So What you think?! This guy advertised himself directly and unashamedly on a post by Allison on ... Appropriate Advertising. Can't not love him.

Guess what I am in Spanish? I'm "una madre de personalidad dividida tratando de dar sentido a lo que pasa en su tierra". So there. Now maybe you'll treat me with more respect!

What do you want from us?
I always think it is both unfair and unwise to make unfavorable and critical comparisons between Israel and old, established Western democracies. Israel is not an old, established Western democracy and cannot be expected to have reached the same levels of development in issues such as human rights in such a relatively short period of time. Think how long it took for the UK to give women the vote (or to give anyone but the landed gentry the vote, for that matter), or for the USA to abolish slavery (or even to award all African Americans their basic civil rights). We're mere infants, in comparison, and, taking that into consideration, we're not doing so badly. Actually, we're doing damn well!

Strangely, many see Israel's being forged as a Western style democracy as a natural development, but when you think of it, it was anything but natural. The Israel we see today was built, in the early days, by Eastern European Jews, most of them born and bred in Orthodox Jewish households, where the Rabbi's word was law and the secular ruler of the land, often a cruel tyrant, was feared and hated. Jewish Pioneers from Western democracies were few and far between in the Land of Israel, and, mostly unsuited for the life of hardship, didn't last it out. There was no tradition of peer rule, no gradual development over the years of a belief in liberalism or in individual freedom, or anything like that. Still, amazingly, these people, joined later by, among others, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from feudal Middle Eastern and North African countries, somehow managed to break away from what they had experienced before, and established a Western-style democratic state (as opposed to a Soviet-style socialist one), long before this was to come to be in any of their countries of origin. Is this not a wonder? Is this not amazing? True, our democracy has its flaws. It is far from perfect (as are all democracies, even old, established ones). But give us time. We're working on it. We have one or two other problems, as well.

I believe the example of Israel can give us hope, because surely it proves that other countries in this region are also capable of functioning as democracies. Ve'yafa sha'a ahat kodem (= and better sooner than later).

Interesting idea.
Jonathan Edelstein, his Head Heebness, suggests a legal treaty between the State of Israel and its Arab citizens, so as to ensure their rights and equality, and to strengthen their connection to the state, on lines similar to the Waitangi Treaty, which is the foundation of white-Maori relations in New Zealand.

As I write these words, a large group of young men in white shirts is dancing and singing along the street under my window. It is the eve of Simchat Torah, when observant Jews celebrate finishing the year long reading of the weekly portions of the Torah and begin again.

Hag Same’ach.

Schiphol (and misconceptions)
Eldest and I were on the train on our way back from somewhere or other, when the train made a stop at Schiphol Airport and filled up with people with suitcases. The seats across from us filled up with big Americans. I might point out that, being rather small, everyone seemed enormous to me in Holland. The ethnic Dutch were real giants. Luckily there were so many non-ethnic Dutch (I hope this is not a very un-PC thing to say, but how else can I call them?) I didn't feel completely dwarfish. I eavesdropped shamelessly to the Americans' conversation with a Dutchman who was sitting with them, and to the conversation that their colleagues, sitting behind me, were having with a woman, who turned out to be Israeli. They were from Florida and they were on a one-night stopover on their way to... Israel! Eldest and I were flabbergasted. They had flown all this way to such a beautiful city and they weren't stopping. They were continuing straight on to Israel (Were they completely mad?!). I thought they must be reporters or something, but no. They planned to rent a car and head up to the Galilee. Wonders never cease.

* * * *

Waiting to board our El Al flight to Tel Aviv from Schiphol Airport, after the last security checks, a young couple sat down opposite Eldest and I, a man and a woman. The man seemed Middle Eastern, he could have been Jewish or Arab, I couldn't tell. He had one of those weird little, strangely shaped beards young men seem to sport these days (Don’t ask me why. They must think it makes them look attractive or something). The woman looked Dutch. They shared one piece of hand luggage. I was immediately curious about them because from the moment they sat down they seemed extremely tense, even hostile. Then I noticed that they weren’t talking to each other. In fact, they didn't exchange a word for the fifteen minutes we were sitting there.

The suspicious thoughts started racing. The first suspicious thought was that they were ISM-ers forced for some reason to fly El Al and feeling decidedly hostile about the wicked Israeli families around them, especially those most dangerous colonizing Israeli babies. The second suspicious thought was straight out of an Entebbe Rescue movie. She was Baader-Meinhof and he was PLO and they would take over the plane once it was airborne. I wondered should I alert security. I commenced piercing them with my fiercest glare, so they would know I was on to them, and they wouldn't dare try anything. They didn't seem very intimidated by this. Well, it used to work on perverts on crowded buses when I was in my teens. I must be losing my touch.

Then it dawned on me. Pure speculation, of course, but far more likely: They were on their way to Israel to meet his parents and, being tense about this, they had had a big row.

I still decided to keep an eye on them during the flight, just in case. Unfortunately, I wasn't seated anywhere near them and only saw them again in Ben Gurion Airport at the place you get your suitcases. I was busy worrying how I would be able to schlep our suitcase (which, strangely, was now far heavier than on the way out to Holland) off the conveyor belt without swinging it at someone and causing grievous bodily harm. Even though I was thus preoccupied and continuously warning Eldest to keep away from me because I was all psyched up to fully implement my meager muscle power for the serious mission I was facing, and therefore dangerous, I happened to notice the man right on the other side of the conveyor belt. He was chatting and laughing excitedly with someone I couldn't see, probably the woman. All the tension had disappeared from his face.

Ah, that's nice, I thought, they must have kissed and made up during the flight.

Or maybe he was just nervous of flying, like Bish, and now he was relieved that his ordeal was over.

I'm ba-a-ck
Amsterdam was great. Holland was great. Eldest was great. We had the best hotel and the best weather. We had a great time hopping on trains and off trams and managed to do all the things we had set out to do (and to empty my bank account, as well. The Euro made things very expensive for us).

Because it was the Succot holiday (still is, actually), Holland was full (and I mean full) of Israeli tourists, but not full of other tourists, which was nice (although there were quite a few Japanese as well, but not enough to render the queues at tourist attractions in any way unpleasant). Eldest was very excited with all the Israeli tourists, quite a few of whom were also mothers (or mothers and fathers) with what looked like other twelve year-old daughters also on their Bat Mitzva trips. I'm such a snob. I tried to curb Eldest's enthusiasm about fellow countrymen for fear of being stuck with them ("Shshsh, they don't have to know we're Israeli, too!"). It didn't help. We obviously looked the part. We ended up spending one evening with a very nice Kibbutznik with her Bat Mitzva daughter searching for the shops her friend back home had promised her were open till nine o'clock at night, although I did try to convince her that from what we'd seen, and according to all our guide books, the shops closed at five, six at the latest.

We started our visit in Anne Frank's house, of course. I think I embarrassed Eldest because I got very emotional, but she made light of it by saying it didn’t matter because she didn't know anyone anyway. She's so sweet.

I like the way Amsterdam, unlike other places, hasn't tried to hide, ignore or bury its rich Jewish history or what happened to make the Jews disappear. In every tour guide, and tourist map you'll find the Portuguese Synagogue and the Jewish Historical Museum prominently pointed out. But that seems to be the thing with Amsterdam. It doesn't pretend to be something it's not. No games. You want sex for money? Over here, take your pick. You want "recreational" drugs? This way please.

Maybe this matter-of-fact openness is why Israelis love it there, besides the Dutch knowing how to make us feel really welcome. It was nice to receive pamphlets in Hebrew at quite a few tourist attractions (and not just at Jewish-y ones). How many cities in Western Europe can boast that, these days? Not anywhere in Britain, that's for sure. (Via Melanie Phillips. Thank you, again, Dad, for taking me away from that country before I was old enough to experience or understand any of that sort of stuff. )

One lady in the market I bought some clothes from, asked me if we were not scared, living in Israel. After answering (same sort of stuff you can read here), I pointed out that I found it strange to be going into crowded tourist attractions in Holland and no one was checking anyone's bags. Just the day before, we had been standing in a very long queue for a ride in the Efteling amusement park (I suffer from very bad motion sickness, this was not one of my best days in Holland. Luckily Eldest is as terrified of roller coasters as I am made nauseous by them, so I managed to get through the day without actually losing any of my meals before they were fully digested), when it suddenly crossed my mind how easy it would be to just come along with a machine gun, open fire and kill dozens of us. Then I realized that there was nothing to actually prevent anyone from entering the park armed with such a weapon. Not to mention an easy-to-conceal explosives belt, which could have killed hundreds in such a queue. Holland is so liberal, I doubt it would be a real problem to purchase such equipment locally. So I told the lady in the market I hoped they would never need to have to check people at the entrance to places. She said they already do, in discotheques, but that was because of the Moroccans, whom, she said, tend to be aggressive. You mean violent? I asked. She meant violent.

We didn't see or hear any news while we were there, and Eldest didn't allow me to go into any Internet cafes (She wouldn't let me go to the meditation room in Schiphol airport either. Meanie. I was very excited about there being a meditation room there).

So it was only on the plane, where they gave me Maariv to read, that I first heard about this Geneva Agreement thing. From what I've managed to work out, it's the Beilinim*, forgetting once again that they lost the elections by an extremely large margin and therefore represent only a small minority of Israelis, having the gall to cut deals with Palestinians, although they have no mandate to do so whatsoever. It seems I'm not the only one incensed by this. According to yesterday’s Yediot Aharonot, an opinion poll by Mina Tzemach and the Dahaf Institute reveals that 59% of Israelis are opposed to the Geneva agreement and 69% of Israelis feel that Israelis cannot negotiate an agreement with Palestinians without the approval of the government (Hebrew link).

* Beilinim = A group of people who happen to be on the left of the Israeli political map, one of them being, as always, MK (Dr.) Yossi Beilin, who believe, on the whole, that just because Arafat and his subordinates have lied and cheated repeatedly, and continue to do so, doesn't necessarily make them unsuitable negotiating partners.

Moreover, the Beilinim seem to believe that whoever doesn't see things as they do is probably either too deranged or too stupid to have a viewpoint. The democratic vote of such a person, therefore, doesn't mean much in their eyes, or so it seems. The Beilinim lost the support of the Israeli public following the colossal failure of Oslo and their rigid refusal to internalize or accept this. These people have no right to be cutting deals in our name. But that's not how they see things.

Still, it's nice to be home.

Update: OK, so I've read this post again three times and I fail to see any insightful observations. But thank you for saying so anyway, Jonathan.

Eldest and I are flying to Amsterdam far to early tomorrow morning. See you all next week, Wednesday-ish.

Cross Country
In high school, I was on my school's cross-country running team for a while. I was good at running long distance and I liked it, but I wasn't crazy about cross-country.

Running long distance track is like meditation. Once you have found your pace, you are free. Your mind soon shuts down and all you are aware of is your steady breath, the feel of your body movements, and the sound of your feet as they hit the ground. This is true for practice. Races have a different energy, but still, the steadiness, the sound of the footfalls, and your breath, always your breath.

I didn't like team practice, although I liked running in the evenings, on my own. They told me I had good style, which I found flattering, but I wasn't really very interested. Running in school was mainly an excuse to get out of games. When they started playing basketball or volleyball or something, I would tell the teacher that I was going out to run. She was quite happy with this because she needed me for races and I didn’t come to team practice.

Cross-country races were no fun because you couldn't get into a steady pace. There were constant surprises along the route, ups and downs, sandy bits, muddy bits, sun, heat, rain (the three and a half days of rain a year always seemed to fall on race days), missing the arrow and getting lost. You never knew what you were in for. And I missed that soothing, calming, steady awareness of my breath. I wasn't really the sporty type and always felt a bit out of place at these sweaty, dusty competitive sports events. I tried to skive off such events at one point, but my teacher lived in my neighborhood, right on my route to the bus stop, and curiously she always just happened to be coming out when I tried to sneak past.

* * * *

It would be nice if life could be like track. Someone would just show us the right direction and we'd be off, like the Energizer Bunny. But life is more like cross-country. You never know what's round the next corner or over the next hill. It's difficult to build up a steady pace. You have to be alert, ready for whatever surprises may lay in your path. You can't switch off and just run.

Another thing about cross-country is, you see, that there are no short cuts and no packing it in. You can't just give up in the middle and cut across the track towards the changing rooms should you decide, in your exhaustion, that you made a mistake and this is not for you. However tough it gets, however tired, broken, wounded, and desperate you are, you must finish the course. It requires stamina and flexibility and a dogged determination. And, unlike track, it's a team effort.

But somehow most people seem to think we have a right to run track. They think normal life involves moving along a steady, foreseeable course.

People crave predictability. People need a feeling of control. But these are illusions. They do not exist. Still people try to find quick and easy solutions for complex problems.

We Israelis used to react differently after terrorist attacks. We desperately wanted it to stop and we scrambled for instant fixes, each according to his or her basic beliefs.

Now we know, and we have known for a while, that there are no instant fixes, no quick and easy solutions. Bombing the living daylights out of them, and/or forcing them all onto trucks and dumping the lot of them on the other side of the border, will not bring about the desired impact. Neither will immediate, unilateral withdrawal to the 1967 border, and/or complete, unquestioning capitulation to each and every last Palestinian demand. Sadly, our experiences of recent years have shown us that not even moderation, compassionate dialogue and willingness for true compromise will do the trick. Nothing short of our ceasing to exist will suffice.

Because, as Melanie Phillips says:

...The Palestinians could have had a state when it was offered to the Arabs in 1948; they could have had it any time between 1948 and 1967, when the West Bank was illegally occupied by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt; they could have it after 1967 when Israel offered the conquered territories to the Arabs in return for peace, which was refused; and they could have had it in 2000, when almost all the land was offered again at Taba, and to which the response was the past three years of mass murder by the Palestinians.

In the face of this realization, and the depression and desperation it elicits, cross-country running has turned out to be a good preparation for life. Stamina and flexibility and a dogged determination. And team effort.

The collective experience of the Jewish people, down the centuries, has been like a particularly harsh, never-ending, cross-country event. As a people, we have learnt tenacity and adaptability.

D. thinks the Palestinians have more staying power than us. They don't.

Melanie Phillips has a blog. Goodie. For instance

But instead, victim and victimiser in the Middle East have been stood on their heads. Israel -- whose settlement policy is wrong and morally corrupting, but that is not the fundamental issue here -- has instead been demonised and dehumanised, and blamed for trying to prevent its citizens from being murdered, a defence which is represented as aggression; while the Palestinians' deliberate targeting of the innocents is said to be legitimate or understandable self-defence. It is this denial of truth, logic and history, this grotesque moral inversion, which is driving the violence in the Middle East --which, like all such terrorism, seeks to achieve precisely this kind of reversal in public opinion, in which the Europeans and Americans between them are so hideously complicit.

Thank you, "Tom Paine", for pointing this out.

Writing aids healing. I can bear witness to this, but now it's scientific. We'll have the doctor prescribing blogging soon.

The Lord God called out to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" He replied, "I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid."

Genesis 3, 9-10 (From the new translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the traditional Hebrew text)

Last Yom Kippur I fasted to save my mother. It didn't work.

I know I shouldn't have fasted to save my mother. This was fake belief, belief for an end, belief in idols.

I didn't really believe it would save my mother. It was more a matter of being one with her beliefs. Giving more energy to her prayers. Fasting for her because she no longer could. Not that she could eat anything either.

This year I have no patience for God and His fasts.

I know recent obsessions and passions have been a way of coping, of channeling my anger and my frustration elsewhere. Because when I try to look at them and understand them, I always end up staring at my mother's photograph with that familiar block of pain throbbing mercilessly in my heart.

Last Yom Kippur I asked forgiveness from my mother in public. It took me a long time to write. I was very nervous about doing it, but I knew it had to be public. I felt I owed it to her to shout it from the rooftop. Later, towards the end, other things were said in private. I am grateful that she died knowing how I felt about her.

This year I will ask for forgiveness in private.

This year I know who needs my forgiveness and acceptance. I know who needs me to tell her that it is alright to be still feeling the pain; that it is okay to be angry; that it is understandable to be swept away with strong emotions

and that it is natural for her to be hiding from herself. But only for a little while.

Seeing as this is Yom Kippur, it would be a good idea for me to also remind her that being swept away, as a way of coping with pain, has its limits. She must remember that the only true possessions that a person has are his or her actions. She must not get lost.

Gmar Hatima Tova

A psalm of David, when he fled from his son, Absalom.

O Lord, my foes are so many!
Many are those who attack me;
many say of me,
"There is no deliverance for him through God."
But You, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, He who holds my head high.
I cry aloud to the Lord,
and he answers me from His holy mountain.
I lie down and sleep and wake again,
for the Lord sustains me.
I have no fear of the myriad forces
arrayed against me on every side.

Psalms 3, 1-7 (From the new translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the traditional Hebrew text)

Still groggy from my Shabbat siesta. Shalom Hanoch's new CD blaring out. "I'm at the end of the world" he sings. There has been another one, Bish says. We don't even bother with the TV anymore. Same pictures.

Haifa. A crowded restaurant. At least 19 dead. On Saturday lunchtime restaurants are packed with families. There will be a lot of children.

I'm taking Youngest out on her bike. She wants to practice for Yom Kippur.

"Stop whining" (Hebrew link), says Ehud Olmert, Minister of Industry and Trade and Vice Prime Minister in the weekend Yediot Aharonot , mainly to the media. I wish they would too.

Update: I know where it is. It's that gas station that we used to drive through on the way to the "Closed Beach" when we were kids. After the gas station we had to go through that little tunnel that went under the railway tracks, which I hated because it smelt bad.

TV is telling of five children among the dead, some of them tiny babies, and of whole families injured.

We have napalm?
Wishful thinking by John Derbyshire - his idea of the perfect war on terror. Via Moe.

Yisrael Ne'eman writes about Media Perceptions.

Following my post of the 23th, Oscar sent me this. I have been meaning to post it but forgot.

I agree with most of what you say, except for one thing. There is a sense in which we are not worse than we were before the Oslo accords. We are now wiser. Lots of people opened their eyes, see reality as it is, and are less inclined to daydream. And more importantly, people do not hate right-wing people so much anymore.

I came back to Jerusalem on August 1998 for two years, after having spent five years abroad, and I was amazed by the hate people professed to Netanyahu and anything related to him. I could understand that some people opposed his views, but I couldn't see why people hated him so much. I mean, I couldn't see anything he did or said that was so terrible. He wanted to move directly to a final settlement with the Palestinians instead of going through all the phases of the Oslo agreement, something that I found reasonable. But people interpreted this as a sign that he did not want peace. He insisted on the "reciprocity" principle, which sounded reasonable to me, but all people around me interpreted this as another sign that he does not want peace. During the elections, when I said that I planned to vote for Netanyahu, people looked at me as if I was joking. They were incapable of conceiving that anybody would vote for him.

But the worse symptom of the state of delusion that the society was in, occurred on a Friday afternoon, while I was driving back from my usual coffee meeting with my friends. It was during the election campaign, and Shlomo Artzi was talking on his radio show about the (admittedly dumb) Likud slogan: manhig hazak le 'am hazak. (A strong leader for a strong people – I.J.). Shlomo Artzi commented that the previous night he was with a couple of Argentine friends of his who told him about the atrocities the military government in Argentina had done during the last dictatorship. In particular, he mentioned the fact that some prisoners (kidnapped by the armed forces) were thrown out of planes to the river, while they were still alive. And these stories came to his mind when he heard people talking about manhig hazak le 'am hazak. This I couldn't take. Hearing the comparison of somebody whom I considered one of the most democratic leaders Israel had, to criminals who did not have any respect for human life persuaded me that there was something really wrong with Shlomo Artzi and people who think like him.

I think things are very different now. Some things are much worse now, as you said. But we know this. And this makes a huge difference. And I definitely prefer the situation today, when people seem to be conscious of what is going on, to the years of blindness and gratuitous hatred.

Shvuyim
While torturing Israeli civilian captive, Elhanan Tenenbaum, we are told, his Hizbullah captors tore out all of his teeth. He was not a healthy man before he was kidnapped, we're told, and he's not holding up very well.

Shvuyim are captives. There has been a lot of talk here of Shvuyim lately. In the days leading up to Yom Kippur, talk always turns back to that war, that terrible war. This year this is especially so, because this year is the thirtieth anniversary. This year the reminiscence coincides with negotiations for a prisoner swap. A rather bizarre prisoner swap according to what has been published: One barely alive Israeli and three bodies, for two hundred or so terrorists (Although what the other side is getting hasn't really been published so this is mainly Media speculation, apparently). And what of IAF navigator Ron Arad? Israel is negotiating the release of Hizbullah's Mustafa Dirani, the one man who was directly responsible for his capture and for, at least, the first period of his captivity. Dirani is regarded as the only viable bargaining chip for Ron's release or for attaining information about his whereabouts, or the whereabouts of his body, if he is no longer alive.

Yesterday there was a documentary on channel 10 about the famous IAF flight squadron "201", known as "The One". They had a tough time of it in the Yom Kippur War. They were less prepared than other squadrons and their first missions at the beginning of the war were disastrous. They lost fourteen planes. Seven pilots were killed, and fourteen were taken captive. The ones who fell in Egyptian territory were relatively well treated. Those who found themselves on the ground in Syria weren't so lucky.

So you've got these guys telling their horrifying stories of the torture and cruelty they endured and you're thinking, why bail out? Why not go down with your plane? Is it part of their code of honor, or something, to stay alive? To endure a fate worse than death? Brave men.

Being a shavuy in Israel, a captive, is not some far off notion. Everyone knows someone who was a shavuy. And everyone was in the army and has therefore seriously considered this eventuality at some point or other. The shvuyim are like our own children. We all await their return.

* * * *
Towards the end of the film about the "201" flight squadron, the pilots being interviewed began to speak about certain unnamed pilots' in the squadron who didn't fulfill their duty during the war. There was talk of those who wouldn't fly. And of shellshock that went untreated. Then they spoke of a sort of hearing that was held for one of the pilots by his peers, the other pilots, at some point, to decide if he could remain in the squadron, considering his behavior. His name wasn't given.

This article in Ynet (Hebrew link), quoting a new book about the war, written by Ronen Bergman and Gil Meltzer, leads us to understand that the person in question was actually none other than the squadron commander 'Y'. I will translate a short excerpt:

8th October 1973 – The commander 'Y' disappears
Two days after the beginning of the war, 'Y' returned from (studies in) the USA. But instead of coming straight to the squadron, he went home and stayed there for another two days.

One of the pilots said, "We all liked 'Y' but he wasn't a strong character. When he was on his way to Israel and he heard the entire story about "Model 5" (The Squadron's mission on 6th October which ended in disaster - I.J.) and about all those killed and the other pilots that were hurt, without anyone knowing how they were, he broke. 'Y' wasn't just any squadron commander. He was carrying on his back quite a lot of difficult feelings as a result of another security affair. (From things I have been reading, the affair the pilot is referring to here could very well be the felling of the Libyan civilian airliner (Hebrew link) that mistakenly flew over Sinai in February 1973, and that was feared to be a suicide mission headed for Tel Aviv, WTC style. Although I have no links to support this, and it should therefore be regarded by readers of this as unsubstantiated hearsay, Bish and I have been reading lately on Israeli forums that 'Y' was directly responsible for this occurrence. It has been claimed that he was the pilot in the fighter plane that unsuccessfully attempted to force the airliner to land, with a disastrous result. Only seven survived the ensuing crash. I'll explain why this has come up lately, in a moment – I.J)

"He was also suffering from jetlag and was unwell. At some point, a few people in the squadron, especially the more senior ones, realized that he didn't want to begin flying again. He didn't have a lot of close friends in the squadron, but anyone who could talk to him at home, did so, in an attempt to persuade him to return to the squadron. We tried to persuade him to return immediately to flying and regain his confidence, and feel that it was not the end of the world. …"

[…]

On the 8th October he returned to command the squadron (I think this must be a print mistake. Logically, based on the story given here, it should be the 10th – I.J). On the 13th October he flew with Navigator Jetlani on a mission to attack the Damascus International Airport. On the way there, over Bethlehem, they aborted the plane because of a technical problem. During the abortion, 'Y' broke his back and did not return to command the squadron. …

So why is former squadron commander 'Y' of interest in Israel today, and why am I making a point of recounting this story? Because according to Israeli current affairs forums he is Lieutenant Colonel Y. Zemer, number five on the list of signatories of the so-called Pilots' Letter (Hebrew link).

Is it right, I ask myself, that such a man, with such a problematic air force history, should be signing such a letter? He may be a good man. He may mean well. He certainly must have quite a lot on his conscience, poor man. I just don't think he should be signing such a letter, that's all. It is not right. It is a deception.

By the way, two of the pilots have already publicly retracted their signatures, claiming that they misunderstood the meaning of the letter. For some reason, their names remain on the site. Another, the most important and highest ranking of the signatories, Brigadier General Yiftah Spector, argues that the wording of the letter does not call for refusing to serve. He says it is just badly written and therefore people have misunderstood its meaning. (Update: I've just read the letter again. There can be no mistake about its meaning. I think it is quite well written and very clear. I don't get it. Gen. Spector must be hallucinating. This is the English version, I don't like linking to this site but I can't find another English one right now. Note that the list of signatories given here is incomplete. The missing names are those of the pilots among the signatories who are currently employed as El Al pilots and they are chicken. LOL.).

Shabbat Shalom.

I missed Allison's birthday. Oops.
Happy Birthday, Allison. Hope you had fun.

[Someone, who will remain nameless, suggested foulplay, but I won't do it. I am a woman of honor (stop laughing).]

Paranoia
I haven't been very well for a few days. Now I'm busy preparing for the trip to Amsterdam. I know, I know, famous last words, but it's not for me. It's Eldest's Bat Mitzva request. We suggested Sinai. Top of her list was, horror of horrors, Paris, but that was where I put my foot down. This is not the time, I said. So Amsterdam it is. I'm quite excited about it. Mother and daughter thing and all that.

Back to the not being well, it seems like everyone in Israel is under the weather. When this happens, I always get this funny feeling that it must be biological warfare. Everyone can't be unwell all together just like that. Someone must be slipping something into our water.

Bat Mitzva
My baby is 12 today. Only yesterday she was gazing at me with clear black eyes, a tiny bundle of starched green cotton with a head of black hair, in the nurse's arms.

Reeling? Hardly
I'd say: slightly irritated at the media for giving this issue (a fringe phenomenon) such a lot of unnecessary exposure, better describes my feelings. I am referring to the so-called IAF pilots' letter, of course. It doesn't seem like a very serious endeavor. 27 ex-pilots and reservists aren't very impressive. What about the hundreds (I'm not aware of IAF data, and if I was I wouldn't be writing it here, but it could very well be thousands for all I know) who didn't sign? It seems one of them has already changed his mind (Hebrew link).

Bish has pointed out some interesting things with regard to the letter (they are all apparently ex-IAF pilots, a few of them still do reserve duty, although I've read that hardly any (Thank you, Allison for the link) were actually called to do any of the missions they are objecting to, so their refusal is actually academic). I still have to do some research, organize my thoughts about some of the information he has uncovered and find relevant links, but the one thing that stands out is that one of the ringleaders is none other than Yigal Shohat, husband of the infamous Orit Shohat, the far left wing pain in the neck that writes in Haaretz and its Tel Aviv local rag Ha'ir. I've discussed her before. Her husband is a known refusenik (Hebrew link, don't be sorry, it's a rather uninspiring and uninteresting speech given by him in Tel Aviv on 9th January 2002 about the merits of refusing). This couple's well-publicized sentiments emboldened Orit's mother, famous Israeli singer of old, eighty-something-year-old Yaffa Yarkoni, into making a fool of herself by taking a public stand in favor of the refuseniks a while ago. This provoked much mirth and merriment at the time, because Ms. Yarkoni is not famous for her brains or for her common sense. Or for her voice, for that matter. Every time I hear Shlomo Gronich sing Bab-el-Wad I cry. I just can't help it. Her rendition, on the other hand, (the original, sadly) makes me cringe. Oh well, they say she was pretty when she was young.

Yigal Shohat's F-4E Phantom II was apparently felled by an Egyptian SAM (scroll down and down and down) on 3rd August 1970 during the War of Attrition. The crew was taken prisoner and Shohat's co—pilot, Moshe Goldwasser, was killed in captivity. Bish says Shohat lost a leg, but I can't find a link.

Happy Birthday, Bish my love.

Shana Tova
May the coming year bring many blessings to us all.

Arafat – not exactly a self-made man
DogfightAtBankstown links to this article in WSJ about how the KGB invented Arafat. Riveting stuff. The Straightjacketed Saint over at Dogfight etc. attributes it to Andrew Sullivan for some reason, but I can't find anything about it on his blog and he didn't write it. The guy who wrote it is Ion Mihai Pacepa, a Rumanian who was the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc, or so says WSJ.

Update: The Saint has rectified: Andrew Sullivan linked to this on the 23rd. His permalinks seem to be inaccurate (this can happen to big important bloggers and not just to us mere mortals?).

Apropos the splendiferous festivities on the wondrous occasion of Shimon Peres' eightieth birthday, for which I paid but wasn't on the guest list:

Things are far worse now than they were before the Oslo Accords, for us and for the Palestinians. I am saying this as one who was once a staunch supporter of these accords. Things are not worse because terrorism takes its daily toll on ordinary Israelis and because life for the Palestinians is unbearable in the shadow of the Israeli tanks. Things are worse because where there was once hope for a better future for Israelis and the Palestinians living here alongside us, now there is none.

My belief in Oslo was based on my personal acquaintance with some of these local Palestinians. They wanted a bit of what we had. They wanted to be able to run their lives themselves. I wanted it for them too. So did most of my friends. But it never happened. What happened was that for various inner-Palestinian political reasons they couldn't accept a leadership other than that of Arafat and his cronies. And they got it. Some of them said, quietly, that what they got was far worse than what they had before. Israeli rule was exchanged for the rule of Palestinians who came from without ("Tunisians"), foreigners who knew nothing of Israel and the life the local Palestinians had been watching and wanted a piece of. They enforced their rule over the local Palestinians brutally. Their torture chambers made Israel's prisons seem like summer camps. Furthermore, they saw no need to learn from Israel's example of proper administration. And most of all, they hadn't internalized what the local Palestinians had: That Israel and the Israelis weren't going anywhere, and it would be better to get along with them and compromise, compromise.

They came, these outsiders, and commenced poisoning the few sweet water wells that they found. Palestinian society is a young society, and children are more susceptible to indoctrination. An old-new hope was fuelled, a completely unrealistic but very compelling and seductive hope, not of coexistence and peace with Israel, but of ridding this land of its usurpers.

Yes, I know, the failure of Oslo was not one sided. Israel wasn't lilywhite, either. But while support for a Palestinian state among regular Israelis increased steadily all through the Oslo years, with many of my right-wing friends, formerly opposed to Oslo, voting for Ehud Barak and his left-wing government in 1999, Palestinian leadership was just as steadily instilling among regular Palestinians the belief that Israel was weak and destructible.

It is a rather dreamlike belief of some in Israel that the deportation of Arafat, a completely justified action given that he broke every promise and agreement he made in order to get in, but maybe not very wise, will somehow turn back the wheel and obliterate the adverse results of Oslo. It won't, of course. The wells have been poisoned, their water no longer fit for human consumption. It will take years and years for the water in them to be clear and sweet again, if ever.

For the same reason, Israelis, who believe that talks can begin again where they stopped as if nothing has happened during the last three years, are just as deluded.

So I don't mind that I wasn't invited to Shimon Peres' egotistic celebrations. I wouldn't have gone even if I had been the guest of honor. His wonderful vision of the New Middle East, which I still yearn for, is further away than ever.

I still believe in compromise, compromise, but never in suicide, suicide.

An admission of guilt
Okay, I can't stand it any more. I just have to come clean. I'm feeling guilty about what I wrote about the Shari Arison thing here and here (on the comments). Sometimes I get carried away.

Please don't hate me for it. I couldn't take it.

We-e-ell, you can hate me a little bit if it will make you really happy.

Traveling in a convoy
I didn't really explain the Hevr'e thing and a Canadian lady on Michael J. Totten's comments took offense. She also lives in a community, she said. But the Hevr'e is not a community. It's more of a clannishness of people who aren't necessarily related, a sort of sticky group mentality. It's blunt and intrusive and at times vulgar. It's loud and warm and protective. It's an often-overbearing familiarity that automatically makes every Yitzhak an Itzik, and every Avraham an Avi. It's often extremely embarrassing and must seem completely Neanderthal to the outsider. But it functions as a powerful support group when the going gets rough.

Many people here regularly meet up with their Hevr'e from high school, from the youth movement, and above all, of course, from the army unit. Even when everyone has long gone their different ways. Even after twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years. Some meet once a year, some once a month. People will come from all over the country and sometimes from abroad too. Parents, siblings, widows, widowers and children of those of the Hevr'e who were killed are often part of these meetings too.

The Israeli Hevr'e mentality, I'm told, is particularly noticeable to those traveling in the Far East. Israelis, who go there en masse after the army, apparently travel in large, noisy, rather badly behaved groups. These groups are created largely over there. The first thing the kids do when they land is look for other Israelis. A friend of mine told me that he was once spending the night in a remote village in the Himmalayas with four other non-Israeli hikers he had not previously met. "You can't be an Israeli," One of them asserted. "You're on your own." It is no coincidence that, out of the eight tourists kidnapped last week in Colombia, four were Israelis (you'll remember that another two Israelis were released) while the other four were of other nationalities (two Brits, a German and a Spaniard).

Even a natural loner like myself, who often stays at a safe distance from the happy-go-lucky rowdiness of the Hevr'e, finds herself feeling a little lonely in its absence.

A popular Israeli book for pre-schoolers by Lewin Kipnis tells the story of The Three Butterflies (It seems to be out of print. We had our copy passed down to us from Our Sis's boys). A butterfly goes out to play, fluttering about in the meadow. After a while another butterfly appears and they decide to play together. Then another one comes and all three are fluttering about together in the meadow. Suddenly it begins to rain and the three butterflies start looking for cover. They reach a flower and ask to take cover inside it. The flower agrees but says it only has room for one butterfly. The butterflies say indignantly that they are friends and they won't be separated, and they fly away. This happens twice more. Each time they reach a flower, which agrees to give refuge to just one butterfly, and they refuse to be parted. In the end, they manage to survive the rain. The sun comes out and they go back to fluttering happily around the meadow. They have survived the rain and have stuck together, without any one of them taking the opportunity to save itself by deserting its friends.

Notice that the butterflies' acquaintance is fleeting, but when the rain starts, they have a strong feeling of mutual responsibility. This is the essence of the Hevr'e.

There was a time when I was obliged to read this story to my girls on a daily basis. Back then the story's message used to annoy me. I reckoned that if each butterfly had just gone into one of the flowers all three would have been less endangered. Their chances of personal survival would have been greater. I disliked this herd mentality, and what I saw as preparing the kids for the army before they could read. Today I am more reconciled to this thinking. It is probably the survival tactic that has got us this far. Yes, there is sometimes something idiotic and obstinate in putting friendship first. But that is the Hevr'e. And it is an indispensable part of the Israeli way of life, like it or not.