Yikes, Ruvy. Why don't you just scrap it all and move back to the US? We'd welcome you back, and at least here when the government destroys your home they pay you 80% of a fair price for it.

dave

Check the e-mail I just sent you about the links in the article - one of them was wrecked.

Ruvy: For a moment reading this I got the impression that Ma'aléh Levoná was your natural longtime home. Then I remembered that you moved there deliberately last year, presumably to purposely put yourself on a collison course with future events. Please remember to move out of the way when that D9 goes through your squat...

Chris,

I moved here because I was paying NIS 2,700 a month or more in rent in J-lem, and now I'm paying NIS 1,000 a month. That is a significant difference.

"Then I remembered that you moved there deliberately last year, presumably to purposely put yourself on a collision course with future events."

I didn't move here to put myself on a collision course with future events. Indeed, in my own mind, the failure of the Israeli government in dealing with HizbAllah made me think that there was some security in moving here, at least for a couple of years. But you may well be right as to the Big Guy in His intents. Seeing those D9's up close and personal sure as hell clarify the mind.

He may be talking to you. Listen in your heart. Long ago, you said you were a seeker. You may be getting an Answer - not one you expected, but an answer nonetheless.

By the way, thank you very much for fixing the links in the article. I'll have to pay very close attention to those little marks from now on...

No problem Ruvy; I still consider you a top bloke and a good virtual buddy, despite your faithist affliction...

Nah, don't listen to Nalle. Move to Oz, Ruvy, and get away from everything ... the only dozing that gets done here is in a hammock.

BTW, I was the foreign editor of a paper when all the drama was happening in Jenin a few years back. I saw plenty of pictures of them and they looked pretty frightening. The Israelis used them to cut a path through the houses so they could get tanks in. The most poignant picture in that time was of a young girl with a tear streak down her face, holding the only toy she could salvage - a small teddy bear - and standing atop a heap of rubble that been her house.

A few weeks later, a young Israeli girl and her grandma were blown to bits by a suicide bomber when they went for a special treat at an ice-cream parlour (in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; you would remember that for sure but I can't). The copy picture of the little Israeli girl, smiling at the camera and in her best clothes, was equally poignant.

It was quite distressing. I just couldn't help thinking how nice it would be if everyone sat down and talked for once so the kids on both sides would never have to go through that stuff.

No one did, though, and they probably won't and I can't see any end to the current impasse.

Dave,

Thanks for the kind words. There is no future for me in the States, and definitely no future for my kids, unless they marry out. My father-in-law would probably offer to pay our way to leave Israel if he saw this article. Which is why I'm not forwarding it to him. If he finds it on his own...

I'm too old to get a decent paying job in the States with health insurance and all, and I do need that health insurance. It is highly doubtful the government will take my wife back in its service, even though she worked for the only outfit in it that actually made money.

Finally, if we even see Social Security checks from the States, something I do not count on at all, we can actually get by on that alone here. In America, forget it.

Boycott Caterpillar

Dave, Stan, and for Mark, when he gets here.

Let me teach you a little bit of Hebrew. Dave will recognize some of this from his years speaking Arabic in Syria and Jordan. There are two words for "faith" in Hebrew.

One is "emuná", אמונה, related to the word "amén" which also comes from Hebrew. It means faith in something or someone based on previous experience. For example, the sun rose in the east this morning. It has done so for the last several billion years. I have faith, emuná, that it will rise tomorrow in the east as well.

Similarly, my wife has been faithful to me, and I have been faithful to her (as in no side action or fucks for the road) for the last 19 years or so. We both have faith "enuná" that we will continue to be faithful to each other in future.

There is a second word for faith - "bitaHón" ביטחון - more accurately translated by some as "trust" - which is faith in someone or Something based on no experience at all.

It is this bitaHón which I have learned in Israel, from my wife, who has had it since a young child and uses it as a working principle in her life.

It has been bitaHón that has carried us forward in this country - faith in an Entity based on no experience at all. The days when we had no money to buy food or pay rent, and barely anything in the fridge, the times when we have gone without medicine...

There is a line in the Grace After Meals that we recite after eating any meal with bread in it.

"barúkh hagéver ashér yivtáH bahashém, v'hayá hashém mivtaHó." "Blessed is the man who has trust in G-d and G-d will be his security."

We live by these lines.

You both tell me to run away from a potentially painful, if not fatal situation. By doing so, we would reject all that we have learned, and reject the faith and trust that carries us forth daily. For it is not by bread alone that a man lives.

If your government doesn't deal with you in good faith, why do you continue to have faith in or support that government. Even more, why do you continue to let it victimize you and others?

God I'm glad I don't live in Israel.

VP,

I do not have any faith in the government at all. Nor do I have any use for the exploitative bastards. And their exploitation extends not only to Arabs but to most of the Jewish citizens of Israel. But to participate in protecting the country from terrorism, I have to go to their damned police force - there is no other.

At this point, I am not in the position of creating another. Such a project would take millions of shekels, something I do not have.

As for letting it victimize me, my partner and i had an argument last night over what to do if the army tries to destroy my home. She feels that we should oppose all this legally, demonstrate and what have you. I feel it is necessary to fight, to fire at the enemy - even if the enemy is the IDF.

I spent until 3:00 am writing an article about that on Sunday night - Monday morning. It's a very hard question to consider, and it was difficult to write. I had seven pages written and was getting ready to type it up later Monday morning (after getting some needed sleep) when I noticed Olmert's plan to call in the EU as an occupation force here.

So, I changed the article around entirely to what you see above.

The only thing more depressing than Israeli policy is the thought of the EU defending anyone's rights, especially jews.

You're royally screwed.

Dave

Apropos of the last paragraph of #9, let me paraphrase a parable:

So this fox was strolling along the edge of the water, and noticed a school of fish fleeing from a larger fish which was trying to devour them. The fox, deciding that a seafood dinner would be particularly appetizing, came up with an idea to trick the little fish into coming within his reach.
"Look how dangerous it is there in the water!" he called to the little fish. "Why don't you come up here on the dry land with me, where you'll be safe from that big fish?"
The school of little fish replied, "Do we look like we have 'stupid' written all over our faces?! If it's dangerous for us here in the water which is our natural environment, how much more so it would be out there where it isn't our natural environment!"


Ein kmo Eretz Israel -- there's no place like the Land of Israel, for the Children of Israel!

On 29 January, the Arabs showed just how empty all the speechifying by the rich Jews in the west at the International Holocaust Day ceremonies about "never again" was. They killed off three Israelis in Eilat.

Go to Jacob Richman's website to get a clear idea of what peace means to the terror groups who misrule the Arabs, and why these terrorists all must die before there can be peace in this part of the world.

Three links to articles affecting the region.

The first is for those custard heads who still think the US is an an "ally" of Israel. It is a declassified State Department telegram from 1 June, 1967.

The second gives a clear picture of democracy and religious freedom in a "secular democratic Palestine" filed by Jerusalem Post Arab reporter who has been assaulted physically for his coverage in the past.

The third article deals with what a Jewish community far older than Islam or even Christianity is facing in its final days in exile...