Reality – Herzl

A small ad for the Herzl Museum from the Jerusalem Post website:

The New Herzl Museum - Yes We Can

This, of course, refers to Herzl’s most famous quote: “If you will it, it is no legend”.

The meaningless and the weak

“If it is just to prohibit a Jew from living in Samaria, is it also just to prohibit a black from living in Washington DC?” – Moshe Feiglin

I strongly, very strongly disagree with Moshe Feiglin on many points of his political platform. He’s a manipulator: he presents himself as “loyal to the principles of Likud”, but his own platform actually contradicts that of Likud. It doesn’t mean that i, heaven forfend, support Likud; it just means that Feiglin is a bit of a trickster. Not a liar, just a trickster: Many of his platform’s points are very religious and fundamentalist, but he only publishes them on his own website and not in the articles that he writes for Maariv.

But i strongly, very strongly agree with the point above.

“Stopping natural growth” of the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria is, beyond being nonsensical, violent and racist.

But you know what? Barack Obama is himself a trickster. Worse, yet – he’s a puppet and the people behind him are tricksters. Obama is too good at pleasing crowds. He pleased the crowd in Prague saying that he wants to end nuclear weapons. I support that, but i don’t really believe that he means that. Obama tells a crowd of Jews that Jerusalem will stay undivided, but then a campaign adviser had to clarify, that is muddle it.

A campaign adviser.

At least Moshe Feiglin doesn’t seem to have campaign advisers.

Kas buvo tai nebus

In the last couple of years i fell in love with Israeli literature, especially poetry – from Y. L. Gordon, H. N. Bialik and S. Chernihovski, through N. Alterman and J. Amihay all the way to the present days’ M. Arad and D. Manor. Because of this – among some other things – i decided to study for a minor degree in Hebrew and not in Chinese.

In school i learned about Israel’s poetry like this: There was a literature teacher. We started to study Bialik. She said: “There are common meters – amphibrach, anapaest, iambus, dactyl, and so on, and according to the program you are supposed to study them now, but it is hard for you, and i am not in the mood, so we won’t do it.” She hardly even mentioned Chernihovsky, Shlonsky, Alterman and Avidan – they are, according to her, also “hard, and you can do fine without them”. And so i received the reasonable 75 grade in the matriculation exam in literature in an Israeli high school, but in fact hardly studied any Hebrew literature at all, and for nearly ten years after the school didn’t read a single Israeli book, and not much foreign ones, either.

So now i am replenishing this. At the university i was quickly taught the basics of poetic meters and devices, and suddenly realized what a terrible crime that teacher committed. Without understanding these mostly simple rules it is very hard to read poetry. And he who learns them a little, becomes more educated and opens for himself a new exciting world.

---

The complete collected works of David Avidan are being released these days. I saw the book in the shop and thought – to buy or not buy? Previously, Avidan seemed very hard for me. I looked through a few pages and understood – now i’ll be able to enjoy it. I looked at the table of contents and all of a sudden saw a title of a poem in Latin letters, and not in English – “Kas buvo tai nebus”. It seemed familiar, i thought that it was Latin, but no, obviously not Latin. And after a moment i realized that it was in Lithuanian: “What was, shall not be”. Here is an attempt in translation:

Two Lithuanians, remembering their mother tongue
Less than they remember
Their mother, meet in a cool evening
In an open coffee house and begin
Remembering. How does one say
The past in Lithuanian? Really, how does one say
The past in Lithuanian? Very awkward, indeed
Very uncomfortable. Maybe there is
Someone here in this nice environment, within a radius of a
Kilometer or two who will be able to fix
This depressing linguistic short circuit? But
The time is very late, and all
The Lithuanians, who arentdeadyet are already asleep.

How does one say sleep in Lithuanian?

1964

(The poem may have been already translated into English, maybe even by Avidan himself. As for “arentdeadyet” – Avidan often stuck words together as a literary device.)

I don’t know what prompted Avidan to write such an unusual poem. Lithuanians, as far as i know, preserved their language much better than did most peoples of the USSR. But perhaps he spoke of the Lithuanians in America or in Israel.

But i bought the book, of course.

Reality – Original Israeli

“Original Israeli Music Line. Leonid Ptashka, Marina Maximilian Blumin.”

Ptashka was born in Baku and Blumin in Dnipropetrovsk.

I love this country so much.

Death Sentence in the Palestinian Authority

… And the BBC have also done that yet again: Palestinian handed death sentence.

The article is more or less OK. It says that the sentence is not actually expected to be carried, which is good. (Although similar cases have already ended in executions in the past.) But why does a half of the article discuss the “occupation”? And why does it have a photo of an Israeli soldier with the caption “Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens on occupied land” instead of a photo of a man who was sentenced to death for selling land to Jews? Many countries have border conflicts – Armenia, Serbia, Russia, China, India, the UK, etc. But what other country has a law that says that anyone who sells land to Jews, must be killed? (Oh, and the PA is not exactly a country.)

That’s exactly why i think that Israel, despite its demographic problems, should not have laws that prohibit selling of land to non-Jews. Such laws are discussed in the Knesset, but implementing them would be badly racist. The right thing to do is not to be like the PA.

Wagner

Wagner’s antisemitism and use of his works by the Nazis caused him to be banned in Israel: he’s not played on Israeli radio, and playing him in a classical music concert is a sure way to be booed and to be mentioned on the front page in the next day’s newspapers.

As far as i know, Wagner had sick opinions, but didn’t kill anyone.

Now: Will “Let It Be”, “Imagine” and “Jealous Guy”, produced by an alleged murderer, be banned from Israeli radio? Or from BBC? I think not.

Reality – June 06

These stickers have become quite common lately on walls and cars:

עד מתי יוני 06?! ג. שליט

“Till when June 2006?! G. Shalit”. It refers to a graffiti which is common in public toilets in Israel as well as at military bases. It expresses the frustration of a draft soldier that wants to get demobilized, although the date in such graffiti is usually the date he started his service. Shalit’s draft date is July 2005 and indeed, his friends were demobilized a few days ago. June 2006 is the date Hammas kidnapped him.

The meaning of the name Gaydamak

Lera Henkel asked me: “Can you translate the Russian name Gaydamak into English?”

Gaydamak is not exactly Russian: It came to Russian from Ukrainian, and it came to Ukrainian from Turkish.

The original Ukrainian word is more correctly spelled “Haydamak” in Latin letters, but in case of Mr. Arcadi Gaydamak the custom is to write it with a ‘G’.

For information about who were the original Ukrainian Haydamaks, see the Wikipedia article Haidamaka, which appears to be pretty good.

Face

A little over the top.

No Nukes, part 5 – Scientist

The Israelis have never confirmed they have nuclear weapons, but this has been widely assumed since a scientist leaked details in the 1980s.

(Israel ‘has 150 nuclear weapons’, BBC News, 26 May 2008)

BBC is very careful about quoting—they put ‘has 150 nuclear weapons’ in quotes because they don’t claim that this is true, but because it’s just something that Jimmy Carter said. I’m not sure that all BBC readers actually understand this subtlety, but it’s good that they do it.

However, they say that ‘a scientist leaked details in the 1980s.’ Obviously, they refer to Mordechai Vanunu, but he wasn’t a scientist, just a technician. According to vanunu.org, a website that supports Vanunu, it is an “important point often misunderstood or forgotten”; quoting that site, “Vanunu was not an advanced scientist, but a subordinate technical assistant.” But BBC misunderstood and forgot.

I don’t strongly support Vanunu, because he makes too much of a joke out of himself, but i do support nuclear disarmament.

Lo

I should be ignoring this, but i can’t.

There’s this Eurovision Song Contest thing, right? And Israel participates in it? And the Israeli songs are terrible, just as nearly all the rest, right? And it’s not really about music, but about some fake national pride and a particularly stupid television show, right?

Well, yes, it is.

This year it’s the same crap as every time. The singer’s name was shortened from Boaz Mauda to Boaz. They do it to many Israeli artists for marketing reasons. Crap. OK, i can live with that and i couldn’t care less. And of course they translated the song to English, which is also very pointless, but i can live with that, too. But on the official website they named this so-called song “Fire in Your Eyes (Ke’ilo Kan)” and this i can’t stand.

It’s this Israeli stupidity in its worst. It’s supposed to be written “Ke’ilu”. כאילו. In Hebrew the sounds of [o] and [u] are usually written with the same letter, vav, and the correct pronunciation can be easily guessed by people who know Hebrew. But when transliterating Hebrew to Latin characters Israelis carry this confusion over, and often write an O where they should have written a U and vice versa. It’s similar to a hamburger place i saw once in southern Tel Aviv, which had a big ugly handwritten sign in “English” saying HMBORGR. The A and the E are gone, because they are not written in Hebrew at all, and the U turned to an O, because it’s “the same letter”. Now i think that a stupid hamburger vendor in southern Tel-Aviv should pay a heavy fine for that transgression. What is the appropriate punishment for the “representative” of Israeli culture that can’t fucking spell transliterated Hebrew words?

Now comes the funny part: If i try to change it in Wikipedia, it may be reverted, and someone will say “give me reliable sources; the website says Ke’ilo”. Crap.

Mentiras

What do you know—my persona is being discussed and lied about in Spanish. And it doesn’t even have anything to do with my Catalan studies, but with my being an “Ashkenazi Jew”. It’s been a long time since anybody called me an “Ashkenazi Jew”, so it’s quite funny.

Small Blue Thing, i really welcome you to be my friend —and even sister if you want—, because i am happy about having friends around the world—i have friends from Belarus, USA, Serbia, UAE, Iran, Lebanon, Argentina, Catalonia, Valencia, Mallorca and a whole lot of other places. I am especially happy about any opportunity to practice my very poor Spanish. But please don’t quote me incorrectly.

Treatment

Since about 2004 i watch very little television. I don’t have one at home and i don’t miss it. However, when i am at homes which do have one, i can hardly take my eyes off it when it’s on. That’s probably a good reason not to have one at home.

It doesn’t mean that everything on the TV is crap. I noticed that some Israeli drama series are pretty good. The stories are very humane and many of the actors are genuinely talented.

So i am quite proud to hear that an American TV network bought the rights for the fourth Israeli television script to be adapted for American TV. First there was In Treatment, the American version of Betipul. I haven’t watched any of them, but many other people did. Now, according to ynet, there are three more: Mesudarim and Merkhak Negia and The Ex List, which don’t yet have an article in the English Wikipedia.

So yay—Hebrew TV drama joins Hebrew rock n’ roll as one of the greatest achievements of Zionism.

SAFE HAVEN FOR DONKEYS IN THE HOLY LAND

Wow.

Independence 5768

Click to enlarge

Today Yediot Akhronot published a map showing which artists will appear at the Independence day celebrations organized by municipalities around the country.

Let’s take a good look at this map. Gush Katif is simply a part of Israel. Golan is also just a part of Israel. Judea and Samaria are demarcated with a green line—a pretty rare practice in Israeli mainstream newspapers, though it often appears in Haaretz.

Now the craziest part: Afula and Petakh Tikva are way beyond the green line. (So is Jerusalem, but that’s a borderline case.) I just don’t have anything clever to say about it.

But the most lovable thing about this map is that Tel-Aviv doesn’t appear on it at all! (And Nesher is there, even though most Israelis don’t even suspect that a city with this name exists, but that’s a minor thing.)

Welcome to Israel 5768-2008.

Reality – Marriage

Marriage

Jew, Ashkenazi (an immigrant from Ukraine ) , 174 height , sportive , non-smoking , a home person, practical, professional (programmer and electronics ) .

Understand that family – is constant work that needs to be invested in.

Ready to lead the family – (to cook,budget,education of the children,fixing at home,e.i.).

Value family life.

Seeking a young lady from Ethiopia , that can give birth the four children.

---

Found in Petakh Tikva. See Hebrew text at my Hebrew blog.

Return

The politics mostly make me sick and i don’t really like to write about it. But sometimes things happen, which are so unbelievably stupid, that i’ve gotta tell something about them.

There are new billboards popping up all over Israel: “Olmert, let us return to Israel! Eighty thousand settlers are living in danger on the other side of the fence.” And in the corner a small sign says – “One Home movement” (Bayit Echad, בית אחד).

For some reason i can’t find their website, but Bayit Echad is a movement of Israelis that claims to be social and non-political and its stated goal is to help the settlers that want to leave their homes in the settlements in Samaria to get a fair compensation. This is a lie, of course: I know that Avshalom Vilan from Meretz is one this movement’s leaders.

Now – of course they are entitled to their opinions. It’s their right to claim that destroying flourishing villages is their idea of “peace”. But this billboard is simply stupid. The first stupid thing is that no-one is making it so hard for those people to move to another home. Of course it might be expensive and complicated, possible more complicated than moving from Jerusalem to Haifa, but it’s not illegal; There is no Soviet-style “propiska” here and Olmert doesn’t have to “let” them do it.

Another problem is the danger. Yes – they are living in danger and if they run away from it, will the danger go away? Taking care of that danger is called “occupation” by the people who put up those billboards.

Another weird thing is saying “return to Israel”. They already are in Israel. This is the reality – the UN may claim otherwise, but in practice the settlements are a part of Israel: They are de-facto in the jurisdiction of Israeli courts, Israeli police has stations there and their mayors report to the Israeli Ministry of Interior. Again, the Bayit Echad are entitled to their opinion, but if they think that this kind of propaganda is a way of convincing the general public that the settlements are not a part of Israel, they are simply wrong. It is similar to Lubavitch Hassidim saying “may he live to see good days” instead of “peace be upon him” about their late Rebbe – it’s a natural part of ideology for them and a sad joke for almost everyone else.

And of course, there’s the matter of the fib: It’s not a settlers’ organization that is putting up those billboards, so they can’t say “we”. There is one guy from Karnei Shomron (nonstandard; see also Wikipedia) that is interviewed every now and then as part of this ridiculous PR campaign, but common sense says that he doesn’t represent any significant group of settlers.

Anyway, i hope that it will turn out to be a “you cannot fool all the people all the time” thing, but unfortunately these people have collaborators in the media, so more ugly and stupid surprises may lie ahead.

Reality – Pioneers crossing

This picture was taken in Nesher, Israel in 2007, but it looks like it’s from USSR 1951.

Finding Google

It’s been said that you can find almost anything on Google.

But can you find Google on Google? Or anywhere else?

Google has offices in Israel. In Haifa, for example. If you come from Tel Aviv on highway 2, you’ll see on your right a large building with the Google logo, between Microsoft and Intel. To the best of my knowledge they have some engineers there and they also have a marketing office in Tel Aviv.

However, i couldn’t find the exact address of Google Haifa or Tel Aviv anywhere.

I tried Google corporate page. There’s a long list of countries there, and Israel is not included.

I tried searching the google.com domain for “Israel” using Google and Yahoo. Nothing.

I tried to find a contact address where i can send an email to Google. The best i found was a form for press requests; the page about it said “If you aren’t a member of the press and write to this alias, you will not receive a response.” Damn. (If i use WordPress, am i “a member of the press”?)

I tried to find contact info for Google Israel on the Israeli Yellow Pages. I tried searching for “Google” and “גוגל” and found nothing.

Am i stupid?

I Gotta Move

Oh no.

He came from my home town
He was a prophet
Some kids they put him in the ground
Got coffee
Got donuts
Got wasted
Erased head
And what do they say?
He’s not afraid of the present tense
And talking back is a bad defense
I gotta move
I gotta break
I gotta get me cross the lake
I gotta move

Bother.

People Speaking – Me-e-e-e-e

— “I wonder – now, with all the fuss about Winograd committee and all that, what can Olmert want? Cause one day, sooner or later, he won’t be a prime minister. Is there still anything that he actually wants?”

— “Mmm … To go to Ame-e-e-e-erica …”

Grapes of Wrath 2007

Winograd committee (standard!) which investigated the Second Lebanon War published its first official report today.

It is generating a lot media attention, but i wanted to point out two little things.

First – Retired Justice Eliyahu Winograd is the head of the committee. Winograd means grape in Russian. Thought you’d like to know.

Second – i like epigraphs and opening phrases. Great opening phrases, such as “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (which is probably an incorrect translation, but who cares), “On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature”, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”, “Perl is a language for getting your job done”.

The Winograd report doesn’t have a great opening line.

But it does have an epigraph: “Weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country” (Jeremiah 22:10). And the explanation: “This report is dedicated to the memory of beautiful flowers, the soldiers of IDF, that were cut down before their time in the second Lebanon war. They left after them a crying mother, a worrying father, a sad brother and a baby”.

The epigraph is taken out of context. The verse is incomplete. The full verse is “Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.”

As far as i understand the passage in the Bible refers to captive people. It is related to the war, because it started after soldiers were captured; but the explanation to the epigraph refers to soldiers who died in the war itself.

Israeli judges usually seem to write very good Hebrew in their reports and verdicts. I think that they slipped a little this time.

Slower than a motivated cheetah

In July of 2005, one citizen of the fine city of Sderot spoke to Maariv after a Kassam rocket landed near his house. This is what he said: “Carrying out the disengagement will nullify the motivation to fire Kassam rockets.”

His name is Amir Peretz and today he is the minister of defense. Israel is supposed to be a democracy, and therefore i am supposed to be his boss. I would like to fire him, but i can’t. That’s why i think that Israel is not really a democracy.

URGENT FUND TRANSFER.. YOUR ACTION REQUIRED

I received a message on MySpace (spelling mistakes kept, names abbreviated with ‘):

Hello,
this may sound a bit strange, but I was wondering if you are related to A’ Aharoni from Natanya? If you are, I have been trying to find he and his wife as my husband passed from this life owing them money, and I am trying to settle the debt. It has been troubling me for several years now. They would have known me by S’ P’, my husbands name was D. A. was a musician and his wife was studying to be a teacher I believe I think the spelling of her name is R’. If you could be of any assistance, I would greatly appreciate it.
Shalom
S.

I wonder whether it is a true story of sadness and honesty or an Israeli version of Nigerian spam.

¡Hoja!

This semester i finally started studying two very important languages. No, not Armenian and Irish – i’m talking about Spanish and Arabic.

Spanish is in huge demand. In fact, i’m still not officially signed up for the course. It is given in five different groups, each with its own days and hours, there’s only one that fits me and technically it is full, but the teacher agreed to accept me. This group has sixty students and it is only one of five. I’ll have to go through some more bureaucratic hoops to get an official grade too.

Our Spanish teacher gave us homework for yesterday. I didn’t do it, of course. No-one was really sure whether to hand it in. At the end of the lesson one female student asked loudly: “Do we have to hand in the homework?”, to which i immediately replied: “Shhhhhh!” Then someone told me quietly: “You should forgive her, she is an atudait.”

If you are not Israeli, this requires an explanation. Atudai (עתודאי, f. -it, pl. -im) is someone who is allowed to complete an academic degree before he is drafted to IDF service. So it means that she a). is a geek and b). hasn’t been in the army yet and hence she doesn’t know what a “kit bag question” is. In IDF slang, a “kit bag question” is a question better not asked, because the reply can be positive. It originates at a very common story – the commander tells the unit to run and some stupid soldier asks – “With the kit bag or without the kit bag?” The reply is obvious. This story is very famous, but when i was at tironut (boot camp) someone actually asked this exact question.

Another Hebrew saying goes: “Suckers never die.”

No Nukes, part 4

Iran is given a deadline to respond to UN demands about its nuclear program.

This is not fair. I don’t remember Israel responding to any UN demands about its nuclear program.

That’s right: I know that Iran is a theocratic dictatorship that shows clear intentions to destroy my country and a maybe a bunch of others, like the USA. And Israel is a (perceived) responsible democracy, that too often shows idiotic compassion towards its worst enemies; Israel also says in some way or another that it is “not going to be the first country in the Middle East to use nuclear weapons”. None of it matters. Someone – please – break this vicious circle – now.

Ima shelkha zona

The wall clock is in the garbage now. The alarm clock still works. That they stopped on the same day is a curiosity.

I’m using the Hebrew phrase “ima shelkha zona” (“your mother is a whore”) more and more lately. It’s been waiting inside me to come out ever since i heard it used so effectively on the brilliant Chamber Quintet’s “Watermelons” sketch (i won’t get into details).

Here’s an example: Amir Peretz, ima shelkha zona!

It can make a good bumper sticker.