Protest

It’s well-known that animal rights activists often protest against fur. You know, by showing nude models saying that they’ll rather go naked than wear fur, and by more mainstream means. It’s justified, but it’s strange to protest so loudly against something that is actually used by few people because of its price, and not to protest much against leather, which nearly everyone puts on their feet. Do they protest against people who make animals suffer or against bourgeois hedonism?

Chat

In the library of the Hebrew University a religious Jewish student has a friendly and lively chat with an Arab student, in Arabic. They speak about memorial ceremonies for Israeli soldiers which are to be held tomorrow.

Don’t let anyone fool you: There is peace between Arabs and Jews.

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Happy Independence day.

People Speaking – Do

— “No! It can’t be true! What a disgrace. Did you hear who received the Nobel Peace Prize?”

— “No. Who? Abu-Mazen?”

— “No, but the letters are almost the same.”

— “Eh… I don’t know.”

— “Obama.”

— “But what did he do?”

— “Exactly.”

Zero-State

The blogger known as Nobody asks: Are you afraid of a one-state world?

I am afraid of one-state world, especially the United Nations kind of it. I prefer zero-state world.

Hadar went to Northern Italy and told me: “They all speak German there. Why do they belong to Italy and not to Germany?”

And why doesn’t Austria belong to Germany? And why doesn’t Alsace belong to Germany? And why doesn’t Transylvania belong to Hungary? And why doesn’t Karmiel belong to Russia?

There shouldn’t be states – there should be only municipalities. Municipalities that share language or culture should organize themselves into non-exclusive cultural associations. And that’s all that’s really needed.

Made Me Cry – Neda

Whatever it means, Neda made me cry, too.

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.

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.

Crime

I am familiar with only one Israeli media personality who openly professes right-wing opinions on a publicly funded station: Dudu Elharar.

Well, Dudu Elharar’s program is being closed. He blames Galey Tzahal for shutting him down for his views and says that this is the second biggest crime after the Disengagement. They don’t like the Disengagement comparison, but mildly admit that his views were not exactly their cup of tea.

No more right-wing politics in public Israeli media, then.

Secrets

This is so ridiculous: If is forbidden for newspapers in Israel to publish this: Israel Scandal’s LI Link.

The article says: “In a highly unusual move, Israeli authorities have barred the country’s media from publishing Talansky’s name – revealed now in The Post – saying it could hamper their investigation.” The move is really unusual, because the Israeli press is one of the freest in the world. But for the Israeli government, it is stupid in a very usual way.

This is called “Israbluff”. We can’t even censor things properly. In the really rare occasion when a news story, a song or a movie is censored in Israel, it causes it to be immediately published everywhere. The bad thing about it is not the silly censorship itself. When a state uses law to try and make people not do something, which they will do anyway, it will make people disrespect the law even when it does good things.

Goats

Two years ago there were Knesset elections in Israel.

5,014,622 had the right to vote.

3,137,064 cast a vote.

690,901 voted for the Kadima party, more than for any other party. As usual, Kadima was designated as the ruling party by the president, because that was the people’s choice.

No, it wasn’t.

1,877,558 didn’t vote for anyone. That’s more than twice as much as what Kadima got.

Kadima got 22% of the actual voters and 13.78% of eligible voters.

Apparently, 13.78% is a majority.