Turmoil in The Arab World

I hate to say "I told you so," but I did predict that the rioting would spread.  To me it's just so obvious, I can't understand how anyone can honestly believe that the demonstrators are really for benign western style democracy.  Remember how U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama was raised and his mother's extreme Leftist ideology.  He really may be incapable of comprehending what's going on. 

It's not going to be easy for the American military to leave Iraq with dignity.  Either they will have to stay or they'll flee, like from Vietnam.  Yes, the riots have reached Iraq.  And they're rioting in Lybia and Bahrain, too.

And about Egypt...  now that the military has taken over, things seem to be getting worse for the general population.  Will they soon miss the days of Hosni Mubarak?  Well, they wanted change. 

Maybe it was the military who secretly instigated the riots because they didn't want Mubarak's son to take over....

Nixon in China, Begin and Sadat, Arik Sharon's Disengagement

I doesn't matter how convincingly a politician speaks when capmpaigning.  You never now how he/she'll react once in office.

Would anyone have guessed that Conservative ol' Richard/Dick Nixon would go to China aftrer being elected President of the United States?  Today's the anniversary.

Now China's ecomony is very strong, looking even better than America's.

Post facto, it makes sense that Mengachem Begin would want to do something unexpected, be the "peacemaker" and give Sadat's Egypt the Sinai, as if it was a flower from his private garden.  Was Nixon's China move among his inspirations for it?

And how could Arik Sharon, who was so instrumental and supportive in building Jewish Communities in YESHA, agree to banish, ethnically cleanse Gush Katif?

I'm still waiting for an American President to make friends with Cuba. 

Watch The Cards Fall

Listening to some world leaders, like the la la Americans Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U. S. President Barack Hussein Obama, cheering on the Arab "protest" movement, I'm reminded of some classes I taught who insisted that James Bond was a real person.  Fantasy and reality are all mixed up in their minds.

"Spreading unrest..." I love the euphemistic terms used. Does it mean contagious insomnia? I keep thinking of the instability of a house of cards.



The truth is that the protests are violent and the demonstrators are rioting.

Apparently, Obama isn't surprised by the spreading riots, but his support is totally misplaced.  The various anti-government forces in the Arab world aren't the intellectual, academic refuseniks like those who protested in the USSR.

Please don't get me wrong.  I don't support totalitarian dictatorships, but the rioters in the street will not form a western style democracy.  They'll just put new dictators in to share out the goodies and abuse the population.  It doesn't matter how much money and how many modernizing and democracy programs western countries will pay for.  You can't change the leopard's spots.

Official NO To Segregation on Egged Buses, At Least on Some of Them

That’s what this sign says.
Every passenger has the right to sit wherever he/she wants, except if it's a seat reserved for the handicapped. Abusing/threatening another passenger is a criminal offense.

No Passengers Yet, But The Train is Running on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road

We ordinary people aren't allowed on the trains yet, but it's no longer a rare sight to see the lightrail moving down Jerusalem's main drag, Rechov Yaffo, Jaffa Road.  All other vehicles have been banished, and the earthly powers haven't yet figured out how to get ambulances there when needed.

I was impressed at how full the sidewalks were the other day.  I hope that the pedestrians are patronizing the local businesses.

The stations/stops are lit up with times and notices in three languages, Hebrew, Arabic and English.  I managed to video the train moving and uploaded it to youtube.

Caroline Glick Saved The Evening

Last night was the Elitzur Memorial Evening at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, which I attended.  The subject was the book launch of Peace in the Making: The Menachem Begin - Anwar Sadat Personal Correspondence.  It's no secret that I'm on the negative end of ambivalent about the entire Camp David/Sinai to Egypt historic decision/event.  That puts me in a very perilous/awkward position as wife of the co-editor of the book who is also a senior employee of the center.

So I psyched myself up to behave well, not embarrass anyone and even try to enjoy it.  I think I did a pretty good job, especially when Caroline Glick spoke.  She was the second of the three speakers, and she got the longest and most enthusiastic applause.  So, obviously, I wasn't alone in my apprehensions.  She prefaced her talk by saying that it's the basis of "tomorrow's column."  Well, "tomorrow" is today, and here's the link to it on her site.

Here are a few highlights:

The effect of Sadat's visit on the Israeli psyche generally and on Begin's mindset in particular was profound. A new book of the two leaders' correspondence, Peace in the Making: The Menachem Begin-Anwar Sadat Personal Correspondence edited by Harry Hurwitz and Yisrael Medad of the Begin Heritage Center presents readers with a portrait of the Israeli leader enthralled with the belief that he and Sadat were embarking their nations on the road to a peaceful future.

But it was not to be. Whether Sadat was purposely deceptive or whether he was simply blocked from implementing his vision of peace by an assassin's bullet in 1981is unclear. True, he committed Egypt committed to peace. The peace treaty contains an entire annex devoted to specific commitments to cultivate every sort of cultural, social and economic tie imaginable. But both Sadat and his successor Mubarak breached every one of them.

As the intervening 32 years since the treaty was signed have shown, in essence, the deal was nothing more than a ceasefire. Israel surrendered the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and in exchange, Egypt has not staged a military attack against Israel from its territory.

...
In 1977 Jimmy Carter was the president of the United States. And Carter was the most hostile president Israel had faced. His negative attitude towards Israel made it all but impossible for Begin to walk away from the table. When Carter's antagonism is coupled with Sadat's romantic pledges of everlasting peace and brotherhood, it is easy to understand why Begin agreed to overpay for a ceasefire.

WHILE BEGIN'S behavior during the negotiations is relatively easy to understand, Israel's behavior since the peace with Egypt was signed is less comprehensible, and certainly less forgivable. Since Israel withdrew from the Sinai in 1981, it has been the state's consistent policy to ignore Egypt's bad faith. This 30-year refusal of Israel's leadership to contend with the true nature of the deal Israel achieved with Egypt has had a debilitating impact both on Israel's internal strategic discourse as well as on its international behavior.
...
Under the ceasefire, with Israeli approval and encouragement, Egypt has built a modern, US-trained and armed military. And for 30 years, that military has been training to fight Israel.

On the other side, Israel stopped training in desert warfare and stopped gathering intelligence on the Egyptian military. As far as IDF commanders and successive defense ministers have been concerned, there was no reason to prepare for war or care about Egypt's preparations for war because we were at peace.

On the international stage, our leadership's refusal to acknowledge that Egypt had not abandoned its belligerent attitude against Israel was translated into an abject refusal to admit or deal with the fact that Egypt leads the international political war against Israel. Rather than fight back when Egyptian diplomats at the UN instigate anti-Israel resolution after anti-Israel resolution, Israeli diplomats have pretended that there is no reason for concern.

The same is the case regarding Egyptian anti-Semitism. Before the peace treaty, the Foreign Ministry prepared regular reports on anti-Semitism in the Egyptian media and school system. These reports were distributed at embassies and consulates throughout the world. After the treaty was signed, the reports were filed away and never spoken of.
...
Israel failed to consider the implications of signing a deal with a military dictator on the prospects for the deal's longevity. In an interview with Der Spiegel last week the Muslim Brotherhood's puppet Mohammed ElBaradei explained those implications. As ElBaradei put it, Israel has "a peace treaty with Mubarak, but not one with the Egyptian people."

THE ADVANTAGE of having a good relationship with a dictator is that he can deliver quickly. The disadvantage is that once he is gone no one is bound by his decisions because he doesn't represent anyone.
...
AS ISRAEL moves into the uncharted territory of managing its relations with the post-Mubarak Egypt, it is imperative that our leaders understand the lessons of the past.

Fantasies are no match for reality. Aggression must be fought, not wished away. And the world is a dynamic place. Today's solutions will likely be irrelevant tomorrow as new challenges eclipse the current ones. Our strategies must be rational, flexible and sober-minded if we are to chart a forward course rather than be thrown asunder by the coming storm.

And we must never put all our eggs in anyone's basket.

It was on one hand nice to hear an expert like Caroline Glick voice opinions so similar to my own, but I must admit that with all her facts so simply and intelligently expressed, I became depressed.  According to Glick, Israel is in more danger than I had realized.  This is the fault of successive Israeli political and military leadership for the past thirty-plus years, long after Menachem Begin's rule as Prime Minister.  To think that we have to depend on Ehud Barak as Defense Minister is frightening.  Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has given him much too much freedom of decision to format policy.

Israel needs good competent leadership, true leadership, leaders who aren't afraid to do what's right even when there's international and internal criticism.

Are "Suckers" and "Bloggers" Synonyms?

Last night, at the Elitzur Evening at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, another blogger and I were asked why we weren't making big money like the Huffington Post sale to AOL.

There have been reports in The New York Times and elsewhere that Facebook is now valued at $50 billion, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter had been in low-level talks with both Google and Facebook, with some estimates putting the value of the company at $10 billion. Tumblr, the short-form blogging service, is storming along a similar, if more demure path, while Quora, a site built on user-generated questions and answers, seems to be on its way. And at the beginning of last week, The Huffington Post agreed to be sold for $315 million to AOL.
The funny thing about all these frothy millions and billions piling up? Most of the value was created by people working free. (Emphasis mine)

We spend hours getting our messages across every day, and at most we receive virtual recognition.  I do try to limit my investment by only using free internet services, which does have a downside at times.  There's a limit to even my foolishness.  I'm not that easy a mark, at least that's what I keep telling myself.

I blog on blogger/google/gmail; the slashes are to indicate that they're all the same company.  Some people are getting very rich, but the money doesn't trickle down this far to this very principled blogger in her unheated den in the holy city of Shiloh.  A big advantage of my blogging is that now I can control which of my words get presented to the world, unlike the pre-blog times when journalists would spend hours or even days with me and then publish at most a few of my words, sometimes so distorted or dismissive I would wonder why I had agreed to host them, feed them and sometimes even allow them to sleep over.

Recently I helped a neighbor start a blog.  She was very receptive to the principle that it shouldn't cost her any money.  I'll never forget all the help/content I gave to someone else who had always looked down on what he considered inferior, freebie services.  He paid some internet company to "host" his blog/site, which really was a fantastic one, but when the money gave out, it disappeared, the downside of virtual.  Bli eyin haraa, not to tempt the "evil eye," but free blogger is a better investment.  At least my blog still exists, and blogger updates its services quite frequently.

Would people pay me if I put one of those paypal links begging for funds on my blogs?  Or would I really get money from the ads google would love to have on my blogs?  I'm about to take off the webads logo, because the company seems to be inactive now.  I used to give the small payments received to our local synagogue as a donation.

Back to my original question:

Are "Suckers" and "Bloggers" Synonyms?

An "Illness" More Contageous Than HIV

As usual, Yaakov Kirschen's Dry Bones is right on target, another bull's eye.  Though the message is far from pleasant.  Antisemitism is a great danger to us all and spreads uncontrollably.

And talking about accurate, though not pleasant, bli neder, (don't hold me to it,) G-d willing, I'll blog tomorrow about Caroline Glick's talk at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center.

Do Rami Levi and Yafiz Products Make it in to Gaza?

The other day at work in Yafiz, the Rami Levi clothing store, a customer pointed out various apparel and told me their prices in Ramallah.  I'd been wondering why so many of our good customers are Arabs.  The women don't buy their scarves from us, because they're less expensive in Ramallah.  But they do buy baby clothes and fashionable clothes including men's jackets.  One once asked if an item had been made in China, so I read the tiny Hebrew lettering which confirmed that his guess was right.

Yes, in Ramallah and the smaller towns and villages in Judea and Samaria quite a few people have closets full of Israeli clothes and pantries full of Israeli manufactured food.  Gazans aren't supposed to do that.  Do their cousins from Judea and Samaria bring them presents from Rami Levi and Yafiz, like we used to get from America?

I don't know where the products sold in Ramallah, even in their mall, come from.  A few years ago, there was news that H & O opened in the mall, but I don't know today's situation.  I just see lots of happy, satisfied Arab customers leaving Yafiz, Sha'ar Binyamin with bulging bags.  And there are many more Arabs pushing overflowing shopping carts full of products they apparently can't buy locally, certainly not at Rami Levi prices.

Many of the Arabs who shop at Yafiz are educated and/or used to foreign travel and speak to me in English, not Hebrew.  It's rare for an Arab woman to know Hebrew; the Arabs who speak Hebrew are men.  Sometimes my lack of Arabic is a problem, but I do my best to communicate with pantomime and written numbers.

When I accepted the job in Yafiz, I had no idea that I'd be spending a good portion of my working day with Arabs.  I just needed an easy job which would be easy to get to and return home from.  I don't consider my strong belief that we Jews should be living in and ruling all of the Land of Israel as anti-Arab.  If they are willing to live peacefully with us and obey our laws, they can stay.

This Land is Our Land, historic Jewish Land.  The Bible documents our ancient history, and we Jews are descended from those very same Biblical characters.  The Jewish religion is the same Jewish religion as formulated in the Bible.  In another month we will celebrate the holiday of Purim.  In Shiloh we celebrate a double Purim, two days, two feasts and four readings of Megilat Ester, The Scroll of Esther.  Each year when I listen carefully to the narrative, I'm amazed, impressed anew, when I hear the list of commandments of how we are to celebrate the Jewish victory over Haman.  Here we are in the Twenty-First Century, thousands of years after Esther, Mordechai, King Achashverosh and Haman lived, and we are still celebrating as depicted in that Biblical Book. 

Our ancient, Biblical enemies have long been destroyed, but we still live and thrive, Baruch Hashem, thank G-d.  I see it at work every day I go.  And no doubt, when we return again to our ancient city of Gaza, Rami Levi will open a branch there, too.

A Great HH From the Rebbetzin's Husband

The Rebbetzin's Husband made great efforts to gather all the posts for this week's Havel Havelim.  I must admit that I was going into a panic as I searched for my posts in HH #304.  Yes, panic's the word, it seemed to be winding down, and not a single, solitary one of my posts had been included.  I had tried not to submit too many; maybe I hadn't submitted any at all.  Then finally I read the sweetest words a jblogger could read:

"BATYA’S BLOGS
And in what may be my favorite part of doing HH, the prolific Batya presents..."

My very own section.  I hope that  the intrepid Havel Havelim readers will read to the end and visit my posts.  There's quite a variety.  And of course visit HH and all the posts included. 

Enjoy and have a wonderful week!

Rabbi Riskin Breaks Theological Ground in Jerusalem

Posted by Jewish Israel

Today and Tomorrow, Ohr Torah Stone’s Center for Jewish Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC) in Efrat is sponsoring an interfaith theological conference and exploring the subjects of, “Covenant, Mission and Conversion” at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.

While it's being billed as a "first" international conference which introduces "groundbreaking material" and "new research", Rabbi Riskin previously sponsored an identical conference at Yale last year, with the same speakers and papers being used. Jewish Israel's reports about that conference are available in both English and Hebrew and are certainly worth reviewing at this time.

Representatives from Jewish Israel will be at the Van Leer conference today and tomorrow and we will keep our readership informed of developments… more