ANNAPOLIS AND BEYOND.
Mark Regev, the former Australian who is now the Spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister, addressed a standing-room only capacity crowd on Tuesday, 22/1/08 in the hall of the Kew Shule in Melbourne, Australia.
Some of the remarks he made are summarized below (MM):
Contrary to the impression one may get from media reports, Israel today has some form of relationships with half of the Arab League. As well as that, there are formal peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan,- ‘though, while they may not be very warm ties, however a cold peace is preferable to a hot war.
Annapolis was not meant to bring results on the spot. It is the follow-up from Annapolis which is the most important. The decisions taken there were intended to produce a formula for progress.
The result is that 3 SIMULTANEOUS TRACKS HAVE TO BE FOLLOWED:
1. The Tony Blair track: i.e. he has to work with the Palestinians in capacity building. The legacy of Arafat is a dysfunctional society, which is comparable to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and this has to be completely rebuilt and repaired. The moneys pledged by the European Union must be overseen by him and used to bring about jobs and investments, not graft and corruption.
2. Both parties must commit themselves to the Quartet’s Road Map.
For the Palestinians, this involves immediate disarming of illegal armies; stop incitement and build a healthier political environment. Israel has also responsibilities to implement some of its commitments re illegal outposts and illegal settlements to be dismantled.
3. Political dialogue between the parties must start to show their mutual commitment and their interest to discuss core issues. However, this political track cannot proceed faster than the other 2. It is proposed that some form of agreement will be reached by the end of the year, but it will be difficult and fraught with many stumbling blocks.
The Israeli Government is interested in a stable, contiguous State and a healthy Palestinian Society as its neighbour, not a failed State.
Ultimately they will have to follow and be dependent upon the Road Map. Realistically, compromises will need to be made on both sides.
Q & A FROM THE AUDIENCE.
Mark then offered to run it like a Press Conference, answering probing questions from the gathering. The following points came out as a result.
• Accepted that 2 States for 2 peoples is the eventual desired result. Israel solved the refugee problem for the Jews and a Palestinian State will do the same for the Palestinian refugees.
• There used to be a belief that there are no Palestinians as such (Golda Meir), but simply Arabs who will be absorbed by the vast array of ME Arab countries. Mark assured everyone that the Palestinians have a strong national identity and we must be fair. It is similar to us Jews, who for centuries were not allowed to be recognized as a people and a nation, but simply as a religious group. (Some still want to believe that.) They, like us, are prepared to fight for a homeland.
• Re the hatred inculcated in the population over the decades, how can one deal with this leadership? Must try to overcome it and cultivate the moderates, just as one had to do after ww2 in Europe when enemies came together. Must empower them so that they can overcome the extremists.Must prove to them that it is in their interest first and foremost to moderate their views.
• Re failures of Oslo,- must learn from the mistakes and try not to repeat them. New ones may be made, but one must learn from the past failures.
• Re Bush’s visit,- result was a good feeling in Israel,- that they are on the "same page" re Iran also.
• Re Hamas,- there is absolutely no political logic re their actions. They are isolated from everyone,-inc. those who came to Annapolis. Those present were invited because they want to see stability in the ME,- Hamas et al. do not. In whose interest is it to target the Southern town of Sderot with their rockets? It’s a “nihilist” approach!
• Re Sderot,- no immediate solution. The Government asks the inhabitants to have patience, be strong and gives them whatever support it can.
• Re territorial concessions,- the Government does not have to give up any territory, until Final Status talks, according to the Road Map. Mark assured everyone re JERUSALEM that although both peoples want it to be their Capital, Olmert as the former Mayor of Jerusalem is hardly going to jeopardize the status of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the Jewish State of Israel(applause). (It is obviously the boundaries of Jerusalem that will eventually have to be determined!MM)
• Re Eretz Israel: why should Jewish-claimed land in the West Bank territories be relinquished? Although both the PM and FM are brought up in the Betar tradition, i.e. on the Right, the realities on the ground made them realize that they have no wish to administer a few million Arabs under Israeli sovereignty. No one wants a binational State like Lebanon!
• INDONESIA: as the largest Moslem country, could play a more important role than as a spectator. They could be involved in trying to assist the Palestinians and help ensure the peace process to be accepted more widely in the Arab world.
• Islamic fundamentalism is a huge threat, not only to Israel, but also to the whole world. On the one hand one must extend the hand of friendship to shore up the moderates, but with other hand, one must keep Hamas, Iran, Al Queda, etc. at bay. Al Jazeera has a lot to answer for in inciting rejection of all good initiatives and intentions by Israel.
• SAUDI ARABIANS: still difficult to deal with, but there are some positive indications that a stable ME is also in their interests.
• ABASS, with all his faults is still the only one to talk to. He has many internal challenges to deal with and Israel, Blair and others have to try and help him.
• IRAN is not only Israel’s problem, but everyone’s problem. A nuclear Iran is totally not acceptable to Israel. Sanctions which affect the elites more than the average Iranians may eventually work. Diplomatic pressures have to be employed, but tightend, not relaxed.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
ISRAEL: "DEEP INSIDE THE PLUCKY COUNTRY". by Greg Sheridan.
THE AUSTRALIAN
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor |
January 19, 2008
IN a land of stark, powerful and sometimes bizarre images, as Israel is, perhaps the most ghostly for an Australian are the countless gum trees that populate Israel, the north especially.
Israelis brought in the gum trees to drain the swamps. Now they are not so sure whether the fast-growing and thirsty trees are an ecological plus or not. But these exotic Australian settlers in the land of the Bible are now too numerous to eradicate, and too beautiful.
Their presence is almost surreal in the much bombed and fought over land of Israel. But the gum trees are friendly, especially to an Australian visitor. It's as if a single ghost gum represents every Australian soldier who ever fell in the Middle East, through all the many decades that Australian soldiers have been fighting and dying there.
The Middle East is an indelible part of Australia's past and of its future. Our strategic engagement there is in the direct defence of our national interests, for the Middle East is the pivot of global conflict.
Three weeks in Israel recently presented a compelling series of images. Often enough it's images that are fought about in the Middle East. Yet in the context of Israel, it is seldom images of Israel that attract attention. It is images instead of the Palestinian territories. These are indeed compelling and they are among the most reported, seen and discussed images in the world. They deserve attention. But here's something else.
Alongside the territories is a much under-reported but fascinating and unique country. It's called Israel.
The world media makes a mistake by using the same reporters to cover the Palestinian territories as well as Israel. They can't do both, and most don't try to.
They cover the territories and they only cover Israel as a brooding and malign presence in the territories.
Naturally the reporting is one-sided. But it is worse than that. It omits from the equation Israel and the Israelis, and all the countless enthralling and diverse aspects of Israeli politics and society.
It is ever the fate of stable, democratic countries, even those involved in a conflict, to be under-reported. Israel was more reported a few years ago, when terrorists were murdering 1500 of its citizens a year. Now, with the security barrier, wrongly labelled a wall when it is mostly a fence, terrorist infiltration is much more difficult and perhaps a dozen or so Israelis are killed a year by terrorists.
Although Israel is a physically small country - it's one-third the size of Tasmania - most of its seven million people distribute themselves over incredibly diverse cities.
Jerusalem is an eternal city: the centre of Judaism, the fountainhead of Christianity and an important site for Islam. Visually it is stunning, its character maintained by the most enlightened civic ordinance on record: that all new buildings must be constructed of white Jerusalem stone. Like most Israeli cities it has several diverse communities: ultra-orthodox religious Jews who don't serve in the army and often don't work, Arab Muslims, Arab Christians (a small and diminishing minority), secular Jews, and national religious Jews who serve in the army and participate in the modern economy.
Tel Aviv, Israel's biggest city, is entirely different. It is a sensuous Mediterranean city that offers every decent amenity of any cosmopolitan European city. Its hedonism and its sensuousness are tempered by the strategic gravity of Israel's situation, by everyone doing their military service and by the cultural depth of Judaism, the traditions of the book. Tel Aviv is predominantly secular Jewish, with very few Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews.
Haifa, the port city to the north of Tel Aviv, is different again. It has the largest Arab minority of a big Israeli city and is where Arabs and Jews most easily and fully mix together, although such mixing occurs all across Israel. Haifa is also the world headquarters of the Bahai faith, which was founded in Iran and has suffered terrible persecution there and so has fled to two countries where religious minorities are not persecuted: Israel and India.
Israel is full of such anomalies. The Druze are a small, separate, Arab religious group found in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Within Israel, they are fiercely loyal to the state of Israel (the Druze in Syria are loyal Syrians and in Lebanon loyal Lebanese) and serve in the Israeli army with great distinction, so that many have been represented in its most elite fighting units.
I caught a glimpse of another Muslim minority, the Bedouin, from the air when I flew in a small plane over the Negev Desert, south and east of Tel Aviv. There I spied dozens of small makeshift settlements, more or less completely outside legal regulation. But these were not the illegal Jewish settlements of media legend. They were Bedouin encampments, often of a few caravans or houses, seemingly impossibly isolated, scattered through the desert. The problem they cause is for those trying to get education and social services to their children.
To the east of the Negev, on the edge of the Dead Sea, I got an aerial glimpse of Masada, the astounding mountain-top fortress where a group of Jews made their last stand against the Roman Empire. On another day, visiting a northern part of the Dead Sea, I came upon a group of tourists cavorting joyfully in the strange, viscous, mineral-filled water. Their accents were unmistakable. They were a group of Malaysian tourists; yet Malaysian passports bear the absurd restriction that says Malaysian citizens may not visit Israel.
One night I dined at the home of a local Israeli Arab leader in the almost entirely Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh, just west of Jerusalem. It has always been identified with the Israeli state. My host had his complaints about the Israeli Government but he was also a proud Israeli. And every night his town, which has many restaurants, is full of Israeli Jews at the countless eateries because, and here I'll make a clear statement of cultural preference, Arab food is generally a little more interesting than Jewish food.
I spent days in the north of Israel and visited the town of Metulla, on the tiny tip of a finger of Israeli territory that juts into southern Lebanon. Until the 2006 war with Hezbollah, its people were repeatedly attacked by rockets from southern Lebanon. The municipality organised field trips away from the town for the children, but mostly the residents stayed. I visited the town's Canada Centre to try the odd practice of pistol shooting on the gun range. Here's another paradox of Israeli society. Many people have guns but it is not remotely a macho society. Its murder rate is low. Binge drinking is not part of the culture. Nobody fires a gun into the air at a wedding. Although the shortest time in Israel is between the light turning green in front of you and the car behind you honking, people don't settle traffic disputes with gunplay. Israelis argue - loudly, abrasively, obsessively - at endless length, but they seldom resort to fisticuffs.
I saw Gadot, the now disused network of bunkers and tunnels constructed by the Syrian soldiers in the Golan Heights. Before Israel seized the Golan Heights, Syrian soldiers would fire from the bunkers at workers on the kibbutz below.
But I also sought out the controversial images of Israel, in particular those of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. A word on definitions. After the 1967 war, when Israel was attacked by a coalition of its Arab neighbours, Israel took territory in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Some of this, Israelis argue, is necessary for security.
It has since left Gaza. Israel is constantly urged to go back to its 1967 borders, but the two places where it has done that, in southern Lebanon and Gaza, the result has been disastrous. It was subject to thousands of rocket attacks from southern Lebanon until it went to war with Hezbollah and now every day Qassam rockets are fired from Gaza at nearby Israeli civilian towns, especially Sderot.
The final borders between Israel and a putative Palestinian state have yet to be worked out. Every inch of territory with a Jewish inhabitant beyond the 1967 borders is commonly referred to as a Jewish settlement. I spent days driving up and down the West Bank and visited as many Jewish settlements as I could. These included suburbs of Jerusalem such as Gilot and Har Homa, big settlements just outside Jerusalem such as Gush Etzion and Ma'ale Adumin, and the biggest, distant settlement, the town of Ariel.
Although I think Israel will be prepared to give up numerous settlements in the West Bank, I don't think any of those named above will be given up under any circumstances. The stereotype of the Jewish settler, as columnist and author Hillel Halkin has written, is of "a belligerently bearded Jew with a knit skullcap on his head, a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other". It's a stereotype I didn't meet at all in any of these settlements, and not for want of trying, although of course I met only a fraction of the nearly 400,000 Jews who live beyond the 1967 lines.
There are certainly ideologically militant and intolerant settlers, but they are a minority. While committed to Israel like virtually all its citizens, the settlers I met lived where they did for a variety of reasons, mainly the lower cost of housing, the communal lifestyle and educational opportunities, and sometimes because of a desire to be connected to biblical lands.
The status of the different communities routinely lumped into the single category of settlements varies enormously. Israel officially annexed some parts of East Jerusalem straight after 1967. Although there may one day be a compromise on Jerusalem, no Israeli government will give up central suburbs such as Har Homa and Gilot.
For an Australian it is almost impossible to imagine the smallness of the distances involved. Gilot was routinely fired on by snipers in Bethlehem several years ago, and so, well before the security fence was put up, Gilot had its own system of walls and shields, especially for children's playgrounds. For Gilot to be fired on from Bethlehem is like Sydney's Surry Hills being fired on from Redfern, or Richmond being fired on from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Jerusalem, in the view of many Israelis, becomes indefensible without its Jewish suburbs developed since 1967.
The status of Gush Etzion, a little distance to the southwest of Jerusalem, is also intriguing. It was a Jewish area before 1948, when the UN divided the land of Israel into Jewish and Palestinian states, which the Palestinians and their surrounding Arab neighbours declined to accept, so that several Arab nations launched a war on Israel. The Jordanian army took control of Gush Etzion at that time.
After 1967 it was re-established as a Jewish settlement. Gush Etzion as a Jewish settlement has a 20th-century history long pre-dating 1967. Before the intifada, to get to Gush Etzion you would drive through Bethlehem. Israelis in those days commonly went to dentists in Ramallah, because it was cheaper. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians earned a good living working in Israel.
The need to prevent terrorism has compromised everyone's quality of life. Now, to get to Gush Etzion from Jerusalem, you drive through a tunnel road. When you emerge from the tunnel, a good deal of the subsequent road is behind walls. The road is Israeli, the land on either side is Palestinian territory, and of course there are checkpoints to get back into Jerusalem as well as armed guards at the entrance to Gush Etzion.
And yet life in Gush Etzion is normal. Behind the gates people hitchhike routinely (as they do in much of Israel) because they all trust each other. On the day I visit, a group of American Jewish teenagers are there as part of a program to acquaint diaspora Jewish youth with their cultural heritage. They are the normal loud-mouthed, good natured, overbearing American kids.
The only odd thing about them is that they are accompanied by two security guards, in this case Israeli girls who look barely older than the teenagers they are guarding and carry rifles as tall as themselves.
The mayor of Gush Etzion, Shaul Goldstein, tells me that many people live there because of the availability of quality housing. They can buy a good apartment for $US200,000 ($228,000) and for a little more, a house with a garden. That's impossible in Jerusalem proper. And the settlement has renowned schools. Says Goldstein: "We thought during the intifada that people would leave. But people didn't leave. Instead they kept coming, even from Australia, even from Bondi Beach.
"One reason is the community lifestyle. People's children can walk safely from house to house. People also feel they are part of history. I'm driving to work through the path of King David. It's important to me as a religious man."
The most emphatic settlement I visited was Ariel. It's a Jewish town of about 30,000 people, deep in the West Bank. Ariel University College has about 10,000 students, 3000 of them doing pre-undergraduate courses. The student population is racially diverse, as is Israel. The Ethiopian presence is noticeable. But Ariel officials tell me some local Palestinians attend as well, although of course they are under pressure not to.
Ariel is a small but substantial city. It is a beautiful place, full of public gardens and garden homes, and it has a distinctly European air and style. People don't like to use the back road to Jerusalem because even in these relatively calm days there is the danger of attacks. Just a few days before I visit, a Jewish settler, not from Ariel but from nearby, was killed on the road, as it turns out by two Palestinian Authority policemen who simply waited for a victim to come along.
I attend a seminar at Ariel on the international media's treatment of Israel. Leonard Asper, the Canadian part-owner of Network Ten in Australia, delivers an alternately witty and fiery denunciation of the media's bias and hostility against Israel. Later Asper, former Israeli defence minister Moshe Arens and I tour the university. It is doing remarkable, cutting-edge work on laser technology. It is able to do this because of the one million Russian Jewish immigrants who have come to Israel in the past 15 years.
Among them were many brilliant scientists and intellectuals. Some Israeli universities were cautious about hiring them, unsure whether their budgets could sustain rapid academic expansion. Ariel went ahead and hired the best Russians it could get, and the research funds have followed.
I comment to Arens that it is a good time, a calm time, in Israel. He replies: "It is calm only because of the efforts of the Israeli Defence Forces, not for any other reason."
Of course the settlements and their future are endlessly debated in Israel, as is everything else. I left Israel profoundly optimistic about the morale of the society and the resolve of the people, but profoundly pessimistic about the peace process. If there were peace, any compromise on borders might be possible. But too many Arab leaders, and too many Palestinian leaders, are playing for the very long term and still believe that in time they will wipe Israel off the map.
Apart from the overwhelming experience of visiting the Yad Vashem museum recalling the Holocaust, the most powerful image I saw in Israel was in a small office in the Knesset (parliament) building in Jerusalem. I had gone to see Ephraim Sneh, a white-haired veteran Labour Party politician and soldier, a former cabinet minister and a former general.
He points to a picture on the back wall of his office. It is of two Israeli F-15 fighters flying over Auschwitz. "When we didn't have F-15s, we had Auschwitz," he says.
His grandparents, he tells me, were killed by the Polish farmers they had paid to shelter them. You learn the lessons of trusting other people with your security.
Israel will certainly make compromises. But it will not commit suicide.
MY COMMENT:
Thank God for Greg Sheridan who has always gone around the world without the rose-coloured glasses of the "politically-correct" current Western journalists who always try to see the worst in our Western societies, while looking for the "underlying causes" of our enemies,- i.e. blaming the victims for the others' evil deeds!
This is the fashionable way to look at today's conflicts! Perhaps there are more obvious causes of people's evil intents? Such as envy and jealousy of "the others',- i.e. "the infidels' " success story which is Israel?
What intelligent logic deems it that the poor Palestinians no longer living under "occupation" in Gaza, should persist in sending rockets onto Israeli towns to incur more wrath and retaliation unto their hapless people?
Furthermore, what problem would be caused by integrating the modern Israeli settlement-towns on the West Bank , within a modern Palestinian Arab State, living side by side in peace and mutual recognition with Israel? Perhaps they might learn something more useful than terrorism,- like the meaning of freedom and democracy?
Toeing the Arab -ine in fear, too often Western journalists aid-and-abet those who say " let's hate them, drive them into the sea. To hell with our people. If the Israelis will retaliate and kill a few more of us, so what? Those bleeding-hearts journalists will blame them, not us! They'll be forced to give up and eventually we will be victorious!"
Good-on-you Greg Sheridan for showing us the plucky little country which Israel is. The hatemongers don't have a hope to succeed in developing their own state, without starting to love their own people alive, more than the Israelis' dead.
Good on The Australian for showing us some true facts for a change,- this is why I only read it nowadays.
(MM)
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor |
January 19, 2008
IN a land of stark, powerful and sometimes bizarre images, as Israel is, perhaps the most ghostly for an Australian are the countless gum trees that populate Israel, the north especially.
Israelis brought in the gum trees to drain the swamps. Now they are not so sure whether the fast-growing and thirsty trees are an ecological plus or not. But these exotic Australian settlers in the land of the Bible are now too numerous to eradicate, and too beautiful.
Their presence is almost surreal in the much bombed and fought over land of Israel. But the gum trees are friendly, especially to an Australian visitor. It's as if a single ghost gum represents every Australian soldier who ever fell in the Middle East, through all the many decades that Australian soldiers have been fighting and dying there.
The Middle East is an indelible part of Australia's past and of its future. Our strategic engagement there is in the direct defence of our national interests, for the Middle East is the pivot of global conflict.
Three weeks in Israel recently presented a compelling series of images. Often enough it's images that are fought about in the Middle East. Yet in the context of Israel, it is seldom images of Israel that attract attention. It is images instead of the Palestinian territories. These are indeed compelling and they are among the most reported, seen and discussed images in the world. They deserve attention. But here's something else.
Alongside the territories is a much under-reported but fascinating and unique country. It's called Israel.
The world media makes a mistake by using the same reporters to cover the Palestinian territories as well as Israel. They can't do both, and most don't try to.
They cover the territories and they only cover Israel as a brooding and malign presence in the territories.
Naturally the reporting is one-sided. But it is worse than that. It omits from the equation Israel and the Israelis, and all the countless enthralling and diverse aspects of Israeli politics and society.
It is ever the fate of stable, democratic countries, even those involved in a conflict, to be under-reported. Israel was more reported a few years ago, when terrorists were murdering 1500 of its citizens a year. Now, with the security barrier, wrongly labelled a wall when it is mostly a fence, terrorist infiltration is much more difficult and perhaps a dozen or so Israelis are killed a year by terrorists.
Although Israel is a physically small country - it's one-third the size of Tasmania - most of its seven million people distribute themselves over incredibly diverse cities.
Jerusalem is an eternal city: the centre of Judaism, the fountainhead of Christianity and an important site for Islam. Visually it is stunning, its character maintained by the most enlightened civic ordinance on record: that all new buildings must be constructed of white Jerusalem stone. Like most Israeli cities it has several diverse communities: ultra-orthodox religious Jews who don't serve in the army and often don't work, Arab Muslims, Arab Christians (a small and diminishing minority), secular Jews, and national religious Jews who serve in the army and participate in the modern economy.
Tel Aviv, Israel's biggest city, is entirely different. It is a sensuous Mediterranean city that offers every decent amenity of any cosmopolitan European city. Its hedonism and its sensuousness are tempered by the strategic gravity of Israel's situation, by everyone doing their military service and by the cultural depth of Judaism, the traditions of the book. Tel Aviv is predominantly secular Jewish, with very few Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews.
Haifa, the port city to the north of Tel Aviv, is different again. It has the largest Arab minority of a big Israeli city and is where Arabs and Jews most easily and fully mix together, although such mixing occurs all across Israel. Haifa is also the world headquarters of the Bahai faith, which was founded in Iran and has suffered terrible persecution there and so has fled to two countries where religious minorities are not persecuted: Israel and India.
Israel is full of such anomalies. The Druze are a small, separate, Arab religious group found in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Within Israel, they are fiercely loyal to the state of Israel (the Druze in Syria are loyal Syrians and in Lebanon loyal Lebanese) and serve in the Israeli army with great distinction, so that many have been represented in its most elite fighting units.
I caught a glimpse of another Muslim minority, the Bedouin, from the air when I flew in a small plane over the Negev Desert, south and east of Tel Aviv. There I spied dozens of small makeshift settlements, more or less completely outside legal regulation. But these were not the illegal Jewish settlements of media legend. They were Bedouin encampments, often of a few caravans or houses, seemingly impossibly isolated, scattered through the desert. The problem they cause is for those trying to get education and social services to their children.
To the east of the Negev, on the edge of the Dead Sea, I got an aerial glimpse of Masada, the astounding mountain-top fortress where a group of Jews made their last stand against the Roman Empire. On another day, visiting a northern part of the Dead Sea, I came upon a group of tourists cavorting joyfully in the strange, viscous, mineral-filled water. Their accents were unmistakable. They were a group of Malaysian tourists; yet Malaysian passports bear the absurd restriction that says Malaysian citizens may not visit Israel.
One night I dined at the home of a local Israeli Arab leader in the almost entirely Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh, just west of Jerusalem. It has always been identified with the Israeli state. My host had his complaints about the Israeli Government but he was also a proud Israeli. And every night his town, which has many restaurants, is full of Israeli Jews at the countless eateries because, and here I'll make a clear statement of cultural preference, Arab food is generally a little more interesting than Jewish food.
I spent days in the north of Israel and visited the town of Metulla, on the tiny tip of a finger of Israeli territory that juts into southern Lebanon. Until the 2006 war with Hezbollah, its people were repeatedly attacked by rockets from southern Lebanon. The municipality organised field trips away from the town for the children, but mostly the residents stayed. I visited the town's Canada Centre to try the odd practice of pistol shooting on the gun range. Here's another paradox of Israeli society. Many people have guns but it is not remotely a macho society. Its murder rate is low. Binge drinking is not part of the culture. Nobody fires a gun into the air at a wedding. Although the shortest time in Israel is between the light turning green in front of you and the car behind you honking, people don't settle traffic disputes with gunplay. Israelis argue - loudly, abrasively, obsessively - at endless length, but they seldom resort to fisticuffs.
I saw Gadot, the now disused network of bunkers and tunnels constructed by the Syrian soldiers in the Golan Heights. Before Israel seized the Golan Heights, Syrian soldiers would fire from the bunkers at workers on the kibbutz below.
But I also sought out the controversial images of Israel, in particular those of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. A word on definitions. After the 1967 war, when Israel was attacked by a coalition of its Arab neighbours, Israel took territory in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Some of this, Israelis argue, is necessary for security.
It has since left Gaza. Israel is constantly urged to go back to its 1967 borders, but the two places where it has done that, in southern Lebanon and Gaza, the result has been disastrous. It was subject to thousands of rocket attacks from southern Lebanon until it went to war with Hezbollah and now every day Qassam rockets are fired from Gaza at nearby Israeli civilian towns, especially Sderot.
The final borders between Israel and a putative Palestinian state have yet to be worked out. Every inch of territory with a Jewish inhabitant beyond the 1967 borders is commonly referred to as a Jewish settlement. I spent days driving up and down the West Bank and visited as many Jewish settlements as I could. These included suburbs of Jerusalem such as Gilot and Har Homa, big settlements just outside Jerusalem such as Gush Etzion and Ma'ale Adumin, and the biggest, distant settlement, the town of Ariel.
Although I think Israel will be prepared to give up numerous settlements in the West Bank, I don't think any of those named above will be given up under any circumstances. The stereotype of the Jewish settler, as columnist and author Hillel Halkin has written, is of "a belligerently bearded Jew with a knit skullcap on his head, a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other". It's a stereotype I didn't meet at all in any of these settlements, and not for want of trying, although of course I met only a fraction of the nearly 400,000 Jews who live beyond the 1967 lines.
There are certainly ideologically militant and intolerant settlers, but they are a minority. While committed to Israel like virtually all its citizens, the settlers I met lived where they did for a variety of reasons, mainly the lower cost of housing, the communal lifestyle and educational opportunities, and sometimes because of a desire to be connected to biblical lands.
The status of the different communities routinely lumped into the single category of settlements varies enormously. Israel officially annexed some parts of East Jerusalem straight after 1967. Although there may one day be a compromise on Jerusalem, no Israeli government will give up central suburbs such as Har Homa and Gilot.
For an Australian it is almost impossible to imagine the smallness of the distances involved. Gilot was routinely fired on by snipers in Bethlehem several years ago, and so, well before the security fence was put up, Gilot had its own system of walls and shields, especially for children's playgrounds. For Gilot to be fired on from Bethlehem is like Sydney's Surry Hills being fired on from Redfern, or Richmond being fired on from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Jerusalem, in the view of many Israelis, becomes indefensible without its Jewish suburbs developed since 1967.
The status of Gush Etzion, a little distance to the southwest of Jerusalem, is also intriguing. It was a Jewish area before 1948, when the UN divided the land of Israel into Jewish and Palestinian states, which the Palestinians and their surrounding Arab neighbours declined to accept, so that several Arab nations launched a war on Israel. The Jordanian army took control of Gush Etzion at that time.
After 1967 it was re-established as a Jewish settlement. Gush Etzion as a Jewish settlement has a 20th-century history long pre-dating 1967. Before the intifada, to get to Gush Etzion you would drive through Bethlehem. Israelis in those days commonly went to dentists in Ramallah, because it was cheaper. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians earned a good living working in Israel.
The need to prevent terrorism has compromised everyone's quality of life. Now, to get to Gush Etzion from Jerusalem, you drive through a tunnel road. When you emerge from the tunnel, a good deal of the subsequent road is behind walls. The road is Israeli, the land on either side is Palestinian territory, and of course there are checkpoints to get back into Jerusalem as well as armed guards at the entrance to Gush Etzion.
And yet life in Gush Etzion is normal. Behind the gates people hitchhike routinely (as they do in much of Israel) because they all trust each other. On the day I visit, a group of American Jewish teenagers are there as part of a program to acquaint diaspora Jewish youth with their cultural heritage. They are the normal loud-mouthed, good natured, overbearing American kids.
The only odd thing about them is that they are accompanied by two security guards, in this case Israeli girls who look barely older than the teenagers they are guarding and carry rifles as tall as themselves.
The mayor of Gush Etzion, Shaul Goldstein, tells me that many people live there because of the availability of quality housing. They can buy a good apartment for $US200,000 ($228,000) and for a little more, a house with a garden. That's impossible in Jerusalem proper. And the settlement has renowned schools. Says Goldstein: "We thought during the intifada that people would leave. But people didn't leave. Instead they kept coming, even from Australia, even from Bondi Beach.
"One reason is the community lifestyle. People's children can walk safely from house to house. People also feel they are part of history. I'm driving to work through the path of King David. It's important to me as a religious man."
The most emphatic settlement I visited was Ariel. It's a Jewish town of about 30,000 people, deep in the West Bank. Ariel University College has about 10,000 students, 3000 of them doing pre-undergraduate courses. The student population is racially diverse, as is Israel. The Ethiopian presence is noticeable. But Ariel officials tell me some local Palestinians attend as well, although of course they are under pressure not to.
Ariel is a small but substantial city. It is a beautiful place, full of public gardens and garden homes, and it has a distinctly European air and style. People don't like to use the back road to Jerusalem because even in these relatively calm days there is the danger of attacks. Just a few days before I visit, a Jewish settler, not from Ariel but from nearby, was killed on the road, as it turns out by two Palestinian Authority policemen who simply waited for a victim to come along.
I attend a seminar at Ariel on the international media's treatment of Israel. Leonard Asper, the Canadian part-owner of Network Ten in Australia, delivers an alternately witty and fiery denunciation of the media's bias and hostility against Israel. Later Asper, former Israeli defence minister Moshe Arens and I tour the university. It is doing remarkable, cutting-edge work on laser technology. It is able to do this because of the one million Russian Jewish immigrants who have come to Israel in the past 15 years.
Among them were many brilliant scientists and intellectuals. Some Israeli universities were cautious about hiring them, unsure whether their budgets could sustain rapid academic expansion. Ariel went ahead and hired the best Russians it could get, and the research funds have followed.
I comment to Arens that it is a good time, a calm time, in Israel. He replies: "It is calm only because of the efforts of the Israeli Defence Forces, not for any other reason."
Of course the settlements and their future are endlessly debated in Israel, as is everything else. I left Israel profoundly optimistic about the morale of the society and the resolve of the people, but profoundly pessimistic about the peace process. If there were peace, any compromise on borders might be possible. But too many Arab leaders, and too many Palestinian leaders, are playing for the very long term and still believe that in time they will wipe Israel off the map.
Apart from the overwhelming experience of visiting the Yad Vashem museum recalling the Holocaust, the most powerful image I saw in Israel was in a small office in the Knesset (parliament) building in Jerusalem. I had gone to see Ephraim Sneh, a white-haired veteran Labour Party politician and soldier, a former cabinet minister and a former general.
He points to a picture on the back wall of his office. It is of two Israeli F-15 fighters flying over Auschwitz. "When we didn't have F-15s, we had Auschwitz," he says.
His grandparents, he tells me, were killed by the Polish farmers they had paid to shelter them. You learn the lessons of trusting other people with your security.
Israel will certainly make compromises. But it will not commit suicide.
MY COMMENT:
Thank God for Greg Sheridan who has always gone around the world without the rose-coloured glasses of the "politically-correct" current Western journalists who always try to see the worst in our Western societies, while looking for the "underlying causes" of our enemies,- i.e. blaming the victims for the others' evil deeds!
This is the fashionable way to look at today's conflicts! Perhaps there are more obvious causes of people's evil intents? Such as envy and jealousy of "the others',- i.e. "the infidels' " success story which is Israel?
What intelligent logic deems it that the poor Palestinians no longer living under "occupation" in Gaza, should persist in sending rockets onto Israeli towns to incur more wrath and retaliation unto their hapless people?
Furthermore, what problem would be caused by integrating the modern Israeli settlement-towns on the West Bank , within a modern Palestinian Arab State, living side by side in peace and mutual recognition with Israel? Perhaps they might learn something more useful than terrorism,- like the meaning of freedom and democracy?
Toeing the Arab -ine in fear, too often Western journalists aid-and-abet those who say " let's hate them, drive them into the sea. To hell with our people. If the Israelis will retaliate and kill a few more of us, so what? Those bleeding-hearts journalists will blame them, not us! They'll be forced to give up and eventually we will be victorious!"
Good-on-you Greg Sheridan for showing us the plucky little country which Israel is. The hatemongers don't have a hope to succeed in developing their own state, without starting to love their own people alive, more than the Israelis' dead.
Good on The Australian for showing us some true facts for a change,- this is why I only read it nowadays.
(MM)
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
DEALING WITH GAZA: SCRUPLES AND SECURITY.
SCRUPLES AND SECURITY
Rabbi Dow Marmur
The Government of Israel has obviously decided that the way of dealing with Hamas is to try to eliminate its leaders. Some 300 Hamas men have already been killed; according to estimates, there’s another 1000 on the hit list. Bush may very well have endorsed the plan, perhaps on condition that the “collateral damage” of civilian deaths be kept to a minimum. Mahmoud Abbas may have chosen to be willfully blind to the situation, even when occasionally he issues condemnations of Israeli “massacres.”
One of the prices that Israel may have to pay for its action is the failure to get home Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas. Though it would be a huge feather in Prime Minister Olmert’s cap to be photographed with the freed Shalit – and, in view of his current standing, he needs every feather he can get – but it’s possible that it’s really Ehud Barak, the Defense Minster, who’s calling the shots, and he’s not likely to care for Olmert’s cap. Barak is a former Chief of Staff and generals often say that there are times when sacrificing one or two of your own for a greater cause may be justified.
It’s difficult to defend the Israeli actions, but it’s even harder to condemn them. The Jewish state cannot afford to have “Hamastan,” the Iranian stooge, at its doorstep, when it repeatedly proclaims its commitment to the imminent destruction of “the Zionist entity.” Pragmatic politicians are prepared to compromise (Olmert, Abbas and many others). The leaders of Hamas are religious ideologues/fanatics who don’t accept any half-measures. As far as they’re concerned, Israel must be eliminated, irrespective of how much time and how many lives it takes.
The death of innocent civilians troubles the Israeli public. Though so far no Israeli civilians have lost their lives as a result of the constant barrage of Qassam rockets fired by Hamas from across the border with Gaza onto the town of Sderot in the Negev and surrounding areas, many have been injured and much property has been damaged. Hamas deliberately targets civilians whereas the IDF does not, even though occasionally and unintentionally Palestinian civilians are killed by Israeli fire.
The enemies of Israel are understandably keen to exploit every Palestinian civilian death. Thus, with the help of hostile television reporters from different countries, they managed to blame Israel for the death seven years ago of a 12-year old boy, even though it has been demonstrated that the incident was staged for the benefit of the media. Israelis are, therefore, often cynical about “world opinion” and prefer to live by Ben Gurion’s famous maxim, “It’s not what Gentiles say that counts but what Jews do.” In this situation, the Jews may be doing as well as gruesome circumstances permit. The results aren’t pretty but the alternatives – so the argument goes - may be worse.
On the assumption that the media abroad depict Israel’s actions against Hamas, coupled with the restrictions it imposes on Gaza, as scandalous, it’s understandable that even friends of Israel are embarrassed. I’m not suggesting that looking at the situation from the perspective of Israel, the moral issues are different, but I am suggesting that when you believe that your very survival is at stake, actions to stop the enemy seems less outrageous, even when they’re morally problematic.
It may be easier to live with moral scruples than with the prospect of destruction, even if from some lofty heights such fears seem exaggerated.
Jerusalem 16.1.08 Dow Marmur
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Rabbi Dow Marmur
The Government of Israel has obviously decided that the way of dealing with Hamas is to try to eliminate its leaders. Some 300 Hamas men have already been killed; according to estimates, there’s another 1000 on the hit list. Bush may very well have endorsed the plan, perhaps on condition that the “collateral damage” of civilian deaths be kept to a minimum. Mahmoud Abbas may have chosen to be willfully blind to the situation, even when occasionally he issues condemnations of Israeli “massacres.”
One of the prices that Israel may have to pay for its action is the failure to get home Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas. Though it would be a huge feather in Prime Minister Olmert’s cap to be photographed with the freed Shalit – and, in view of his current standing, he needs every feather he can get – but it’s possible that it’s really Ehud Barak, the Defense Minster, who’s calling the shots, and he’s not likely to care for Olmert’s cap. Barak is a former Chief of Staff and generals often say that there are times when sacrificing one or two of your own for a greater cause may be justified.
It’s difficult to defend the Israeli actions, but it’s even harder to condemn them. The Jewish state cannot afford to have “Hamastan,” the Iranian stooge, at its doorstep, when it repeatedly proclaims its commitment to the imminent destruction of “the Zionist entity.” Pragmatic politicians are prepared to compromise (Olmert, Abbas and many others). The leaders of Hamas are religious ideologues/fanatics who don’t accept any half-measures. As far as they’re concerned, Israel must be eliminated, irrespective of how much time and how many lives it takes.
The death of innocent civilians troubles the Israeli public. Though so far no Israeli civilians have lost their lives as a result of the constant barrage of Qassam rockets fired by Hamas from across the border with Gaza onto the town of Sderot in the Negev and surrounding areas, many have been injured and much property has been damaged. Hamas deliberately targets civilians whereas the IDF does not, even though occasionally and unintentionally Palestinian civilians are killed by Israeli fire.
The enemies of Israel are understandably keen to exploit every Palestinian civilian death. Thus, with the help of hostile television reporters from different countries, they managed to blame Israel for the death seven years ago of a 12-year old boy, even though it has been demonstrated that the incident was staged for the benefit of the media. Israelis are, therefore, often cynical about “world opinion” and prefer to live by Ben Gurion’s famous maxim, “It’s not what Gentiles say that counts but what Jews do.” In this situation, the Jews may be doing as well as gruesome circumstances permit. The results aren’t pretty but the alternatives – so the argument goes - may be worse.
On the assumption that the media abroad depict Israel’s actions against Hamas, coupled with the restrictions it imposes on Gaza, as scandalous, it’s understandable that even friends of Israel are embarrassed. I’m not suggesting that looking at the situation from the perspective of Israel, the moral issues are different, but I am suggesting that when you believe that your very survival is at stake, actions to stop the enemy seems less outrageous, even when they’re morally problematic.
It may be easier to live with moral scruples than with the prospect of destruction, even if from some lofty heights such fears seem exaggerated.
Jerusalem 16.1.08 Dow Marmur
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Sunday, January 13, 2008
THE STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. Melanie Phillips
(Melanie reiterates basically what I commented on in the next artcle.
MM)
The state of the Jewish people
By Melanie PHILLIPS
Jewish Chronicle,*
12 January 2008
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=558
Beyond the grandstanding over President Bush's visit to
Israel this week, there is an even more important concern
than over what America may be pushing it to do. This is
Israel's own attitude towards its identity and history
and, by extension, its right to exist at all.
Among the Israeli intellectual elite, the instinct for
national self-destruction reaches near-hallucinatory
levels.
A recent research paper by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan,
which wondered why unlike other armies Israeli soldiers
did not rape women under their occupation, claimed that
this was because IDF troops viewed Arab women as
sub-human. This absurd piece of malice was awarded a
teachers' committee prize by the Hebrew University.
Clearly, Nitzan should have interviewed Ha'aretz
editor-in-chief David Landau, who was reported as telling
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a dinner last
September that the Israeli government wanted 'to be
raped' as it was a 'failed state' that needed a
US-imposed settlement.
Such grand guignol flights from reason can only deepen
respect for the strategic genius of Yasser Arafat. He
understood that while Jews would unite against
conventional attack, they wouldn't cope with the
psychological pressure of being turned into international
pariahs through a falsified colonial narrative of
oppression.
But even he could hardly have foreseen the extent to
which Israeli intellectuals would so completely invert
their own history, and swallow the fiction that the
Middle East impasse is over the division of the land and
that Jewish possession of that land is illegitimate.
This series of untruths has now coalesced into an
axiomatic assumption that Jerusalem must be divided, as
stated by Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an
interview in the Jerusalem Post last weekend.
But as Dore Gold authoritatively documents in his
important book 'The Fight for Jerusalem', the Jews have a
unique and overwhelming claim to Jerusalem which is
central to the unique nature of the Jewish state.
It is no accident, therefore, that this pressure to
divide Jerusalem comes at a time when the Jewishness of
Israel is being openly called into question. Olmert says
that a 'two state solution' is essential to preserve
Israel as a Jewish state. But the Arabs themselves have
now ruled out a Jewish state altogether. Shortly before
Annapolis, the Palestinians' chief negotiator Saeeb
Erekat said they would 'never acknowledge Israel's Jewish
identity'.
Olmert insists nevertheless that Mahmoud Abbas accepts
Israel as a Jewish state 'in his soul'. Olmert clearly
possesses truly wondrous psychic powers, displayed even
as members of Fatah associated with Abbas's own security
apparatus were murdering two Israelis on a hike near
Hebron.
The west believes that dividing Jerusalem is the fairest
solution. But when were aggressors ever thus rewarded at
the expense of their victims, even while they continued
their century-old war as the Arabs are doing?
Why doesn't Israel put the record straight? Why doesn't
it remind the world of that same world's conclusion back
in 1920 that the Jews had a unique claim to the entire
land of Israel, including Jerusalem? Why doesn't it
recall how, when Jordan illegally occupied east Jerusalem
until 1967, it desecrated Jewish holy sites, ripping up
Jewish gravestones on the Mount of Olives to use them for
latrines?
Why doesn't it tell the world that the Islamic claim to
Jerusalem is not so much religious as political - and
that as Gold states in his book, since the capture of
Jerusalem is seen as the precursor to the fall of the
entire west the division of the city would recruit untold
additional numbers to the global jihad?
It doesn't do so for two reasons. First, it still fails
to grasp that the real battleground is composed not of
rockets and human bombs but of ideas. And second, much of
its intellectual class has come to believe the mendacious
propaganda of Israel's enemies.
In Israeli schools and on campus, there is widespread
ignorance of Jewish history and of the indissoluble bond
between the religion, the people and the land which
constitutes Jewish identity. When Israel's Education
Minister issues a textbook for Israeli Arab children that
teaches them the Arab propaganda line that the 1948 War
of Independence was a naqba, or catastrophe, something
has gone badly wrong with the foundations of Israeli
self-belief.
When the Israel government refuses to stop the Muslim
authorities in charge of the Temple Mount from destroying
countless excavated artefacts from the Temple in order to
obliterate the evidence of the historic Jewish claim to
Jerusalem, one has to conclude that Israeli diplomacy has
morphed into pathology.
The real reason Israel doesn't fight the battle of ideas
to defend Jewish history and identity is that
increasingly it is repudiating them. The Arabs thus don't
need to do much to bring about the end of the Jewish
state. The Jews will do it for them.
*Some passages in this piece were omitted from the
article as published in the JC.
MM)
The state of the Jewish people
By Melanie PHILLIPS
Jewish Chronicle,*
12 January 2008
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=558
Beyond the grandstanding over President Bush's visit to
Israel this week, there is an even more important concern
than over what America may be pushing it to do. This is
Israel's own attitude towards its identity and history
and, by extension, its right to exist at all.
Among the Israeli intellectual elite, the instinct for
national self-destruction reaches near-hallucinatory
levels.
A recent research paper by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan,
which wondered why unlike other armies Israeli soldiers
did not rape women under their occupation, claimed that
this was because IDF troops viewed Arab women as
sub-human. This absurd piece of malice was awarded a
teachers' committee prize by the Hebrew University.
Clearly, Nitzan should have interviewed Ha'aretz
editor-in-chief David Landau, who was reported as telling
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a dinner last
September that the Israeli government wanted 'to be
raped' as it was a 'failed state' that needed a
US-imposed settlement.
Such grand guignol flights from reason can only deepen
respect for the strategic genius of Yasser Arafat. He
understood that while Jews would unite against
conventional attack, they wouldn't cope with the
psychological pressure of being turned into international
pariahs through a falsified colonial narrative of
oppression.
But even he could hardly have foreseen the extent to
which Israeli intellectuals would so completely invert
their own history, and swallow the fiction that the
Middle East impasse is over the division of the land and
that Jewish possession of that land is illegitimate.
This series of untruths has now coalesced into an
axiomatic assumption that Jerusalem must be divided, as
stated by Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an
interview in the Jerusalem Post last weekend.
But as Dore Gold authoritatively documents in his
important book 'The Fight for Jerusalem', the Jews have a
unique and overwhelming claim to Jerusalem which is
central to the unique nature of the Jewish state.
It is no accident, therefore, that this pressure to
divide Jerusalem comes at a time when the Jewishness of
Israel is being openly called into question. Olmert says
that a 'two state solution' is essential to preserve
Israel as a Jewish state. But the Arabs themselves have
now ruled out a Jewish state altogether. Shortly before
Annapolis, the Palestinians' chief negotiator Saeeb
Erekat said they would 'never acknowledge Israel's Jewish
identity'.
Olmert insists nevertheless that Mahmoud Abbas accepts
Israel as a Jewish state 'in his soul'. Olmert clearly
possesses truly wondrous psychic powers, displayed even
as members of Fatah associated with Abbas's own security
apparatus were murdering two Israelis on a hike near
Hebron.
The west believes that dividing Jerusalem is the fairest
solution. But when were aggressors ever thus rewarded at
the expense of their victims, even while they continued
their century-old war as the Arabs are doing?
Why doesn't Israel put the record straight? Why doesn't
it remind the world of that same world's conclusion back
in 1920 that the Jews had a unique claim to the entire
land of Israel, including Jerusalem? Why doesn't it
recall how, when Jordan illegally occupied east Jerusalem
until 1967, it desecrated Jewish holy sites, ripping up
Jewish gravestones on the Mount of Olives to use them for
latrines?
Why doesn't it tell the world that the Islamic claim to
Jerusalem is not so much religious as political - and
that as Gold states in his book, since the capture of
Jerusalem is seen as the precursor to the fall of the
entire west the division of the city would recruit untold
additional numbers to the global jihad?
It doesn't do so for two reasons. First, it still fails
to grasp that the real battleground is composed not of
rockets and human bombs but of ideas. And second, much of
its intellectual class has come to believe the mendacious
propaganda of Israel's enemies.
In Israeli schools and on campus, there is widespread
ignorance of Jewish history and of the indissoluble bond
between the religion, the people and the land which
constitutes Jewish identity. When Israel's Education
Minister issues a textbook for Israeli Arab children that
teaches them the Arab propaganda line that the 1948 War
of Independence was a naqba, or catastrophe, something
has gone badly wrong with the foundations of Israeli
self-belief.
When the Israel government refuses to stop the Muslim
authorities in charge of the Temple Mount from destroying
countless excavated artefacts from the Temple in order to
obliterate the evidence of the historic Jewish claim to
Jerusalem, one has to conclude that Israeli diplomacy has
morphed into pathology.
The real reason Israel doesn't fight the battle of ideas
to defend Jewish history and identity is that
increasingly it is repudiating them. The Arabs thus don't
need to do much to bring about the end of the Jewish
state. The Jews will do it for them.
*Some passages in this piece were omitted from the
article as published in the JC.
COMMENT: why a Jewish State?
ISRAEL, THE ONLY “JEWISH STATE “, is not a theocracy.
RE http://www.middleway.org/
I am cynical about such groups who try to bring both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs together in a middle-way for peace. They usually attract people with one-sided agendas, not the even-handed ones they are supposed to attract, - but there seem to be a number of such groups on the web and maybe,- just maybe, more from the Arab side will take courage and join up. Usually they are instigated by Israelis and well-meaning Jews with a few Moslems from democratic countries, while Moslems from the Islamic Theocracies and Palestinians are afraid to participate, except those who push their own side's agenda.
Inevitably, these groups face the question of what kind of State Israel should end-up being, when eventually (Please God!)peace will come to their region.
For Diaspora Jewry, Israel is not just a haven for the dispossessed and endangered Jews from all parts of the world. It is our spiritual homeland, not simply another secular, democratic state like any other in the world! We expect it to have the Jewish ethos and spring from the well of Jewish traditions, while following modern democratic principles of human rights. This kind of Jewish nation is not a form of Theocracy as practised in some Islamic States. The Israeli citizens, while very ethnically mixed and multicultural, agree to these basic principles, whether they are religious or secular.
Thus most Diaspora Jews visiting Israel love the idea of being able to experience life in a total Jewish environment. This means observing the Sabbath and the Jewish Holy Days, - not the Sundays and Christian Holy Days of the West,- or no Holy days at all!It also means walking in the footsteps of the Sages of the Torah-scriptures, not only of those of the New Testament or the Koran. It means being able to buy, eat and drink Kosher foods whenever and wherever one wants to. They want to experience the country where primarily Jewish History is taught to the young throughout their school years, alongside all other world histories,- while living in a total Jewish environment which needs to be saved and preserved for future gnerations.
It does not mean however, that Diaspora Jewry expects Israel to be a Theocracy, no matter how much the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) communities would wish it to be. No one wants to have ancient religious edicts imposed on them, nor religion in general rammed down their throats.
In "The Australian" (January (9/1/08), an article described USA Jews who were polled and found to be less and less committed to Israel as a "Jewish State",- or to any "ethno-centric" State! Tzipi Livni, Israeli FM, is apparently very concerned about that and has taken steps to address this problem. But how and why is it so?
I blame the Israeli Jews themselves, first and foremost, who instead of being ambassadors for their sole Jewish nation in the world, flock abroad to live and work or simply as tourists en-masse,- with their "Jewish" part seemingly of little outward concern. We find that they often keep away from us Diaspora Jews (when we would love to embrace them!)and even when we do make contact they don't want further interaction! They rarely participate in traditional rituals with other Jews in the Diaspora communities.
Perhaps it is understandable. Israeli Jews probably look at us Diaspora Jews living our lives unconcerned by daily war, terrorism, or hostile Arab neighbours,- our kids don't have to continuously go and put their lives at risk in the IDF,- and probably feel alienated from us. We discovered quite a few Israelis locally by accident, who don't see or feel anti-Semitism, except anti-Israel hostility because it is "the Jewish State", - so they may not believe in the need to safeguard their totally 'Jewish' nation, but simply their homeland. Who for?- The Haredim (ultra-orthodox) whom they view more as a burden than an asset? For the Diaspora who push them to "fight to the last Israeli"? Surely they will tire of it eventually?
If there won't be an educational change, particularly from the religious modern-Orthodox and Progressive Zionists,- I am afraid the next generations will not care to fight for Israel to remain predominantly Jewish.
I hope I am wrong, but if there won't be a change in the Israeli people’s attitude to us Diaspora Jews, -who are after all their only reliable allies and supporters,- I fear for the future of Israel as a "Jewish" State. I am hopeful that the academics and politicians like Tzipi Livni who care about this issue and are becoming aware of this problem, are paying attention to it and addressing it in their research and applying it in their educational institutions.
I have heard an Israeli academic present his research data on the attitudes of Israelis towards the Diaspora,- it wasn’t very optimistic. But at least it showed an awareness that it is a topic which needs to be addressed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JEWISH JOKE
A Synagogue's Custom
A young scholar from New York was invited to become Rabbi in a small old community in Chicago. On his very first Shabbat, a hot debate erupted as to whether one should or should not stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments.
The next day, the rabbi visited 98 year-old Mr. Katz in the nursing home. "Mr. Katz, I'm asking you, as the oldest member of the community," said the rabbi, "what is our synagogue's custom during the reading of the Ten Commandments?"
"Why do you ask?" asked Mr. Katz. "Yesterday we read the Ten Commandments. Some people stood, some people sat. The ones standing started screaming at the ones sitting, telling them to stand up. The ones sitting started screaming at the ones standing, telling them to sit down... "
"That," said the old man, "is our custom."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RE http://www.middleway.org/
I am cynical about such groups who try to bring both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs together in a middle-way for peace. They usually attract people with one-sided agendas, not the even-handed ones they are supposed to attract, - but there seem to be a number of such groups on the web and maybe,- just maybe, more from the Arab side will take courage and join up. Usually they are instigated by Israelis and well-meaning Jews with a few Moslems from democratic countries, while Moslems from the Islamic Theocracies and Palestinians are afraid to participate, except those who push their own side's agenda.
Inevitably, these groups face the question of what kind of State Israel should end-up being, when eventually (Please God!)peace will come to their region.
For Diaspora Jewry, Israel is not just a haven for the dispossessed and endangered Jews from all parts of the world. It is our spiritual homeland, not simply another secular, democratic state like any other in the world! We expect it to have the Jewish ethos and spring from the well of Jewish traditions, while following modern democratic principles of human rights. This kind of Jewish nation is not a form of Theocracy as practised in some Islamic States. The Israeli citizens, while very ethnically mixed and multicultural, agree to these basic principles, whether they are religious or secular.
Thus most Diaspora Jews visiting Israel love the idea of being able to experience life in a total Jewish environment. This means observing the Sabbath and the Jewish Holy Days, - not the Sundays and Christian Holy Days of the West,- or no Holy days at all!It also means walking in the footsteps of the Sages of the Torah-scriptures, not only of those of the New Testament or the Koran. It means being able to buy, eat and drink Kosher foods whenever and wherever one wants to. They want to experience the country where primarily Jewish History is taught to the young throughout their school years, alongside all other world histories,- while living in a total Jewish environment which needs to be saved and preserved for future gnerations.
It does not mean however, that Diaspora Jewry expects Israel to be a Theocracy, no matter how much the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) communities would wish it to be. No one wants to have ancient religious edicts imposed on them, nor religion in general rammed down their throats.
In "The Australian" (January (9/1/08), an article described USA Jews who were polled and found to be less and less committed to Israel as a "Jewish State",- or to any "ethno-centric" State! Tzipi Livni, Israeli FM, is apparently very concerned about that and has taken steps to address this problem. But how and why is it so?
I blame the Israeli Jews themselves, first and foremost, who instead of being ambassadors for their sole Jewish nation in the world, flock abroad to live and work or simply as tourists en-masse,- with their "Jewish" part seemingly of little outward concern. We find that they often keep away from us Diaspora Jews (when we would love to embrace them!)and even when we do make contact they don't want further interaction! They rarely participate in traditional rituals with other Jews in the Diaspora communities.
Perhaps it is understandable. Israeli Jews probably look at us Diaspora Jews living our lives unconcerned by daily war, terrorism, or hostile Arab neighbours,- our kids don't have to continuously go and put their lives at risk in the IDF,- and probably feel alienated from us. We discovered quite a few Israelis locally by accident, who don't see or feel anti-Semitism, except anti-Israel hostility because it is "the Jewish State", - so they may not believe in the need to safeguard their totally 'Jewish' nation, but simply their homeland. Who for?- The Haredim (ultra-orthodox) whom they view more as a burden than an asset? For the Diaspora who push them to "fight to the last Israeli"? Surely they will tire of it eventually?
If there won't be an educational change, particularly from the religious modern-Orthodox and Progressive Zionists,- I am afraid the next generations will not care to fight for Israel to remain predominantly Jewish.
I hope I am wrong, but if there won't be a change in the Israeli people’s attitude to us Diaspora Jews, -who are after all their only reliable allies and supporters,- I fear for the future of Israel as a "Jewish" State. I am hopeful that the academics and politicians like Tzipi Livni who care about this issue and are becoming aware of this problem, are paying attention to it and addressing it in their research and applying it in their educational institutions.
I have heard an Israeli academic present his research data on the attitudes of Israelis towards the Diaspora,- it wasn’t very optimistic. But at least it showed an awareness that it is a topic which needs to be addressed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JEWISH JOKE
A Synagogue's Custom
A young scholar from New York was invited to become Rabbi in a small old community in Chicago. On his very first Shabbat, a hot debate erupted as to whether one should or should not stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments.
The next day, the rabbi visited 98 year-old Mr. Katz in the nursing home. "Mr. Katz, I'm asking you, as the oldest member of the community," said the rabbi, "what is our synagogue's custom during the reading of the Ten Commandments?"
"Why do you ask?" asked Mr. Katz. "Yesterday we read the Ten Commandments. Some people stood, some people sat. The ones standing started screaming at the ones sitting, telling them to stand up. The ones sitting started screaming at the ones standing, telling them to sit down... "
"That," said the old man, "is our custom."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Muslim Women should speak out. (Marina Mahathir)
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR
A FRIEND was relating how after her daughter had read the Da Vinci Code, she had wanted to read the Bible. Which is not in itself a bad thing except that she was concerned that an impressionable young mind would not be able to differentiate fact from fiction. Also it seemed that perhaps what was needed is a Da Vinci Code-type book for Muslims to spark off the same level of interest in young people in their own religion.
Except that if anyone tried to write a similar thriller based around Islam, they'd be hounded and pilloried and threatened with death, thousands would riot in protest and people who would never have been able to read the book either because they are illiterate or can't afford it would have died.
Such is the difference between our religions. While there are many Christians who are upset about the book and movie, they are countering it with seminars and other educational events to balance what is being said in the book, even if the book is only fiction. There have not been Da Vinci Code-related riots or deaths thus far. Which speaks volumes for the adherents of the faith.
It would be nice if everyone could brush off similar challenges and say "we are strong enough to withstand any attack". Even if a book or a movie becomes a runaway hit, compared to the total number of any faith's followers, the numbers sold can never match it. Books are by nature, in a world where illiteracy is still common, a luxury item. As are American movies, no matter what arguments people make about cultural imperialism.
I remember when there were riots over Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, President Benazir Bhutto commented wryly that the people who were dying over the book were those who would never have read it, or possibly even heard of it if someone hadn't whipped them into a frenzy. A similar situation arose with the cartoons. As insensitive as they were, they were still not worth dying over.
The point is that people's impressions of a religion are often related to the behaviour of its adherents. Some religions are thought of as simply kooky because its followers behave strangely. Some are viewed as benign and peaceful because its followers resolutely will not harm a fly.
But when people, supposedly in the name of religion, riot, burn and kill, it can't help but give the impression of a religion that advocates this, no matter how much we point out that nowhere in religious texts itself does it say you should do this. And unfortunately we get the whole spectrum, from men who publicly insult women on a daily basis without censure to the real crazies.
Recently in New York I had to suffer the embarrassment of having to listen to a Muslim man say to a non-Muslim woman at a forum, "Don't mess with Muslims, we have nuclear weapons!" There I was trying to dispel stereotypes about violence-prone Muslims and in one fell swoop, this nutcase confirmed every stereotype there was.
I think the only people who can dispel stereotypes about Muslims are women. While there are certainly some conservative women, even when these speak out they will naturally change perceptions because in a world where Muslim women are perceived to be perpetually hidden behind curtains, their sheer presence and articulateness will be noticed. What more if they are able to argue rationally in a calm manner.
Thus far there have been very few Muslim men in the international media who give a good impression. We might argue that the Western media selects who they interview in order to perpetuate stereotypes, which is true and that is a problem for all of us. A man or woman who looks like the archetypal wild-eyed conservative is far more telegenic than someone who looks like everyone else. Channel surfers are far more likely to stop at the sight of someone they think of as alien to their culture than if they see someone too similar to them. To stop this means having to make a concerted effort to come together as one community and decide on a sophisticated media strategy. But sadly coming together as one united community is a challenge in itself.
If we do manage as a global community to change other people's perceptions of us, the benefits would be many. Our own people might think more kindly of each other so peace would reign within. And because within ourselves, we respect diversity, we can do the same with others. Then peace would truly have a chance.
http://www.thestar.com.my/columnists/story.asp?file=/columnists/2006/5/3/musings/14120703&sec=Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR
A FRIEND was relating how after her daughter had read the Da Vinci Code, she had wanted to read the Bible. Which is not in itself a bad thing except that she was concerned that an impressionable young mind would not be able to differentiate fact from fiction. Also it seemed that perhaps what was needed is a Da Vinci Code-type book for Muslims to spark off the same level of interest in young people in their own religion.
Except that if anyone tried to write a similar thriller based around Islam, they'd be hounded and pilloried and threatened with death, thousands would riot in protest and people who would never have been able to read the book either because they are illiterate or can't afford it would have died.
Such is the difference between our religions. While there are many Christians who are upset about the book and movie, they are countering it with seminars and other educational events to balance what is being said in the book, even if the book is only fiction. There have not been Da Vinci Code-related riots or deaths thus far. Which speaks volumes for the adherents of the faith.
It would be nice if everyone could brush off similar challenges and say "we are strong enough to withstand any attack". Even if a book or a movie becomes a runaway hit, compared to the total number of any faith's followers, the numbers sold can never match it. Books are by nature, in a world where illiteracy is still common, a luxury item. As are American movies, no matter what arguments people make about cultural imperialism.
I remember when there were riots over Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, President Benazir Bhutto commented wryly that the people who were dying over the book were those who would never have read it, or possibly even heard of it if someone hadn't whipped them into a frenzy. A similar situation arose with the cartoons. As insensitive as they were, they were still not worth dying over.
The point is that people's impressions of a religion are often related to the behaviour of its adherents. Some religions are thought of as simply kooky because its followers behave strangely. Some are viewed as benign and peaceful because its followers resolutely will not harm a fly.
But when people, supposedly in the name of religion, riot, burn and kill, it can't help but give the impression of a religion that advocates this, no matter how much we point out that nowhere in religious texts itself does it say you should do this. And unfortunately we get the whole spectrum, from men who publicly insult women on a daily basis without censure to the real crazies.
Recently in New York I had to suffer the embarrassment of having to listen to a Muslim man say to a non-Muslim woman at a forum, "Don't mess with Muslims, we have nuclear weapons!" There I was trying to dispel stereotypes about violence-prone Muslims and in one fell swoop, this nutcase confirmed every stereotype there was.
I think the only people who can dispel stereotypes about Muslims are women. While there are certainly some conservative women, even when these speak out they will naturally change perceptions because in a world where Muslim women are perceived to be perpetually hidden behind curtains, their sheer presence and articulateness will be noticed. What more if they are able to argue rationally in a calm manner.
Thus far there have been very few Muslim men in the international media who give a good impression. We might argue that the Western media selects who they interview in order to perpetuate stereotypes, which is true and that is a problem for all of us. A man or woman who looks like the archetypal wild-eyed conservative is far more telegenic than someone who looks like everyone else. Channel surfers are far more likely to stop at the sight of someone they think of as alien to their culture than if they see someone too similar to them. To stop this means having to make a concerted effort to come together as one community and decide on a sophisticated media strategy. But sadly coming together as one united community is a challenge in itself.
If we do manage as a global community to change other people's perceptions of us, the benefits would be many. Our own people might think more kindly of each other so peace would reign within. And because within ourselves, we respect diversity, we can do the same with others. Then peace would truly have a chance.
http://www.thestar.com.my/columnists/story.asp?file=/columnists/2006/5/3/musings/14120703&sec=Musings
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
ASSASSINATED BECAUSE SHE WAS A WOMAN
THE AUSTRALIAN
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22995050-7583,00.html
Pamela Bone |
January 02, 2008
ARE women across the world mourning Benazir Bhutto? They should be. Not because she was a saint; she wasn't. She was at least a beneficiary of the billions stolen by her husband from the people of Pakistan. Nor did she do anything much for Pakistani women during her two periods of leadership, declining even to try to repeal the infamous Hudood laws whereby rape victims can be punished for adultery.
She should be mourned not because of what she was but because of what she symbolised. Her death was a political assassination, not an honour killing, as some have said.
Nevertheless it was a reminder of what we face. Bhutto was murdered because to her enemies she was Westernised, a traitor to her culture and an American stooge. She was murdered because she had vowed to bring secularism and democracy to Pakistan. She was murdered because she was all these things, and a woman.
"I know I am a symbol of what the so-called jihadists, Taliban and al-Qa'ida, most fear," she wrote in her autobiography, Daughter of the East. "I am a female political leader fighting to bring modernity, communication, education and technology to Pakistan."
Yes, fear is the right word. The fear of women, of women's freedom, and most of all, of women's sexuality, runs through Islamism. It is a large part of Islamist hatred of the West. "The issue of women is not marginal," writes the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma. "It lies at the heart of Islamic occidentalism (anti-Westernism)."
It is the "deep, ignored issue", writes Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism. Why, I wonder, is it mainly men who are making these points?
To call these warriors for God sexually repressed is to absurdly understate it. Consider Mohammad Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers who -- despite having spent his last nights in the US going to strip clubs -- wrote in his will that no pregnant woman or other "unclean person" should come to his funeral and that no woman should visit his grave.
Or Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian philosopher, one of the chief inspirations for al-Qa'ida, who, during a visit to the US in 1948, wrote home about the "seductiveness' of young women he saw dancing at a church hall (to the song, Baby It's Cold Outside), about the "shocking sensuality" of women everywhere he went in the country.
Consider that in parts of Afghanistan still controlled by the Taliban, so great is the need to keep women powerless, silent and invisible that girls' schools are burned down and a male schoolteacher who defied an order to stop educating girls was last year killed and dismembered.
No wonder they hated Bhutto, the first woman to lead a Muslim country, who was not only brave and strong but physically beautiful, her loosely draped Islamic headscarf more an object of adornment than of modesty. No wonder Islamist militants had been trying to kill her for more than a decade.
(Ramzi Yousef, now in prison in the US for his part in the first attempt to blow up the twin towers in 1993, had earlier attempted to assassinate her.)
Now they have succeeded. Her murder is most likely the work of al-Qa'ida or its allies inside Pakistan. Certainly, they've expressed glee at her death.
If the fact that she was a Western-educated woman seeking power in lands they claim as their own was not reason enough, killing her meant they could disrupt the scheduled elections and maintain instability in Pakistan, which would allow them to continue using that country's territory to train the increasing numbers of willing martyrs, funded by trillions of dollars from opium sales.
One wonders why the Western powers don't make a co-ordinated effort to defoliate Afghanistan's opium fields.
Al-Qa'ida has made it perfectly clear that its aim is an Islamic caliphate, first in all nominally Muslim countries and ultimately in the whole world. The jihadis would, if they could, impose the same rampant misogyny on women worldwide as was, and still is to a large extent, imposed on the women of Afghanistan.
They can't win. No one, apart from extremists like themselves, wants the kind of society they envisage. But they could, if the West fails in its determination, win enough to make life very unpleasant for millions of women for a generation or more.
The best hope is that Bhutto's assassination will galvanise opposition to Islamism in Pakistan and elsewhere. It is a small hope. At present, the Islamists are triumphant and energised.
Meanwhile, in Australia, the very people who once would have fought against everything the Islamists stand for are instead obsessed with showing their support for David Hicks, that very stupid young man who once trained on the Islamists' side.
Could the murder of Bhutto be enough to wake up Western women to the fact that the war being waged by the Islamists is very much about them? Could the modern Left be persuaded that the people who killed Bhutto are the ones we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places across the world? Can we, in our niceness, stop telling ourselves they are justified in their hatred of us?
Maybe they are. God knows the West has made more than enough blunders, supporting corrupt dictators wherever it deemed it suitable. But as British writer Nick Cohen notes, what the Islamists hate is not the worst of us but the best of us: human rights, the rule of law, the equality of women and all those other freedoms we take so much for granted.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Bone is a Melbourne writer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Bone as usual puts it the way it is.
MM-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22995050-7583,00.html
Pamela Bone |
January 02, 2008
ARE women across the world mourning Benazir Bhutto? They should be. Not because she was a saint; she wasn't. She was at least a beneficiary of the billions stolen by her husband from the people of Pakistan. Nor did she do anything much for Pakistani women during her two periods of leadership, declining even to try to repeal the infamous Hudood laws whereby rape victims can be punished for adultery.
She should be mourned not because of what she was but because of what she symbolised. Her death was a political assassination, not an honour killing, as some have said.
Nevertheless it was a reminder of what we face. Bhutto was murdered because to her enemies she was Westernised, a traitor to her culture and an American stooge. She was murdered because she had vowed to bring secularism and democracy to Pakistan. She was murdered because she was all these things, and a woman.
"I know I am a symbol of what the so-called jihadists, Taliban and al-Qa'ida, most fear," she wrote in her autobiography, Daughter of the East. "I am a female political leader fighting to bring modernity, communication, education and technology to Pakistan."
Yes, fear is the right word. The fear of women, of women's freedom, and most of all, of women's sexuality, runs through Islamism. It is a large part of Islamist hatred of the West. "The issue of women is not marginal," writes the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma. "It lies at the heart of Islamic occidentalism (anti-Westernism)."
It is the "deep, ignored issue", writes Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism. Why, I wonder, is it mainly men who are making these points?
To call these warriors for God sexually repressed is to absurdly understate it. Consider Mohammad Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers who -- despite having spent his last nights in the US going to strip clubs -- wrote in his will that no pregnant woman or other "unclean person" should come to his funeral and that no woman should visit his grave.
Or Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian philosopher, one of the chief inspirations for al-Qa'ida, who, during a visit to the US in 1948, wrote home about the "seductiveness' of young women he saw dancing at a church hall (to the song, Baby It's Cold Outside), about the "shocking sensuality" of women everywhere he went in the country.
Consider that in parts of Afghanistan still controlled by the Taliban, so great is the need to keep women powerless, silent and invisible that girls' schools are burned down and a male schoolteacher who defied an order to stop educating girls was last year killed and dismembered.
No wonder they hated Bhutto, the first woman to lead a Muslim country, who was not only brave and strong but physically beautiful, her loosely draped Islamic headscarf more an object of adornment than of modesty. No wonder Islamist militants had been trying to kill her for more than a decade.
(Ramzi Yousef, now in prison in the US for his part in the first attempt to blow up the twin towers in 1993, had earlier attempted to assassinate her.)
Now they have succeeded. Her murder is most likely the work of al-Qa'ida or its allies inside Pakistan. Certainly, they've expressed glee at her death.
If the fact that she was a Western-educated woman seeking power in lands they claim as their own was not reason enough, killing her meant they could disrupt the scheduled elections and maintain instability in Pakistan, which would allow them to continue using that country's territory to train the increasing numbers of willing martyrs, funded by trillions of dollars from opium sales.
One wonders why the Western powers don't make a co-ordinated effort to defoliate Afghanistan's opium fields.
Al-Qa'ida has made it perfectly clear that its aim is an Islamic caliphate, first in all nominally Muslim countries and ultimately in the whole world. The jihadis would, if they could, impose the same rampant misogyny on women worldwide as was, and still is to a large extent, imposed on the women of Afghanistan.
They can't win. No one, apart from extremists like themselves, wants the kind of society they envisage. But they could, if the West fails in its determination, win enough to make life very unpleasant for millions of women for a generation or more.
The best hope is that Bhutto's assassination will galvanise opposition to Islamism in Pakistan and elsewhere. It is a small hope. At present, the Islamists are triumphant and energised.
Meanwhile, in Australia, the very people who once would have fought against everything the Islamists stand for are instead obsessed with showing their support for David Hicks, that very stupid young man who once trained on the Islamists' side.
Could the murder of Bhutto be enough to wake up Western women to the fact that the war being waged by the Islamists is very much about them? Could the modern Left be persuaded that the people who killed Bhutto are the ones we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places across the world? Can we, in our niceness, stop telling ourselves they are justified in their hatred of us?
Maybe they are. God knows the West has made more than enough blunders, supporting corrupt dictators wherever it deemed it suitable. But as British writer Nick Cohen notes, what the Islamists hate is not the worst of us but the best of us: human rights, the rule of law, the equality of women and all those other freedoms we take so much for granted.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Bone is a Melbourne writer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Bone as usual puts it the way it is.
MM-------------------------------------------------------
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