…or the Jewish Channel at least.
Erza Nawi sentenced tomorrow
Ezra Nawi, Israeli activist, is due to be sentenced tomorrow for his peacework in the West Bank. He published a letter on The Nation’s web site worth reading. Of lesser susbstance is the Justice Ministry’s official response to petitions to have him freed.
June 30th, 2009 Filed under: Israel and Politics. 0 Comments
Spy vs. Spy, Kung Fu Jew Edition
I hath met my alterego on Twitter, the white spy to rival my black:
vs. 
While politely grandstanding in the #Gilad Shalit lovefest on Twitter (who is due to be released soon, if rumor is to be believed) this gentleman, Kung_Fu_Tweets aka Avi, engaged me on my politics. Oh my! An evil twin! A white spy to my black!
Even our martial arts are contrary in interesting ways. Not opposites, but alternate sides of the same coin. His school teaches a combat mentality for approaching life, in order to live more happily and fully. I agree with the end (a healthy living), but I found styles which teach fighting as their central viewpoint to be harmful means. Fighting cannot be extended metaphor to everything, adversary is not a given.
My chosen art is about finding personal control and preserving Korean culture. The latter is actually a very crucial element. The style I learn is an amalgamation of the many styles left after the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. It was an act of preserving Korean heritage for future generations. For personal reasons, this preservation was deeply resonant with me. Enduring traditions that have evolved over millenia have an unarguable staying power. Something in them has been tested and won against the Darwinian effects of time. As a Jew, this similitude is familiar. I understand this need to preserve.
Which leads me to be skeptical of invented styles, no offense to Avi, his concocted karate-kung fu hybrid, or his laudable principles. No offense either to my Wiccan high school friends who found it the easiest way to be spiritual without dignifying their overbearing Christian parents. I too innovate but the wholesale invention seems to me another level. Neither do I instruct it to others. At best, I do so knowing that if what I change is weak, I will be its first and last practitioner.
All this is to say that Avi’s style mirrors mine in many ways, though our differences are clear. And that’s not even getting into our conversation about the Palestinian state. They should just declare one, he says, and build from there. I agree, except that Israel still holds the keys to statehood — land, settlements, et al. Oh, and the big difference? The Palestinians, he says, teach their children only hatred and desire not a state but to take the Jews’ state away. Oy. Evil twin indeed.
June 26th, 2009 Filed under: Israel and Kung Fu. 0 Comments
Rise to kill them first
Oft is the anecdote that every Israeli child can recite the Talmudic instruction “If a man comes to kill you, rise to kill him first.”
Of course it’s also remarked that too few know the second part of that edict, saying that if you must kill a third person to prevent a second person from killing you, “better to die than kill an innocent.” Strong morals that are left behind entirely it seems, by the IDF’s operation in Gaza.
But I still feel the first sentence is abused, just as it stands. “Rise first to kill him.” First, from how far away do you consider him a threat? Pounding at your door? Walking down your block? A mile away, over borders and through a sniper’s scope? In geopolitical terms, do you bomb Iran’s suspected nuclear sites a decade before fissile material could be usable in a bomb? Do you assassinate Hamas leaders while avoiding with all strength the negotiations which could disarm their violence?
Perhaps a more interesting extension of this question is whether it can be properly construed as self-defense to build a prison for a people out of their own infantile statelet, then kill those who rise in rebellion against such conditions? The Israeli High Court ruled that somehow it does not count as “collective punishment” to reduce the caloric intake of 1.3 million people, so long as the average calories does not fall below the caloric benchmark for medically-defined starvation. This is like saying it is not technically strangulation if you squeeze a person’s neck to near-suffocation and hold it there. The 300 checkpoints and 13 cantons of Palestinian life incite clausterphobic frenzy. To create killers then claim we had no choice but to kill them in self-defense should fall outside the permissions of this edict.
What Israel excuses in a so-called war against terrorists is a slowly corrupting bastardization of the original intent of Jewish ethics. I for one will not defend it. I will not conscience it and an Israel that sells its Jewish ethics in exchange for land and pride is no Israel I’ll support. May God have mercy on her generals.
June 17th, 2009 Filed under: Judaism and War. 0 Comments
Join a virtual protest — Crash the state news of Iran
I’m very lucky to have friendly connections to Iranian society — through a number of people, including some Iranian citizens studying in America. Hearing about their crushed hopes that Iranian presidential candidate Mousavi’s likely electoral victory was stolen by unconvincing voter fraud by incumbent President Ahmadinejad is heart breaking. And for the sake of peaceful relations in the region (and as a fuck you to the Jewish warhawks) I was very much excited with the prospect of Ahmadinejad losing.
From Facebook, for tonight through June 21st:
ALL PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD ARE INVITED…help Iranians to earn back their votes
simply click on the link and it opens the site in new tab. it will not stop you from browsing…
there are 3 links:1- http://www.pagereboot.com/?url=http://irna.ir&refresh=1
2- http://www.pagereboot.com/?url=http://www.farsnews.com/&refresh=1
3- http://www.pagereboot.com/?url=http://rajanews.com/&refresh=1
4- http://www.pagereboot.com/?url=http://ahmadinejad.ir&refresh=1
5- http://www.pagereboot.com/?url=http://www.leader.ir/&refresh=1
6- http://www.pagereboot.com/?url=http://president.ir/&refresh=1
7- http://www.pagereboot.com/?url=http://www.irib.ir/&refresh=1
8- http://www.pagereboot.com/?url=http://www.iribnews.ir/&refresh=1
Pagereboot reloads a given page as often as you ask, very useful for asking a soccer page to reload those sports scores. Instead, this is going to retaliate against Ahmadinejad’s closing of Facebook, opponents’ web sites, and texting to prevent protestors from organizing.
Let’s hope this does something.
June 14th, 2009 Filed under: Politics. 1 Comment
Danny Mendlow, Half-Jewish Comedian on the I-P Conflict
After the blowjob joke, Mendlow tells a funny analogy about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I love irreverent humor. Perhaps because it makes the truth so apparent, and shocking to those who are too polite to do it themselves. Enjoy.
June 11th, 2009 Filed under: Humor and Israel. 2 Comments
Two Years of Gaza Closure by the Numbers
Data provided by Gisha.
June 2007- June 2009: Crossings Closed; Supplies Restricted
- Percentage of goods permitted to enter Gaza, relative to demand: 25% (approximately 2,500 truckloads/month instead of 10,400/month prior to June 2007).
- Supplies of industrial diesel permitted to enter Gaza, relative to need: 63% (2.2 million liters/week rather than the 3.5 million liters/week needed to generate electricity).
- Average length of power outages in Gaza: five hours per day.
- Current number of people without access to running water in Gaza: 28,000.
Compare and Contrast:
- Number of food items Israel’s Cabinet Resolution promised to permit to enter Gaza: Unlimited.
Number of food items actually permitted into Gaza: 18. - Amount of money pledged for reconstruction aid at the March 2009 Donors Conference: $4.5 billion.
Quantity of building materials permitted to enter Gaza: Zero. - Unemployment rate in Gaza in 2007, the year the closure was imposed: 30%.
Unemployment rate in Gaza in 2008: 40%.
No development, no prosperity, only “minimum humanitarian” items allowed.
- The Israeli military permits margarine in individual packets to enter Gaza, but margarine in buckets is banned, because it could be used for industry (i.e. by factories producing food and providing jobs).
- The Israeli government clarified that its March 22, 2009 Cabinet decision authorizing the “unrestricted” supply of food into Gaza “has been given a restrictive interpretation” and that the government “did not intend to remove the restrictions, which were imposed in the past, on the entrance of food and supplies into Gaza”. Translation: Food supply continues to be restricted. Among the food items banned from entering Gaza: Halva, tea, juice powder.
- Among the nonfood items banned from entering Gaza: soccer balls (footballs), guitars, paper, ink.
People trapped:
- Number of days Rafah Crossing has been open for regular traffic: Zero.
- Number of people unable to travel through Rafah each month: 39,000.
- Criteria for passage through Erez Crossing: exceptional humanitarian cases.
June 11th, 2009 Filed under: Israel. 1 Comment
Two Capitals (Two Beers) for Two Peoples
Peace Now wore this awesome pun t-shirt for Yom Yerushalayim, the celebration of the “reunification” of Jerusalem following the 1967 war. A reunfication we all know is bupkis because East Jerusalem is not only still entirely Arab but gets little of the infrastructure that the Jewish west side does. I’ll report back with how to order them for yourself.
Hat tip to NIF Shatil Fellow and my former New Voices co-worker Ilana Sichel for the link!
June 9th, 2009 Filed under: Humor and Israel. 1 Comment
Your power is greatest on Israel — use it for change
There is more than “just” a sea change among our generation, those of us under 35, regarding how we see Israel. The tide has changed for sure but we are compartmentalized from each other and afraid of acting on our feelings.
We are not interested in the battles and concerns of the OJC — yet we are strongly opinionated about them. I know that taking up an iconoclastic stance on such matters feels like intruding on “their” issues. It even feels like unnecessarily baiting the establishment. There are other battles to fight, we say to ourselves, ones that really matter to more people than just the Jews. And who wants to rock our parents’ boat anyway — best leave them their overprotected turf.
But I say that the resolution of this matter — an end to hostilities in Israel and Palestine — is the greatest, most immediate good you, a Jew, can accomplish in the world. Your/our authority on Israel’s well-being is unlike any moral power you possess on an any issue. As a Jew, your opinions about health care, economy, war are just as valid as all others. On Israel and the Palestinians, your command in the public media, among friends, with your Congresspeople, is amazing, sweeping, nearly unquestionable! How can you resist employing such leverage for good?
Even on an issue like genocide in Darfur, your power is greater on Israel. The stability of Darfur does not capture the passions of Christians, Jews and Muslims across the world. Darfur does not build such mistrust with Arabs and Muslims across Africa, the Mideast and Southeast Asia. Darfur does not consume the national interests of a hundred nations and millions of people. Three billion of your tax dollars, six million Jews and six million Palestinians’ lives rise and fall by the choices of your President who looks to Jews for backing and resistance. On Darfur the President listens to Jews’ moral authority, but on Israel he seeks it.
Jewish identity on this issue is powerful. The passions of a hundred American gentiles can barely match the punch of one, outspoken Jew. Their best intentions and life-long expertise can be wiped away with one callous charge of anti-Semitism. How unfair to see it, but it’s accurate. Our allies can barely join without our assistance. This is our fight.
I’m not saying you should make Israel your chief cause and I’m definitely not advising you to take time away ending genocide anywhere, like Darfur. Don’t allow Jewish particular concerns to take away from the good work we are doing for global well-being. But a small piece of your attention on this issues goes a long way. Farther than your influence on any other issue.
And today, I’m just asking for you for a click or two, a moment to express what you already feel: that Obama is doing what is right. Take a second to sign this petition saying so: www.obamapledge.org and then click the occasional action alerts that come your way. Simple. Powerful. Game changing.
June 2nd, 2009 Filed under: Israel. 0 Comments
More from Max Blumenthal and Philip Weiss: Gambling with Conflict
Full article here.
June 2nd, 2009 Filed under: Israel. 0 Comments
