s Jews, but the Americans dropped an atom bomb on Japan and the war ended before the Japanese got around to adhering to Nazi directives.
Today the Jews of Shanghai, who number several hundred, meet five times a year in Ohel Leah, in the People’s Park, to celebrate Purim, Israel’s Independence Day, and other events. The Jewish population is made up of businessmen, hi-tech people serving a few years in China, and ex-patriots teaching English. The main focus is Beit Chabad, which amazingly attracts up to 200 people for a Friday night service, and full meat meal. Most are tourists, or businessmen traveling through, but some Israeli hi-tech people who are residents, while not religious, said they come to keep connected to Judaism and Israel.
When asked why the congregation couldn’t get possession of Ohel Moshe or Ohel Leah the traveler is told, “Jews aren’t recognized. And the government can’t give away land to private people.” About Jewish recognition, one was told, “If they recognize the Jews, then what about the other fifty-odd ethnic minorities. In China everything is connected to something else. Give the Jews a building, what about the Baptists, or the Moslems?” While the Jews have synagogues, like Beit Chabad, and the Moslems Mosques, neither is officially recognized. And when it comes to minorities, the list is long and the Jews are nowhere near the top in importance or numbers.
Beijing even has a Kosher restaurant, a Chabad congregation, and even a liberal one, a mix of Conservative/Reform and Reconstructionist congregants. In total about 4,000 Jews live and work in China. Peretz Rodman is the Rabbi of the Liberal congregation, and visits his ‘kehila’ from his home in Jerusalem several times a year. Lately he has begun conducting Sunday school lessons using long-distance Internet learning.
The Jews in China are comfortable. The old-line families, the Sassons and Kadouris moved their businesses to Hong Kong, or London, after the Communist revolution, but are still doing business n China.. In the long history of China, Jews and Chinese, hardly crosses paths hence there is no animosity. Some scholars postulate that Confucius, who predated Buddha, actually espoused some teachings that had distinct Hebrew tones to them. Confucius was known to be a voracious reader and scholar with far-reaching interests so who knows. Whatever the reasons, Jews are accepted in China without prejudice. To the Chinese, the Jews and Israelis are just another brand of white man. And that, for Jews, and Israelis, is something rare indeed.
Monday, April 14, 2008
"Face" and the Dali Lama
China is a country of stark contrasts. From peasants hand-farming postage stamp sized vegetable patches to billionaires relaxing in chauffer driven Rolls-Royce sedans. Even villages with putrid communal outhouses have satellite dishes parked in front of the shaky wooden shacks. China is a “capitalist” country, a ‘boom like the 1980’s in the USA,’ one analyst said; but the heavy hand of the party can still be felt manipulating nearly everything, with the passive consent of the citizenry.
The television might broadcast 11 CCTV channels, but four will be propaganda, usually at least one will be a TV drama with the Chinese fighting the Japanese (whom the Chinese still despise) during WWII, or another aspect of the glorious days of Communist victory over the Nationalists, and one or two featuring a TV series based on a Kung Fu legend. To round out the picture one channel, CCTV 3, features opera and choruses, sometimes Chinese, sometimes Western, but always with Chinese performers.
Chinese news broadcasts cover some selected international events, but focus on the positive, at least to the casual observer who doesn’t speak Chinese. Reports on new irrigation techniques, or some breakthrough in fish breeding in hi-tech ponds; or the opening of a new lock in the impressive Three Gorges Dam project, the third largest dam in the world, and a source of national pride. In fact the dam is an amazing accomplishment..
CCTV channel 9 is in English, with skilled readers in smooth English reporting on who the Premier met with, who the President met with, what new businesses have succeeded, and then how the Western press is biased against China and supporting the Dali Lama.
This line is echoed in the English Language newspapers as well. Both the China Daily and the China News carry reports of Western bias. Specifically how CNN took a photograph of a Chinese policeman beating a Tibetan protester but neglected to include the wider angle of the shot that showed other protesters pelting the police with stones. The press also criticizes the West for siding with the Dali Lama, who if you can believe the descriptions is some place between Jack the Ripper and John Dillinger.
Touring the Lama Temple in Beijing one is told of a historic meeting in the 1950’s between Chairman Mao and the Dali Lama that took place in the Lama Temple, with both men shaking hands and smiling at the camera. According to a tour guide the Dali Lama lived and studied in the Lama Temple until he fled to India in 1954.
On the tour of the Lama Temple one is shown the main prayer hall where the Dali Lama gave his talks from a stately elegantly cushioned wooden chair. To his left was the Buddha shrine, and then another wooden chair for the administrator of the Temple. Around the shrine and the chairs were cushions and desks where the monks prayed and studied when the tourists weren’t around. The Temple had set hours for tourist visits.
But the room with the photograph of Chairman Mao shaking hands with the Dali Lama was “closed for repairs” although no one was working on it and it appeared to be in good shape. In the Temple area a large framed photograph of the Temple administrator rested in his hair, leaning against the tall wooden back. But the photograph of the Dali Lama was missing, according to the guide.
Another guide had questions of the Western visitors. These questions rose after visiting Mt. Emei, and the Buddhist temple 10,000 feet above sea level, and literally above the clouds. Back on the ground, the driver, dodging potholes the size of craters, started in on how the Dali Lama was a criminal out to destroy China. This was the line pitched on TV and in the press. With fifty-five ethnic minorities spread over 26 provinces, the risk of China breaking apart like the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia is very real. Also, Tibet is a huge mineral-rich province important to China's economy. Some say the Beijing-Lhasa train was recently built not for tourists but to extract raw materials from Tibet.
Actually, there may be something to this. A report in the International Herald Tribune specified a concerted public relations campaign begun by a group of American, not Chinese and not Tibetan, “students” (one organizer was named Mendoza) in San Francisco shortly after it was announced that the Chinese had been granted the venue for the Olympics. The protests that have erupted since then were, according to the IHT, not spontaneous, but rather, part of a well orchestrated pr campaign, that included disruptions of the torch ceremony that crossed from country to country.
So, as Henry Kissenger is often quoted as saying, even if he didn’t, ‘just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’
The Chinese may be right. The Dali Lama denies any part in the demonstrations, and he may well not be involved, but there is a movement based in the USA that is trying to upset the Chinese participation in the Olympics.
These protests and disruptions are a major embarrassment for the Chinese. “Face” is as integral a part of China as rice. A technician for a foreign elevator company working in China said you couldn’t tell the Chinese foreman he’d done something wrong, you had to suggest to him that other ways are available, not as good as his, but other ways. You had to give him a peg to hang his hat on, or the embarrassment would kill him.
The same technician told a story of how, during the inspection of a new high-rise building’s elevators, he saw a man dangling from the roof by one hand, and then let go. The man was a “jumper.” Why had he jumped? In China migrant workers come in from the farms to make some money. They live in simple rooms, are given some food, but not paid a salary until the terms of their employment are over, sometimes a year or more, once the buildings are finished. In this case the contractor who built the building found himself with a white elephant on his hands. The office building market was oversupplied. More skyscrapers had gone up than there was need for offices or apartments; the contractor either didn’t have the money to pay, or didn’t want to. The worker committed suicide rather than return home broke after leaving his family for a year, leaving them to take up the slack of his absence and help supporting them. He couldn’t face the embarrassment. The loss of ‘face.’ Jumpers.
So ‘face’ was involved in the Olympics. The games are a source of national pride, we were told by almost everyone. This would put China on the map. “They’re insecure,” we were told by one businessman. “They feel as if the Olympics with justify their place in the world.” The protests and police action are a major source of trouble. The IHT article even pointed out that the Chinese are not good at PR, and have just started to realize that they have to play catch up with those who began the campaign against them a couple of years ago.
Everywhere you go in China you see a beautification program, as if the people who visit China for the Olympics will find themselves in every tourist spot in the country. One pundit postulated that the government was using the Olympics as a way to initiate changes in the country that otherwise would have been difficult. Spitting, for example. Spitting seems a Chinese tradition. Men cough up phlegm and let goblets fly, turning the sidewalk into a minefield, and turning the stomachs of foreign visitors. In Beijing and Shanghai, however, “no spitting” signs are posted in many locations, and in truth, the spitting is nearly non-existent..
And in China no one, even peasants, drink the water from the tap, unless it’s boiled. The more affluent and the foreigners drink mineral water. However, a new filtration system is reportedly going on-line in the Olympic village which some say is a pilot project that will be implemented in other cities, then the towns, and finally the villages.
And they need it. In the town of Lijian, in the mountains in the south of China, not far from the Tibetan border, nine-foot wide canals run through the quaint town. The water passes under picturesque stone bridges, and flows out of town. Local women do their laundry in the canals. They also use buckets of the water to wash down their stone floors, then they dump the dirty water back in the canal. One woman, who worked in a guest house along a canal, could be seen every morning bringing vegetables out to the river, separating the bad lettuce leaves from the stalk, tossing them in the canal, then rinsing the remaining lettuce off in the same canal she’d dumped her refuse. No wonder even the locals never ate the raw vegetables, but only stir-fried.
Still in this town, as in almost every other town visited, an official Olympic 2008 store existed, selling t-shirts, hats, medallions, sport bags, watches, rings, mugs, and other trinkets. The Olympics was a source of national pride.
But no one knew how much the Olympic games cost to mount? Ask the average Chinese and they shrugged their shoulders. The newspapers didn’t mention it. The TV didn’t report it. In fact, the Chinese populace didn’t even think about it. It just was, like the dirty gray polluted smog hovering over the country.
Climbing the path to the famous rice terraces outside of Da Zhai, with a local ethnic woman in an elaborate colorful costume, making a living carrying the suitcases and backpacks of tourists in a wicker basket held by leather straps on her back (20 yuan or about three dollars was the average for a bag on the two-hour hike up to the village. According to a Reuters news report, the poverty line in China is cut at $156 a year, and 80 million people fall below that!), one realized that these were peasants, people of the earth, simple people, until the stout middle-aged woman in the colorful clothing took out a mobile phone and began chattering away as if she were in a mall in Westchester. Or finally reaching the village, and seeing big silver satellite dishes on nearly every rooftop. No heat, outhouses, but satellite dishes and mobile phones.
For these people, the simple people, who made up eighty per cent of the population, the Olympics was something that only important countries could host, and since China was hosting them, China was important. These people didn’t see the new Buicks, and Toyotas, and Hondas, since the village up in the rice terraces had no roads. They saw donkeys and mules hauling building supplies, not trucks and jeeps. They probably didn’t know that the Chinese were partners with these multi-national car companies, building the cars in Shanghai factories. They didn’t know, unless the TV showed them, that Shanghai had buildings nearly 100 stories high. But they did know about the Olympics. They did know the Olympics were important. And they were proud of it.
The television might broadcast 11 CCTV channels, but four will be propaganda, usually at least one will be a TV drama with the Chinese fighting the Japanese (whom the Chinese still despise) during WWII, or another aspect of the glorious days of Communist victory over the Nationalists, and one or two featuring a TV series based on a Kung Fu legend. To round out the picture one channel, CCTV 3, features opera and choruses, sometimes Chinese, sometimes Western, but always with Chinese performers.
Chinese news broadcasts cover some selected international events, but focus on the positive, at least to the casual observer who doesn’t speak Chinese. Reports on new irrigation techniques, or some breakthrough in fish breeding in hi-tech ponds; or the opening of a new lock in the impressive Three Gorges Dam project, the third largest dam in the world, and a source of national pride. In fact the dam is an amazing accomplishment..
CCTV channel 9 is in English, with skilled readers in smooth English reporting on who the Premier met with, who the President met with, what new businesses have succeeded, and then how the Western press is biased against China and supporting the Dali Lama.
This line is echoed in the English Language newspapers as well. Both the China Daily and the China News carry reports of Western bias. Specifically how CNN took a photograph of a Chinese policeman beating a Tibetan protester but neglected to include the wider angle of the shot that showed other protesters pelting the police with stones. The press also criticizes the West for siding with the Dali Lama, who if you can believe the descriptions is some place between Jack the Ripper and John Dillinger.
Touring the Lama Temple in Beijing one is told of a historic meeting in the 1950’s between Chairman Mao and the Dali Lama that took place in the Lama Temple, with both men shaking hands and smiling at the camera. According to a tour guide the Dali Lama lived and studied in the Lama Temple until he fled to India in 1954.
On the tour of the Lama Temple one is shown the main prayer hall where the Dali Lama gave his talks from a stately elegantly cushioned wooden chair. To his left was the Buddha shrine, and then another wooden chair for the administrator of the Temple. Around the shrine and the chairs were cushions and desks where the monks prayed and studied when the tourists weren’t around. The Temple had set hours for tourist visits.
But the room with the photograph of Chairman Mao shaking hands with the Dali Lama was “closed for repairs” although no one was working on it and it appeared to be in good shape. In the Temple area a large framed photograph of the Temple administrator rested in his hair, leaning against the tall wooden back. But the photograph of the Dali Lama was missing, according to the guide.
Another guide had questions of the Western visitors. These questions rose after visiting Mt. Emei, and the Buddhist temple 10,000 feet above sea level, and literally above the clouds. Back on the ground, the driver, dodging potholes the size of craters, started in on how the Dali Lama was a criminal out to destroy China. This was the line pitched on TV and in the press. With fifty-five ethnic minorities spread over 26 provinces, the risk of China breaking apart like the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia is very real. Also, Tibet is a huge mineral-rich province important to China's economy. Some say the Beijing-Lhasa train was recently built not for tourists but to extract raw materials from Tibet.
Actually, there may be something to this. A report in the International Herald Tribune specified a concerted public relations campaign begun by a group of American, not Chinese and not Tibetan, “students” (one organizer was named Mendoza) in San Francisco shortly after it was announced that the Chinese had been granted the venue for the Olympics. The protests that have erupted since then were, according to the IHT, not spontaneous, but rather, part of a well orchestrated pr campaign, that included disruptions of the torch ceremony that crossed from country to country.
So, as Henry Kissenger is often quoted as saying, even if he didn’t, ‘just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’
The Chinese may be right. The Dali Lama denies any part in the demonstrations, and he may well not be involved, but there is a movement based in the USA that is trying to upset the Chinese participation in the Olympics.
These protests and disruptions are a major embarrassment for the Chinese. “Face” is as integral a part of China as rice. A technician for a foreign elevator company working in China said you couldn’t tell the Chinese foreman he’d done something wrong, you had to suggest to him that other ways are available, not as good as his, but other ways. You had to give him a peg to hang his hat on, or the embarrassment would kill him.
The same technician told a story of how, during the inspection of a new high-rise building’s elevators, he saw a man dangling from the roof by one hand, and then let go. The man was a “jumper.” Why had he jumped? In China migrant workers come in from the farms to make some money. They live in simple rooms, are given some food, but not paid a salary until the terms of their employment are over, sometimes a year or more, once the buildings are finished. In this case the contractor who built the building found himself with a white elephant on his hands. The office building market was oversupplied. More skyscrapers had gone up than there was need for offices or apartments; the contractor either didn’t have the money to pay, or didn’t want to. The worker committed suicide rather than return home broke after leaving his family for a year, leaving them to take up the slack of his absence and help supporting them. He couldn’t face the embarrassment. The loss of ‘face.’ Jumpers.
So ‘face’ was involved in the Olympics. The games are a source of national pride, we were told by almost everyone. This would put China on the map. “They’re insecure,” we were told by one businessman. “They feel as if the Olympics with justify their place in the world.” The protests and police action are a major source of trouble. The IHT article even pointed out that the Chinese are not good at PR, and have just started to realize that they have to play catch up with those who began the campaign against them a couple of years ago.
Everywhere you go in China you see a beautification program, as if the people who visit China for the Olympics will find themselves in every tourist spot in the country. One pundit postulated that the government was using the Olympics as a way to initiate changes in the country that otherwise would have been difficult. Spitting, for example. Spitting seems a Chinese tradition. Men cough up phlegm and let goblets fly, turning the sidewalk into a minefield, and turning the stomachs of foreign visitors. In Beijing and Shanghai, however, “no spitting” signs are posted in many locations, and in truth, the spitting is nearly non-existent..
And in China no one, even peasants, drink the water from the tap, unless it’s boiled. The more affluent and the foreigners drink mineral water. However, a new filtration system is reportedly going on-line in the Olympic village which some say is a pilot project that will be implemented in other cities, then the towns, and finally the villages.
And they need it. In the town of Lijian, in the mountains in the south of China, not far from the Tibetan border, nine-foot wide canals run through the quaint town. The water passes under picturesque stone bridges, and flows out of town. Local women do their laundry in the canals. They also use buckets of the water to wash down their stone floors, then they dump the dirty water back in the canal. One woman, who worked in a guest house along a canal, could be seen every morning bringing vegetables out to the river, separating the bad lettuce leaves from the stalk, tossing them in the canal, then rinsing the remaining lettuce off in the same canal she’d dumped her refuse. No wonder even the locals never ate the raw vegetables, but only stir-fried.
Still in this town, as in almost every other town visited, an official Olympic 2008 store existed, selling t-shirts, hats, medallions, sport bags, watches, rings, mugs, and other trinkets. The Olympics was a source of national pride.
But no one knew how much the Olympic games cost to mount? Ask the average Chinese and they shrugged their shoulders. The newspapers didn’t mention it. The TV didn’t report it. In fact, the Chinese populace didn’t even think about it. It just was, like the dirty gray polluted smog hovering over the country.
Climbing the path to the famous rice terraces outside of Da Zhai, with a local ethnic woman in an elaborate colorful costume, making a living carrying the suitcases and backpacks of tourists in a wicker basket held by leather straps on her back (20 yuan or about three dollars was the average for a bag on the two-hour hike up to the village. According to a Reuters news report, the poverty line in China is cut at $156 a year, and 80 million people fall below that!), one realized that these were peasants, people of the earth, simple people, until the stout middle-aged woman in the colorful clothing took out a mobile phone and began chattering away as if she were in a mall in Westchester. Or finally reaching the village, and seeing big silver satellite dishes on nearly every rooftop. No heat, outhouses, but satellite dishes and mobile phones.
For these people, the simple people, who made up eighty per cent of the population, the Olympics was something that only important countries could host, and since China was hosting them, China was important. These people didn’t see the new Buicks, and Toyotas, and Hondas, since the village up in the rice terraces had no roads. They saw donkeys and mules hauling building supplies, not trucks and jeeps. They probably didn’t know that the Chinese were partners with these multi-national car companies, building the cars in Shanghai factories. They didn’t know, unless the TV showed them, that Shanghai had buildings nearly 100 stories high. But they did know about the Olympics. They did know the Olympics were important. And they were proud of it.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
On The Road 2: China
The news from Tibet was disquieting. According to some local sources one hundred Tibetans have been killed in the riots. However news is hard to come by, and precise facts even harder. Local Chinese don’t have access to CNN and other foreign broadcasts, those services are only provided to expensive foreign tourist hotels. Foreign news sources put the total at closer to 700.
Some sources say that the cause is the displeasure by the local population at the Chinese Government’s imposition of a new successor to the Dali Lama, without the present Dali Lama’s consent. Reportedly the current Dali Lama has someone else in mind.
This riot is blamed on the Dali Lama. According to the Chinese press, the Dali Lama is behind the riots. Others say that the riots are caused not only by the choice of a successor to the Dali Lama being taken out of that Holy Man’s hands, but also by other stringent measures the Chinese Government is reportedly placing on the Buddhist community in Tibet, including restricting the study of Buddhism and planning the educational curriculum.
The Chinese Government, however, blames the riots on the Buddhist, claiming that the much anticipated Beijing Olympics in the fall of 2008 are being used by the Dali Lama to push his own agenda.
Still, some Western observers see this as only the beginnings of the crack in the Chinese society. Some claim that the disparity between rich and poor is growing, and it is only a matter of time until the society “implodes.” One restaurateur said that “greed” was the driving force in China.
The China Daily, an English language publication which is assumed to be state sponsored, published a small blurb on March 17, 2008. The headline, “Dali Lama Behind Tibet Riots.” This was in sharp contrast to the New York Times which reported, “Dali Lama Does Not Support Riots.”
Some facts about China, according to the China Daily.
“Jan-Feb investments rose 24%” was the headline of an article by Wong Xu, on March 17. He wrote, “Fixed assets investments in cities and towns rose 24.3 per cent in the first two months from the same period a year earlier.” According to the National Bureau of Statistics, “…investment in real estate lead the spending spree with year on growth of 32.9 per cent.”
“Meanwhile a total number of new projects amounted to 14,447, a jump of 40 per cent from a year ago.
“The nation may need domestic investments to make up for the decline in exports this year,” said Chin Jin, chief economist with Beijing based Citic Securities.”
“Chinese exports growth plunged 6.5 per cent in February from January of 26 per cent.”
“CPI surged 8.7 per cent in February, the highest level in a decade. Meanwhile producer prices, the cost of goods as they leave the factory, also rose the fastest pace this year during the same period.”
Goldman Sachs reported, “We expect the government to take tightening measures in the coming months, which will pressure downward investment.”
In another article entitled, “Getting the Chemistry Right,” Rex Jianxin, who runs China National Chemical Corp. (ChemChina) said the company’s assets and sales have topped 100 billion yuan. (7 yuan to one U.S. dollar).
“In the past this year’s sales have seen a 92 per cent year-on growth, profits have risen 71 per cent annually.”
“Along with PetroChina, Sinopec, and CNOOC, ChinaChem was one of the five largest companies in the Petroleum & Chemical Sectors.”
But according to another article quoting Liu Chanzi, the founder of the Lenovo Group, the 4th largest computer company in the world, “The economy is facing a number of uncertainties, such as rising exchange rates and consumer prices, and a potential slowdown.”
Liu said, “The rural market is showing great potential to bolster domestic consumption. The rural market contributed to Lenovo’s rapid rise in China. Last year it sold 10 million computers up from 2 million in 2000,” he said.
“A large portion of these sales were to people in the countryside.”
The article continues, “Home to 700 million people, the countryside has long been seen as a potential engine for China’s continued development.
Liu, who is a member of the NPC, The National People's Congress, China's Parliament, (that endorsed Premier Wen Jiabao's work report and the country's 11th Five-Year Plan) said the government has promised that by 2010 all rural areas will have highways, electricity, mail services, passenger airport services, telephone lines, and rural people with access to telephone and internet.”
China TV's English Language channel 9 had a talk show with a Chinese economist and a British diplomat. During the discussions it became clear that the Chinese focus on exports, which has sharp ups and down, will now be scaled back, with the emphasis put on the steady and reliable domestic market.
The central government said a the ongoing NPC session, at the committees meetings in Beijing, that it will this year increase spending on rural development to record highs, up 562.5 billion yuan (@$79 billion) up 30 per cent from last year.
In a big article, “Countryside Gives Lessons In Education,” the plenum was told that now all school education is free. One school teacher said in 1986 a classroom held four students scattered over three grads, “Now the number of students is 400,” with a new school, dorm and canteen.
In an editorial entitled “Equitable Education” the writer said, “Exempting rural kids from school fees, which are perhaps negligible by urban standards but back-breaking for some extremely poor rural households, will undoubtedly help make compulsory education true to its name.”
Traveling in China can be luxurious or primitive, so can lodging. Tourism is a major industry in China, but most of the tourists are native Chinese. With a population of 1.3 billion people, foreign tourists are not a large part of the economy. Neither, as stated above, are exports. One flies Boeing 727s or Airbus 300s, then rides in old VW Passat taxis on potholed roads with traffic coming to a halt.
This happens daily on the road from Guilin to Yangshu, a popular tourist venue because of the karst mountains that rise like angry dragons over the Li river.
There are two ways to get to Yangshu, one is on a three-hour ferry ride from Guilin, popular with Presidents from Nixon to Clinton, pictured standing on the deck of the ship with the mountains soaring in the distance like the fingers of an angry giant.
Or on the two-lane "National Highway," which is a toll road. Here traffic frequently comes to a halt when a three-wheeled motorized cart with a top speed of ten-miles per hour blocks forward motion. The road is also populated with bicycles, motorbikes, local buses, and tour buses, as well as the shiny Buicks and occasional Mercedes SUV.
Along the roadside farmers toil on their little plots of land, each perhaps fifty yards by fifty yards. No mechanized machinery is in view. By the time a tractor started up and drove forward, there wouldn't be room to turn around. So the plowing is still done by a man holding a metal plow attached to a water buffalo, unchanged from his ancestors, except perhaps for the metal plow.
Women work beside the men, some still wear the conical straw hats, some in shirts and work pants. Here and there the contrasts occur, like a wooden shack with a slanted roof that looks about to fall in, but with a metal satellite dish in front of the door.
Yangshu is a farming community turned tourist town. The main drag in the old town is called West Street, and features all varieties of knock-offs. One could buy a Rolex for twenty dollars, or a Gucci bag for fifteen. Some unsuspecting tourists will get off the tourist boat after the three-hour ride, not know the merchandise is Jiad, fake, and overpay for something that will "fall apart on the first washing," as one local put it.
China today is a nation of contrasts. Friendly people. Many say "Hello" making one suspect that a Chinese campaign exists preaching friendliness in anticipation of the much awaited Olympics.
That's a big thing in China. It puts China on the map.
With what's going on in Tibet, its possible the Olympics in the fall may put more focus on domestic problems then the Chinese want.
Some sources say that the cause is the displeasure by the local population at the Chinese Government’s imposition of a new successor to the Dali Lama, without the present Dali Lama’s consent. Reportedly the current Dali Lama has someone else in mind.
This riot is blamed on the Dali Lama. According to the Chinese press, the Dali Lama is behind the riots. Others say that the riots are caused not only by the choice of a successor to the Dali Lama being taken out of that Holy Man’s hands, but also by other stringent measures the Chinese Government is reportedly placing on the Buddhist community in Tibet, including restricting the study of Buddhism and planning the educational curriculum.
The Chinese Government, however, blames the riots on the Buddhist, claiming that the much anticipated Beijing Olympics in the fall of 2008 are being used by the Dali Lama to push his own agenda.
Still, some Western observers see this as only the beginnings of the crack in the Chinese society. Some claim that the disparity between rich and poor is growing, and it is only a matter of time until the society “implodes.” One restaurateur said that “greed” was the driving force in China.
The China Daily, an English language publication which is assumed to be state sponsored, published a small blurb on March 17, 2008. The headline, “Dali Lama Behind Tibet Riots.” This was in sharp contrast to the New York Times which reported, “Dali Lama Does Not Support Riots.”
Some facts about China, according to the China Daily.
“Jan-Feb investments rose 24%” was the headline of an article by Wong Xu, on March 17. He wrote, “Fixed assets investments in cities and towns rose 24.3 per cent in the first two months from the same period a year earlier.” According to the National Bureau of Statistics, “…investment in real estate lead the spending spree with year on growth of 32.9 per cent.”
“Meanwhile a total number of new projects amounted to 14,447, a jump of 40 per cent from a year ago.
“The nation may need domestic investments to make up for the decline in exports this year,” said Chin Jin, chief economist with Beijing based Citic Securities.”
“Chinese exports growth plunged 6.5 per cent in February from January of 26 per cent.”
“CPI surged 8.7 per cent in February, the highest level in a decade. Meanwhile producer prices, the cost of goods as they leave the factory, also rose the fastest pace this year during the same period.”
Goldman Sachs reported, “We expect the government to take tightening measures in the coming months, which will pressure downward investment.”
In another article entitled, “Getting the Chemistry Right,” Rex Jianxin, who runs China National Chemical Corp. (ChemChina) said the company’s assets and sales have topped 100 billion yuan. (7 yuan to one U.S. dollar).
“In the past this year’s sales have seen a 92 per cent year-on growth, profits have risen 71 per cent annually.”
“Along with PetroChina, Sinopec, and CNOOC, ChinaChem was one of the five largest companies in the Petroleum & Chemical Sectors.”
But according to another article quoting Liu Chanzi, the founder of the Lenovo Group, the 4th largest computer company in the world, “The economy is facing a number of uncertainties, such as rising exchange rates and consumer prices, and a potential slowdown.”
Liu said, “The rural market is showing great potential to bolster domestic consumption. The rural market contributed to Lenovo’s rapid rise in China. Last year it sold 10 million computers up from 2 million in 2000,” he said.
“A large portion of these sales were to people in the countryside.”
The article continues, “Home to 700 million people, the countryside has long been seen as a potential engine for China’s continued development.
Liu, who is a member of the NPC, The National People's Congress, China's Parliament, (that endorsed Premier Wen Jiabao's work report and the country's 11th Five-Year Plan) said the government has promised that by 2010 all rural areas will have highways, electricity, mail services, passenger airport services, telephone lines, and rural people with access to telephone and internet.”
China TV's English Language channel 9 had a talk show with a Chinese economist and a British diplomat. During the discussions it became clear that the Chinese focus on exports, which has sharp ups and down, will now be scaled back, with the emphasis put on the steady and reliable domestic market.
The central government said a the ongoing NPC session, at the committees meetings in Beijing, that it will this year increase spending on rural development to record highs, up 562.5 billion yuan (@$79 billion) up 30 per cent from last year.
In a big article, “Countryside Gives Lessons In Education,” the plenum was told that now all school education is free. One school teacher said in 1986 a classroom held four students scattered over three grads, “Now the number of students is 400,” with a new school, dorm and canteen.
In an editorial entitled “Equitable Education” the writer said, “Exempting rural kids from school fees, which are perhaps negligible by urban standards but back-breaking for some extremely poor rural households, will undoubtedly help make compulsory education true to its name.”
Traveling in China can be luxurious or primitive, so can lodging. Tourism is a major industry in China, but most of the tourists are native Chinese. With a population of 1.3 billion people, foreign tourists are not a large part of the economy. Neither, as stated above, are exports. One flies Boeing 727s or Airbus 300s, then rides in old VW Passat taxis on potholed roads with traffic coming to a halt.
This happens daily on the road from Guilin to Yangshu, a popular tourist venue because of the karst mountains that rise like angry dragons over the Li river.
There are two ways to get to Yangshu, one is on a three-hour ferry ride from Guilin, popular with Presidents from Nixon to Clinton, pictured standing on the deck of the ship with the mountains soaring in the distance like the fingers of an angry giant.
Or on the two-lane "National Highway," which is a toll road. Here traffic frequently comes to a halt when a three-wheeled motorized cart with a top speed of ten-miles per hour blocks forward motion. The road is also populated with bicycles, motorbikes, local buses, and tour buses, as well as the shiny Buicks and occasional Mercedes SUV.
Along the roadside farmers toil on their little plots of land, each perhaps fifty yards by fifty yards. No mechanized machinery is in view. By the time a tractor started up and drove forward, there wouldn't be room to turn around. So the plowing is still done by a man holding a metal plow attached to a water buffalo, unchanged from his ancestors, except perhaps for the metal plow.
Women work beside the men, some still wear the conical straw hats, some in shirts and work pants. Here and there the contrasts occur, like a wooden shack with a slanted roof that looks about to fall in, but with a metal satellite dish in front of the door.
Yangshu is a farming community turned tourist town. The main drag in the old town is called West Street, and features all varieties of knock-offs. One could buy a Rolex for twenty dollars, or a Gucci bag for fifteen. Some unsuspecting tourists will get off the tourist boat after the three-hour ride, not know the merchandise is Jiad, fake, and overpay for something that will "fall apart on the first washing," as one local put it.
China today is a nation of contrasts. Friendly people. Many say "Hello" making one suspect that a Chinese campaign exists preaching friendliness in anticipation of the much awaited Olympics.
That's a big thing in China. It puts China on the map.
With what's going on in Tibet, its possible the Olympics in the fall may put more focus on domestic problems then the Chinese want.
Monday, March 03, 2008
On Tour 1 Bangkok, Thailand
While the Iranian-supplied Grad missiles fall on Ashkelon, and the IDF fights to protect Israeli citizens, Jerusalem-Magazine is on the road.
First stop was Bangkok.
The last time we were in Bangkok was a decade ago. The old airport was small and intimate. Walking down the corridors one looked out onto narrow canals with simple boats manned by peasants in baggy pants and bamboo hats, with the beginning of even narrower streets just beyond the water. Simple huts and homes lined both canal and street.
Today the new Suvarnabhumi airport is massive, ultra-modern, humming with air-conditioned filtered air, buzzing with electronics, laden with stylistic pipes and braces and architectural wonders, replete with all the elevators, escalators, moving sidewalks, computers, long-distance phones, internet and TVs one would want.
Outside the story is a little different.
Bangkok is a city of close to six million people, mostly ethnic Thai and Chinese, but blossoms up to nine-million counting the surrounding metropolitan area. Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, and its main port, is 49 times greater than its next largest city, Chiang Mai. The population is 95% Buddhist, the remainder Hindu and Moslem.
There are nearly 30,000 Buddhist temples in Thailand, over 400 alone in Bangkok.
Smog hovers over the city like a low-hanging cloud. After an hour or two outdoors amid the traffic you can literally taste the pollution on your lips.
Much of the problem is caused by the traffic.
The toll-roads in and out of the new airport are new, wide, sleek, and cheap. 50 Baht to get into the city (Baht 31 to the US $). But then the fun stops. So does the traffic. We were told by a tour guide that the average Bangkok driver spends up to two-hours a day stuck in traffic. Cars are relatively cheap, about the same as US prices, and everyone wants one. A decent Toyota Corolla sedan, the ubiquitous taxi model, costs about $25,000. Then the three wheeled motor-scooters are popular taxis, lastly the speedy 100cc motorized bicycles which weave dangerously through traffic but get the passenger to a destination faster than anything outside of a helicopter.
In fact, while stuck in traffic, one wonders when airborne cars will go on the market, making Bangkok traffic five or six-layered, but moving.
Our twenty-kilometer ride into the city took an hour, much of it stuck, sitting in a row of other cars, many belching diesel exhaust or smoke from bad piston rings.
Traffic lights come with digitized times, announcing how long before the lights change. The numbers count down, sometimes from thirty-seconds, sometimes from six-minutes. One only sits and waits, air-conditioning blasting, if you're lucky enough for your car to have air-conditioning.
But the ride only cost 400 Baht. Compare that to the ride from Kennedy Airport in NYC, and it’s a bargain.
The newspapers publish the air quality, which has a color bar, stretching from good to very bad. The days were in Bangkok the bar was on the cusp of bad and dangerous, and never got better.
Thailand, once called Siam, is now a constitutional Monarchy, ruled by the much beloved King Rama IX for the last 60-years. The first King Rama I The Great took the throne in 1782. Thailand's population is about sixty-million, with exports of $105 Billion, mainly to China.
The 80-year old king was born in Boston, Ma., a fact the tour guide repeated a dozen times. His father had been a diplomat stationed in the USA at the time of the King's birth. Later the King returned to study at Harvard, learn how to play jazz clarinet, and then take over the throne at the age of twenty. His photograph is everywhere, posters, billboards; pictures adorn streets, shops, banners, many with pictures of him from early in life to nearly the present, carefully avoiding his dotage. The most popular is of him with dark hair and glasses, a Nikon or Canon camera hanging from a strap around his neck.
But the king has only titular power. There have been a series of military coups in Thailand, deposing one Prime Minister and installing another, without interference from the king. One commentator said if he gets involved and the Army ignores him, the monarchy is finished. So he stays out of politics, preferring do-good "projects."
His daughter, the princess, rides in a yellow Rolls-Royce amid a nine-car convoy of guards and staff. Yellow is the color of the king's day of birth. In Buddhism, each day has a color attached to it. Traffic stops when the Princess takes to the street. We know. We were on tour with a guide when all traffic was stopped by the police, adding to the already irritating delays.
The main public works activity was pushed forward by the latest deposed 23rd Prime Minister, fifty-eight year old Taksin Shinawatra, called Taksin for short. A self-made Billionaire, who made his money owning the first mobile phone carrier in Thailand, Taksin holds an MBA and is reportedly "very clever." Too clever for the military who deposed him two years ago, accusing him of "corruption." A favorite accusation. The current Chief of Police was recently fired for "corruption," skimming money off a deal to buy 6000 cars for the police. His job had been to investigate Taksin's charge of corruption. Co-incidently, he was fired the day Taksin returned from "exile."
Taksin became popular when he brought Thailand out of a disastrous economy in 2000 after the local currency, the Baht, contracted as much as 10 per cent a year. Taksin used huge public works projects, locally called "Thanksinomics,"which resulted in economic growth of about 5% a year for the last six-eight years.
We learned all of this because Taksin returned to Thailand from "self-imposed exile" (meaning, according to one analyst, getting out before he was arrested, and coming back when he'd made a good deal) while we were in Bangkok. His arrival was the top story in every paper, as well as his background, and opinions pro and anti. It turns out Taksin got things done in a country where development outstrips infrastructure, where four-tower sixty-story luxury condo complexes are under construction by hordes of Thai workers who start their day at seven and work until nine at night. All this in land cleared of either green areas, or squatters huts. One watches the construction and wonders how the narrow crowded two lane roads will accomodate the thousands of new residents of the two-kilometer long street.
A new super-fast train is under construction from the airport to the city, a project Taksin initiated, as well as the new airport, but which was stopped while he was abroad. Taksin apparently knows how the government works, and how to get it working. He returned to face his corruption charge, and was already offered the Finance Ministry as a job. He swore publicly to stay out of politics, but most observers say he always says that when he's in trouble. Most consider him the de facto Prime Minister now, who is expected to get the country moving again.
The streets of Bangkok are lined with small shops, restaurants, coffee shops, and massage parlors. One coffee shop looked across the narrow two-lane road onto four massage parlors, one advertising itself as the "Japanese Club." The narrow sidewalks are littered with food stands, like the hot-dog or pretzel vendors in Manhattan. But here they have little charcoal stoves with sizzling meat, chicken, and who knows what else. Some stands sell plastic bags of white rice and vegetables. Low tables and lower stools line the sidewalk along the stands which become fast-food restaurants. Where ever one turns one sees these side-walk restaurants, as numerous as the cars. These are the "people's" restaurants where a meal can cost 20 Baht. Compare them to the up-scale restaurants where a meal can cost 800 Baht, without wine.
The growth of Thailand is attributed to Taksin. He is a populist loved by the poor people for instituting health care and improving the infrastructure, the electric grids, the roads, managing the economy by borrowing money from the Chinese to finance the public works. He is also despised by the "ruling class" for siphoning power from them, and according to one pundit, for not sharing enough of his skim with them. Or worse, stopping their corrupt deals to help move the economy forward.
They deposed him, tried to do without him, we were told, but they failed. So they let him back in.
Now to Israel. The press covered the IDF attacks in Gaza, spending 90 per cent of the article on how much damage Israel did to the Palestinians, but barely mentioning the cause for the IDF action. It is hard to find a balanced article about Israel.
Touring Bangkok in a mini-van, one sees the amazingly opulent Royal Palace, constructed in 1782; the Wat Traimit temple devoted to the five-ton solid gold Buddha, found in N. Thailand in the 1950's; and the 46-meter by 16 meter sleeping Buddha in the Wat Pho temple.
The rich and poor in Bangkok mix, but are separate. A massive outdoor market is crowded with shoppers buying everything from shrimp to mango, shorts to fans, all set out on tables in rows of stalls. For the rich there are massive shopping malls, like the Emporium, with Hermes, Guicci, Rolex stores. The poor ride the three-wheeled taxis and crowded filthy buses, the rich the new "Sky Train" where 40 Baht gets you on a air-conditioned luxury car with flat-screen TV's announcing the stops, and playing video commercials in between.
In traffic the motorbikes and three-wheeled motor-scooters sit idling their engines besides housewives with the kids in back of their SUVs or Mercedes sedans. On the side streets, away from the leafy villas set back behind high walls, are the rows of stores, families gathered on the floor eating their simple meals, all gathered around a color TV; the store is not only their place of business but also their home.
Leaving Bangkok one was again taken with the building, the cranes, the tractors, the sky-scrapers going up, and the tin roofed huts in their shadow.
Our guide, who lives 100 kilometers out of town, and left home at 04:30 am to meet us at our hotel at 07:30 said he remembers when Bangkok was mostly green, with shrubs and trees, now its mostly smog and traffic. Wooden homes are expensive because the forests have been stripped nearly bare. But he laughed when he said it. The Thai people are always smiling, laughing, "Accommodating" as Paul Theroux said in an interview which appeared in the Bangkok Post. Theroux recalled visiting Bangkok in the 1970's while the USA was embroiled in the Viet Nam war. Then he said Bangkok was a horizontal city, today it’s vertical.
The road out of town was clear; the driver took a different route, one that was 200 Baht cheaper and forty-minutes faster. Like anywhere else in the world, a tourist is at the mercy of the taxi driver, concierge, waiter, and frequently is literally 'taken for a ride.'
Perhaps that's reassuring. All over the world corruption and progress are at war. The best outcome is when some sort of stasis is achieved, allowing the corrupt to function, while the economy moves forward, and the plight of the people improves.
First stop was Bangkok.
The last time we were in Bangkok was a decade ago. The old airport was small and intimate. Walking down the corridors one looked out onto narrow canals with simple boats manned by peasants in baggy pants and bamboo hats, with the beginning of even narrower streets just beyond the water. Simple huts and homes lined both canal and street.
Today the new Suvarnabhumi airport is massive, ultra-modern, humming with air-conditioned filtered air, buzzing with electronics, laden with stylistic pipes and braces and architectural wonders, replete with all the elevators, escalators, moving sidewalks, computers, long-distance phones, internet and TVs one would want.
Outside the story is a little different.
Bangkok is a city of close to six million people, mostly ethnic Thai and Chinese, but blossoms up to nine-million counting the surrounding metropolitan area. Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, and its main port, is 49 times greater than its next largest city, Chiang Mai. The population is 95% Buddhist, the remainder Hindu and Moslem.
There are nearly 30,000 Buddhist temples in Thailand, over 400 alone in Bangkok.
Smog hovers over the city like a low-hanging cloud. After an hour or two outdoors amid the traffic you can literally taste the pollution on your lips.
Much of the problem is caused by the traffic.
The toll-roads in and out of the new airport are new, wide, sleek, and cheap. 50 Baht to get into the city (Baht 31 to the US $). But then the fun stops. So does the traffic. We were told by a tour guide that the average Bangkok driver spends up to two-hours a day stuck in traffic. Cars are relatively cheap, about the same as US prices, and everyone wants one. A decent Toyota Corolla sedan, the ubiquitous taxi model, costs about $25,000. Then the three wheeled motor-scooters are popular taxis, lastly the speedy 100cc motorized bicycles which weave dangerously through traffic but get the passenger to a destination faster than anything outside of a helicopter.
In fact, while stuck in traffic, one wonders when airborne cars will go on the market, making Bangkok traffic five or six-layered, but moving.
Our twenty-kilometer ride into the city took an hour, much of it stuck, sitting in a row of other cars, many belching diesel exhaust or smoke from bad piston rings.
Traffic lights come with digitized times, announcing how long before the lights change. The numbers count down, sometimes from thirty-seconds, sometimes from six-minutes. One only sits and waits, air-conditioning blasting, if you're lucky enough for your car to have air-conditioning.
But the ride only cost 400 Baht. Compare that to the ride from Kennedy Airport in NYC, and it’s a bargain.
The newspapers publish the air quality, which has a color bar, stretching from good to very bad. The days were in Bangkok the bar was on the cusp of bad and dangerous, and never got better.
Thailand, once called Siam, is now a constitutional Monarchy, ruled by the much beloved King Rama IX for the last 60-years. The first King Rama I The Great took the throne in 1782. Thailand's population is about sixty-million, with exports of $105 Billion, mainly to China.
The 80-year old king was born in Boston, Ma., a fact the tour guide repeated a dozen times. His father had been a diplomat stationed in the USA at the time of the King's birth. Later the King returned to study at Harvard, learn how to play jazz clarinet, and then take over the throne at the age of twenty. His photograph is everywhere, posters, billboards; pictures adorn streets, shops, banners, many with pictures of him from early in life to nearly the present, carefully avoiding his dotage. The most popular is of him with dark hair and glasses, a Nikon or Canon camera hanging from a strap around his neck.
But the king has only titular power. There have been a series of military coups in Thailand, deposing one Prime Minister and installing another, without interference from the king. One commentator said if he gets involved and the Army ignores him, the monarchy is finished. So he stays out of politics, preferring do-good "projects."
His daughter, the princess, rides in a yellow Rolls-Royce amid a nine-car convoy of guards and staff. Yellow is the color of the king's day of birth. In Buddhism, each day has a color attached to it. Traffic stops when the Princess takes to the street. We know. We were on tour with a guide when all traffic was stopped by the police, adding to the already irritating delays.
The main public works activity was pushed forward by the latest deposed 23rd Prime Minister, fifty-eight year old Taksin Shinawatra, called Taksin for short. A self-made Billionaire, who made his money owning the first mobile phone carrier in Thailand, Taksin holds an MBA and is reportedly "very clever." Too clever for the military who deposed him two years ago, accusing him of "corruption." A favorite accusation. The current Chief of Police was recently fired for "corruption," skimming money off a deal to buy 6000 cars for the police. His job had been to investigate Taksin's charge of corruption. Co-incidently, he was fired the day Taksin returned from "exile."
Taksin became popular when he brought Thailand out of a disastrous economy in 2000 after the local currency, the Baht, contracted as much as 10 per cent a year. Taksin used huge public works projects, locally called "Thanksinomics,"which resulted in economic growth of about 5% a year for the last six-eight years.
We learned all of this because Taksin returned to Thailand from "self-imposed exile" (meaning, according to one analyst, getting out before he was arrested, and coming back when he'd made a good deal) while we were in Bangkok. His arrival was the top story in every paper, as well as his background, and opinions pro and anti. It turns out Taksin got things done in a country where development outstrips infrastructure, where four-tower sixty-story luxury condo complexes are under construction by hordes of Thai workers who start their day at seven and work until nine at night. All this in land cleared of either green areas, or squatters huts. One watches the construction and wonders how the narrow crowded two lane roads will accomodate the thousands of new residents of the two-kilometer long street.
A new super-fast train is under construction from the airport to the city, a project Taksin initiated, as well as the new airport, but which was stopped while he was abroad. Taksin apparently knows how the government works, and how to get it working. He returned to face his corruption charge, and was already offered the Finance Ministry as a job. He swore publicly to stay out of politics, but most observers say he always says that when he's in trouble. Most consider him the de facto Prime Minister now, who is expected to get the country moving again.
The streets of Bangkok are lined with small shops, restaurants, coffee shops, and massage parlors. One coffee shop looked across the narrow two-lane road onto four massage parlors, one advertising itself as the "Japanese Club." The narrow sidewalks are littered with food stands, like the hot-dog or pretzel vendors in Manhattan. But here they have little charcoal stoves with sizzling meat, chicken, and who knows what else. Some stands sell plastic bags of white rice and vegetables. Low tables and lower stools line the sidewalk along the stands which become fast-food restaurants. Where ever one turns one sees these side-walk restaurants, as numerous as the cars. These are the "people's" restaurants where a meal can cost 20 Baht. Compare them to the up-scale restaurants where a meal can cost 800 Baht, without wine.
The growth of Thailand is attributed to Taksin. He is a populist loved by the poor people for instituting health care and improving the infrastructure, the electric grids, the roads, managing the economy by borrowing money from the Chinese to finance the public works. He is also despised by the "ruling class" for siphoning power from them, and according to one pundit, for not sharing enough of his skim with them. Or worse, stopping their corrupt deals to help move the economy forward.
They deposed him, tried to do without him, we were told, but they failed. So they let him back in.
Now to Israel. The press covered the IDF attacks in Gaza, spending 90 per cent of the article on how much damage Israel did to the Palestinians, but barely mentioning the cause for the IDF action. It is hard to find a balanced article about Israel.
Touring Bangkok in a mini-van, one sees the amazingly opulent Royal Palace, constructed in 1782; the Wat Traimit temple devoted to the five-ton solid gold Buddha, found in N. Thailand in the 1950's; and the 46-meter by 16 meter sleeping Buddha in the Wat Pho temple.
The rich and poor in Bangkok mix, but are separate. A massive outdoor market is crowded with shoppers buying everything from shrimp to mango, shorts to fans, all set out on tables in rows of stalls. For the rich there are massive shopping malls, like the Emporium, with Hermes, Guicci, Rolex stores. The poor ride the three-wheeled taxis and crowded filthy buses, the rich the new "Sky Train" where 40 Baht gets you on a air-conditioned luxury car with flat-screen TV's announcing the stops, and playing video commercials in between.
In traffic the motorbikes and three-wheeled motor-scooters sit idling their engines besides housewives with the kids in back of their SUVs or Mercedes sedans. On the side streets, away from the leafy villas set back behind high walls, are the rows of stores, families gathered on the floor eating their simple meals, all gathered around a color TV; the store is not only their place of business but also their home.
Leaving Bangkok one was again taken with the building, the cranes, the tractors, the sky-scrapers going up, and the tin roofed huts in their shadow.
Our guide, who lives 100 kilometers out of town, and left home at 04:30 am to meet us at our hotel at 07:30 said he remembers when Bangkok was mostly green, with shrubs and trees, now its mostly smog and traffic. Wooden homes are expensive because the forests have been stripped nearly bare. But he laughed when he said it. The Thai people are always smiling, laughing, "Accommodating" as Paul Theroux said in an interview which appeared in the Bangkok Post. Theroux recalled visiting Bangkok in the 1970's while the USA was embroiled in the Viet Nam war. Then he said Bangkok was a horizontal city, today it’s vertical.
The road out of town was clear; the driver took a different route, one that was 200 Baht cheaper and forty-minutes faster. Like anywhere else in the world, a tourist is at the mercy of the taxi driver, concierge, waiter, and frequently is literally 'taken for a ride.'
Perhaps that's reassuring. All over the world corruption and progress are at war. The best outcome is when some sort of stasis is achieved, allowing the corrupt to function, while the economy moves forward, and the plight of the people improves.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Hands Across Borders
Historian Benny Morris gave an in-depth interview to the Jerusalem Post’s editor David Horowitz, which was published over the weekend. Morris’ specialty is the late British PM Winston Churchill.
In the interview Morris discusses the rise of Nazism in the 1920’s and 30’s, and British, European and US avoidance in facing the threat, until it was nearly too late. According to Morris, had Britain heeded Churchill’s cry that Hitler was a dangerous fanatic bent on world domination, and readied itself militarily, the war against the Nazis would only have taken six-months, rather than six-years, and been much less costly in the loss of life.
Morris dances around the parallel to today’s Iran, but he makes it pretty clear he believes there are parallels to be drawn. The good professor says that France and Russia and the rest of Europe could have stopped Hitler in the early 1930’s, but didn’t. Why? Because no one took him seriously, except Churchill.
Today, should Europe and Russia and perhaps even China, join Israel and the USA in confronting Iran, it is possible that the Iranian threat could still be contained. But it is easier for politicians to avoid confrontation than face the reality that there’s an enemy outside your steel door preparing enough c-4 plastique explosive to blow down the door, and probably blow up your house. From inside the house, with the stereo on, the TV blaring, dinner on the table, it’s hard to imagine an enemy lurking in the bushes.
Morris also points out that China and Russia today are attempting to build themselves into superpowers, replete with client states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, ready to do their bidding. Should Iran agree to avoid a confrontation with Russia, or China, while confronting Israel and the USA, and other parts of Europe, then in the historians opinion, China and Russia will agree.
Much as Russia agreed in the 1930’s with the non-aggression pact Stalin signed with Hitler. Until Hitler decided he’d had enough of Stalin and went to war with Russia as well.
Hitler never told the truth to anyone about anything. In today’s Israeli press commentators say that Iranian leader Achminajad has been lying for five years about his nuclear development program. Now some reports say t hat he is only months away from a nuclear weapon.
As if to underscore this assumption, Lebanon’s Shiek Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian backed Hezbollah, has said that Israel would be destroyed within three years. One assumes that Nasrallah has better information about the Iranian progress to nuclear weapons than the rest of the world. Especially the U.S. intelligence agencies that did an about-face recently,, declaring that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon.
These are the same agencies, with different names, and in different guises, who said that Hitler wasn’t a threat. Until he was, of course.
That’s not to say Iran can’t be stopped, even if they develop a weapon tomorrow. Hitler’s top military commanders, the old guard elite aristocracy, never believed Germany could win the war. As early as 1939 they were seeking back-door deals to head off the US and Britain from entering the war, at the same time beginning to plot the assassination of Hitler.
But these aristocrats were good Germans, patriots, fighting for the fatherland, and all that. They did their jobs in spite of their misgivings. And indeed crazy Adolph lost the war. In fact, he lost the war back in 42, and the loss was sealed when Russian entered the fray in 43, but he never knew, or admitted it.
Nuts. Historians say that he was willing to take a whole country along with him, too. Not that the Germans were blameless. They went along with Hitler’s glorious song of a 1,000 year rule. But the song was off-key, and played on a pipe-organ that ran out of steam long before the thousand years had even gotten off the starting blocks.
Many observers believe that Achminajad is another Hitler. Analysts say he is like other despots; interested in power, glory, adoration. He speaks and crowds go into frenzy. They can believe his shouts and rants about destroying the West, but in all likelihood once he tries it military experts say he’ll wind up dead with scores of millions of his countrymen. Analysts admit he will certainly inflict damage, perhaps even fatal damage, to some countries, perhaps even Israel, but in the end Iran will go up in smoke; the oil wells will blaze across the countryside, and the populace will all be fighting various forms of radiation poisoning.
The editorial pages lump the above topics with the upcoming U.S. elections. Given a world facing war, who would you rather have making decisions; Churchill, Chamberlain, or Roosevelt? In another time frame it is now Clinton, Obama or McCain.
Clinton is a flinty woman who will do what is necessary to do. Lurking over her head is the dirty cloud of politics that she and her husband have been busy flying through. Observers point out that as U.S.President, when the time came for Bill to decide to take out a petty dictator in Somalia, he failed miserably. Or at least his troops did. Pundits ask, if “Billary” do better facing a nascent dictator with nuclear weapons? Good question.
Then there’s Barry Obama. All reports paint him as a fine man. Good bone structure. Good command of English. An inspiring speaker. He caught Billary by surprise, snuck up from a corner just as Bill did when he ran the first time, and next thing you know Billary is swimming upstream against the current, and tiring fast. Perhaps Obama will rise to the occasion and be a true leader of the century, making decisions based on big ideas that work, and change the course of history.
Political analysts point out that Obama wants to talk to everyone. He’s going to talk to Achminajad. Well, he might succeed. Some observers say the one thing the West doesn’t completely understand is the Arab mindset that revolves around pride and respect. If Obama treats Achminajad as a respected leader, not some nut who appears ready to take over the world and turn it into an Islamic Federation, and if Achminajad actually succumbs to Barak Obama’s outstanding powers of persuasion, then perhaps the world’s present nuclear crises will recede with the tide, leaving quiet shores and gentle waves lapping at the sandy beaches.
Jimmy Carter thought he could talk people into Peace. Historians say he couldn’t. Jimmy Carter thought he would bring “Change” to Washington, he couldn’t. But Perhaps Barak Obama is really what he appears to be: a brilliant, cool, reasoned intellectual who can duke it out with the world’s bullies when necessary.
Or will talk only go so far? In Israel observers have long followed the misrepresentations and prevarications uttered during the run-up to peace talks. Both sides lie. In 1938-9 Hitler told Chamberlain he wouldn’t invade Czechoslovakia, Poland, whatever. He lied. In 1941 the Japanese ambassador to Washington sat in the White House negotiating an oil deal while the planes were just outside Pearl Harbor with their bomb doors opening, ready to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Mao Tse-Tung, lied to Edgar Snow, who wrote Red Star Over China, about everything. Mao lied to everyone, ruled by terror, was a disciple of Stalin, and then tried to out Stalin Stalin. All the while meeting with Stalin, rising up three times tossing up his hands yelling “Long Live Stalin. Long Live Stalin.”
In short, as Will Parker, the old folk singer used to say, ‘people tell you what you want to hear, and you hear what you want to hear when people tell you.’ If Barack Obama meets with Achmanijad and it turns out Barack isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, the bombs may already be falling on Washington by the time he gets home.
Then we have John McCain. By the process of deduction we are stuck with him. Is he a good guy? As David Lettterman reportedly said in his recent stand-up, the ‘Republican Party is a bunch of grumpy old white guys teeing off at a restricted country-club.’ Well, maybe not too obviously restricted, anymore. McCain is the son and grandson of Admirals. He knows something about fighting. He knows about surviving, too. If his experience was anything like that of the hero in the 1970’s flick about a Vietnam POW released after seven-years of torture, then McCain can lie straight-faced to the enemy and maybe even smile while doing it. What is probably called for now is a fighter, not a talker. Best is someone who could do both, extremely well. Extremely well is the key. Not thinking they can do it extremely well, like Cheeny and Rumsfield, but really doing it extremely well.
Should the pundits of academia be correct, we take off the top of the curve and the bottom of the curve and go for the middle.
So who do we have left? Billary.
Or Ralph Nader. Take your pick.
The next President is going to have to reach out across the border, but we'll have to ait to see if he or she gets a handful of honey, or winds up sticking their fingers in a garbage disposal.
In the interview Morris discusses the rise of Nazism in the 1920’s and 30’s, and British, European and US avoidance in facing the threat, until it was nearly too late. According to Morris, had Britain heeded Churchill’s cry that Hitler was a dangerous fanatic bent on world domination, and readied itself militarily, the war against the Nazis would only have taken six-months, rather than six-years, and been much less costly in the loss of life.
Morris dances around the parallel to today’s Iran, but he makes it pretty clear he believes there are parallels to be drawn. The good professor says that France and Russia and the rest of Europe could have stopped Hitler in the early 1930’s, but didn’t. Why? Because no one took him seriously, except Churchill.
Today, should Europe and Russia and perhaps even China, join Israel and the USA in confronting Iran, it is possible that the Iranian threat could still be contained. But it is easier for politicians to avoid confrontation than face the reality that there’s an enemy outside your steel door preparing enough c-4 plastique explosive to blow down the door, and probably blow up your house. From inside the house, with the stereo on, the TV blaring, dinner on the table, it’s hard to imagine an enemy lurking in the bushes.
Morris also points out that China and Russia today are attempting to build themselves into superpowers, replete with client states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, ready to do their bidding. Should Iran agree to avoid a confrontation with Russia, or China, while confronting Israel and the USA, and other parts of Europe, then in the historians opinion, China and Russia will agree.
Much as Russia agreed in the 1930’s with the non-aggression pact Stalin signed with Hitler. Until Hitler decided he’d had enough of Stalin and went to war with Russia as well.
Hitler never told the truth to anyone about anything. In today’s Israeli press commentators say that Iranian leader Achminajad has been lying for five years about his nuclear development program. Now some reports say t hat he is only months away from a nuclear weapon.
As if to underscore this assumption, Lebanon’s Shiek Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian backed Hezbollah, has said that Israel would be destroyed within three years. One assumes that Nasrallah has better information about the Iranian progress to nuclear weapons than the rest of the world. Especially the U.S. intelligence agencies that did an about-face recently,, declaring that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon.
These are the same agencies, with different names, and in different guises, who said that Hitler wasn’t a threat. Until he was, of course.
That’s not to say Iran can’t be stopped, even if they develop a weapon tomorrow. Hitler’s top military commanders, the old guard elite aristocracy, never believed Germany could win the war. As early as 1939 they were seeking back-door deals to head off the US and Britain from entering the war, at the same time beginning to plot the assassination of Hitler.
But these aristocrats were good Germans, patriots, fighting for the fatherland, and all that. They did their jobs in spite of their misgivings. And indeed crazy Adolph lost the war. In fact, he lost the war back in 42, and the loss was sealed when Russian entered the fray in 43, but he never knew, or admitted it.
Nuts. Historians say that he was willing to take a whole country along with him, too. Not that the Germans were blameless. They went along with Hitler’s glorious song of a 1,000 year rule. But the song was off-key, and played on a pipe-organ that ran out of steam long before the thousand years had even gotten off the starting blocks.
Many observers believe that Achminajad is another Hitler. Analysts say he is like other despots; interested in power, glory, adoration. He speaks and crowds go into frenzy. They can believe his shouts and rants about destroying the West, but in all likelihood once he tries it military experts say he’ll wind up dead with scores of millions of his countrymen. Analysts admit he will certainly inflict damage, perhaps even fatal damage, to some countries, perhaps even Israel, but in the end Iran will go up in smoke; the oil wells will blaze across the countryside, and the populace will all be fighting various forms of radiation poisoning.
The editorial pages lump the above topics with the upcoming U.S. elections. Given a world facing war, who would you rather have making decisions; Churchill, Chamberlain, or Roosevelt? In another time frame it is now Clinton, Obama or McCain.
Clinton is a flinty woman who will do what is necessary to do. Lurking over her head is the dirty cloud of politics that she and her husband have been busy flying through. Observers point out that as U.S.President, when the time came for Bill to decide to take out a petty dictator in Somalia, he failed miserably. Or at least his troops did. Pundits ask, if “Billary” do better facing a nascent dictator with nuclear weapons? Good question.
Then there’s Barry Obama. All reports paint him as a fine man. Good bone structure. Good command of English. An inspiring speaker. He caught Billary by surprise, snuck up from a corner just as Bill did when he ran the first time, and next thing you know Billary is swimming upstream against the current, and tiring fast. Perhaps Obama will rise to the occasion and be a true leader of the century, making decisions based on big ideas that work, and change the course of history.
Political analysts point out that Obama wants to talk to everyone. He’s going to talk to Achminajad. Well, he might succeed. Some observers say the one thing the West doesn’t completely understand is the Arab mindset that revolves around pride and respect. If Obama treats Achminajad as a respected leader, not some nut who appears ready to take over the world and turn it into an Islamic Federation, and if Achminajad actually succumbs to Barak Obama’s outstanding powers of persuasion, then perhaps the world’s present nuclear crises will recede with the tide, leaving quiet shores and gentle waves lapping at the sandy beaches.
Jimmy Carter thought he could talk people into Peace. Historians say he couldn’t. Jimmy Carter thought he would bring “Change” to Washington, he couldn’t. But Perhaps Barak Obama is really what he appears to be: a brilliant, cool, reasoned intellectual who can duke it out with the world’s bullies when necessary.
Or will talk only go so far? In Israel observers have long followed the misrepresentations and prevarications uttered during the run-up to peace talks. Both sides lie. In 1938-9 Hitler told Chamberlain he wouldn’t invade Czechoslovakia, Poland, whatever. He lied. In 1941 the Japanese ambassador to Washington sat in the White House negotiating an oil deal while the planes were just outside Pearl Harbor with their bomb doors opening, ready to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Mao Tse-Tung, lied to Edgar Snow, who wrote Red Star Over China, about everything. Mao lied to everyone, ruled by terror, was a disciple of Stalin, and then tried to out Stalin Stalin. All the while meeting with Stalin, rising up three times tossing up his hands yelling “Long Live Stalin. Long Live Stalin.”
In short, as Will Parker, the old folk singer used to say, ‘people tell you what you want to hear, and you hear what you want to hear when people tell you.’ If Barack Obama meets with Achmanijad and it turns out Barack isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, the bombs may already be falling on Washington by the time he gets home.
Then we have John McCain. By the process of deduction we are stuck with him. Is he a good guy? As David Lettterman reportedly said in his recent stand-up, the ‘Republican Party is a bunch of grumpy old white guys teeing off at a restricted country-club.’ Well, maybe not too obviously restricted, anymore. McCain is the son and grandson of Admirals. He knows something about fighting. He knows about surviving, too. If his experience was anything like that of the hero in the 1970’s flick about a Vietnam POW released after seven-years of torture, then McCain can lie straight-faced to the enemy and maybe even smile while doing it. What is probably called for now is a fighter, not a talker. Best is someone who could do both, extremely well. Extremely well is the key. Not thinking they can do it extremely well, like Cheeny and Rumsfield, but really doing it extremely well.
Should the pundits of academia be correct, we take off the top of the curve and the bottom of the curve and go for the middle.
So who do we have left? Billary.
Or Ralph Nader. Take your pick.
The next President is going to have to reach out across the border, but we'll have to ait to see if he or she gets a handful of honey, or winds up sticking their fingers in a garbage disposal.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Mugniyah and the Snow
Mugniyah and the snow all in one week. The headrest of the Mitsubishi Pajero Jeep that the no.2 man in Hezbollah was driving exploded, obliterating one of Israel’s arch-enemies. Who did it? Like the attack on the alleged Syrian nuclear facility a few months ago, no one is claiming responsibility.
However Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly made a victory walk through the Knesset’s cafeteria in what observers say was a very rare appearance in that lunchroom of the elite. Reportedly he paraded through with a smirk on his face shortly after the news of the Mugniyah assassination was made public.
Much has been written about the assassination and the aftermath. Israel is girding for attacks by Hezbollah in Africa, S. America and Europe. Warnings have gone out to Israeli Embassy’s and Jewish organizations to be on the alert for any type of Hezbollah reprisals. Israel’s military intelligence organizations expect some reprisal. Where and when are the big questions?
It is also possible that Hezbollah will launch killer pilot-less drones from Lebanon aimed at Israel’s cities and dense population centers. Hezbollah may also launch missile attacks. On Monday evening the Haaretz newspaper announced that Israel had deployed Patriot missile batteries to defend against such attacks.
Some wonder if perhaps Hezbollah will wait until May when Israel is about to celebrate her 60th birthday, then let off a reign of terror that will kill the celebrations, and anyone nearby.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Nasrallah has sworn to take revenge for the killing. In a brilliant example of double-speak Nasrallah said that the assassination of Mugniyah outside of Lebanon meant Hezbollah was now free to attack Israeli and Jewish targets anywhere in the world. Observers wondered at Nasrallah’s ‘chutzpah’ in that statement, since the bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994 was only one of a string of attacks outside of Lebanon or even Israel for which Hezbollah is allegedly responsible.
Mugniyah was killed in Damascus, where he’d been living for years. The U.S claimed that it was Damascus who killed Mugniyah, or Iran. Of course this type of rhetoric sends Hezbollah climbing the walls. Outrageous disinformation has been the hallmark of the terrorist movements since their inception. Giving them back some of their mind-twisting games has been long overdue.
The rumor mill has it that Mugniyah was killed by Arab agents of some government, either Israel, the US, or who knows, maybe Iran and/or Syria. Some pundits speculate that perhaps Mugniyah fell afoul of the powers that be for some infraction of their rules. Maybe he embezzled Hafaz Assad’s cash, or sold a nuclear bomb to the wrong criminals. Anything is possible. Unless one is involved in the planning and execution of such an event, everything said is commentary and speculation.
As part of the assassination speculation, the lives, or deaths, of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the two soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah, reportedly at the behest of Mugniyah, that started the War in Lebanon II are now in the news. According to the German Der Speigel newspaper both soldiers are no longer alive. Some analysts believe that once this news reached the Israeli government they felt free to attack Hezbollah’s leadership without fear of the reprisal murders of Regev and Goldwasser. Again, this is pure speculation. Officially the Israeli government has said that until they see proof the two soldiers are dead they are considered alive, and the hunt for them, and negotiations for their release carries on.
But in the shady world of espionage and international intrigue who knows what the truth is? Only those privy to the closed door conversations.
Four Kassam rockets plowed into the Negev on Monday. Two fell near the first aid station of a kibbutz, causing some damage. Two other rockets fell in open fields. Earlier in the week Sderot residents were treated for shock when rockets fell near them.
These rocket attacks are going on in the face of a blistering engagement by Israeli special forces in Gaza. Raids and attacks are taking place using the best units Israel has at its disposal. On Sunday a commander of the Sayet HaMatkal, Israel’s most elite commando unit, was seriously injured in an operation in Gaza. As of Monday afternoon he was reportedly out of danger, but still badly injured by shrapnel and debris. The injuries were mainly in the chest area. Navy Seals, Paratroopers, and other units were all involved in the raids aimed at neutralizing the rocket fire.
A top Hamas official was killed on Saturday when an explosion leveled his home. No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.
Iran has not given up its murderous rhetoric. Mohammad Ali Jafari the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard warned that Hezbollah will destroy Israel. According to the Fars News Agency, Ali Jafri said, “In the near future, we will witness the destruction of the cancerous germ of Israel by the powerful and competent hands of the Hezbollah combatants.”
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is reportedly providing military support to Hezbollah, although Tehran denies this. And Iranian leader Achmanijad said yesterday, according to the International Herald Tribune, that giving up the goal of nuclear weapons would be against Allah’s wishes. One wonders how the Iranian’s leaders gets his orders from Allah.
In Jerusalem the new suspension bridge at the entrance to the city is expected to be completed by the 60th anniversary celebrations. The spire that will support a spider-web like net of fine wires attached to a bridge over the entrance to the city costs a reported $65 million. According to the Kol Ha Ir local Jerusalem newspaper, the bridge was the folly of one of the cities leaders who wanted to exert his ‘ego.’ In a city strapped for cash, with a diminishing tax base and increasing poverty, one wonders how effective a $65 million bridge will be when according to informed sources in the newspaper, an effective bridge could have been built for $5 million.
In that same vein, the city of Jerusalem passed a resolution allowing the construction of 1,700 apartments, reportedly meant for the ultra-orthodox population, who usually pay little or no state of city taxes. This is because of their large families, and their tax-exempt status as students in religious institutions. While the new constructionmight have brought in more city tax if aimed at a different market, this development will only be another drain on an already nearly bankrupt city.
The new construction will take place in the Jerusalem Forest just beneath the Ramot neighorhood. Residents groups have been fighting to keep the forest a green area, sort of like New York’s central park, and have been waging a pitched battle in the courts.
Israel’s supreme court was to have ruled on the subject, but no notice of their ruling had been published. The municipality gave the builders permission to put up signs in the forest notifying the public of the impending construction. Local groups are planning to petition the lower courts to review the case. As of now the forest is home to herds of gazelle, wild life from foxes to rare birds, and a plethora of flora and fauna. However cynics say that when builders and politicians sit down to discuss things in the quiet of dark restaurants the good of the public frequently takes a back seat to the monetary benefits of the interested parties.
One can only hope that the Supreme Court will hear the petition and grant a reprieve to the last green area in northern Jerusalem. As one city planner warned, Jerusalem, in fact all of Israel, is in danger of the ‘Singapore Syndrome’ where roads and more roads eradicate any semblance of nature and open areas, replacing them with a network of highways and streets that choke the atmosphere and the imagination.
Snow is falling in Jerusalem for the second time this winter. But the storm is expected to abate by Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday and Thursday the temperatures are expected to be back in the sixties.
One wonders if the snow storm and the assassination of Mugniyah are both rare occurrences; or if they’re both symptoms of changing times: snow as part of the global warming, and Mugniyah as part of a new pro-active stance the west is taking to fend off radical Islam.
However Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly made a victory walk through the Knesset’s cafeteria in what observers say was a very rare appearance in that lunchroom of the elite. Reportedly he paraded through with a smirk on his face shortly after the news of the Mugniyah assassination was made public.
Much has been written about the assassination and the aftermath. Israel is girding for attacks by Hezbollah in Africa, S. America and Europe. Warnings have gone out to Israeli Embassy’s and Jewish organizations to be on the alert for any type of Hezbollah reprisals. Israel’s military intelligence organizations expect some reprisal. Where and when are the big questions?
It is also possible that Hezbollah will launch killer pilot-less drones from Lebanon aimed at Israel’s cities and dense population centers. Hezbollah may also launch missile attacks. On Monday evening the Haaretz newspaper announced that Israel had deployed Patriot missile batteries to defend against such attacks.
Some wonder if perhaps Hezbollah will wait until May when Israel is about to celebrate her 60th birthday, then let off a reign of terror that will kill the celebrations, and anyone nearby.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Nasrallah has sworn to take revenge for the killing. In a brilliant example of double-speak Nasrallah said that the assassination of Mugniyah outside of Lebanon meant Hezbollah was now free to attack Israeli and Jewish targets anywhere in the world. Observers wondered at Nasrallah’s ‘chutzpah’ in that statement, since the bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994 was only one of a string of attacks outside of Lebanon or even Israel for which Hezbollah is allegedly responsible.
Mugniyah was killed in Damascus, where he’d been living for years. The U.S claimed that it was Damascus who killed Mugniyah, or Iran. Of course this type of rhetoric sends Hezbollah climbing the walls. Outrageous disinformation has been the hallmark of the terrorist movements since their inception. Giving them back some of their mind-twisting games has been long overdue.
The rumor mill has it that Mugniyah was killed by Arab agents of some government, either Israel, the US, or who knows, maybe Iran and/or Syria. Some pundits speculate that perhaps Mugniyah fell afoul of the powers that be for some infraction of their rules. Maybe he embezzled Hafaz Assad’s cash, or sold a nuclear bomb to the wrong criminals. Anything is possible. Unless one is involved in the planning and execution of such an event, everything said is commentary and speculation.
As part of the assassination speculation, the lives, or deaths, of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the two soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah, reportedly at the behest of Mugniyah, that started the War in Lebanon II are now in the news. According to the German Der Speigel newspaper both soldiers are no longer alive. Some analysts believe that once this news reached the Israeli government they felt free to attack Hezbollah’s leadership without fear of the reprisal murders of Regev and Goldwasser. Again, this is pure speculation. Officially the Israeli government has said that until they see proof the two soldiers are dead they are considered alive, and the hunt for them, and negotiations for their release carries on.
But in the shady world of espionage and international intrigue who knows what the truth is? Only those privy to the closed door conversations.
Four Kassam rockets plowed into the Negev on Monday. Two fell near the first aid station of a kibbutz, causing some damage. Two other rockets fell in open fields. Earlier in the week Sderot residents were treated for shock when rockets fell near them.
These rocket attacks are going on in the face of a blistering engagement by Israeli special forces in Gaza. Raids and attacks are taking place using the best units Israel has at its disposal. On Sunday a commander of the Sayet HaMatkal, Israel’s most elite commando unit, was seriously injured in an operation in Gaza. As of Monday afternoon he was reportedly out of danger, but still badly injured by shrapnel and debris. The injuries were mainly in the chest area. Navy Seals, Paratroopers, and other units were all involved in the raids aimed at neutralizing the rocket fire.
A top Hamas official was killed on Saturday when an explosion leveled his home. No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.
Iran has not given up its murderous rhetoric. Mohammad Ali Jafari the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard warned that Hezbollah will destroy Israel. According to the Fars News Agency, Ali Jafri said, “In the near future, we will witness the destruction of the cancerous germ of Israel by the powerful and competent hands of the Hezbollah combatants.”
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is reportedly providing military support to Hezbollah, although Tehran denies this. And Iranian leader Achmanijad said yesterday, according to the International Herald Tribune, that giving up the goal of nuclear weapons would be against Allah’s wishes. One wonders how the Iranian’s leaders gets his orders from Allah.
In Jerusalem the new suspension bridge at the entrance to the city is expected to be completed by the 60th anniversary celebrations. The spire that will support a spider-web like net of fine wires attached to a bridge over the entrance to the city costs a reported $65 million. According to the Kol Ha Ir local Jerusalem newspaper, the bridge was the folly of one of the cities leaders who wanted to exert his ‘ego.’ In a city strapped for cash, with a diminishing tax base and increasing poverty, one wonders how effective a $65 million bridge will be when according to informed sources in the newspaper, an effective bridge could have been built for $5 million.
In that same vein, the city of Jerusalem passed a resolution allowing the construction of 1,700 apartments, reportedly meant for the ultra-orthodox population, who usually pay little or no state of city taxes. This is because of their large families, and their tax-exempt status as students in religious institutions. While the new constructionmight have brought in more city tax if aimed at a different market, this development will only be another drain on an already nearly bankrupt city.
The new construction will take place in the Jerusalem Forest just beneath the Ramot neighorhood. Residents groups have been fighting to keep the forest a green area, sort of like New York’s central park, and have been waging a pitched battle in the courts.
Israel’s supreme court was to have ruled on the subject, but no notice of their ruling had been published. The municipality gave the builders permission to put up signs in the forest notifying the public of the impending construction. Local groups are planning to petition the lower courts to review the case. As of now the forest is home to herds of gazelle, wild life from foxes to rare birds, and a plethora of flora and fauna. However cynics say that when builders and politicians sit down to discuss things in the quiet of dark restaurants the good of the public frequently takes a back seat to the monetary benefits of the interested parties.
One can only hope that the Supreme Court will hear the petition and grant a reprieve to the last green area in northern Jerusalem. As one city planner warned, Jerusalem, in fact all of Israel, is in danger of the ‘Singapore Syndrome’ where roads and more roads eradicate any semblance of nature and open areas, replacing them with a network of highways and streets that choke the atmosphere and the imagination.
Snow is falling in Jerusalem for the second time this winter. But the storm is expected to abate by Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday and Thursday the temperatures are expected to be back in the sixties.
One wonders if the snow storm and the assassination of Mugniyah are both rare occurrences; or if they’re both symptoms of changing times: snow as part of the global warming, and Mugniyah as part of a new pro-active stance the west is taking to fend off radical Islam.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Everyone Loves A Winner
Everyone loves a winner, because people near a winner, or that supported a winner, feel that they too have the ‘right stuff.’ Its like picking the right horse at the race track; or the right stock in a bear market. Being around a winner makes people plain feel good. Unless of course you’re the looser, than being around the winner probably makes you feel lousy, but that’s another subject.
Now we have the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America. Obama has momentum. Hilary is rumored to be having trouble with her campaign. The more Obama wins the more Hilary loses. The herd instinct at work. Wanting to be with the winner. Wanting to feel good.
Two weeks ago, or so, when Tom Brady was in the playoffs for the division championships, sports announcers were falling all over themselves extolling praise on Brady as perhaps the best quarterback ever to play football, and the 2007-8 New England Patriots as perhaps the best team ever to play football.
Then came the Superbowl, and the closer the game came to the final buzzer the worse Tom Brady became in the eyes of the sports announcers. The day following the game it was clear by reading any of the experts analysis that Brady hadn’t been good since game 8, and the Patriots were beat-up and tired for the last half of the season. Why the sudden change of heart? Of course. We all know. Because they lost.
Now Clinton is a loser and the staunch Democrats who extolled her virtues are now finding fault with her husband Bill, previously one of her best selling points because of his eight-years in the job, her lack of ability to inspire crowds, and even her clothing. Many pundits have commented how superficial the commentary has become. The issue is how big a crowd does Obama draw, how much money is pouring into his campaign, how many young people buy his message calling for “Change.”
But what about the issues? According to an article in Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post, Hilary Clinton has made her position on issues abundantly clear, whereas Obama has been vaguer on important points. Clinton’s clarity has thus put her at a disadvantage.
Barack Obama is campaigning for “change.” Kids love that kind of talk. Yeah, let’s change it. But to what? That Senator Obama doesn’t say.
According to Malcolm Hoenlein, executive VP of the Conference of Presidents (of Major Jewish Organizations), in an interview in Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post, “All the talk about change, but without defining what that change should be is an opening for all kind of mischief."
Hoenlein was covering his tracks after earlier statements quoted in Haaretz, Israel’s most influential newspaper, indicated he was not in favor of Obama’s candidacy. Hoenlein said that in forty years he’d never backed a specific candidate, only a specific issue.
The Presidential race became a media circus back when Kennedy debated Nixon, and the latter looked lousy on camera. Today its all about image. Barack Obama has stage presence, speaks wonderfully, can rally the crowd like an old-time preacher. But what is he saying? Is it time for a revolution? Is he planning a new form of government? Will his policies differ so drastically from Bush, or the previous Clinton, or the previous Bush?
Will he have a different foreign policy? Will he be more for change than for “Truth, Justice and the American Way?” And if he gets elected, and that’s what the debate is now, about “if” he gets chosen to be the Democratic candidate, and “if” he gets elected will he then come out swinging with both fists with a flurry of punches and fancy footwork to make Mohammed Ali seem an amateur? Didn’t we have an “outsider” who wanted to come into Washington and change things. Sweep up. Reform. Change?
Yes we did. Jimmy Carter. He meant well. But did he change anything? Or did he show he was a well-meaning God-fearing man who was simply not cut out to run the ship of state? Who was derailed by the very system he wanted to change. And who was, truth be told, probably incompetent. In later years he showed he meant well, but was far from even-handed, although he could never bring himself to admit that.
Obama has similar shortcomings. He plays a tune of change but the melody is uneven and there are no lyrics. Does have a beat though, and a few chords that bounce around inside the head like a popular jingle. But will that make him a good President? Or just a populist candidate who obviously can reenergize the flagging Democratic party?
Bill Clinton was similar to Jimmy Carter in certain ways. Both thought they were doing the right thing for Israel. Carter brokered the cold peace between Egypt and Israel, Clinton between Jordan and Israel. The Palestinian issue was never resolved, although the “Clinton Plan” is essentially the one on the table now under a different title and in a slightly different form.
The “Road Map” will disintegrate from old age before it is implemented, mainly over the issue of Jerusalem. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak thought giving up large chunks of Jerusalem would bring the parties to a peace treaty. But he was wrong. Chunks won’t appease the Palestinian desire for control of Jerusalem, and Hamas’ desire for a land purged of the Jewish people, their smell, and any sign they were ever here.
Will Barak Obama enter the fray? Or will he decide other issues are more important, like jobs, health-care, Iraq, Afghanistan? Has he ever said anything on these issues?
Then there’s the kicker. Barack is pronounced Bareck in the USA, to rhyme with Derek. In Israel it is pronounced Barack with the accent on the last syllable. The name in Arabic comes from the horse ‘Barack’ that Mohammed rode when the horse leapt from Mecca to Jerusalem, touched a hoof down .on the rock on Mt. Moriah, where Abraham was to have slaughtered Isaac, then soared up to heaven.
In Hebrew Barack is lightening. Somehow one supposes Barak Obama doesn’t have a Hebrew name, since Obama is a proud, familiar, Arabic family name.
Those to words, Barack and Obama are an obstacle for a leader seeking the support of the Israeli people. To most in Israel this candidate is akin to having a Moslem president. Since Israel’s conflict with the world is primarily with the Moslems, it is understandable why Israelis would be hesitant to back such a candidate, even though his mother was Christian and he is a Christian. Its sort of like Arabs backing a guy who has a Jewish name running for President. Same same, as they say in the souk of Jerusalem’s Old City.
So now the question is:when the primaries are all over and the winner is chosen will Hilary be seen as Tom Brady, or will it be Barack Obama?
And the bigger question is: can either of them beat John McCain?
And if he comes
Now we have the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America. Obama has momentum. Hilary is rumored to be having trouble with her campaign. The more Obama wins the more Hilary loses. The herd instinct at work. Wanting to be with the winner. Wanting to feel good.
Two weeks ago, or so, when Tom Brady was in the playoffs for the division championships, sports announcers were falling all over themselves extolling praise on Brady as perhaps the best quarterback ever to play football, and the 2007-8 New England Patriots as perhaps the best team ever to play football.
Then came the Superbowl, and the closer the game came to the final buzzer the worse Tom Brady became in the eyes of the sports announcers. The day following the game it was clear by reading any of the experts analysis that Brady hadn’t been good since game 8, and the Patriots were beat-up and tired for the last half of the season. Why the sudden change of heart? Of course. We all know. Because they lost.
Now Clinton is a loser and the staunch Democrats who extolled her virtues are now finding fault with her husband Bill, previously one of her best selling points because of his eight-years in the job, her lack of ability to inspire crowds, and even her clothing. Many pundits have commented how superficial the commentary has become. The issue is how big a crowd does Obama draw, how much money is pouring into his campaign, how many young people buy his message calling for “Change.”
But what about the issues? According to an article in Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post, Hilary Clinton has made her position on issues abundantly clear, whereas Obama has been vaguer on important points. Clinton’s clarity has thus put her at a disadvantage.
Barack Obama is campaigning for “change.” Kids love that kind of talk. Yeah, let’s change it. But to what? That Senator Obama doesn’t say.
According to Malcolm Hoenlein, executive VP of the Conference of Presidents (of Major Jewish Organizations), in an interview in Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post, “All the talk about change, but without defining what that change should be is an opening for all kind of mischief."
Hoenlein was covering his tracks after earlier statements quoted in Haaretz, Israel’s most influential newspaper, indicated he was not in favor of Obama’s candidacy. Hoenlein said that in forty years he’d never backed a specific candidate, only a specific issue.
The Presidential race became a media circus back when Kennedy debated Nixon, and the latter looked lousy on camera. Today its all about image. Barack Obama has stage presence, speaks wonderfully, can rally the crowd like an old-time preacher. But what is he saying? Is it time for a revolution? Is he planning a new form of government? Will his policies differ so drastically from Bush, or the previous Clinton, or the previous Bush?
Will he have a different foreign policy? Will he be more for change than for “Truth, Justice and the American Way?” And if he gets elected, and that’s what the debate is now, about “if” he gets chosen to be the Democratic candidate, and “if” he gets elected will he then come out swinging with both fists with a flurry of punches and fancy footwork to make Mohammed Ali seem an amateur? Didn’t we have an “outsider” who wanted to come into Washington and change things. Sweep up. Reform. Change?
Yes we did. Jimmy Carter. He meant well. But did he change anything? Or did he show he was a well-meaning God-fearing man who was simply not cut out to run the ship of state? Who was derailed by the very system he wanted to change. And who was, truth be told, probably incompetent. In later years he showed he meant well, but was far from even-handed, although he could never bring himself to admit that.
Obama has similar shortcomings. He plays a tune of change but the melody is uneven and there are no lyrics. Does have a beat though, and a few chords that bounce around inside the head like a popular jingle. But will that make him a good President? Or just a populist candidate who obviously can reenergize the flagging Democratic party?
Bill Clinton was similar to Jimmy Carter in certain ways. Both thought they were doing the right thing for Israel. Carter brokered the cold peace between Egypt and Israel, Clinton between Jordan and Israel. The Palestinian issue was never resolved, although the “Clinton Plan” is essentially the one on the table now under a different title and in a slightly different form.
The “Road Map” will disintegrate from old age before it is implemented, mainly over the issue of Jerusalem. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak thought giving up large chunks of Jerusalem would bring the parties to a peace treaty. But he was wrong. Chunks won’t appease the Palestinian desire for control of Jerusalem, and Hamas’ desire for a land purged of the Jewish people, their smell, and any sign they were ever here.
Will Barak Obama enter the fray? Or will he decide other issues are more important, like jobs, health-care, Iraq, Afghanistan? Has he ever said anything on these issues?
Then there’s the kicker. Barack is pronounced Bareck in the USA, to rhyme with Derek. In Israel it is pronounced Barack with the accent on the last syllable. The name in Arabic comes from the horse ‘Barack’ that Mohammed rode when the horse leapt from Mecca to Jerusalem, touched a hoof down .on the rock on Mt. Moriah, where Abraham was to have slaughtered Isaac, then soared up to heaven.
In Hebrew Barack is lightening. Somehow one supposes Barak Obama doesn’t have a Hebrew name, since Obama is a proud, familiar, Arabic family name.
Those to words, Barack and Obama are an obstacle for a leader seeking the support of the Israeli people. To most in Israel this candidate is akin to having a Moslem president. Since Israel’s conflict with the world is primarily with the Moslems, it is understandable why Israelis would be hesitant to back such a candidate, even though his mother was Christian and he is a Christian. Its sort of like Arabs backing a guy who has a Jewish name running for President. Same same, as they say in the souk of Jerusalem’s Old City.
So now the question is:when the primaries are all over and the winner is chosen will Hilary be seen as Tom Brady, or will it be Barack Obama?
And the bigger question is: can either of them beat John McCain?
And if he comes
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Post Winnograd
The old adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend applies in Israel today.
The Egyptians are closing the breached Gaza border, but reportedly doing so with the coordination of Hamas. Does this make the Egyptians the enemy of Israel’s enemy? Good question.
According to press reports, on Sunday Shin Bet security services chief Yuval Diskin warned government ministers that the breach in the Gaza—Egypt border could become permanent. Diskin told the ministers that the advantage to the situation is that Egypt would become responsible for the border, not Israel. According to Diskin the Gaza terrorists were now able to smuggle weapons overland rather than smuggling them in through tunnels.
Other commentators have said that Egypt might get stuck with the welfare of Gaza, instead of Israel, which the Israelis would consider a very positive development. The Egyptians reject this option because they are worried about the radicals from Gaza coming into Egypt and bolstering those out to overthrow the present Mubarak administration.
Meanwhile security is high along the porous Israel/Egypt border. Israel expects terrorist attacks by groups who left Gaza through the hole in the wall, entered Egypt, made their way across the desert and are preparing to cross unhindered into Israel. The Israeli/Egyptian border has no fence and stretches for approximately a hundred kilometers. Terrorists could conceivable just walk across the border into Israel. As of now Sudanese refugees looking for work routinely find their way into Israel through this route.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the cabinet on Sunday that Israel had to seal up the border between Egypt and Israel, especially the areas near Nitzana and Eilat. Barak considered this a vital step to insure Israel's security.
A second conundrum in the adage of the enemy of my enemy is my friend is the announcement on Sunday by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is also the head of the Labor Party, that he has decided not to resign from the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
According to his statement, Barak said that he weighed the recently released Winnograd Committee report. He said the report was a very bad criticism of the government and the army, but decided that this was not the time to quit the government. He said that some people would be saddened by this decision but that others would be happy with it.
Labor Party Knesset Member Danny Atom told Israel Radio’s Reshet Bet that he was saddened to hear the news. Atom said he’d spent an hour with Barak on Saturday and informed him that in his opinion Labor had to leave the Olmert government. Barak obviously didn’t follow his advice.
The Israeli press analyzed Barak’s Post-Winnograd options over the weekend. One commentator said that if Barak left the government now it would be an endorsement of Hizbollah’s strength and claims that they had won the war. By throwing the country into new elections, unleashing all of the claims and counter claims in the press, Hizbollah would consider the ouster of Olmert yet another success, and that in resigning Barak would be doing the country a disservice.
Other commentators questioned if the Army would follow Olmert in another war. Still others claimed that the country had grown weak and soft relying more on high-tech dollars and BMW SUVs than the fighting spirit needed to keep the country afloat.
One reporter told Israel Television’s Channel One that in his opinion the army did a decent job of fighting the war, given the conditions, and that Olmert didn’t do that bad a job after all. He claimed that the Winnograd Committee was holding the government and the army to archaic standards no longer practiced in the modern world. According to this reporter the Winnograd Committee was made up of elderly jurists who still held to the beliefs of the freedom fighters of the War of Independence. Those values, according to the reporter, were no longer applicable. Modern Israel was not Israel of 1948, and the report’s mistake was to judge the Army and the government according to the values held sixty years ago, not today. He concluded that the Winnograd Committee was naïve.
Many of the pundits and commentators lined up according to party or ideological affiliations. Some predictably called for the Prime Minister’s resignation, others, like Olmert himself, claimed he took the Winnograd report and the criticism of the government in the report very seriously, but that in the end he’d been vindicated in his choice of going to war. Ex-Defense Minister Amir Peretz also said the report proved that he wasn’t to blame for the war, and its outcome. Peretz said that the groundwork for the failures had been laid long before he took over the Defense Ministry, hinting that his predecessors were to blame, not him.
Dr. Martin van Creveld, a military historian who taught for many years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in “The Forward,” that Prime Minister Olmert actually did pretty well in the war, and so did the Army. Van Creveld writes about the long history of violence along the Lebanese border, dating back to the late 1960’s when the PLO took over Southern Lebanon.
Van Creveld said the only time there has been quiet along that border has been during the period since the end of the War in Lebanon II. Van Creveld wrote that the UNIFIL force in Lebanon has succeeded in controlling Hezbollah, and keeping them away from Israel’s border.
According to van Creveld this is a major accomplishment, and one that can’t be dismissed. Like the Winnograd Committee, van Creveld said that Olmert was right in unleashing a blizzard of violence on Hezbollah. That unexpected response rocked Hizbollah on its heels, and that terrorist entity has yet to recover.
The liberal commentators against Prime Minister Olmert’s resignation hold out hope that Olmert may be the man who can bring peace to the region, since he has the support of the US, and the Palestinian Authority.
Others say that Olmert has learned the lessons of failure, and that the Army had corrected its mistakes long before the Winnograd report was published. According toVan Creveld, “failure has already come at a price, at least for some. From Peretz through the military’s chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, and commander of the Northern front, Udi Adam, all the way down to several division and even brigade commanders, those responsible have either been fired or resigned on their own initiative.”
So Israel has a lot of friends today. Friends like Olmert and Barak, who are the avowed enemies of Israel’s enemies, and who have decided to stick together in the time of crises. Friends like Egypt, who stepped in to close the gap in the border fence, more to keep the Gazan’s out of Egypt than to help Israel with the Gaza problem, and the PA, who has been so badly battered by Hamas that without Israel’s recognition the PA would have no political standing among its own people.
One only hopes that the old Jewish saw doesn’t apply, the one that goes, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”
Time will tell. Meanwhile, Israel has to rebuild the army, get the diplomatic track laid down, and try to implement policies that strengthen the economy, while providing some solution to the consistent threats by Iran to destroy Israel.
In all likelihood Ehud Barak was right. Now is not the time for political maneuvers, now is the time to construct a defense against the existential threats that hover over the country like a cloud of atomic fallout.
Elections will surely be held, but the nation, given the choice of Olmert teamed up with the experienced Barak, or the Likud’s Netanyahu, will probably chose Olmert and Barak.
Barak apparently thinks the country would rather go with the status quo. If the popular tide turns, observers think he’ll call elections in a minute, but only once he thinks he can win.
The Egyptians are closing the breached Gaza border, but reportedly doing so with the coordination of Hamas. Does this make the Egyptians the enemy of Israel’s enemy? Good question.
According to press reports, on Sunday Shin Bet security services chief Yuval Diskin warned government ministers that the breach in the Gaza—Egypt border could become permanent. Diskin told the ministers that the advantage to the situation is that Egypt would become responsible for the border, not Israel. According to Diskin the Gaza terrorists were now able to smuggle weapons overland rather than smuggling them in through tunnels.
Other commentators have said that Egypt might get stuck with the welfare of Gaza, instead of Israel, which the Israelis would consider a very positive development. The Egyptians reject this option because they are worried about the radicals from Gaza coming into Egypt and bolstering those out to overthrow the present Mubarak administration.
Meanwhile security is high along the porous Israel/Egypt border. Israel expects terrorist attacks by groups who left Gaza through the hole in the wall, entered Egypt, made their way across the desert and are preparing to cross unhindered into Israel. The Israeli/Egyptian border has no fence and stretches for approximately a hundred kilometers. Terrorists could conceivable just walk across the border into Israel. As of now Sudanese refugees looking for work routinely find their way into Israel through this route.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the cabinet on Sunday that Israel had to seal up the border between Egypt and Israel, especially the areas near Nitzana and Eilat. Barak considered this a vital step to insure Israel's security.
A second conundrum in the adage of the enemy of my enemy is my friend is the announcement on Sunday by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is also the head of the Labor Party, that he has decided not to resign from the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
According to his statement, Barak said that he weighed the recently released Winnograd Committee report. He said the report was a very bad criticism of the government and the army, but decided that this was not the time to quit the government. He said that some people would be saddened by this decision but that others would be happy with it.
Labor Party Knesset Member Danny Atom told Israel Radio’s Reshet Bet that he was saddened to hear the news. Atom said he’d spent an hour with Barak on Saturday and informed him that in his opinion Labor had to leave the Olmert government. Barak obviously didn’t follow his advice.
The Israeli press analyzed Barak’s Post-Winnograd options over the weekend. One commentator said that if Barak left the government now it would be an endorsement of Hizbollah’s strength and claims that they had won the war. By throwing the country into new elections, unleashing all of the claims and counter claims in the press, Hizbollah would consider the ouster of Olmert yet another success, and that in resigning Barak would be doing the country a disservice.
Other commentators questioned if the Army would follow Olmert in another war. Still others claimed that the country had grown weak and soft relying more on high-tech dollars and BMW SUVs than the fighting spirit needed to keep the country afloat.
One reporter told Israel Television’s Channel One that in his opinion the army did a decent job of fighting the war, given the conditions, and that Olmert didn’t do that bad a job after all. He claimed that the Winnograd Committee was holding the government and the army to archaic standards no longer practiced in the modern world. According to this reporter the Winnograd Committee was made up of elderly jurists who still held to the beliefs of the freedom fighters of the War of Independence. Those values, according to the reporter, were no longer applicable. Modern Israel was not Israel of 1948, and the report’s mistake was to judge the Army and the government according to the values held sixty years ago, not today. He concluded that the Winnograd Committee was naïve.
Many of the pundits and commentators lined up according to party or ideological affiliations. Some predictably called for the Prime Minister’s resignation, others, like Olmert himself, claimed he took the Winnograd report and the criticism of the government in the report very seriously, but that in the end he’d been vindicated in his choice of going to war. Ex-Defense Minister Amir Peretz also said the report proved that he wasn’t to blame for the war, and its outcome. Peretz said that the groundwork for the failures had been laid long before he took over the Defense Ministry, hinting that his predecessors were to blame, not him.
Dr. Martin van Creveld, a military historian who taught for many years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in “The Forward,” that Prime Minister Olmert actually did pretty well in the war, and so did the Army. Van Creveld writes about the long history of violence along the Lebanese border, dating back to the late 1960’s when the PLO took over Southern Lebanon.
Van Creveld said the only time there has been quiet along that border has been during the period since the end of the War in Lebanon II. Van Creveld wrote that the UNIFIL force in Lebanon has succeeded in controlling Hezbollah, and keeping them away from Israel’s border.
According to van Creveld this is a major accomplishment, and one that can’t be dismissed. Like the Winnograd Committee, van Creveld said that Olmert was right in unleashing a blizzard of violence on Hezbollah. That unexpected response rocked Hizbollah on its heels, and that terrorist entity has yet to recover.
The liberal commentators against Prime Minister Olmert’s resignation hold out hope that Olmert may be the man who can bring peace to the region, since he has the support of the US, and the Palestinian Authority.
Others say that Olmert has learned the lessons of failure, and that the Army had corrected its mistakes long before the Winnograd report was published. According toVan Creveld, “failure has already come at a price, at least for some. From Peretz through the military’s chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, and commander of the Northern front, Udi Adam, all the way down to several division and even brigade commanders, those responsible have either been fired or resigned on their own initiative.”
So Israel has a lot of friends today. Friends like Olmert and Barak, who are the avowed enemies of Israel’s enemies, and who have decided to stick together in the time of crises. Friends like Egypt, who stepped in to close the gap in the border fence, more to keep the Gazan’s out of Egypt than to help Israel with the Gaza problem, and the PA, who has been so badly battered by Hamas that without Israel’s recognition the PA would have no political standing among its own people.
One only hopes that the old Jewish saw doesn’t apply, the one that goes, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”
Time will tell. Meanwhile, Israel has to rebuild the army, get the diplomatic track laid down, and try to implement policies that strengthen the economy, while providing some solution to the consistent threats by Iran to destroy Israel.
In all likelihood Ehud Barak was right. Now is not the time for political maneuvers, now is the time to construct a defense against the existential threats that hover over the country like a cloud of atomic fallout.
Elections will surely be held, but the nation, given the choice of Olmert teamed up with the experienced Barak, or the Likud’s Netanyahu, will probably chose Olmert and Barak.
Barak apparently thinks the country would rather go with the status quo. If the popular tide turns, observers think he’ll call elections in a minute, but only once he thinks he can win.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
A Snow Job In Jerusalem?
It snows in Jerusalem and the world stops. Or almost.
Schools and most places of business close.
Drivers are warned to stay in the house.
The television is filled with clips of Mayor Luplianski sitting on a snowplow
ready for the white powder to attempt to disable his city.
Weather reports began the hype two days earlier. To many snow in Jerusalem is more exciting than the visit of U.S. President Bush.
When it snows in Jerusalem some Tel Aviv residents pile their kids in the cars and drive up the hill about thirty miles to let them toss snowballs at each other. Years later these children will remember driving up from the Mediterranean and the snowfall in Jerusalem and the ‘dangerous’ drive up the mountain to reach the 800 meter high city.
The snow however, was slow in coming. TV ratings may have soared as concerned parents tuned in to see if their children would be in school the next day, and employees to find out if they were going to work, but in the end it was all ratings oriented hype.
As Mark Twain has often been quoted as saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
Truth is the first day the snow was really slush, no more serious than a wimpy spring storm in Minneapolis. Besides the splashing of water beneath the tires, driving wasn’t impaired. Those who were raised in harsh winter climates shook their heads at the fuss. One was warned that if the temperature dropped further, ice would make driving difficult to impossible. Fortunately, snow and ice in Jerusalem rarely lasted more than a few hours, maybe a day. One extremely rare occasion, two days, but according to the weather reports that two-day period only came around once every seven years.
As luck would have it, those poor souls who were forced to the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem during this cold snap were in for a tortuous experience. For understandable and justifiable security reasons the U.S. Consulate is essentially a fortress. Armed guards patrol the perimeter around Salahadin Street. The high walls are topped with barbed wire. Guards sit in bulletproof huts behind cement anti-car bomb barriers, suspiciously watching anyone who approaches.
The newest security precaution is appointments. In order to come to the Embassy in Tel Aviv or Consulate in Jerusalem for a visa, a social security question, or a passport issue, one must sign up on-line, make an appointment weeks in advance, then present oneself promptly at the Consulate at the designated hour.
Two days ago, as the temperatures plunged to allow snow to form from the rain and make the weathermen seem more like professionals, those arriving at the U.S. Consulate were in for a bitter surprise. First they had to sign in with a guard inside a bullet-proof cage, who checked to make certain the name was listed. Then the visitor was given a number, and shown to a bullet-proof glass door, which needed to be locked and unlocked after each visitor entered, then through a metal detector, afterwards depositing anything potentially dangerous, including a mobile phone; finally one was allowed into an open courtyard covered by thin sheets of opaque plastic, held up by light aluminum. On a nice spring day the courtyard was undoubtedly pleasant; but with the temperatures in the high thirties or low forties (about 7 degrees C) the courtyard was like a refrigerator.
On the day of our visit the courtyard held about thirty people, some ultra-Orthodox Jews, some Arabs, some secular Israelis. One was a journalist seeking a visa to the US to cover the primary elections, the famed Super-Tuesday.
All were sitting down waiting for their number to be called. One couple, a Hassid and his New York born wife, had a six-month old baby girl in a pink snowsuit with them. Another ultra-Orthodox family had a cute little two-year old girl in a skirt and long stockings. It was ten thirty when we sat down beside an American woman from Florida who had come to apply for a new passport since hers was lost and she was scheduled to leave the country in two weeks.
One of the things about waiting for extended periods of time is that boredom sets in. People begin to talk to each other. This woman was a Christian Missionary who was doing Good Works in the Palestinian Refugee Camps, passing out milk, raising money for hospital beds, teaching the Lord’s word of Peace. In our opinion her message was certainly needed. Any help that could be given to the poor was good work, and any influence to allow people to be exposed to the message of Peace was a good influence.
The other thing that happens with waiting is the cold. As the numbers slowly were called, the frigid air bit deeper into the clothing reaching all the way to the skin, eventually to the bone.
One of the women waiting with her elderly father, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man with a long beard, wearing the traditional ‘beged Yerusalmi’ the long black satin coat and black hat, said she’d been there in the summer and the sun beat down as mercilessly as the cold ate through clothing. Now the cold was chilling her father in his thin coat.
So why, one asks, are people, visitors to the USA and citizens, required to wait out in the cold, or the boiling heat, for their number to be called? The courtyard had a wall around it, supporting the aluminum and the plastic ceiling but a few feet of space existed between the top of the wall and the roof, space open to the elements. One wonders why couldn’t the US Government have built a proper waiting room; put in heat? (Fans in the summer?)
When the question was asked of the guards, they said, “Ask the Consul once you’re inside.” As if a visitor every saw the Consul, unless the visitor was a VIP. When the guards were asked to call a representative of the agency to explain why visitors and US citizens were forced to sit out in the cold, the guard said, “People ask that every day. No one ever comes.” At least let the baby inside, the guard was told. That, eventually happened.
An hour and a half after the scheduled appointment, by which time noses were running, and coughs developing, our number was finally called. Inside we found a different world. The space was small, but warm.
The clerks behind the bullet-proof glass in the room were quite pleasant, helpful, and efficient. But getting to that point was like the search for Shangra-La. One assumes that budget and a massive bureaucracy would have to be overcome before the conditions were made more amenable to the common man (one can’t imagine the nephew of U.S. Sec Rice, VP Cheeney, or Pres. Bush’s nephew, or a Congressman’s favorite donor, waiting out in the cold. But that’s another matter.)
One of the clerks behind the window clucked when told how long the wait had been, and said the suggestion had been made to put a message on the website to prepare for an outdoor wait, but the suggestion was vetoed by those managing the Consulate. Too bad. Watching the Vikings play San Fransciso in an outdoor Minnesota game would have warranted thermal underwear, hats, gloves, down jackets and wool pants. Who ever imagined the same was needed in Jerusalem just to visit the Consulate.
Two days later the snow began. One wonders what those poor souls sitting out in the courtyard did for warmth until their number was called.
Meanwhile Jerusalem’s main roads to Benei HaUmah were clear. Three hundred journalists were expected to descend on the Conference Center to hear the results of the Winnograd Commission read out to the public. By tomorrow the snow may be gone, but the echoes of the Commission’s findings will be bouncing around the media for weeks to come. There’s even talk of another commission to investigate the findings of the Winnograd Commission. The new commission would have teeth, pundits say.
By all accounts, the IDF will be blamed for the loss of life, injury, and disappointment, of the War in Lebanon II, with PM Olmert excused from major blame. The question is, though, will the public sit still for the results, or demand some punishment of the government’s leaders beyond the criticism aimed at the IDF? Most Israelis think PM Olmert will survive the report, crediting him with being one of the most polished and wily politicians ever to sit in the PM’s chair.
Maybe the Winnograd Commission will turn out to be just a snow job, but meanwhile its going to be interesting to watch if PM Olmert manages to keep his footing on the icy paths of Jerusalem once the Winnograd Commission’s findings are made public.
Schools and most places of business close.
Drivers are warned to stay in the house.
The television is filled with clips of Mayor Luplianski sitting on a snowplow
ready for the white powder to attempt to disable his city.
Weather reports began the hype two days earlier. To many snow in Jerusalem is more exciting than the visit of U.S. President Bush.
When it snows in Jerusalem some Tel Aviv residents pile their kids in the cars and drive up the hill about thirty miles to let them toss snowballs at each other. Years later these children will remember driving up from the Mediterranean and the snowfall in Jerusalem and the ‘dangerous’ drive up the mountain to reach the 800 meter high city.
The snow however, was slow in coming. TV ratings may have soared as concerned parents tuned in to see if their children would be in school the next day, and employees to find out if they were going to work, but in the end it was all ratings oriented hype.
As Mark Twain has often been quoted as saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
Truth is the first day the snow was really slush, no more serious than a wimpy spring storm in Minneapolis. Besides the splashing of water beneath the tires, driving wasn’t impaired. Those who were raised in harsh winter climates shook their heads at the fuss. One was warned that if the temperature dropped further, ice would make driving difficult to impossible. Fortunately, snow and ice in Jerusalem rarely lasted more than a few hours, maybe a day. One extremely rare occasion, two days, but according to the weather reports that two-day period only came around once every seven years.
As luck would have it, those poor souls who were forced to the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem during this cold snap were in for a tortuous experience. For understandable and justifiable security reasons the U.S. Consulate is essentially a fortress. Armed guards patrol the perimeter around Salahadin Street. The high walls are topped with barbed wire. Guards sit in bulletproof huts behind cement anti-car bomb barriers, suspiciously watching anyone who approaches.
The newest security precaution is appointments. In order to come to the Embassy in Tel Aviv or Consulate in Jerusalem for a visa, a social security question, or a passport issue, one must sign up on-line, make an appointment weeks in advance, then present oneself promptly at the Consulate at the designated hour.
Two days ago, as the temperatures plunged to allow snow to form from the rain and make the weathermen seem more like professionals, those arriving at the U.S. Consulate were in for a bitter surprise. First they had to sign in with a guard inside a bullet-proof cage, who checked to make certain the name was listed. Then the visitor was given a number, and shown to a bullet-proof glass door, which needed to be locked and unlocked after each visitor entered, then through a metal detector, afterwards depositing anything potentially dangerous, including a mobile phone; finally one was allowed into an open courtyard covered by thin sheets of opaque plastic, held up by light aluminum. On a nice spring day the courtyard was undoubtedly pleasant; but with the temperatures in the high thirties or low forties (about 7 degrees C) the courtyard was like a refrigerator.
On the day of our visit the courtyard held about thirty people, some ultra-Orthodox Jews, some Arabs, some secular Israelis. One was a journalist seeking a visa to the US to cover the primary elections, the famed Super-Tuesday.
All were sitting down waiting for their number to be called. One couple, a Hassid and his New York born wife, had a six-month old baby girl in a pink snowsuit with them. Another ultra-Orthodox family had a cute little two-year old girl in a skirt and long stockings. It was ten thirty when we sat down beside an American woman from Florida who had come to apply for a new passport since hers was lost and she was scheduled to leave the country in two weeks.
One of the things about waiting for extended periods of time is that boredom sets in. People begin to talk to each other. This woman was a Christian Missionary who was doing Good Works in the Palestinian Refugee Camps, passing out milk, raising money for hospital beds, teaching the Lord’s word of Peace. In our opinion her message was certainly needed. Any help that could be given to the poor was good work, and any influence to allow people to be exposed to the message of Peace was a good influence.
The other thing that happens with waiting is the cold. As the numbers slowly were called, the frigid air bit deeper into the clothing reaching all the way to the skin, eventually to the bone.
One of the women waiting with her elderly father, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man with a long beard, wearing the traditional ‘beged Yerusalmi’ the long black satin coat and black hat, said she’d been there in the summer and the sun beat down as mercilessly as the cold ate through clothing. Now the cold was chilling her father in his thin coat.
So why, one asks, are people, visitors to the USA and citizens, required to wait out in the cold, or the boiling heat, for their number to be called? The courtyard had a wall around it, supporting the aluminum and the plastic ceiling but a few feet of space existed between the top of the wall and the roof, space open to the elements. One wonders why couldn’t the US Government have built a proper waiting room; put in heat? (Fans in the summer?)
When the question was asked of the guards, they said, “Ask the Consul once you’re inside.” As if a visitor every saw the Consul, unless the visitor was a VIP. When the guards were asked to call a representative of the agency to explain why visitors and US citizens were forced to sit out in the cold, the guard said, “People ask that every day. No one ever comes.” At least let the baby inside, the guard was told. That, eventually happened.
An hour and a half after the scheduled appointment, by which time noses were running, and coughs developing, our number was finally called. Inside we found a different world. The space was small, but warm.
The clerks behind the bullet-proof glass in the room were quite pleasant, helpful, and efficient. But getting to that point was like the search for Shangra-La. One assumes that budget and a massive bureaucracy would have to be overcome before the conditions were made more amenable to the common man (one can’t imagine the nephew of U.S. Sec Rice, VP Cheeney, or Pres. Bush’s nephew, or a Congressman’s favorite donor, waiting out in the cold. But that’s another matter.)
One of the clerks behind the window clucked when told how long the wait had been, and said the suggestion had been made to put a message on the website to prepare for an outdoor wait, but the suggestion was vetoed by those managing the Consulate. Too bad. Watching the Vikings play San Fransciso in an outdoor Minnesota game would have warranted thermal underwear, hats, gloves, down jackets and wool pants. Who ever imagined the same was needed in Jerusalem just to visit the Consulate.
Two days later the snow began. One wonders what those poor souls sitting out in the courtyard did for warmth until their number was called.
Meanwhile Jerusalem’s main roads to Benei HaUmah were clear. Three hundred journalists were expected to descend on the Conference Center to hear the results of the Winnograd Commission read out to the public. By tomorrow the snow may be gone, but the echoes of the Commission’s findings will be bouncing around the media for weeks to come. There’s even talk of another commission to investigate the findings of the Winnograd Commission. The new commission would have teeth, pundits say.
By all accounts, the IDF will be blamed for the loss of life, injury, and disappointment, of the War in Lebanon II, with PM Olmert excused from major blame. The question is, though, will the public sit still for the results, or demand some punishment of the government’s leaders beyond the criticism aimed at the IDF? Most Israelis think PM Olmert will survive the report, crediting him with being one of the most polished and wily politicians ever to sit in the PM’s chair.
Maybe the Winnograd Commission will turn out to be just a snow job, but meanwhile its going to be interesting to watch if PM Olmert manages to keep his footing on the icy paths of Jerusalem once the Winnograd Commission’s findings are made public.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
A Wall Of Swiss Cheese
According to Israeli press reports, the Moslem Brotherhood sent a delegation to Gaza to speak with Hamas leaders in the wake of the breach of the Gaza/Egypt border. The coalition of these two groups has Israeli security officials on edge.
This development dovetails with media reports of a convergence of militant groups, including Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Al-Quada, in the Sinai desert. This meeting follows the holes punched in the border wall by Hamas explosives. Israeli defense officials are reportedly deeply concerned about this conclave of militants.
In a related development, because of the “massive passage of Palestinians in the past few days from the Gaza Strip to Sinai, the IDF spokesman’s office stated in a Jan 26th communiqué, that Israel has closed some roads in the Negev to tourist traffic, as well as some tourist attractions. Some reports speculate that the militant groups are planning to use the porous border to infiltrate suicide bombers into the south of Israel.
Meanwhile Egypt has made a so far unsuccessful effort to reseal the border, sending troops to keep the Gaza residents from spilling out of the immediate area of the hole in the wall and into Egypt proper. Some Gazans have already reached the Sinai. Others are trying to make their way deeper into Egypt.
The Egyptian government is reportedly concerned that Hamas militants will tie up with the Moslem Brotherhood inside Egypt, and along with other extremist organizations, wreck havoc through terrorist attacks aimed at unseating Egyptian president Hosnei Mubarak.
Egypt also ordered all the stores in Al Arish to close. The Gazans have been pouring into nearby Al Arish, just across the Egyptian border, in order to buy everything from goats to cigarettes. The news is filled with photographs of Gazans moving small herds of sheep, wheeling boxes of cigarettes on trollys, or carrying cartons with space heaters, back into Gaza. The price of goods in Al Arish is significantly cheaper than Gaza.
With the removal of Al Arish as a shopping point, Egypt hopes to keep the Gazans within the confines of the Gaza Strip.
This was the fifth day in a row that Gazans flowed across the holes in the border into Egypt.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has asked Egypt for permission to take charge of the Rafiah border crossing, replacing the Egyptians. Egypt took over the border crossing when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip over two years ago. Egypt then gave Israel guarantees that no smuggling would take place from Egypt into Gaza, but the promises were never kept.
Egypt has agreed in principal to the PA request, according to the Haaretz newspaper. Hamas reportedly has also asked to be in charge of the border crossing. Egypt has never recognized the legitimacy of Hamas control over Gaza. The PA president Mohammed Abbas has so far said he refuses to talk with Hamas. Pundits believe that Hamas will ultimately act as the spoiler and prevent the PA from taking over control.
Israeli security sources say that money, guns, and ammunition, have been smuggled back into Gaza through the holes in the fence, effectively canceling any gains Israel made by cutting off the supply of some goods to Gaza. Hamas reportedly had been working for months on a plan to blow up this border fence.
Some Israeli sources say that the holes in the fence proves that Egypt could alleviate the problems of housing, medicine, and food, all in short supply in Gaza, by simply allowing the Gazans to move into Egypt. But Egypt reportedly wants no part of the Gazans, who would bring with them the Hamas style of Islamic fundamentalism, further threatening Mubarak’s regime.
The last time Jerusalem Magazine even mentioned the words Moslem Brotherhood, we received e-mails from that organization reminding us that they were aware of any mention to their cause made in our magazine or on the internet.
Spooky. But that’s life in the Middle East.
Nazareth and Upper Nazareth were declared International cities by the CEO of Cisco, John Chambers. Cisco is donating over $2.5 million to install advanced internet and communications systems providing the two towns with internet services for schools, hospitals, and even churches.
The Galilee is also not immune from terrorist incidents. According to the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser’s office, about20 Israeli Arabs from Jisr A-Zarka and the Wadi Ara region were recently arrested on illegal weapons trafficking. Six of those arrested were indicted today (Sunday), 27.1.08.
Hamza Masri, 24, from Kafr Kara, is accused of trafficking in weapons and munitions with Shahar Hanina, 41, the head of the Fatah backed Tanzim in the West Bank town of Qalkilya. The police allege that Masri acquired a pistol for Hanina in 2005,, as well as a 15-kilogram bag of potassium for use in preparing explosives, Allegedly Masri was fully aware of the intended use of the potassium.
Masri was arrested in 2005 and warned about his ties with Hanina, whom he knew headed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Kalkilya. According to the indictment upon his release later in 2005, Masri continued his links with Hanina. Masri allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars' worth of weapons and munitions for Hanina, including an M-16, a hunting rifle and a laser sight for an M-16.
The rash of terrorist incidents in Israel have continued. Over the weekend another border guard was stabbed at the entrance to Jerusalem near the Shuafat refugee camp. Last week a border guard was stabbed to death near the same area.
Israel is expected to be hit with its first major storm of the season. While the Mekorot water authority has been complaining about the falling level of the water supplies in Israel, the meteorological society predicts heavy rains starting on Tuesday night, turning to snow in the hilly areas on Wednesday.
As a rule, when snow falls in Israel, work in the hilly regions, like Jerusalem, and Safed and the Galilee, stops, and tourists load the children into cars and drive to the area to allow their children a rare chance to see snow.
Mekorot, which had offered a walking tour of the water lines in the Galilee, cancelled their offer due to the impending storms.
This development dovetails with media reports of a convergence of militant groups, including Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Al-Quada, in the Sinai desert. This meeting follows the holes punched in the border wall by Hamas explosives. Israeli defense officials are reportedly deeply concerned about this conclave of militants.
In a related development, because of the “massive passage of Palestinians in the past few days from the Gaza Strip to Sinai, the IDF spokesman’s office stated in a Jan 26th communiqué, that Israel has closed some roads in the Negev to tourist traffic, as well as some tourist attractions. Some reports speculate that the militant groups are planning to use the porous border to infiltrate suicide bombers into the south of Israel.
Meanwhile Egypt has made a so far unsuccessful effort to reseal the border, sending troops to keep the Gaza residents from spilling out of the immediate area of the hole in the wall and into Egypt proper. Some Gazans have already reached the Sinai. Others are trying to make their way deeper into Egypt.
The Egyptian government is reportedly concerned that Hamas militants will tie up with the Moslem Brotherhood inside Egypt, and along with other extremist organizations, wreck havoc through terrorist attacks aimed at unseating Egyptian president Hosnei Mubarak.
Egypt also ordered all the stores in Al Arish to close. The Gazans have been pouring into nearby Al Arish, just across the Egyptian border, in order to buy everything from goats to cigarettes. The news is filled with photographs of Gazans moving small herds of sheep, wheeling boxes of cigarettes on trollys, or carrying cartons with space heaters, back into Gaza. The price of goods in Al Arish is significantly cheaper than Gaza.
With the removal of Al Arish as a shopping point, Egypt hopes to keep the Gazans within the confines of the Gaza Strip.
This was the fifth day in a row that Gazans flowed across the holes in the border into Egypt.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has asked Egypt for permission to take charge of the Rafiah border crossing, replacing the Egyptians. Egypt took over the border crossing when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip over two years ago. Egypt then gave Israel guarantees that no smuggling would take place from Egypt into Gaza, but the promises were never kept.
Egypt has agreed in principal to the PA request, according to the Haaretz newspaper. Hamas reportedly has also asked to be in charge of the border crossing. Egypt has never recognized the legitimacy of Hamas control over Gaza. The PA president Mohammed Abbas has so far said he refuses to talk with Hamas. Pundits believe that Hamas will ultimately act as the spoiler and prevent the PA from taking over control.
Israeli security sources say that money, guns, and ammunition, have been smuggled back into Gaza through the holes in the fence, effectively canceling any gains Israel made by cutting off the supply of some goods to Gaza. Hamas reportedly had been working for months on a plan to blow up this border fence.
Some Israeli sources say that the holes in the fence proves that Egypt could alleviate the problems of housing, medicine, and food, all in short supply in Gaza, by simply allowing the Gazans to move into Egypt. But Egypt reportedly wants no part of the Gazans, who would bring with them the Hamas style of Islamic fundamentalism, further threatening Mubarak’s regime.
The last time Jerusalem Magazine even mentioned the words Moslem Brotherhood, we received e-mails from that organization reminding us that they were aware of any mention to their cause made in our magazine or on the internet.
Spooky. But that’s life in the Middle East.
Nazareth and Upper Nazareth were declared International cities by the CEO of Cisco, John Chambers. Cisco is donating over $2.5 million to install advanced internet and communications systems providing the two towns with internet services for schools, hospitals, and even churches.
The Galilee is also not immune from terrorist incidents. According to the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser’s office, about20 Israeli Arabs from Jisr A-Zarka and the Wadi Ara region were recently arrested on illegal weapons trafficking. Six of those arrested were indicted today (Sunday), 27.1.08.
Hamza Masri, 24, from Kafr Kara, is accused of trafficking in weapons and munitions with Shahar Hanina, 41, the head of the Fatah backed Tanzim in the West Bank town of Qalkilya. The police allege that Masri acquired a pistol for Hanina in 2005,, as well as a 15-kilogram bag of potassium for use in preparing explosives, Allegedly Masri was fully aware of the intended use of the potassium.
Masri was arrested in 2005 and warned about his ties with Hanina, whom he knew headed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Kalkilya. According to the indictment upon his release later in 2005, Masri continued his links with Hanina. Masri allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars' worth of weapons and munitions for Hanina, including an M-16, a hunting rifle and a laser sight for an M-16.
The rash of terrorist incidents in Israel have continued. Over the weekend another border guard was stabbed at the entrance to Jerusalem near the Shuafat refugee camp. Last week a border guard was stabbed to death near the same area.
Israel is expected to be hit with its first major storm of the season. While the Mekorot water authority has been complaining about the falling level of the water supplies in Israel, the meteorological society predicts heavy rains starting on Tuesday night, turning to snow in the hilly areas on Wednesday.
As a rule, when snow falls in Israel, work in the hilly regions, like Jerusalem, and Safed and the Galilee, stops, and tourists load the children into cars and drive to the area to allow their children a rare chance to see snow.
Mekorot, which had offered a walking tour of the water lines in the Galilee, cancelled their offer due to the impending storms.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Superficial, Banal, Trivial
The closure of Gaza has elicited reactions on the left and right in Israel and around the world.
Israeli Knesset members showed up at the Gaza checkpoint to protest either the resumption of supplies
into Gaza, or to demand that the shipping of the supplies be resumed.
One analyst told Israel radio that the Arab Knesset members were quick to show up to protest the closure of
Gaza, but were nowhere to be seen when the Jews of Sderot were attacked. Another analyst said that it is the
Arabs who vote for the Arab Knesset members, not the Jews, and politics was politics.
What was clear, however, was that the closure of the Gaza supply lines from Israel had an immediate effect on the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. Before the closure fifty rockets a day fell on the Western Negev, during the closure only two. As a columnist wrote in the Jerusalem Post, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out the cause and effect of the closure.
Humanitarian considerations for the Palestinians in Gaza aside, the closure was the most effective weapon Israel has yet deployed in the seven-year fight to stop the rockets falling on Israel.
The PA government in Gaza lead by Hamas employed all the public relations tricks learned in decades of struggle. Bare-chested pre-teenaged boys marched through the streets of Gaza protesting the closure. Photos and footage of women, covered head to foot in fabric, cooking over a Primus stove in a primitive kitchen were plastered around the globe. Reports of severe shortages of fuel, food, water, were plentiful, even though former British Prime Minister, now the EU envoy to the Middle East, said his agency was assured no shortages existed.
Twenty years ago then Defense Minister Ezer Weizman deported four hundred Hamas men from Israel to Lebanon. Rather than take their suitcases and continue on their way, these men pitched tents and held public relations side-shows every day. When the winter set in TV crews were happy to film these men hunkered down around a fire in front of their tents protesting Israeli inhumanity. Eventually they were allowed back into Israel. This victory was just one of many Hamas has successfully run in the media.
Israel isn't a heartless brutal dictatorship, no matter what her enemies say. Israel is, according to most reports, a vibrant democracy. Bleeding heart liberals abound in Israel. Thus it was only a matter of time until the closure weapon was put back in the holster.
The Hamas criticism of Israel was superficial, banal, and trivial. It did not cut to the heart of the matter, which is that, as Israeli President Shimon Peres said, if Hamas wants to stop the closure they should simply stop firing rockets into Israel.
But according to pundits Hamas won't stop firing rockets into Israel. The goal is to force Israel into a cease-fire. Israel will concede Hamas has brought the Israelis to the negotiating table, and agree to stop firing if Israel stops attacks into Gaza, and forbids another closure.
No mention is made of the fact that Israel expended tremendous energy and expense in withdrawing Isaeli settlements from Gaza a few years ago in order to bring peace to the region. But Hamas ignored this withdrawl and kept on with their attacks. The PR of Hamas manages to eclipse any concessions Israel makes. They are brilliant at manipulating the media. Israel, with all the resources at her disposal runs a poor second.
Some say that PM Ehud Olmert is now seeking the right strategy to avoid the wave of criticism which will befall him after the dreaded Winograd commission makes its findings known at the end of the month. Some believe that by making a fuss at the Gaza border, Olmert can appear to be the tough leader, fighting for the well being of the country. Time will tell if that strategy works.
However, an old article by Nachum Barnea which appeared in the Yideot Achranot newspaper is worth re-reading. It was written during the height of the last war in Lebanon.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3287515,00.html
Whatever happens now, will only be an explanation of what happened then.
Israeli Knesset members showed up at the Gaza checkpoint to protest either the resumption of supplies
into Gaza, or to demand that the shipping of the supplies be resumed.
One analyst told Israel radio that the Arab Knesset members were quick to show up to protest the closure of
Gaza, but were nowhere to be seen when the Jews of Sderot were attacked. Another analyst said that it is the
Arabs who vote for the Arab Knesset members, not the Jews, and politics was politics.
What was clear, however, was that the closure of the Gaza supply lines from Israel had an immediate effect on the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. Before the closure fifty rockets a day fell on the Western Negev, during the closure only two. As a columnist wrote in the Jerusalem Post, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out the cause and effect of the closure.
Humanitarian considerations for the Palestinians in Gaza aside, the closure was the most effective weapon Israel has yet deployed in the seven-year fight to stop the rockets falling on Israel.
The PA government in Gaza lead by Hamas employed all the public relations tricks learned in decades of struggle. Bare-chested pre-teenaged boys marched through the streets of Gaza protesting the closure. Photos and footage of women, covered head to foot in fabric, cooking over a Primus stove in a primitive kitchen were plastered around the globe. Reports of severe shortages of fuel, food, water, were plentiful, even though former British Prime Minister, now the EU envoy to the Middle East, said his agency was assured no shortages existed.
Twenty years ago then Defense Minister Ezer Weizman deported four hundred Hamas men from Israel to Lebanon. Rather than take their suitcases and continue on their way, these men pitched tents and held public relations side-shows every day. When the winter set in TV crews were happy to film these men hunkered down around a fire in front of their tents protesting Israeli inhumanity. Eventually they were allowed back into Israel. This victory was just one of many Hamas has successfully run in the media.
Israel isn't a heartless brutal dictatorship, no matter what her enemies say. Israel is, according to most reports, a vibrant democracy. Bleeding heart liberals abound in Israel. Thus it was only a matter of time until the closure weapon was put back in the holster.
The Hamas criticism of Israel was superficial, banal, and trivial. It did not cut to the heart of the matter, which is that, as Israeli President Shimon Peres said, if Hamas wants to stop the closure they should simply stop firing rockets into Israel.
But according to pundits Hamas won't stop firing rockets into Israel. The goal is to force Israel into a cease-fire. Israel will concede Hamas has brought the Israelis to the negotiating table, and agree to stop firing if Israel stops attacks into Gaza, and forbids another closure.
No mention is made of the fact that Israel expended tremendous energy and expense in withdrawing Isaeli settlements from Gaza a few years ago in order to bring peace to the region. But Hamas ignored this withdrawl and kept on with their attacks. The PR of Hamas manages to eclipse any concessions Israel makes. They are brilliant at manipulating the media. Israel, with all the resources at her disposal runs a poor second.
Some say that PM Ehud Olmert is now seeking the right strategy to avoid the wave of criticism which will befall him after the dreaded Winograd commission makes its findings known at the end of the month. Some believe that by making a fuss at the Gaza border, Olmert can appear to be the tough leader, fighting for the well being of the country. Time will tell if that strategy works.
However, an old article by Nachum Barnea which appeared in the Yideot Achranot newspaper is worth re-reading. It was written during the height of the last war in Lebanon.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3287515,00.html
Whatever happens now, will only be an explanation of what happened then.
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