Another diversion from Gaza: Israel has an election coming up in 5 weeks (though some would say this is the reason we’re in Gaza), and the preliminary candidate lists have been posted to the Knesset website. (Warning: Hebrew only. I presume that, as in previous elections, the lists will be posted in English (and Arabic and Russian) after they are finalized.) The final lists will be released on January 16.
After the final lists are up, you’ll get a chance to make predictions about the election results and enter the February Madness pool (in the style of our March Madness pool from 2006).
Some observations from looking at the lists:
There are 34 parties running this year (even more than the 31 in the last election), including all the parties currently represented in the Knesset, some perennial also-rans (Aleh Yarok / Green Leaf, Men’s Rights, etc.), and some brand-new ones.
Despite the party-based Israeli election system, the Israeli parties are clearly taking a page from American personality-based politics. Four of the largest parties are listing themselves on the ballot (where it typically just has the name of the party) as “The Likud - Ahi - with the leadership of Binyamin Netanyahu for prime minister”, “Labor - headed by Ehud Barak”, “Yisrael Beiteinu headed by Avigdor Lieberman”, and “Kadima - with Tzipi Livni for prime minister”. (And let’s not forget Netanyahu’s website.)
It’s always fun to look at the “honorary” slots at the bottom of the lists. For example, Meretz has writers A.B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz as #114 and 115, and Labor has former president Yitzhak Navon at #120.
Can someone explain the difference between the new Green Movement (which has joined forces with Meimad) and the preexisting Green party?
“Aleh Yarok alumni with Holocaust survivors”? What?
Looks like the attempted merger between the National Religious Party and the National Union (which ran as a joint list in 2006) has completely fallen apart. It seems that the secular presence in the far-right/pro-settlement camp had more life left in it than anyone thought.
Time to do some research on some of these new parties, including “Strong Israel headed by Dr. Ephraim Sneh”, “The Israelis”, “The voice of money - for the destruction of bank control” (is this the old Party for the Struggle with the Banks, renamed?), “Revolution in education”, and “Tzabar - Israel’s young people’s party”.
After splitting into a few factions leading into the 2006 election, it looks like Shinui no longer exists in any form (though I wonder if some of these other wild-card parties involve any of the same people; I haven’t looked closely enough yet).
Let’s take a break from all the Gaza news and remind ourselves that the universe is much, much larger than these conflicts. 2009 has been declared the International Year of Astronomy (sponsored by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO, along with organizational associates around the world), commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first astronomical observations with a telescope (by Galileo) and the publication of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, two events that could be considered the birth of modern astronomy. The IYA is being celebrated with numerous events around the world, including a contest to come up with Hebrew names for the planets Uranus and Neptune!
You see, the first 5 non-Earth planets in our solar system are visible to the naked eye and were well-known to ancient astronomers. Therefore, they each have long-standing Hebrew names: Mercury is Kochav, Venus is Nogah, Mars is Ma’dim, Jupiter is Tzedek, and Saturn is Shabbetai. However, Uranus and Neptune were discovered in 1781 and 1846, and when Hebrew was revived as a spoken and scientific language, no Hebrew names were chosen; Hebrew speakers (like speakers of most languages) have referred to these planets by the name of a Greek and a Roman god. No more. The science division of the Academy of the Hebrew Language has announced a contest to select authentic Hebrew names. (Pluto has been demoted from planet status, and is therefore not included in the contest.)
Submissions will be accepted any time until Lag Ba’omer (May 12). Finalists will be chosen by a panel of Israeli astronomers and Academy members, and the final decision will be put to a public vote. The winners will be announced over Chanukah.
Be creative! I’ve already put in my submission (though I’m not going to tell you what it is until the finalists are announced). And good luck!
If what is happening in Gaza is being “prevented” from “becoming” a humanitarian crisis, I’d hate to see what the Israeli military does qualify as a crisis.
Needless to say, this is obviously a very positive development.
Like so many of us, my anguish over the Gaza crisis has only deepened during the past week - particularly as Israel’s ground invasion begins, the civilian death/casualty toll increases and headlines scream things at us like “Ceasefire Rejected” and “No End in Sight.” Still and all, I seem to have retained a uniquely masochistic impulse to devour every news report and analysis that comes my way.
Amidst the myriad of articles, news reports and blog posts I have read this past week, the one that has stuck with me the longest is a five year old Jerusalem Post interview with Israeli geographer Arnon Soffer. Soffer is widely regarded as the architect of Sharon’s disengagement plan and his insights (as morally repugnant as they are) are critical for our understanding of the actual intentions behind Israel’s pullout from Gaza. In their tragically ironic way, I believe Soffer’s words are are profoundly important in helping us understand why it shouldn’t be such a surprise that things have now come to this.
A brief excerpt:
How will the region look the day after unilateral separation?
The Palestinians will bombard us with artillery fire - and we will have to retaliate. But at least the war will be at the fence - not in kindergartens in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Will Israel be prepared to fight this war?
First of all, the fence is not built like the Berlin Wall. It’s a fence that we will be guarding on either side. Instead of entering Gaza, the way we did last week, we will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is fired over the fence, we will fire 10 in response. And women and children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident, Palestinian mothers won’t allow their husbands to shoot Kassams, because they will know what’s waiting for them.
Second of all, when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.
While CNN has its cameras at the wall?
If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist. The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.
Here’s my thesis: The best thing that can happen for peace in the Middle East, today, is a decisive military victory for the IDF in Gaza - not an immediate ceasefire. Now that you’ve read that, take a minute to get angry, yell at me, tell me I’m wrong, and the like. Good. Next step, let me explain myself. More »
Call your Representative and your two Senators (find them here) and tell them:
Hi, my name is [first name] [last name] from [hometown], [state]. As a Jewish constituent who supports Israel, I urge the Senator [or Representative] to call for U.S. leadership in establishing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and southern Israel by all sides in concert with the international community.
If the [Senator/Representative] intends to make a statement about the crisis, I ask that it acknowledge the suffering and civilian injuries and deaths on both sides.
I very much hope that we see an end to the hostilities very soon. Thank you.
It takes 1 minute for each call. You can report successful calls to Brit Tzedek.
Not interested in marching in mindless lockstep with The David Project, StandWithUs, the ZOA and AIPAC? Great. Now’s the time to do something about it.
This week’s G-dcast is written, narrated, voiced and so forth by the multitalented Marcus Freed. He’s in LA right now so watch out for his fro, his wicked warrior 2, and of course, his aura…
The BBC reports on Human Rights Watch and B’tselem accounting of Israel targeting a university, schools, mosques, government buildings, and other civilian cites. The article also outlines some of the thorny issue around the question of who is a civilian:
The bloodied children are clearly civilians; men killed as they launch rockets are undisputedly not. But what about the 40 or so young Hamas police recruits on parade who died in the first wave of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza?
And weapons caches are clearly military sites – but what about the interior ministry, hit in a strike that killed two medical workers; or the money changer’s office, destroyed last week injuring a boy living on the floor above?
As the death toll mounts in Gaza, the thorny question is arising of who and what can be considered a legitimate military target in a territory effectively governed by a group that many in the international community consider a terrorist organisation.
This is also the group that won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006 and a year later consolidated its control by force.
So while it was behind a campaign of suicide attacks in Israel and fires rockets indiscriminately over the border, it is also in charge of schools, hospitals, sewage works and power plants in Gaza.
…
“Our definition is that anyone who is involved with terrorism within Hamas is a valid target. This ranges from the strictly military institutions and includes the political institutions that provide the logistical funding and human resources for the terrorist arm.”
-Benjamin Rutland, IDF spokesman
…
“To claim that all of those offices are legitimate targets, just because they are affiliated with Hamas, is legally flawed and extremely problematic.”
-B’Tselem director Jessica Montell
Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds - who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.
“This is not good” is the content of a text I received just before stepping into Waltz with Bashir, as the IDF sent ground troops into Gaza. Waltz is the award-winning and Israel’s Oscar foreign film entry Oscar-nominated animated documentary about the filmmaker’s search for his wartime memories of the Saaba and Shatila massacres of the 1982 Lebanon invasion, and the implications were heavy on my mind as I stepped inside.
When I emerged I felt precisely that…implicated. Implicated for Israel’s invasion this weekend.
More than war or trauma, the film is about memory. We fabricate memories we don’t otherwise remember and we chose not to remember what we find traumatic. Searching for his own trauma-blocked memories of the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres, filmmaker Ari Folman interviews war buddies about where he was in all the fighting. “Was I there too?” he asks his former commander after a particularly bloody anecdote. The former commander takes a cigarette drag, “Of course. You were always with me.”
Snippets of visions and dreams by Folman’s war buddies compliment his own as real memories blend together — aided by the masterful animation by David Polonsky (see stills here). The visages are haunting and yet patient, never over the top or dramatic. Sometimes the depictions of war are even funny, resembling video games or a black humor’s happenstance. At the end of the film, real TV footage of the morning after in Shatila is all that reminds us that this film isn’t just a vision.
As Israel rolls into Gaza, what are the Jewish and Israeli communities remembering about the IDF’s previous ill-fated incursions to “uproot” and “destroy the terrorist infrastructure” while “minimizing civilian casualties”? Very little apparently. More »
A way to use your printer, your window and some scotch tape to end the war in Gaza: For the JStreet “Cease Fire Now” do it yourself poster click on the image below (links to PDF):
So in my attempt to lighten the mood and put my inappropriate sense of humor to use, I set about recaptioning those hilarious (to me) pictures of cats known as LOLCats.
But the people who thought this was funny really missed the OTHER LOLCat images I recaptioned which I’m sure they’d laugh at a lot less:
With over 400 Palestinians and 4 Israelis killed and the death toll mounting daily, we urgently need to demand that world leaders take strong diplomatic action to end the violence. An Israeli ground invasion is believed to be imminent and would claim many more lives — we must act fast to demand that our leaders act now.
Some thoughts for the new year, in response to the most recent spat of launching phalli in the Middle East.
This piece doesn’t place blame or even comment on the conflict directly, in any regard, but it is a product of it nonetheless. Thoughts and comments are appreciated. Click below to read. More »
No new word on the firebombing of Chicago’s Temple Sholom this past Monday, but police seem to still be treating it as a hate crime, likely in response to the crisis in Gaza. A few blessings in the aftermath: no one was hurt and there was minimal damage to the synagogue.
An even bigger blessing is the very public support and concern Temple Sholom is receiving from Chicago’s interfaith community. Here’s a statement released today by the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago:
The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago is saddened and disturbed by an anti-Semitic incident that took place at Temple Sholom, one of Chicago’s oldest synagogues, earlier this week.
“I heard about the incident on the radio on my drive into work on Monday and the first thing I did was to call information, get Temple Sholom’s number and call them to express my concern” said Junaid M. Afeef, Executive Director of the Council. “It was 7:20 am so I had to leave a message but later in the day I followed up with an email to Temple Sholom’s rabbis and its executive director with a message of concern and an offer to help in any way possible on behalf of the Muslim community” added Afeef.
The American-Muslim community, through the Council, stands ready to support Temple Sholom and its congregants. The Council is an strong advocate of peace, tolerance and justice and will stand by the Jewish community against any act of anti-Semitism.
Daily News Egypt and Qatar’s Al Arab publish a peice accusing Hamas of ignoring the Palestinian people in favor of a pissing contest with Israel. [Editor's Note: You can read the article's author's blog here for more progressive Muslim thoughts. Her story is getting picked up everywhere, thankfully.]
