Yom Kippur: Very, Very Fast Forward (wicked cool video)

Why "holidays" in Israel really aren't like anywhere else:


I'll try real hard to envision this speeded-up version of the fast, ohh, about the last two hours of the
s

l

o

w fast tomorrow afternoon...

And to any and all - worldwide - that I may have offended or hurt with this blog in any way, shape or form, please forgive me.

Tzom kal - an easy, "fast" fast to all - and remember K-Mart shoppers: Saturday night is woodworking night:


And then, of course, there's this:
A buncha' guys gettin' their groove thang on, at "hakafot Shniyot" on Simchat Torah, in Jerusalem's Liberty Bell park, 2005. (Dave Bender)

And, finally, here's a cheat sheet for the clueless, but curious.

Maccabi TA takes on the NY Knicks (don't laugh!)

From David Brinn & Co. at Israelity:

Next month the action goes down at Madison Square Garden when The New York Nicks play Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv in a game of hoops that promises to be exciting.

No, the Israel team wasn’t catapulted into the NBA in some sort of parallel universe happenstance.

It’s a fundraiser game during Hoops and Dreams Week and all the proceeds will go to American Friends of Migdal Ohr. Migdal Ohr [Lighthouse] is Israel’s largest youth village providing homes, educations and opportunity for some 6,500 young people.

Read about the game and the village in this story.

All bets are on the kids…

Jane's: Syria, Iran & nerve gas against Israel

Iranian military launches missile salvo during
maneuvers earlier this year.

From Janes Magazine via The Jerusalem Post:

"Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane's Magazine report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.

According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas and VX gas.

The factory was created specifically for the purposes of altering ballistic missiles to carry chemical payloads, the magazine report claimed."

Meawhile, Israeli President Shimon Peres opines:

"I estimate that the tension between Syria and Israel has gone down, we are ready for direct peace negotiations with Syria,"

Hey - it's jes' me talkin' here, but, WTF?

Click here for previous posts on Syrian, Iranian, Israeli tensions.

French FM: 'prepare for war with Iran'

From Haaretz:

The world must "must prepare for the worst" - including the possibility of war - in light of the Iranian nuclear crisis, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Sunday.

"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst, sir, is war," Kouchner said in an interview on LCI television and RTL radio.

...and about that supposed Israeli airstrike against Syrian targets?

"I think it would be unusual for Israel to conduct a military operation inside Syria other than for a very high value target, and certainly a Syrian effort in the nuclear weapons area would qualify," [former United Nations ambassador John] Bolton told Channel 10 in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"I think this is a clear message not only to Syria, I think it's a clear message to Iran as well, that its continued efforts to acquire nuclear weapons are not going to go unanswered," Bolton said.

Background: former IDF strategist, Dr. Eran Lerman, detailed these very issues - Iran and Syria - in an exclusive interview some nine months ago. Although understandably cautious in his assessments, I think he fairly nailed the issues involved even then.

Previous Israel At Level ground posts about Iran and Israel.

Atlanta Morning (original photography)

Atlanta Morning

A foggy August morn' along I-75 in Atlanta, as the last wisps of fog burned off among the downtown skyscrapers, and rush-hour motorists drove on, unawares.

I shot this on the way to work. Luckily, just after my turn-off, I managed to pull over and grab my camera out of the trunk. Lot's of Photoshopping, to retrieve the look and feel of the moment.

Freakin' cool indie Israeli rock - in English (video)

Ok, this is cool - and "wis' no Ez-rae-lie ak-sent."

L.A. Times: "This band from Israel covers some of the same ground as Coldplay with the kind of sing-along choruses that could appeal to a large audience. Singer Ohad Eilam has an accessible sincerity and, in "Hidden Thieves," when the keening guitar enters on the final chorus, providing a diversion from the center of focus (the piano) one can imagine a concert hall of swaying bodies."

Their clean-cut image matched with their talent appealed to Israel's Foreign Ministry, which in a way has chosen missFlag as cultural ambassadors for Israel. According to the band, it was the Israeli consul in Los Angeles which helped them out with initial contacts in the music industry and media.

"I think it is really down-to-earth stuff... nothing political like one would expect from Israel. The songs are about relationships, hopes, loves and sadness and the things that everyone goes through," Assayas told ISRAEL21c.

RoshHashanaShabbat: four nights, seven festive meals

As the Jewish world enter the Rosh Hashana eat-a-thon:

...and don't forget "grazing" the cookie table, and the herring and shnapps at the after-services-Kiddush...

Shana Tova!

Stickin' with a sweet New Year - updated (video)

Best comment on this one?

"Why Is It When Kids Do This Kinda Of Stuff Its Funny And Cute But When I Do It Everybody Says "What The Hells Wrong With You? Your 35 And This Isnt Your House!"

True, true...

And colleague, and damn-but-I-wish-I-wrote-as-good-as-her, pal Judy Lash-Balint has a great feaure on the "Signs of Rosh Hashana in Jerusalem: "

Anyone venturing into the shuk or even a local supermarket this week
could be forgiven for thinking that a famine was imminent. Shoppers
laden with huge nylon bags of every kind of produce, fish, meat and
bread, may be seen staggering under the weight of their purchases,
secure in the knowledge that they have sufficient provisions for three
days when stores are closed.

Certain foods are traditional to eat on Rosh Hashana, and the markets
are full of the most beautiful pomegranates; succulent dates and crisp
apples. All the produce is local—pomegranate trees grow everywhere,
even in private gardens; dates are from the Jordan Valley and apples
from the Golan.

Read it all, "for verily, it is a good and spacious Land."

Shana Tova, a good and sweet year to all.

Eyewitness to 9/11 in Jerusalem's Old City

Following are a number JPost Radio reports I prepared from Jerusalem's Old City immediately after the terror attacks against the US on 9/11/01:

Me, hoofing it with crash helmet, mike and gear down the darkened alleyways of the "souk." This shot was lit by camera flash. It was much darker, with sounds and footsteps echoing off the cobblestones. (Mati Milstein)


Talking with American tourists (Oklahoma and Arkansas) along the Via Dolorosa. After hearing the news of the attacks, they hurried back to their hospice, en route to a flight back stateside. (Mati Milstein)

I interviewed Muslim and Christian Palestinians, American Christian tourists, and Jewish seminary students from New York.

We made our way north to south, from the Damascus Gate in the Muslim Quarter, through the Christian Quarter to the Jewish Quarter, near the Western Wall Plaza and Temple Mount area in the Old City. We exited the Old City at Zion Gate, near the Armenian Quarter.


Speaking with a Palestinian shopkeeper at an Internet cafe'. The interviewee is unconnected to the following clips. (Mati Milstein)

• Palestinian Muslim shopkeeper: Damascus Gate. BTW - that incredulity you might hear in my voice, as I'm talking with this guy? It's real.
  
  
• Second Palestinian Muslim shopkeeper, further down the alleyways, towards the heart of the Old City:
  
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• Two American tourists hurrying for safety at a Catholic convent where they were staying:
  
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• Talking with a group of four yeshiva seminary students. They are in a pizza parlor in the Jewish Quarter, watching a television showing images of the smoking WTC towers:
  
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Who you callin' a 'racist?'

Two Darfuri refugees at the menorah near
the Israeli Knesset parliament, Jerusalem.

September 6, 2007 - It has become fashionable to throw charges of "apartheid" at Israel, regardless of how little that word may actually apply. The political sloganeering needs to be balanced by a consideration of reality.

Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit has announced plans to grant Israeli citizenship to several hundred refugees from Darfur. He stated that "Just as prime minister Menachem Begin acted to grant citizenship to refugees from Vietnam, the same ought to be done today."

According to UN estimates, over 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made refugees since 2003 when the fighting in Darfur began. As David Frankfurter observes in his report, a country the size of Israel cannot be expected to grant asylum to 2.5 million. But Israel is doing its part. The Muslim communities of the world are not doing theirs.

Look at how Egypt responds to the Darfur crisis. One day last August four Sudanese refugees were trying to cross the Egyptian border into Israel (yes, these Muslims seeking shelter felt their chances were better in Israel). As they ran towards the border fence Egyptian soldiers fired on them, killing two and wounding a third. As the fourth refugee ran to the fence an Israeli soldier reached out a hand to help him cross. It was too late. Two Egyptian soldiers began pulling at the man's legs.

"It was literally like we were playing 'tug of war' with this man," said the Israeli soldier. "They were aiming loaded weapons straight at us, I was afraid they were going to shoot us." He was forced to release his grip. The Egyptians carried the man off several yards, then beat him and the wounded refugee with stones and clubs until they died.

"What happened there yesterday was a lynch," said the Israeli soldier. "These are not men, they're animals. They killed him without even using firearms. We just heard screams of pain and the sounds of beatings. Then the screams stopped."

Read it all.

Related: Deconstructing Apartheid:

The historical context of the Jewish-Arab conflict in the Middle East is fundamentally different from that between the whites' Afrikaner ideology of apartheid and the blacks in South Africa. The latter was a system of discrimination and inequality based upon racial criteria; a system of domination by a minority over a majority and refusal to negotiate a bilaterally agreed solution.

Previous Darfur-related posts here.