The turtle and the hare

Once upon a time there were two friends, a hare and turtle, and they both joined the Jerusalem Police.

The swift hare was kept very busy in the police, all the time running here, there and everywhere. He was in Sheikh Jarah, helping to expel Palestinian families and let settlers take over their homes and beating up any demonstrator who dared protest. And he went running to Shuafat, raiding and arresting in the late hours of the night and during the day confronting youths on the streets and spraying them with tear gas. A very very busy life he had, the swift police hare.

His friend the police turtle was given an important task: to approach the settlers in that illegal seven-floor house erected in the middle of Silwan, of telling them that they must at last obey the Supreme Court's ruling and get out of there. The turtle was given the eviction order, and he duly set out for Silwan – at a snail's pace, naturally. And get there he will. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next year, who can tell? You can’t hurry up a turtle!

Is this education?

General Gabi Askenazi, the Army Chief-if-Staff, is very much ashamed of his alma mater, the “Gymnasia Herzlia” in Tel Aviv. This fine old highschool, with its proud traditions, has fallen upon evil days indeed. It has fallen into the claws of that horrible principal, Dr. Zeev Dagani. A man who actually believes that teachers are more qualified to teach than the fine decorated officers which the army and education ministry send to his school. And heresy of heresies, he actually dared say on the radio that it would be better to evaluate a school by how well its graduates do in the university, rather than by how many of them join combat units in the army.

This is really insufferable. With our children abandoned into the care of the Daganis, where will we get for the next war soldiers who obey every order and kill and ask no questions?

The Fitting Punishment

White Phosphorous bombs are inhumane weapons. White Phosphorous fragments burn with an unquenchable fire, sink deeper and deeper into the living flesh in all directions, causing terrible pain which often ends in a cruel death. Such was the lot of quite some inhabitants in the Gaza Strip, exactly a year ago.

Shooting White Phosphorous bombs into populated areas is an act strictly forbidden by International Law. A war crime, pure and simple.

The Israel defense forces, the most moral army in the world, found a fitting punishment for those who ordered this act to be committed: writing a note. Yes, writing down a note in a file which will thereupon be filed and forgotten in an army archive.

Such is Israel's response to the Goldstone Report. The rest of the world – except for Alan Dershowitz and Silvio Berlusconi – will fail to even laugh at the joke.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/10/q-israel-s-use-white-phosphorus-gaza

A real Israeli does not shirk

"A real Israeli does not shirk!" proclaim advertisement signs throughout the country, placed by someone with quite a lot of money (the money of donors from Israel, or from abroad?).

Quite right, too. A real Israeli indeed does not shirk doing his or her civic and moral duty. Even if it is hard and unpleasant and unpopular and at some times also downright dangerous.

A real Israeli does not shirk protesting against oppression and injustice. A real Israeli does not shirk even when the soldiers shoot tear gas at Bil'in and the police with their clubs are ready to drag Sheikh Jarah protesters to the detention cells.

Real Israelis do not shirk raising the voices when the country's army commits war crimes. And when the state authorities do shirk their duty to seriously investigate the war crimes (and seriously punish their perpetrators), a real Israeli does not shirk the duty of testifying before those who do investigate.

The Human Rights activists are real Israelis. And also those of the New Israel Fund.

Playing with fire

A foreign minister is a country' number one diplomat. It is a Foreign Minister's job to speak calmly and politely, to smooth things and calm down tensions, to try as much as possible to present a sane and moderate image even when the minister's country's is not truly such.

A Foreign Minister is certainly not supposed to be the most aggressive of provocateurs, to rattle swords and make bald threats of war. But then, nobody ever had any illusion that Avigdor Lieberman is qualified to be a Foreign Minister.

A person who enjoys playing with fire and who every day sets alight a match or two in a sensitive spot is bound to eventually start a great conflagration.

And he who appoints a pyromaniac to command the fire brigade ... the words fail me.

A question of holiness

A question of holiness

Pinhas Walerstein, hailed by part of the Israeli media as "a moderate settler", a few days ago called upon fellow settlers "not to harm the IDF's holiness".

The IDF's holiness. The holy IDF. The Holy Army. In every other country of the Western Democratic World, to which Israel so much wants to belong, these words would sound very strange, not exactly part of 2010.

In the Middle Ages, indeed, there were such things. Holy Armies there were all over Europe, orders of fighting monks which went on Crusades and Holy Wars. But all this went out of fashion, hundreds upon hundreds of years ago.

At those times, Jews did not have Holy Armies. Jews who had to bad fortune to find themselves on the path of a Holy Army often had a very bitter fate. But it seems that about a thousand years out of schedule, somebody is trying to make up for lost time, create here a Holy Army and send us by an express train back to the Middle Ages.

Note: This blog is going on vacation until February 1.

On lions and ambassadors

Five hundred years ago, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote an advice to princes, which is quite good also to deputy foreign ministers: If you don't want to fight the lion, better not wake him. If you don't want to fight the Turks, better not insult their ambassador, be forced to apologize, and in total make yourself look ridiculous twice within twenty-four hours.

http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3834078,00.html