'Israel As The Battered Woman'

(Graphic courtesy of Chabad)

I just came across this prescient article below, penned by American-born therapist Dr. Miriam Adahan, not long after the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the then nascent Palestinian Authority. Around the same period, I worked as a producer and program host at a "micro-broadcast" radio station in Jerusalem, called "RadioWest."

One evening as I was working the control board during the hourly newscast, Dr. Adahan was sitting in the studio alongside the news reader, waiting to begin her call-in show. As I watched the reader tersely recite a day's litany of terrorism and other mayhem, Adahan hid her eyes in her hands, and rocked back and forth in her seat as in grieved shock and mourning. How true her words ring today:

"In years to come, historians will be shocked at how Israeli leaders happily encouraged a gang of Arab murderers to create a country within our tiny borders -- a country which never existed before -- and gave them arms knowing that those arms could be used to kill and maim us, and then continued to try to appease the murderers. Why are we fulfilling Hitler's dream? Why did we ignore Arafat's rhetoric calling for our destruction, ignore the fact that they were flooding their cities with arms, and ignore the warnings that they are preparing for all-out war?"

(...)Want to understand what happened here in Israel? Listen to the battered woman:

1. "It takes two to make a fight. So I must deserve this abuse -- after all, I'm not perfect either. I left dishes in the sink, was talking on the phone when he came home and didn't have dinner ready on time. Sometimes, I was a little confused after he beat me up and didn't function so well. These sins of mine are so enormous that whatever he does is justified. I should have done better, should have known, should have anticipated...." (Israel: "As penance for not being perfect, we must allow them to continue murdering us.")

2. "If he's so angry, it means that I'm to blame. People don't get angry about nothing. It must be that I haven't done enough to please him. If I just try harder, I'm sure I'll eventually win his love." (Israel: "We must keep making more concessions. We're the more enlightened country, so we have to keep trying harder to get them to become more democratic, more humane, more civilized.")

3. "No matter how badly he acts at times, I truly believe that he doesn't really mean to hurt me and that he really does love me underneath it all. He just has to act like this to prove his masculinity. It doesn't really mean anything, because underneath it all, there's a good man." (Israel: "No matter how many of us he kills, Arafat is our partner. The fact that he keeps wanting to talk is proof of his love, isn't it? Otherwise, why would he take the time to talk to us?")

4. "I'm proud of myself for being loyal and determined! I stand by my man through thick and thin. You don't leave during the bad times. When you're willing to forgive after getting beaten up, that's when you prove how strong your love is." (Israel: "We take pride in the fact that we are the ones who care more about peace, and keep negotiating even when we're under attack. Hey world! Look at how much we're willing to suffer and not fight back! Now will you love the Jews?")

Read the rest, and weep.

Iranian prez shilling for Israeli cable TV !

Brilliant:



From Haaretz:

"My brothers," says the mock Iranian president in a speech broadcast through loudspeakers across the country, "the uranium is in our hands and after Monday it will be goodbye to Israel."

Unexpectedly, the Iranian leader's supporters - dressed in Shiite religious garb - take exception to the speech, dismayed at the prospect of missing their favorite Israeli television series.

"What are you talking about?" asks one of his followers. "It's the last episode of Danny Hollywood on Monday."

The declaration of Iranian president's intent to destroy Israel is met with riots and the police are deployed to control protests which suddenly take the form of a big budget musical.

The commercial, produced by advertising company McCann Erickson, is entirely a parody of "Kazablan," a hit Israeli musical of the 1960s:

From IMDB:

"An adaptation of a popular Israeli stage musical. Kazablan is an army veteran turned gang leader in the Israeli port of Jaffa who masks his feelings of bitterness with a lot of bravado."

'Never Again' vs 'Once More With Luck'

Israel at 60: two recent videos, with an abyss between them. Draw your own conclusions.



(Courtesy: Israel Channel 10 TV)


(Courtesy: www.InfoLive.tv)


Text of a proposed speech for an Israel prime minister.

A wealth of videos about Israel At 60 are here.

Israeli Hospital, under Palestinian Bombardment, Treats Palestinian Preemies

Dr. Maria Tzeitlin of BMCA examining one of the premature Palestinian babies (Photo: David Avioz, BMCA)

The bombardee would be Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, a few miles up the coast from the Gaza Strip. The same one Gaza Palestinians are blowing holes in with Iranian-made Grad/Katyusha rockets.

The same one that Palestinian premature twins are being kept alive in and cared for, while rockets hammer into the walls above, wounding patients and civilians.

This care isn't a hospital public relations department stunt, but rather a daily, telling occurrence throughout Israel. And a potent measure of the goodwill, health, and tempered resilience of Israeli society.

And I can personally vouch for it:

Both staff and patients at the Jerusalem hospital where my three children were born was made up of Israelis, Jews and Arabs (Palestinian Jerusalem ID card-holders, to the best of my knowledge).

Another family member was also successfully treated a few years ago by a similar staff makeup at the city's Hadassah Hospital, in their state-of-the-art pediatric cancer ward and outpatient clinic. Many of the patients I and family interacted with at the clinic during her course of treatment were Palestinians from Jerusalem, Ramallah and area villages.

On one day's chemotherapy session, I had my camera with me and recorded this:


Seventeen Native North American tribes, offering prayer and healing, visit with cancer-stricken Jewish, Christian and Muslim children and youth at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital pediatric cancer outpatient clinic. Here, a Muslim Arab mother of a cancer-stricken child speaks with a Native American woman, as Winnie the Pooh looks on. (Dave Bender).


And here, swirling dancers in tribal garb and a healing drum circle offer prayers for health, and bring sound, color and excitement to parents, kids and staff. (Dave Bender).

Are there tensions? Yes. Especially after terror attacks, as you might imagine. But all were helped by the best medical care in the region - possibly the world, and at Israeli taxpayer expense.

Lives were, and continue to be saved, and people healed. But Israelis aren't asking for applause here; this is about lifesaving and elemental human decency.

BMCA's neonatal intensive care unit, transferred to a bomb shelter (Photo: David Avioz, BMCA)

Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank - just like those twins - are treated, 24/7 in Israeli hospitals like Barzalai in Ashkelon, even when their elders try again and again, to kill those keeping them alive.

One of the Palestinian twins (Photo: David Avioz, BMCA)

Remember that the next time you read those headlines.

Read the rest here.

Video: Pals fire rockets, mortars, guns at Israeli news crew

(Israel Channel 2 Television/YouTube)

An Israeli TV news crew reporting from Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha near Gaza on Jan. 15 was attacked and pinned down by Palestinian snipers shooting from Gaza.

Interestingly enough, this hasn't been featured in the mainstream media - either in Israel or abroad.

Were this to have been a foreign news crew - or any news team for that matter - other than Israelis it would have made headlines worldwide, as similar stories have been reported in the past.

Hmmm. Odd, that. Can't quite figure out why. Journo and editor colleagues - any ideas why the underportage here? Could it be because they're Je-... nahhhh. Couldn't be, right?

I don't know the individuals in that crew, but I can imagine that they aren't making a lot out of it because of professional pride. But who knows what's being said at morning editorial meetings, and around the bar after hours.

But I have covered that area, and have been present at similar locations when we (reporters) were warned not to venture into the open, for fear if sniping attacks like this.

It is a damning indictment of the international media based in the area, and Israel provincialism not to scream to the high heavens over this, and demand Reporters Without Borders intervene, or at least issue a statement denouncing the attack - pallid and neutered as it may well be.

HT: Backspin

Annapolis: Video Commentaries and Latest Headlines

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• Low grades for Israeli education system
• Government ministers want to fire Education Minister
• After Annapolis: IDF responds to Hamas violence
• Annapolis Special Commentaries:
• Mr. Alon Pinkas – Former Israel's Consul General, NY – click to watch
• Mr. Dov Weisglass – Former PM Ariel Sharon’s Bureau Chief - click to watch
• Mr. Benny Regev – Brother of Kidnapped Soldier, Eldad Regev - click to watch
  

Holocaust Survivor Tutors Palestinian Billy Elliot

From Canada's Globe and Mail:

KIBBUTZ GAATON, ISRAEL — The story could have been drawn straight from the Billy Elliot movie script: A young boy who was first transfixed by ballet on television, and would dance secretly in his room at night, practicing what he learned from films and Internet videos.

But Ayman Saffah is a young Palestinian-Israeli – as he prefers to be known – from a small village in the Galilee, and young men in traditional Arab Muslim villages don’t dance ballet, at least not publicly. And so Mr. Saffah’s path to a remote ballet school at Kibbutz Gaaton, the preparatory school for Israel’s prestigious Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, has been riddled with stops and starts.

“I always wanted to dance,” says the young-looking 17-year-old, wearing jeans and sneakers, a pair of sunglasses dangling at his neck. “[But] when I saw it on the TV or Internet, I saw many, many girls dance, but I never saw boys. So I thought I couldn’t do it.”

Read the rest (Gross posted what appears to be a large excerpt, since the G&M page is subscriber-only).

Web Of Life (original photograph)

'Web of Life' (Dave Bender)

Close-up of droplets of rainwater suspended in a spider's web in the grass. I shot this alongside the Chattahoochee River, just north of Atlanta, as a light misty rain began to fall on a cold Sunday afternoon. Click the pic for the hi-rez size -- it's worth a closer look.

"Cropped 'n' Shopped:" sharpened and color corrected.

And speaking of rain, here's a great site for those wanting accurate information about the weather in Israel: The Israeli Meteorological Service.

'Geekdad' Hacks Hannukah

From Wired:

History notwithstanding, Hanukkah still lags behind Christmas in the transition from traditional light sources like candles towards microcontroller driven arrays of LEDs. While that may be simply due to the relative flammability of dry pine trees versus that of metal menorahs, the irony is that Hanukkah -- unlike Christmas -- actually requires observers to light up specific lights in a specific order, which is exactly the sort of thing that you want a microcontroller for.

Umm, ahh, sure. That's what I always wanted a microcontroller for. Doesn't everyone? Fun for the whole family:

Finally. The US media get it right about dealing with terrorists!

And it's about damn time.


In The Know: War On Terror