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"20th Century Fox Studios acquired the format of the Israeli drama show 'The Ex', and will produce a pilot for CBS based on the Israeli series. If the network is happy with the pilot, the show will go into production.
'The Ex' was written and directed by Sigal Avin, produced by Israeli network Keshet and broadcast on Channel 2 in the past year."
"This time it's Playboy. As we've noted previously, distorted articles about the Arab-Israeli conflict have increasingly turned up in popular magazines and professional journals that don't ordinarily cover world affairs (eg: Vogue, Architectural Review, Oprah and Lancet). Editors of such publications are generally unequipped to spot inaccuracies, distortions and lack of context on Middle East issues. Because these publications usually provide information on non-controversial or human interest stories, when they promote fringe, false and inflammatory points of view the mainstream public is likely to accept these views as credible.Read the rest.
"It is most troubling, then, that Playboy magazine, the racy but popular men's magazine, has published in its October 2007 issue an article comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa. The article, "Israel shouldn't get a free pass" by Jonathan Tasini, argues that "Jimmy Carter is correct in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid when he describes the control over Palestinians' movements as similar to South Africa's apartheid system."
In an essay published in the Jewish magazine Tikkun last January, Bertell Ollman, one of the world’s best-known Marxist theorists, recounted how, on his way into the operating room, he realised that if he did not survive his surgery, he would die a Jew. The prospect was so unsettling that, once healed, he wrote his Letter of resignation from the Jewish people. The reasons were Zionism, Israel, and the support its policies enjoy from other Jews.
Ollman might yet reconsider, but for that to happen, Jews would have to embrace his own version of Jewish identity. Paraphrasing a Lenny Bruce joke, he said:
Painfully important reading."Noam Chomsky, Mordechai Vanunu and Edward Said are Jewish. Elie Wiesel is goyish. So, too, all ‘Jewish’ neo-cons. Socialism and communism are Jewish. Sharon and Zionism are very goyish. And, who knows, if this reading of Judaism were to take hold, I may one day apply for readmission to the Jewish people."
(2007-09-24) — Columbia University promised a full investigation into charges of police brutality after today’s reported Tasering of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had come to the Ivy League school to give the annual Adolph Hitler Memorial Peace and Tolerance Lecture.Imagine my surprise (if only).
Like a similar incident at the University of Florida last week, the stun-gun assault by police followed a lengthy anti-American rant by the alleged victim, and was immediately condemned by civil rights advocates. According to eyewitnesses, Mr. Ahmadinejad was dragged from the room shouting: “Do not make to Tase myself, slang brother man.”
It was not immediately known whether the victim was legitimately attempting to exercise his freedom of speech or if, as one unnamed witness said, “he’s little more than a publicity hound and prankster who will do anything to get news coverage.”
"I always bristle when I’m referred to as a ‘settler’. It happened recently in the national left-leaning daily paper Ha’aretz, all so innocently, in an article about my friend, author Matt Rees, who just released his first mystery novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, about a Palestinian private eye.Read the rest.
"‘Rees lives with his wife in the Old Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem. He has organized an office where he can sit in front of the keyboard and look out at the city’s landscapes through the window. There is a guitar in the room. He is also a musician and plays bass guitar in an ensemble formed by some of his friends who live in Jewish settlements in the territories.’"
I just happen to be one of Matt’s band mates. And all right, I do live in Ma’aleh Adumim, a city situated three miles from Jerusalem, just over the ‘Green Line’ - that invisible boundary that separates Israel from the West Bank.
Words. Fail. Me.
"...the new Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has kicked off a popular "Iran-loves-Jews" campaign that will include a sensitive re-writing of the laws to accommodate religions other than Islam. He explained, "With the Zionist entity out of the way, the Iranian government will tone down its violent and threatening rhetoric, dismantle its nuclear program, and stop funding Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. As a matter of fact, I might even resign my position and award the presidency to someone else. Do you think Schwarzenegger is available?"Read the rest here.
"A spokesperson for Hezbollah stated that Iran's proposal wouldn't matter. "We don't need the funding because we no longer have any reason to exist. We disposed of our weapons, and will now re-focus on opening a chain of pizzerias. You just can't get decent pizza around here, and we're going to change that."
"He was joined by a former high-ranking member of Hamas: "Yeah, we also pretty much accomplished what we wanted. We'll get together for reunions now and then, but otherwise, we'll just settle down into normal lifestyles. You know... mortgage, house, bowling, PTA meetings..."
"In pondering the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I cannot help but think of the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. At the time, an Iranian law laid down that children as young as 12 could be used to clear mine fields, even against the objections of their parents. Before every mission, a small plastic key would be hung around each of the children’s necks. It was supposed to open for them the gates to paradise.This is what the man who is to speak at Columbia University directly, personally represents.
“In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela’at, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the mine fields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes could henceforth be avoided, Ettela’at assured its readers. “Before entering the mine fields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.
(...)
"The western media showed little interest for the Basiji – perhaps because journalists could not be present during the hostilities or perhaps because they did not believe the reports. Such disinterest has persisted to this day. The 5000 dead of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on the Kurds of Halabja have remained in our memory. History has forgotten the children of the minefields.
"Today, however, Ahmadinejad appears in public in his Basiji uniform. During the war, he served as one of the Basiji instructors who turned children into martyrs."
As Yom Kippur begins at sunset this evening, I'd like to invite the rest of the country to join right in with your Jewish neighbors in marking the Day of Atonement. Pull up a chair and have a little nothing to eat, and let's all get started.Read it all.
From shortly after the end of this afternoon's Panthers game until just before tomorrow's first Simpsons rerun, Jews will be observing a millennia-old tradition of fasting, sober reflection, and rigorous self-appraisal. Sounds fun, doesn't it? I think it's time we made it a national holiday.
(...) Yom Kippur is a day of introspection and not eating, and if there was ever a culture in need of introspection and not eating, we're it. Raised on hedonism and credit cards, Americans make every day a holiday and every meal a feast, to the point of devaluing actual holidays and feasts. We have name-branded golden calves and a television show called American Idol. At the same time, we are encouraged to think of ourselves as victims, not to take responsibility for ourselves. We could all use some of the dermabrasion for the soul that Yom Kippur promises.
