De data asta, la oglinda.

(c) Dan Hayon

Ierusalim, mijloc de decembrie, 2019

Mi-am ales doi prieteni, incerc sa-i aduc langa mine. Unul este turc, Orhan Pamuk si celalalt japonez , Haruki Murakami.

 Primul a primit deja premiul Nobel pentru literature, al doilea il asteapta impreuna cu noi, cetitorii lui, an dupa an. Cred ca Haruki de fapt si-a pierdut de mult interesul pentru o distinctie onorabila si generos rasplatita dar care a pierdut in ultimii ani lustrul si gloria cu care ne obisnuise.
Atunci cand este anuntat castigatorul ma uit mai degraba la cine NU l-a primit, caci comisia isi doreste probabil  mai cu seama  un ilustru necunoscut, o gaselnita .

Si de ce vreau sa-i aduc langa mine pe Orhan si pe Haruki ? Sa-i aduc sfatuitori in ale scrisului.

De cetit am cetit. Nu destul , e adevarat caci daca as fereca poarta  pe dinauntru atunci  avea de lucru  pentru doua vieti numai cu scrierile acumulate intre peretii casei.

De "acrosat"/conceput/desenat/ si implementat proiecte de arhitectura, destul pana acum, desi pohta ramane mare. Ma intreb ce o fi, rutina sau narav?

In fine, la scris. Aici sunt mare dator.

Si acum il chem pe Haruki Murakami care isi face "Autoportretul scriitorului de cursa lunga" si pe Orhan Pamuk care vrea sa-mi vorbeasca despre "Romancierul naiv si sentimental" sa-mi spuna doua, trei vorbe de duh, sa ma lamureasca si sa ma atraga descoperindu-mi nebanuitele  taine ale mestesugului.  Stau langa mine doi meseriasi.

Stau nehotarat la incrucisarea intre doua drumuri. Memorialistica, ar fi o cale. Mai mult decat o cale, o datorie. Sau vastul autoportret facut prin intermediul multiplelor caractere fictive care s-ar intalni in paginile mele. S-ar saluta sau si-ar intoarce spatele. A doua cale, mult mai intortochiata.

Sa pornim deci la drum. Cu speranta ca pofta va veni asa cum ii este obiceiul: mancand.





 

URBAN FRIENDS FAMILY

Comming back soon - re - construction

Splendid news for my Iranian friends...

See you in court, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

By Adi Schwartz

(from Ha-Aretz)


Next month, a new element will be introduced into the discussions about the international community's attitude toward Iran, which is becoming a nuclear power. A group of Israelis, headed by former UN ambassador Dr. Dore Gold, recently completed the composition of a lawsuit to be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for incitement to genocide. The lawsuit, whose main points are being published here for the first time, is based on the 1948 UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, one of the most important conventions in international law. The convention was written after the Second World War, in order to prevent the repetition of cases of genocide such as the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis. According to the convention, "direct and public incitement to committing genocide" is a criminal offense, with genocide defined as an activity "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." In first place among the list of crimes enumerated by the convention is "Killing members of the group." Aside from Gold, the group includes Meir Rosenne, former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry and Israeli ambassador to France and the U.S.; Eytan Bentsur, former director general of the Foreign Ministry; and MK Danny Naveh. The four share the opinion that the words repeatedly uttered by the Iranian president regarding the destruction of Israel and erasing it from the map are a distinct violation of the Genocide Convention, aside from being a violation of the convention of the UN itself, which prohibits a member nation from calling for the destruction of another member nation.

Time to attack
"There are things about which we must not be silent and that we must not ignore," says Gold, today chair of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which is coordinating the lawsuit as a nongovernmental organization. "The time has come to go on the legal attack. As a citizen and a former diplomat, who was witness to the fact that Israel was under attack for years in the area of humanitarian international law, I believe that we must no longer remain silent, particularly in light of the blatant violation of the Genocide Convention, which is the most important of the UN conventions." Rosenne, today a private attorney, says that this is not a political act. "It is easy to imagine what would happen if Israel announced that it desired to destroy another country," says Rosenne. "Sanctions against it would be applied immediately. Were the threat only theoretical, we could live with it. But we are talking here about a country of about 70 million people, which is increasingly arming itself, and in addition is arming organizations that it sponsors, such as Hezbollah, which are acting directly against Israel. In other words, this has practical implications. It is simply astonishing that the president of a country that is a UN member makes such declarations and nobody in the international community reacts, except with polite words." The lawsuit says that the name of the convention - the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - testifies to the fact that its intention is to prevent genocide. For that reason, in order to prevent conflict and bloodshed, the court is requested to discuss the lawsuit. The document points out that according to the convention, incitement is a crime in itself, and there is no need to wait until genocide takes place in order to convict for incitement to genocide. The lawsuit spells out the history of the relations between Iran and Israel, and particularly their deterioration since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Strong words against Israel have been uttered over the years, but Ahmadinejad has brought them to a peak in his specific calls for destroying Israel. Gold says that the suit will give about 20 examples of such calls (which the president of Iran managed to utter in the course of only one year since becoming president), including his declaration in 2005 that "Israel should be wiped off the map," or a statement from August 2006 to the effect that the solution to the crisis in the Middle East is "the destruction of the Zionist regime." In 2005 the Iranian president convened a congress in Tehran called The World Without Zionism. There is no question about the public and direct nature of these words, and according to the suit, the State of Israel and its population are considered a national entity. "I relate to these threats in all seriousness," says Irit Kahan, former head of the department of international law in the State Prosecutors Office, who supports the initiative to prosecute Ahmadinejad. "We have here a specific threat to eliminate a country. The man is also a serial Holocaust denier, who makes no effort to hide that fact. This is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored." Gold explains that Ahmadinejad differs from previous leaders of Arab or Muslim countries. "In the past, with Nasser for example, the expression focused on criticism, as harsh as it may have been, of the Israeli government or of Zionism," says Gold. "But here there is a call to wipe out the population living in Israel. These are two entirely different things. Aside from that, since the 1990s, and particularly since the terrible failures of the UN in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, the international community has been paying special attention to the issue of genocide. The subject of genocide is blazing in the consciousness of jurists and diplomats, and therefore the ground is much more fertile for discussing such issues." The main precedents offered in the lawsuit come from the International Tribunal for Rwanda, which convicted nine people of incitement to genocide. The most prominent of them was the former prime minister of Rwanda, Jean Kambanda, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the special role he played when speaking in the name of the government at public events and in the media, engaging in direct and public incitement to commit acts of violence against moderate Tutsi and Hutu. The lawsuit points out that Kambanda's status as a head of state did not grant him immunity. A well-known incident from the Rwanda tribunal was that of three journalists who were accused of genocide because of their exhortations on the "Radio Machete" radio station, to the tune of "Let's destroy them" and "Get to work!" meaning "Go and murder!" In the lawsuit it is claimed that while this case requires attention to the context in which the words were said in order to conclude that this was incitement to murder, Ahmadinejad's calls are specific and require no interpretation. New coalitionsThe main obstacle to putting Ahmadinejad on trial is technical, and stems from legal and political circumstances. Legally speaking, the main problem is that Iran is not a signatory to the Rome Convention on the International Criminal Court, which sits in The Hague and is supposed to mediate the lawsuit. Therefore, the ICC has no power to try Iranian citizens. Jurists say that there are two ways of bypassing this obstacle. One is by turning to the UN Security Council, which is allowed to refer such cases to the Chief Prosecutor in The Hague. In such a case, there is no importance to the question of whether Iran is a signatory to the ICC convention; this was the method used, for example, in the case of the genocide in Darfur (Sudan is not a signatory, either). A second possibility is for a country that is a member of the convention (not Israel, which is not a signatory) or a nongovernmental organization (such as the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) to refer the case to the Chief Prosecutor, who is permitted in exceptional cases to begin an investigation. The question of whether the UN Security Council will refer the case to the Chief Prosecutor in The Hague depends on the international interests of countries like Russia and China, which are liable to cast a veto against such a proposal. "Our explicit goal is to conduct a discussion in an international legal forum on the matter of the Iranian president," says Danny Naveh, who believes that even discussing the issue and bringing it before international public opinion are very important. Gold explains that to date, the discussion on Iran has focused on security and economic questions, such as the nuclear project and the oil industry. "Here there is an entirely new angle of blatant violation of an international convention," he says. "This is an opportunity to create new and strong coalitions on the Iranian issue. At present, for the most part those who are speaking against Iran are identified as rightists, conservatives, or Republicans in the case of the United States. Introducing the element of genocide can also lead to the support of liberals, who champion human rights, especially when it comes to such a blatant violation of such an important convention." If the Chief Prosecutor in The Hague should decide to open an investigation and if the ICC convicts Ahmadinejad, says Kahan, the prosecutor can issue an extradition order against the Iranian president. Clearly Iran will not extradite its president to The Hague, but it will be possible to restrict his movements outside the borders of the country, because if he visits one of the countries that is a signatory to the convention, it will have to arrest him immediately. Meir Rosen explains that if the discussion comes to the UN General Assembly, it will be possible to impose sanctions against Iran itself, for example by severing commercial and diplomatic ties, and preventing the landing of Iranian planes in other countries. In the first stage, Gold and his colleagues intend to publish the document as a book in English, and to organize several events, mainly in the United States and Great Britain, in order to enlist support for the move. The four intend to raise the issue at the UN General Assembly, an annual event convening all the heads of state, which will take place in September. At the same time, the four plan to begin proceedings in legal channels. Several important jurists have already joined the initiative. Irwin Kotler, former Justice Minister of Canada and one of the authors of the basic convention of the court in The Hague, told Haaretz this week that Canada may submit a request to The Hague to investigate Ahmadinejad. Kotler said that genocide is the most serious crime that exists, and that this is not only a matter of punishment after the fact, but before the fact, which is the meaning of the expression "Never again." He added that prosecution after the fact is too late, and that we must remember that cases of genocide like the Holocaust succeeded due to the demonization of the other. The Holocaust began with words, said Kotler, not with the gas chambers. It is no coincidence that incitement to murder appears in all the legal documents, because the international community recognizes the fact that incitement is a significant part of the process of genocide. In the case of Ahmadinejad, he said, we are taking about a fixed and clear pattern of incitement to genocide. George Fletcher, a professor of international criminal law at Columbia University and one of the most important theoreticians today in the United States, believes that the initiative is important and necessary, because we have to label the behavior of Ahmadinejad illegal. The worst thing, he said, is that it is being greeted by silence, and is thus becoming acceptable. This is criminal behavior par excellence. Fletcher says that this is a matter of world peace, not necessarily Israeli peace, and calls it "racist" speech: The fact that a politician is talking about the murder of specific people as a group is intolerable and leads to dehumanization. It is a blow to humanity, according to Fletcher. Attorney Alan Dershowitz has also joined the initiative. In an interview from his home in the United States, he said that this is a test for the international community of the seriousness of its intentions and of its ability to execute international norms and laws. If, God forbid, there should be genocide, and if it is Iran that commits it against the State of Israel, it is clear that the president of Iran will be convicted of incitement, said Dershowitz. He added that this means that Ahmadinejad is violating the law already, because the incitement is taking place now. "Do we really have to wait until the genocide takes place?" he asked.

Dancing In summer time- Bucharest 1935...

As I showed the Salsa Festival in Anador Center, a few days ago, here a picture I found from Bucharest, summer time 1935... 

A really hot dance...

The dancers had to resist the hot summer night in Bucharest.
"Salsa" in itself is a very, very hot dance so the heat of the summer was irelevant... 

A good "shot"

The "Salsa Festival" in Anador Center- Bucharest, was a good opportunity to try the photographer skill. I'll offer some of the pictures to the blog, hope you'll enjoy them... 

Festvalul Salsa si Flamingo s-a deschis la Anador in Bucuresti.

Aseara, formatia Mandiga a deschis festivalul salsa si flamingo din Bucuresti.
Sunt fericit sa-i gazduiesc in Piata Anador din complexul comercial "Anador", asezat la coltul Stefan cel Mare cu strada Vasile Lascar.
Piata a fost plina cu tineri, foarte tineri si mai putin tineri , care au intrat rapid in atmosfera sud americana creata cu pasiunea cubaneza a vedetelor. E calda vara la Bucuresti... 

Letter from Spielberg to Gibson

The following letter was written by Steven Spielberg

please forward if you agree...

August 10th 2006

Dear Mr. Gibson,
I am one Jew who doesn't accept your apology today. I don't accept it, because you have spit on the graves of the Goldwyns, the Warners, the Mayers, the Cohns, the Foxes, the Thalbergs, the Selznicks, the Zukors and the thousands of other Jews both living and dead who have made your questionable career possible.

When you do get out of "rehab" and recount your millions, please consider how much of your fortune you would have if you had made your true feelings known, when you were starting out in the film industry.

You are a despicable human being, one that doesn't even have the sense to realize that he has repeatedly bitten the hand that fed him. Whatever you (or your publicity agents) say today, does not even begin to redress your long standing theories about the Jewish people.

Apparently the apple does not fall far from the tree. If you haven't yet distanced yourself from your father's views of the Holocaust, why should the Jewish community meet with you, or believe anything you have to say now.Your words are a thinly veiled attempt to admit that you really messed up this time, and you want to cover yourself, so that you can continue to be adored and further your revenue stream.

The truth is, you are an unreformed, unrepentant anti semite of the worst kind, and your hollow outreach is worth less than the price of your next drink, which will surely find itself in your hands before long. I'm buying.Of course, if I am wrong, you could start by donating $1,000,000 today to the State of Israel in her time of need.Surely that is a small public relations price to pay for a man of your stature who "honors all of God's children".

Steven Silberberg
New Rochelle, NY

Some Israeli military secrets....(from Ha-Aretz)

The longest month
By Amir Oren
In a plain government office, in a room no different from the standard medical facility, a DNA sample from the body of a Lebanese man has been kept for almost nine years. It belongs to Hadi Nasrallah, the son of the Hezbollah leader, who was killed in a battle with the IDF in 1997. The body was taken by fighters from the Egoz reconnaissance unit and returned to Lebanon in return for the body of a Shayetet 13 (Naval Commando) fighter, Itamar Iliya, who was killed in the failed Naval Commando raid in the village of Ansariya in Lebanon. Hassan Nasrallah commemorated his son at the dock of Hezbollah's naval force in Beirut, which was attacked two weeks ago in a joint air force-navy operation - another operation that was swallowed up in the melee of the war. What remains in Israel is rare intelligence material: the DNA of the Nasrallah dynasty, in the event that the IDF or the Mossad espionage agency succeeds in killing the Hezbollah leader and want to identify the body definitively. This story is typical of the emotional seesaw of the Israeli war against Hezbollah. On the one hand, frustration that Nasrallah evaded the bombs and the assassination attempts and is making fun of his adversaries; on the other hand, determination to pursue him relentlessly, almost at any price, and implement a death sentence - "Hitler," one of the heads of the intelligence community called him this week in Tel Aviv - and thus also to overturn the gloomy atmosphere among the public and in the army.

A perusal of thick and detailed dossiers shows how deeply Israeli intelligence was able to penetrate certain levels of Hezbollah's alignments, but also how limited in importance this was in the decisive test of utilizing the secrets. The resources that were focused on Yasser Arafat in recent years were not aimed at Nasrallah. What was collected by Military Intelligence and the Mossad was so compartmentalized that it was kept hidden from its consumers in the operative bodies. "Hezbollah's Combat Concept" (January 2006) is a 130-page booklet, crammed with data, bunkers and Katyusha rockets and nature reserves. Its author is a lieutenant colonel in Military Intelligence who is the intelligence aide to MI director Amos Yadlin and formerly head of the Lebanon section in the intelligence department of Northern Command. The rub lies in the classification: not just "Top Secret" but "Restricted Purple" - for a select few, and not every major general was allowed to feast his eyes on it, only those who were cleared for this subject. The result was that the intelligence officer of the 91st Division - the Galilee Division, which was in charge of preventing abductions and of moving immediately to war - a lieutenant colonel who had clearance - would have taken his life in his hands had he dared allow the division's commander to have a look at the material.

Well-prepared for war
And contrary to the popular impression, which some in the IDF were at pains to create - as part of the envy and the competition for a place at the top - the 91st Division was in fact well- prepared for the war.
The division's deputy commander, Colonel Dror Paltin, organized an efficiency effort from the division's budget in favor of dedicated training. With the aid of Northern Command, and on the basis of a general blueprint of the material in the purple booklets, a facility at which to practice combat in conditions approximating Hezbollah's forward deployment was built at the Elyakim training base. The division's reserve brigades, Alexandroni in infantry and Chariots of Steel in armor, trained there, along with the division's regular-army Druze battalion, and these units excelled in the war in carrying out their assignments, no less than the well-known units and brigades that were rushed north from the territories and had had little training.

Northern Command also complained about the minimal training the IDF gives its combat soldiers - members of the Armored Corps go through four courses instead of 17 - and expressed nostalgia for Ground Forces Headquarters and the professionalism of its corps (armor, infantry, artillery, engineers), which withered on the vine in the transition to the present army headquarters. The report about the bombing in the village of Qana, which had the effect of prolonging the war and gave Nasrallah time to recover - in the wake of which the position of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was weakened - reached U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while she was in the middle of a discussion with Defense Minister Amir Peretz, minutes after she had expressed amazement mixed with displeasure at the Israeli insistence on continuing the fighting until the abducted soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, were returned.

The Americans could not understand why Israel was ready to put at risk so many soldiers and civilians for the sake of two abductees. Israel had a strategic warning concerning an abduction attempt. It was provided by a top source in Hezbollah - Nasrallah - in his public declarations. But Nasrallah did not supply the essential details for a report - journalistic or intelligence - or for a tactical warning: who, what, where, when, how. The authority to issue such warnings is the perogative of the head of MI's research division. A warning, in this context, is not just rhetoric; it has practical implications in terms of awareness of the need to reinforce the line by bringing in forces from other sectors. The division is not authorized to issue a warning. The command has limited authority. Only MI has full authority. Between the official warnings, the division resorted to stratagems and internal alerts, and for months on end was successful in this. First there was the "Hill and Valley" event at Raghar, in November 2005, and afterward preparedness that was codenamed "Dew and Rain," in the spring of this year. Finally, in June-July, following the abduction of Gilad Shalit at Kerem Shalom, on the Gaza border, the state of alert was raised to the highest level. Condition "National Asset" - recall of soldiers from leave - was declared and home leaves on successive weekends were canceled; officers did not get home for a month and more. Tension at this level cannot be maintained indefinitely. The fear of an abduction was not realized and the alert level was lowered, though it was still higher than in other sectors. The abduction occurred two days later. This was not by chance: Hezbollah monitored the IDF's activity, and if the high alert had continued, the other side, too, would have continued waiting patiently for its unavoidable end.

No complacency
One floor up, in Northern Command, understanding was shown for the division's approach, but as part of the policy of "containment," restraint and cooling down - passive observation of Hezbollah's preparations, monitoring of its ability to mount a sudden attack on targets on the Israeli side of the border, put a ban on a preemptive operation on the Lebanese side. The list of Northern Command goals, which was presented in June to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, contained, in third place "rapid passage from routine to combat." In second place was "preventing abduction." These goals constitute irrefutable proof that there was no complacency - but first place on the list was reserved for "security and tranquillity for the communities in the north," meaning prevention of escalation that would bring in its wake volleys of Katyushas, cause civilian casualties and damage the economy. During the first days of the fighting there were pointed arguments and heated exchanges between the GOC Northern Command, Major General Udi Adam, and the division commander, Brigadier General Gal Hirsch. According to members of the General Staff, who heard faint echoes of all this, the differences of approach between Adam and Hirsh concerning the format and consecutiveness of combat left the two on the verge of an irreparable personal and professional rift. As time passed, and Adam understood that the dangerous front for him was above him and not below, tempers cooled and a uniform line was adopted in the north. Now one can hear personnel in the Northern Command war room, the "Castle" on Mount Canaan, quoting effusive praise Adam is heaping on Hirsch and on the commanders and fighters in the division's brigades and battalions.

One of the positive surprises of the war was the quiet influence of a bland, almost anonymous major general who is on retirement leave - Eyal Ben Reuven - who was until recently the commander of an armored formation and of the National Defense College. Ben Reuven acted as Adam's deputy. Alongside a GOC who sought to delay, but without trying to overshadow him, Ben Reuven suddenly stood out as the spokesman for an aggressive and decisive approach, which impressed the General Staff and the divisions. "A wolf in sheep's clothing," one of his colleagues said of him, and also gave grounds for his assessment. Ben Reuven is the last of the IDF's ground generals who went through a real war - the Yom Kippur War of 1973 - in addition to fierce armored battles in the Lebanon War of 1982. The chain of knowledge that characterized the IDF from one generation to the next was severed toward the end of the 1990s with the retirement of the generation of Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Matan Vilnai. The territorial commanders in the Six-Day War of 1967 were brigade commanders (or heads of departments in the General Staff) in the Sinai War of 1956 and battalion and company commanders in 1948. The territorial commanders of 1973 were the brigade commanders of 1967; the brigade commanders of 1973 were the major generals of 1982. In 2006 it is difficult to find a major general, let alone division and brigade commanders, with experience in activating large troop formations in a war against an army that is deployed for defense - which, according to Adam, is how Hezbollah units deployed in southern Lebanon. The demand from the IDF to operate against an enemy in Lebanon but not against Lebanon, created a serious limitation: to swat a mosquito on a porcelain statuette. Fouad Siniora was marked as the designated postwar partner, and therefore the bombings were concentrated on Hezbollah infrastructures - they sustained damage of $10 billion, in the IDF's estimate - but not on those that the Siniora government would have to rebuild. And there was also the fear of the military advocate general, Brigadier General Avihai Mandelblit. Any target that is not saliently military requires his approval or that of his assistants or of the legal advisers of the air force and Northern Command. Mandelblit sent the army to carry out operation "Salvation for the South" - the dissemination of flyers warning civilians of an impending attack and urging them to leave. The old method of two previous operations in Lebanon, "Accountability" (1993) and "Grapes of Wrath" (1996) - getting masses to move north in order to pressure Beirut to pressure Damascus to pressure Hezbollah - was barred as too dangerous: not for civilians, but for soldiers, and not in Al Khayam but in The Hague.

Fish in an aquarium

The central personnel operated in the war like fish in an aquarium. Everything is transparent, everything is exposed, everything is reported to the world even before it happens. In these circumstances it would have been better for Moses, too, not to come down from Sinai with the Tablets of the Law straight into a special day of broadcasts brought to you by the Golden Calf. A disparity was created between substance and show: what is seen is not necessarily, not always, what is actually going on, and between the events that did occur there was no simple causal connection. The hitches with the equipment and training of the reservists, and to a lesser extent with the regular army, are intolerable but not exceptional. They have characterized all the wars with perhaps the exception of the Six-Day War, thanks to the three-week waiting period that preceded it. Wars are not one-time operations (of the likes of Entebbe or the Iraqi nuclear reactor). In June 1982 the ground divisions marked time and the air force excelled in downing Syrian planes and destroying surface-to-air missile batteries, but also killed dozens of Israeli soldiers in attacks on ground forces; and then, as we know, the defense minister and the chief of staff were seasoned war veterans, experienced commanders of Paratroop brigades and armored divisions and territorial headquarters. It is foolish to say this time the IDF performed less well than in other wars just because the chief of staff comes from the air force. Not every chief of staff who was a skilled force builder also knew how to activate it - a case in point is Yitzhak Rabin - and not every chief of staff who projected charm justified his image, in war or ahead of it (Moshe Dayan). It was not Dan Halutz who raised the generation of senior ground commanders who were put to the test this time; he only headed it for the past year, and before that was commander of the very air force which proved again this time that it is unsurpassed. Despite the traditional rivalries between the Golani Brigade and the air force and between both of them and the Armored Corps, the voodoo rite of sticking pins into the Halutz doll had the scent of a khaki putsch, an effort to liquidate the competitors from the air. Halutz contributed to this: the commander who was known for his warm interest in subordinates who were hurt broadcast waves of coldness in the war. And they returned to him as frost in his hour of distress. Two weeks ago it was already clear that he was disappointed in the behavior of the major generals who until the war were the closest of his loyalists. Even as he talked about a "bank of targets" it turned out that he is the target in the bank. The chief of staff and the army were senior partners, albeit not exclusive ones, in one of the three components of the war - the military aspect, of which the supreme commander is the government. In the case of the other two aspects - the civilian population and the diplomatic effort - the failures are those of the political level alone.

New Airport Security -Check-in Procedures

Thanks, Charlie, indeed it seems that those
procedures are the best, we have to fit the system and not to "fuck" it.
I hope that either the airport or the companies offer a plastic bag to take your "shmates" on the flight. And that you find yourself next to your dream girl... 

Mariangela Fumagalli- Nettuno

In July 1999 I spent about 10 days at the Rockefeller Foundation. It was in the good days when it was some hope for peace in the Middle East and with an ambitious and very active and political Jewish American architect from New York (Michael Sorkis) we succeeded to organize a meeting in Bellagio between Palestinians and Israelis to discuss the future of Jerusalem. In fact this meeting convinced me that peace is very far away. In fact Sorkis had the right connections; he got the premises and a grant from the generous foundation. He also took care of inviting a lot of people, mostly with unchangeable ideas and not open to a dialogue…
But I met some interesting people, I made a friend or two and I spend a wonderful vacation being located in the tower of the property, a very special place with a magnificent view over the lake.

One afternoon I was walking in Bellagio by myself, I entered in a shop and met an Italian lady with a noble look. We spoke a bit, and I told her that I am from Jerusalem.
A few days later I found in my room a letter. Inside the envelope a hand written poem, signed by the lady, the Italian poet Mariangela Fumagalli-Nettuno.
It goes as follows:

Gerusalemme
Il respiro di Dio vibra
Nelle tue strade Gerusalemme,
Il pulsare del tuo cuore spirituale
Entra nelle mie vene.
Quel colore, non colore
Delle tue mura, dei tuoi ulivi,
Quel greve muoversi del tuo popolo Rotto dalla Cosmopolita dei pellegrini.
Quella spianata ocra di tombe avite
Di chi a te caro era.
Oh, Gerusalemme,
Quale osmosi sentire
Le mie ossa abbracciate
Dalle tu gigantesche ali.
L'universo pulsare
Puntato ad oriente
Come centro dell'Universo.

Seven years passed by. I think sometimes at Mariangela Fumagalli -Nettuno,
(http://www.club.it/autori/mariangela.fumagalli)
I am so grateful to her for the sweet and sour memory of my broken dreams at Bellagio.

Bellagio: Mariangela Fumagalli - Nettuno

Here in Bellagio I met the Italian poet, Mariangela Fumagalli- Nettuno. In July 1999. I told her that I am a Jerusalemite, the next day I found in my room, at the Rockefeller Foundation a letter. An in the letter a hand written poem :
"Gerusalleme".
Thank you Mariangela, I hope that one day I will meet you again... 

E vesel presedintele Ahmadinejad

Cum ziceam mai jos, Mahmoud e vesel. Pasamite ascet ce-i lipseste lui in obrajori, Nassrallah cel rotund compenseaza. Cum zicea pe vremuri o poeta comunista, cred Maria Banus, dar memoria ma poate insela: "La masa verde fata-n fata
Unii cer moartea, altii viata"
Se potrivesc aceste versuri. In numele imam-ului al doisprezecela ,pe nume Mahdi, Ahmadinejad soarbe din nargilea si cere moartea tuturor. 

Narghileaua "pacii" in Orientul Apropiat

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad e multumit.

Fara indoiala. Presedintele Iranului, Ahmadinejad soarbe din narghila multumit. Mahmoud este un om modest si sarac. Narghila este bucuria sarmanilor, necajitii fac rost de doua parale pentru cateva fire de tutun si un carbune incins. Ati baut vre-o data o narghilea? Daca nu, orice bucurestean mai cu stare se poate duce intr-o seara la restaurantul Picolo Mondo, si dupa cateva feluri rasaritene si o sticla din vinul patriei poate comanda odata cu cafelutza si o narghilea. Astazi tutunul se prepara cu arome de mar sau trandafir, si fumul filtrat prin apa se racoreste si atinge delicat palatul, dandu-ti o stare de nirvana care te face sa uiti si de razboiul din Orientul Apropiat si de Gigi Becali, viitorul presedinte al Romaniei din strada Aleea Alexandru numarul unu.

Cum ziceam, Mahmoud e foarte multumit. Membrii Consiliului de Securitate urmaresc cum diplomatii Frantei si Statelor Unite, descaltati si cu sosete in picioarele care se odihnesc intr-un lighean aurit, asuda sa ajunga la o intelegere care sa multumeasca in primul rand opinia publica de aici si de acolo. Francezii isi vor termina vacanta de vara, pregatindu-se de vacanta obligatorie de toamna, atunci cand viile s-au parguit si vinul nou curge in pahare stropind un “chevre” gustos.

Interesant, reprezentantii din Consiliu ai Rusiei si Chinei stau deoparte si urmaresc cu un oarecare interes efortul colegilor , au toate cartile in mana si isi numara asii ascunsi in maneca ce vor fi scosi, cred ei, la momentul potrivit. Mahmoud insa stie ca vremea sosirii pe pamand a Imam-ului al doisprezecela, Mahdi, se apropie. Caci tratativele care se poarta in urma si pe seama bataliei de la granitele Libanului cu Israelul au amanat discutiile legate de programul lui nuclear. Si atunci cand vor fi reluate, vesul va fi descoperit ca are dinti galbeni si gaunosi care nu mai sunt in stare sa muste .

Natiunile din lumea democrata au uitat sa se ridice la inaltimea evenimentelor si sa judece in perspectiva istorica. Mai curand conducatorii acestor natiuni, care impreuna alcatuiesc acest nou Imperiu Roman, atacat la frontiere de barbari si care, acum ca atunci, prefera dulceata clipei, craticioara cu cassoulet, confruntarii curajoase pe campul de lupta.
In Israel insa, situatia este si mai curioasa. Natiunea este gata de lupta si de sacrificii, guvernul insa a clipit primul in fata lui Mahmoud Nassralah Ahmadinejad.

Sa presupunem ca Ahmadinejad mai avea nevoie de o luna de zile pana la definitivarea Bombei si pregatirea unei incercari nucleare In desertul persan. A capatat acest cadou, si vom vedea, credeti-ma , cum Ahmadinejad isi va aprinde narghila de la taciunele nuclear.

Ahmadinejad isi imparte timpul intre nargileaua lui si telefon. Asteapta sa primeasca stirea ca totul este pregatit pentru intrarea nebunului in clubul care nu vrea sa-l primeasca. Dupa cum se vede insa, volens, nolens, Mahmoud, desi are ciorapi puturosi si gauriti se va aseza la masa nucleara cu dinti sanatosi, ascutiti ,flamanzi si stralucitori. Cu siguranta isi va aduce si narghileaua la ospat.

Loosing a battle or loosing the War?

The facts are that this battle was for the Israeli a war and for the west just a battle in WW3 or WW4 (it depends how you cunt them). Now, the West can loose a battle but eventually win the war. I doubt very much if Israel can loose this war.
On the Israeli prime minister’s personal level and for the Israel government, there is no problem. They have the GOC Northern Command to put the blame on and, as usual defeat is orphan.

The diplomatic deal on the way will spare life for now, and apparently this is good. The French will go on with there summer vacation and enjoy wine and cheese. The Americans tried their best, but unfortunately the Israel army did not performed as it was hoped and both the Americans and the Israelis blinked first.

Not the European nor the Arab governments were able to sustain the war in front of their public opinion. In the past the Israel interest came first and world public opinion second. For the first time in the recent history Israel and West interests were absolutely the same, but unfortunately for all of us the decision is to postpone the ultimate battle… to the day when the Shi’a will have the possibility to nuke us all and bring to Earth their Messiah, their twelve’s Imam, Mahdi who will save us all and make sure a quick meeting in Paradise.

Sorry.

From Ha-aretz- Israel must win

Israel must win (Ha-Aretz)
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey


Israel has been cautious in Lebanon, fearing not only for the lives of its soldiers, but also that an overly aggressive military campaign will alienate world opinion and force its hand diplomatically at the UN. However, Israeli leaders ought to worry more about a different scenario, one in which American policymakers, analyzing the Israel Defense Forces' failure to defeat Hezbollah after 30 days effort, lose their faith in Israel's ability to "get the job done" on issues of shared strategic interest. Should the IDF lose its aura of invincibility in American eyes, Israel's perceived value as an ally could decline sharply.

This reassessment in Washington, when combined with a continuing and even heightened determination by Arab states and jihadists to destroy Israel, would be catastrophic for its security. For decades, Israel has enjoyed an extremely close relationship with the United States. These ties have grown even stronger during George W. Bush's presidency. Israeli leaders should not, however, take American support for granted. There is, of course, a tremendous reservoir of good will and genuine affection for Israel among Americans; but sentiment and habit alone are not a sufficient basis for an enduring U.S.-Israel alliance. The hard truth is that Israel must appear to be, and be, a winner in order to remain a valuable strategic partner for the United States.

As Israel's leaders once understood, the Washington-Jerusalem strategic partnership has always been nurtured by a steady stream of Israeli successes, both in defending its own security and in advancing American interests. These successes ranged from humbling the Soviet Union's Cold War Arab clients, proving the superiority of America's weapons over Russia's (the IDF's 1982 downing of 85 Syrian MIGs being a perfect case in point), to providing invaluable intelligence and being a democracy in a sea of autocracies. Israel's successful 1981 Osirak mission was another excellent example of its strategic value in the Middle East. An Israel that could defang Saddam's nuclear program could also credibly offer the United States help against Iran's looming nuclear threat.

By contrast, Israel's inability to defeat Hezbollah, at least at the tactical and operational level, makes it look less like a valuable ally and more like a liability. This is particularly the case because of the impact - well understood in Washington particularly in the post-September 11 environment - of Arab perceptions of Israeli strength or weakness on their assessment of U.S. capabilities.

The Bush administration's pro-democracy strategy also makes it far more difficult for it to ignore the stridently anti-Israeli views expressed by the proto-democratic governments in Iraq and Lebanon. The fact that the United States has spent major diplomatic capital providing Israel with an unprecedented window of opportunity to deal with Hezbollah, facing down both its European allies and the Arab League, and complicating efforts to launch multilateral sanctions against Iran, makes matters even worse. This is especially true when U.S. domestic political developments are taken into account. In the past, Israel could depend upon a basic consensus among both Republicans and Democrats that it was a valuable, indeed indispensable, ally that occupied the moral high ground.

The political sands, however, are shifting. Anti-Israeli sentiments are rife among Democrats - 59 percent want the U.S. to be more "evenhanded" in the Middle East - some of whom appear to be convinced that the Bush administration's deposition of Saddam Hussein was masterminded by "neo-conservatives" in Israel's interest. Senator Joseph Lieberman's August 8 loss in the Connecticut primary, and the evident triumph of the Democrats' neo-McGovernite wing, signal trouble ahead. The danger posed by Israel's flawed assessment of its closest friend is matched by its apparent neglect of its enemies' evolving nature.

For all of its long experience of the neighboring secular Arab dictatorships, Hamas, and even Hezbollah, Israel has relatively little experience with full-scale jihadi warfare that fuses religion, authoritarian state power, and a pan-Islamic alliance of radical groups. Obviously, this is also true of the United States and the West in general, but Israel has far less room for error.

Organizations like Hezbollah, Al-Qaida and Hamas are not just committed to Israel's destruction at the rhetorical level - as a means of palliating restive populations - but are actively pursuing this objective as a near-term goal, and Hezbollah's ability to hold its own against the IDF has reinforced the Islamists already ebullient mood. The radical Islamist belief that the West is a "weak horse" has, of course, also been reinforced by the continuing insurgency in Iraq and the rising peace movements in Europe and the United States, but Israel is on the front line.

Any conclusion of the current conflict on terms that leave Hezbollah unbowed would further undercut the West's credibility, and would squander much of the deterrent effect of Israel's past military successes from 1948 to the present. In short, Israel must win.

The writers, who served in a variety of legal and policy positions in the U.S. government, are partners in the Washington D.C. office of Baker & Hostetler LLP and are also members of the UN Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

I tell you, he is right!

Little Satan has big teeth
By Yoel Marcus (Ha-aretz)



"Israel is winning this war and chalking up unprecedented achievements. If the fighting were to end today, we could say with certainty that the face of the Middle East has changed as a result of this great Israeli victory." Today, these boastful remarks made by Ehud Olmert at a military college graduation last week sound like they were written on ice. "How will we know we've won?" Ilana Dayan asked Chief of Staff Dan Halutz this week. "We'll feel it," he said. Now that the UN Security Council is gearing up to discuss the cease-fire plan, does anyone feel like we've won? Does anyone feel Olmert has kept his promise to defeat Hezbollah and eliminate the missile threat that looms over Israel? What made the prime minister so sure about how the fighting would turn out? Olmert may be a big expert in soccer, but an authority in military matters he is not. He gets his information from the military. But something happened that happens to generals from time to time: They prepare for the next war based on the rules of the last war.

In the early days of the operation, Israel's generals thought the war could be won by air power alone. But when it finally dawned on them to go in with ground troops, they were surprised by Hezbollah's ability to knock out tanks, carry out ambushes using state-of-the-art night vision technology and above all, bombard the Israeli home front with hundreds of missiles a day.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been turned into refugees and the economic damage is possibly the worst suffered in any of Israel's wars. It's not true we didn't know Hezbollah had amassed so much power and had squirreled away thousands of ballistic missiles. We knew, or predicted, that they had long-range missiles supplied by Syria and Iran. We knew Iranian army instructors were training them. We knew about their underground bunkers. We knew everything.

The only thing we didn't know, or didn't accurately foresee, was that Hezbollah would dare to go whole hog and turn an underground guerrilla operation into a full-fledged war against Israel. Israel was right to launch Operation Change of Direction. The big mistake was in not limiting it to a reprisal raid with a time frame and specific dimensions. If we had, we might have picked up on the changes in Hezbollah and revised our thinking, taking into account the great future showdown Hezbollah was preparing.

With the situation as it is, two approaches have grown up regarding the Security Council cease-fire plan. One is that Israel can forget about any kind of crushing victory this time around. Therefore, to keep losses to a minimum, it is best to agree to a cease-fire without insisting on all our demands. The other approach is that a cease-fire without a decisive Israeli victory and without dismantling Hezbollah as a militia will leave it intact as a pro-Iranian ideological organization that will learn its lessons from the current round of fighting and surprise us one fine day with an even bigger wallop. By now, it is clear this war is not about Lebanon. Hezbollah is not a local terrorist organization but an operative arm of Iran, Syria, Al-Qaida and the instigators of the attack on the Twin Towers. Israel is not just safeguarding Kiryat Shmona, Hadera and maybe Tel Aviv. It has been forced to become a partner in the war on fire-and-brimstone Islamic fundamentalism and what Bush calls the "axis of evil" in this part of the world. So let's leave the critiques and the armchair commentary until after the war and face reality. Reality is that we need to take a deep breath and strike Hezbollah with everything we've got, on land and air, until we neutralize it as a military force on our border. It is important to achieve the upper hand by cease-fire time. We have to show them that "Little Satan" has big teeth.

No cease -fire in the war (Associated-Press)

Lebanese PM rejects U.N. cease-fire plan
By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon -

Lebanon's government rejected a U.N. cease-fire plan backed by
President Bush on Monday, demanding immediately withdraw even before a peacekeeping force arrives and promising to send 15,000 troops to take control of the Hezbollah stronghold along the border.

Meanwhile, renewed clashes broke out early Tuesday between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israeli forces near the Lebanon-Israel border. Fifteen guerrillas were killed, along with one Israeli soldier, in fighting in the town of Bint Jbail, the army said.

Hezbollah's television station, Al-Manar, claimed the guerillas had inflicted casualties on Israeli forces near the city of Naqoura. It did not mention the fighting at Bint Jbail.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's stand, delivered in a tearful speech to Arab foreign ministers, came on a day in which 49 Lebanese were killed — one of the deadliest days for Lebanese in nearly four weeks of fighting. The rejection, ratified by the Cabinet, complicated efforts to find a speedy diplomatic solution to the deadly conflict.

Saniora's Cabinet, which includes two Hezbollah ministers, voted unanimously to send 15,000 troops to stand between Israel and Hezbollah should a cease-fire take hold and Israeli forces withdraw south of the border. The move was an attempt to show that Lebanon has the will and ability to assert control over its south, which is run by Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite Muslim militia backed by and Iran
In Texas, Bush said any cease-fire must prevent Hezbollah from strengthening its grip in southern Lebanon, asserting "it's time to address root causes of problems." He urged the
United Nations to work quickly to approve the U.S.-French draft resolution to stop the hostilities.

Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have sharply intensified in recent days as cease-fire diplomacy gains traction after nearly a month of unproductive talks. The cease-fire plan now under scrutiny at the United Nations has drawn only lukewarm support in Israel and vilification in the Arab world. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah has found an incentive to stop fighting, and both may be trying to gain advantage on the ground before a cease-fire.
At least 52 people died Monday on both sides. Hezbollah fired 160 rockets, wounding five Israelis, police and rescue services said. Three Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in south Lebanon, the first in an exchange of fire with Hezbollah fighters and the two others by an anti-tank missile, the Israeli army said.

With Arab League foreign ministers assembled around a horseshoe table, the embattled Lebanese leader repeatedly interrupted his opening address to gather his composure and wipe away tears. The foreign ministers cast their eyes downward in apparent embarrassment.

But Saniora's impassioned appeal did not change minds in Israel, where hospitals in the war zone were working around the clock and under rocket fire to protect patients from harm — in some cases moving them into a basement. The defense minister threatened an expanded ground operation if diplomacy does not produce results soon.
"I gave an order that, if within the coming days the diplomatic process does not reach a conclusion, Israeli forces will carry out the operations necessary to take control of rocket launching sites wherever they are," Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said.

Cabinet minister Tzahi Hanegbi dismissed the Lebanese offer to send troops as "a ploy."
"We know the army of Lebanon," Hanegbi told Israel Army Radio on Tuesday. "It is a virtual army and was never tested in real conflict. It (the proposal) is a ploy to stop growing pressure on Hezbollah."

But Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told CNN a Lebanese army deployment in the south "in principle, is something, of course, we embrace and we support." He said, however, that Israel wants to know "the rules of engagement" and whether this means the Lebanese army is finally going to start disarming Hezbollah.

Lebanon has been unable for nearly two years to implement a previous U.N. resolution calling for disarmament of the Shiite militants.
The new U.N. resolution under consideration calls for "a full cessation of hostilities" based on "the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations."But it makes no explicit mention of an Israeli withdrawal, and implicitly allows Israeli defensive operations. Instead, it calls in the longer-term for a buffer zone in southern Lebanon — which Hezbollah controls and where Israeli troops are now fighting. Only Lebanese armed forces and U.N.-mandated international troops would be allowed in the zone.
France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, promised Monday to take into account Lebanon's concerns that the resolution does not seek the withdrawal of Israeli troops. But he did not say whether France was prepared to add such language to the text.

The Arab foreign ministers announced in Beirut they would send a delegation to the U.N. to represent Lebanon's interests at a meeting with the Security Council on Tuesday.
They will demand major changes in the draft resolution including a call for Israeli forces to pull out of Lebanon once the fighting stops and hand over their positions to U.N. peacekeepers. Arab states also want the U.N. to take control of the disputed Chebaa Farms area, which Israel seized in 1967.
"We need today pressure on the international community for a Security Council resolution that imposes a comprehensive and permanent cease-fire that provides simultaneously for a complete Israeli withdrawal," Saniora said at the hastily arranged Arab League gathering in Beirut.
Washington and Paris had been expected to circulate a new draft later Monday, in response to amendments proposed by Qatar, the only Arab nation on the Security Council, and other members, diplomats said. But they decided to wait to hear from the Arab delegation on Tuesday afternoon.

The timing of the meeting means the council probably would not adopt a resolution until Wednesday at the earliest but some diplomats were guessing it would be put off until Thursday.
Saniora said Lebanon was "stunned" by the devastation of the Israeli offensive, which had taken "our country back decades. We are still in the middle of the shock."

Israel, reeling from 15 deaths in Hezbollah rocket strikes a day earlier, fought back with particular ferocity Monday.
A sunset airstrike on a south Beirut suburb killed at least 10 people in the predominantly Shiite district of Chiah. At least eight strikes rattled the capital before dawn.
To the east, Israeli warplanes staged bombing runs on suspected Hezbollah positions in the Bekaa Valley, killing at least eight people and wounding 32, witnesses and officials said.
In the south, Israeli commandos helicoptered down to a hill overlooking Ras al-Biyada at mid-afternoon, fighting Hezbollah in close combat in a bid to destroy rocket launchers. About 30 commandos battled the guerrillas, but there was no word on casualties, a Lebanese official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Almost all the ground battles have taken place south of the Litani River, some 18 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border. The Israeli army said it declared an indefinite curfew beginning Monday night on the movement of vehicles south of the Litani. Humanitarian traffic would be allowed, but other vehicles would be at risk if they ignored the order, the army said.
The Israelis want to destroy the guerrillas' rocket launchers, but Hezbollah has other weapons in its arsenal.

The Israeli air force shot down a Hezbollah drone for the first time Monday, sending its wreckage plunging into the sea, the army said. Israeli media reported that the unmanned aircraft had the capacity to carry 90 pounds of explosives, nearly as much as the more powerful rockets Hezbollah has been firing into Israel.
Unlike the rockets, the drone has a guidance system to for accurate targeting.

S-o rup mi-e frica

"Intr-o gradina,
lang-o tulpina
Zarii o floare
ca o lumina
S-o rup ...se strica
S-o las mi-e frica
Ca vine altul
Si mi-o ridica"......parca asa zicea primul poet roman , nenea Ienachita... Asa si cu bijuteriile amenintate din satele romanesti, cum este aceasta casa din Saliste Vale. 

Casa cu pridvor

In Marginimea Sibiului, la 25 de kilometri de Sibiu, in satul Saliste -Vale am descoperit "Casa cu pridvor". Florin si Mona Tabra, doi sibieni si-au construit o mica casuta de vacanta pe care o inchiriaza din cand in cand si anuma cand dau peste un musteriu de treaba (www.casacupridvor.ro). Surprinzatoare pentru dimensiunile ei modeste, proportiile impecabile si mestesugul cu care a fost ridicta, casa cu pridvor este un loc incantator. Asezata cu maiestrie intr-o gradina la poalele dealului, ne-a oferit cadrul potrivit scurtei noastre ruperi de cotdianul atat de putin atragator in aceste zile.
Florin a "transhumat" ca sa folosesc limba oierilor din zona, o casuta pe care a gasit-o intr-un sat vecin, cred la Orlat, casuta care era destinata focului de lemne. A refacut-o , adaptat-o si integrat-o intr-o constructie noua, respectand detaliile originale si cautand cu ajutorul catorva mesteri pe cale de disparitie sa creeze un loc foarte special si inedit in peisajul mitocaniei asa zisei arhitecturi contemporane romanesti. 

Pe urmele Pensiunii Weber

Am plecat si eu intr-o scurta vacanta. Departe de zarva orasului. Departe de zgomotul pervers al "stirilor" ingrijoratoare, prevestitoare de rele care urmeaza sa vina si pe care nu ai cum sa le opresti. Departe, tocmai in "Marginimea Sibiului", in inima Ardealului, cautand printre brazi faimoasa pensiune Weber. N-am gasit-o, daca as fi gasit-o cu tot echipajul la bord, probabil ca as fi amanat intoarcerea in capitala.
Dar am invatat de mult ca in orice vacanta, fie ea de trei zile sau de trei luni, exista si prima zi si ultima zi...

A venit vremea shiitilor (Pentru cititorii de limba romana)

“A sosit timpul shiitilor”

(Time Of Shia)


Astfel Max Rodenbeck intituleaza in numarul din 10 august al lui NYR of Books recenzia a doua carti care trateaza subiectul (daca nu problema) shi’a: “Reaching for Power:The Shi’a in the Modern Arab World” (by Itzak Nakash) si “The Shi’a Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future”(de Vali Nasr).

Dupa cum se poate vedea atat in titlul recenziei cat si in titlurile celor doua carti, “traim vremuri interesante”- blestemul chinezesc -, asistand la o revolutie in Islam, suntem insa spectatori activi deoarece, mai mult nolens decat volens, participam la ea. La revolutia shi’a, care se afla in puternica, rapida ,agresiva si amenintatoare ascensiune in lumea islamului.

Musulmanii sunt impartiti in mare in doua ramuri: ramura sunni( de la de la cuvantul sunnah – cale, “calea profetului) si ramura shi’a (de la cuvantul shi’a- partisan). Astazi marea majoritate a ismaelitilor, in proportie de 85% dintre cei un milliard doua sute de mii de musulmani sunt sunni, iar shi’a sunt o minoritate, despre care, in tari musulmane cum sunt Bangladesh, Indonezia sau Maroc, nu se stie mai nimic despre obiceiurile lor diferite in slujirea lui Allah.

Intr-adevar, ritualurile religioase sunt aproape identice. Diferenta de esenta este ca ramura sunni dau prioritate mesajului religios monoteist al Islamului in timp ce Shi’a (partizanii lui Ali) cred in primul rand in ereditatea de sange a Profetului, in imamii descendenti din Ali si Fatima.
Muhamad, dupa cum se stie, a avut multe neveste si de toate felurile. Fiul sau Ibrahim a murit fara sa lase urmasi, descendenta profetului a fost asigurata insa datorita ficei lui, Fatima care s-a casatorit cu un var al profetului , Ali. Dupa cum vom vedea, pentru shi’a , aceasta descendenta de sange devine prioritara in dogma religioasa, (nu in practica), exista aici inca o diviziune, cei care cred intr-un lant de sapte imani descendenti din Muhamad si cei care cred intr-un lant de 12 imani cu descendenta directa, care se duce pana si se termina in anul 874, in care moare ultimnul imam, al doisprezecelea la numar, Muhammad al-Mahdi, moare la varsta de numai 5 ani.

Despre acest copil imam Mahdi, se spune ca, intr-o zi, se va intoarce pe pamant pentru a elibera omenirea de lipsa de dreptate. Si sunt grupari radicale mesianice, cum ar fi “Hojjatieh” care considera nu numai ca intoarcerea pe pamant a lui Mahdi este iminenta dar care si trebuie grabita. Unul dintre membrii grupului Hojjatieh este nu mai putin decat presedintele Iranului, stimabilul Mahmoud Ahmadinejad….Doctrina Shi’a este construita, pe undeva asemanator crestinismului, in jurul ideii salvarii prin suferinta . Iar Mahdi este Messiah a carui venire este iminenta.

Desi atat de minoritar pana a aprea neseminficativ, cu ups and downs in cursul istoriei, miscarea shi’a a fost sustinuta printr-o abila combinatie de bani si de politica. Se aplica o taxa credinciosilor numita “partea lui Mahdi”, sau “khums” (cincime) colectata de preoti pentru binele comun. Aceste sume importante au si dat putere preotimii shi’a dar au si nascut si intarit o solidaritate speciala inauntrul sectei. Ramura Shi’a capata si detine putere politica continua prin identificarea ei cu apararea celor slabi: a fi partizanul (shi’a) lui Ali, inseamna sa practici o forma de rezistenta impotriva injustitiei aparente.

Astfel Shiismul a devenit o credinta care a inflorit in randul asupritilor de toate felurile, o religie a frustratilor. A fost deasemenea imbratisata si folosita cinic de diversi ambitiosi, cum ar fi stapanitorii Iranului din secolul 16, “Safavid” care au reusit sa combine Shi’ismul de fel 12(!) cu nationalismul persan.

Cred ca din ce am scris se intelege clar atat diferenta dintre sunni si shi’a cat si de ce shi’a sunt atat de atragatori astazi pentru masele de musulmani exploatati, flamanzi , asupriti. Si de ce aceste mase pot fi manipulate cu usurinta in Iran de exemplu.

Ahmadinejad insa este un adevarat credincios in Mahdi, si mai putin in Allah sau Dumnezeu. Si doreste probabil sa provoace acel Haos care il va adduce pe pamant pe Mahdi, care va face in fine dreptate. Pentru acest Haos, Ahmadinejad are nevoie de arsenal nuclear.

Nu vreau sa o largesc cu implicatiile locale si regionale ale disparitiei in Irak a lui Saddam Hussein si a dominatiei sunni. Devine din ce in ce mai evident ca Bush impreuna cu consilierii lui au facut o gresala monumentala eliminandu-l pe Saddam. Este prea tarziu acum sa plangem laptele varsat.

Cat despre actualele lupte de la granitele de nord si de sud a Israelului, esenta conflictului se clarifica, odata inteles specificul religios al conflictului.

World War 4

The so called Israel-Lebanon war is an Israel Hisb’allah battle which is an Iran and Syria war/battle against Israel which is one of the first battles of WW3 or WW4, it depends how you count them.
For the west it is just a battle, and we know that in a war you can lose a battle but eventually win the war.
For Israel it is a war it can not loose.
The west know what is all about, Europe just does not has the will and the guts to confront NOW the problem.
The conflict might develop and probably will in a much larger conflict . Not in the future, not ‘in a couple of years”, it is a matter of weeks, may be days.
Sorry.

Cry to those using babies! (Ha-Aretz)

Cry to those using babies
By Naomi Ragen

My son is in the army. He is not the type at all, believe me. Quiet, studious, a writer, a lover of Jewish history, Talmud, ethics. He spent two years in a pre-army program in the Galilee called Karmei Hayil. He made many good friends there from all over the country, and now he and all his friends are in the army. One of them I know well. A bit chubby, with payot (sidelocks) and a great laugh. He and my son have become like brothers. While both of them tried out for the elite paratroopers unit, only his friend made it in. He and his unit are the ones in Lebanon. They were there over a week, fighting under horrific conditions, running out of food and water. Even though the Israel Air Force dropped tons of leaflets warning civilians to flee because they were in terrorist territory and likely to be injured, they still encountered civilians.

My son spoke to his friend yesterday, and this is how he described it: "The village looked empty, and then we heard noises coming from one of the houses, so we opened fire. But when we went inside, we found two women and a child huddled in the corner of the room. We were so relieved we hadn't hurt them. We took up base in one of the empty houses. And then all of a sudden, we came under intense fire. Three rockets were fired at the house we were in. Only one managed to destroy a wall, which fell on one of us, covering him in white dust, but otherwise not hurting him.

"I spent the whole time feeding bullets to my friend who was shooting nonstop. We managed to kill 26 terrorists. Not one of us was hurt. Our commanding officer kept walking around, touching everybody on the shoulder, smiling and encouraging us: 'We're are better than they are. Don't worry.' It calmed us all down. And really, we were much better than them. They are a lousy army. They only win when they hide behind baby carriages." Please remember this when you hear about the "atrocity" of the Israeli bomb that killed many civilians in Kafr Qana, a place from which Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel.

Unlike previous administrations, Mr. Olmert has my respect when he says: "They were warned to leave. It is the responsibility of Hezbollah for firing rockets amid civilians." Terrorists and their supporters have lost the right to complain about civilian casualties, since all they have is one goal: this entire war is to target civilians. Every single one of the more than 2,500 rockets launched into Israel, is launched into populated towns filled with women and children. Just today, another explosive belt meant to kill civilians in Israel was detonated harmlessly by our forces in Nablus.

So don't cry to me about civilian casualties. Cry to those using babies and wives and mothers; cry to those who store weapons in mosques, ambulances, hospitals and private homes. Cry to those launching deadly rockets from the backyards of kindergartens and schools. Cry to the heartless men who love death, and however many of their troops or civilians die, consider themselves victorious as long as they can keep on firing rockets at our women and children. Save your sympathy for the mothers and sisters and girlfriends of our young soldiers who would rather be sitting in study halls learning Torah, but have no choice but to risk their precious lives full of hope, goodness and endless potential, to wipe out the cancerous terrorist cells that threaten their people and all mankind. Make your choice, and save your tears. That terrorists have been unsuccessful in killing more of our women and children is due to our army, God and prayers, not to any lack of motivation or intention on their part. If you hide behind your baby to shoot at my baby, you are responsible for getting children killed. You and you alone.

The writer is an American-born novelist and playwright who lives in Jerusalem.

Picture of child and Nasrallah

There is nothing more terrible than those kids killed in the war. But it is almost as painful to think at the children who survive but they are educated in the culture of hate, blood, war and revange.
Can we find hope, somewhere? 

The demons of war at work.

There is no excuse for innocent death. The demons of war are thirsty, they get plenty of blood those days and it seems that they are not happy yet. There is more to come.
We hardly can look at the any war image, we try to find excuses and reason where we can find dry reason but not for much comfort.
We use planes, tanks, canons, ground troops in our ”fight for peace “, Hisb’allah uses indiscriminate rockets fire and human shields, baby shields. Is any weapon legitimate?
We kill for Peace. They kill for the Prophet. Enough!

Food for thought (from Jerusalem Post)

Our World: Seeing the war in its true colors

Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST July 25, 2006

Today US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet with PrimeMinister Ehud Olmert. The press reports leading up to their meeting were full of details about how European armies wish to send their forces to Lebanon. The reports also noted that Israel will be expected to surrender the Shaba Farms on Mount Dov to Lebanon in exchange for promises of security.For their part, Israeli leaders from Olmert to Defense Minister Amir Peretz to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have been demonstrating a disturbing lack of resolve. Their statements expose a consistent watering down of the goal of the IDF's mission in Lebanon - from destroying Hizbullah as a fighting force to weakening it as a fighting force and "paving the way for a diplomatic settlement" that will apparently include Hizbullah. On the other hand, other voices make clear that despite the best wishes of the government and the Israeli left-wing intelligentsia, it is far from clear that the IDF will end its operations without victory achieved.

For instance, writing in The Sunday Times, former Conservative MPMichael Portillo told his British countrymen that their hostility forIsrael and the US aside, "The bloody truth is that Israel's war is our war." Portillo went on to argue that given the threat that Iran and Hizbullah pose to Britain itself, "for us to turn against Israel and America would be perverse and potentially suicidal.

"STRENGTHENING the view that opposition to war against Iran and its proxies is suicidal, it was reported Sunday that Bulgarian border guards along their border with Romania had intercepted a British truck filled with radioactive materials for building a so-called dirty bomb. The components, which included dangerous quantities of radioactive caesium 137 and americium-beryllium, were stored in 10 lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defense. According to the Daily Mail, this was the second time in less than a year that a British shipment of nuclear materials had been stopped by Bulgarian border guards. Last August, Bulgaria stopped a shipment of zirconium silicate, which can be used as a component of a nuclear warhead, at its border with Turkey en route to Iran. THE CURRENT campaign in northern Israel and Lebanon has brought into sharp focus the major pathologies and strengths of the West in fighting the Iranian-led jihadist axis. The British government's push for a cease-fire, together with the enthusiasm of the UN and France for sending their own troops to Lebanon to protect the Lebanese from the"disproportionate" Israelis; the demand of Israel's radical Left that a deal be made with Syria; and the demands of leftist ideologues in the US that an artificial deadline be set for the conclusion of Israel's operations in Lebanon all point to a similar pathology. As a group, the ideological Left rejects the notion of victory in war for Western forces (although it is fine for jihadists); rejects the notion that there are enemies that are impossible to appease; and specifically rejects the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself against its enemies, let alone vanquish its foes.

LET US BE clear. The European foreign ministers and UN envoys who are tripping over one another on their way to Jerusalem are the same European foreign ministers and UN officials who brought about the misguided American decision to throw out 27 years of US practice and officially engage the mullahs in Teheran. That is, the same European governments now jockeying for a place in an international force that will protect Hizbullah from destruction are the ones who have been stymieing American attempts to take concerted action against Iran's nuclear weapons programs for the past three years.This is the pathology of the West. For if one takes the ideology of appeasing unappeasable foes to its logical conclusion, appeasing states will eventually join forces with their enemies against themselves, or, as Portillo put it, they will become suicidal. AND SO, Britain's Department of Trade and Industry can give export licenses to dirty bomb components en route to Iran. And so American columnists named Cohen can tell the world that Israel's existence is a mistake. And so, Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, can refuse to acknowledge that Hizbullah is an Iranian-run terrorist organization dedicated to Islamic world domination even as its supporters throughout Europe hold mass demonstrations where they hold signs calling for Europe's destruction at the hands of Hizbullah and Iran in the name of Islam. And so Yossi Beilin can say that Israel doesn't need to worry about the repercussions of standing down while a fifth of its population sits in bomb shelters, because Hizbullah is just a measly terrorist organization that poses no real threat to the country. On the other hand, events of the past two weeks have also shown some of the West's greatest strengths in fighting the war so many of its powerful citizens and statesmen refuse to acknowledge. First of all, the IDF has discarded its dangerous delusions that it will be possible to win this war by remote control. Today it fights like an army that knows it is both at war, and at war with an enemy that needs to be destroyed, whatever the price may be. SEVERAL supporters of Israel were quick to write off the IDF in the wake of unsupported statements by Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz and his generals last week, in which they announced - based perhaps on the tonnage of ordnance IAF jets dropped on Lebanon - that Israel had destroyed up to fifty percent of Hizbullah's capacities."Israel is losing this war," these commentators moaned, not recognizing that the IDF is capable of learning from its mistakes. "Israel's intelligence services fell asleep on their watch," it was said. But these eagerly defeatist voices do not recognize that the failure was not one of intelligence, but of politics. Mesmerized by the dovish ideologies propounded by three consecutive governments, it took the General Staff a week to understand that Israel was at war. BUT NOW they know. And now the IDF is fighting well, boldly and effectively on the ground. Halutz initiated a rolling mobilization of the reserves, and the IAF has pulled back to its proper supportive role. As well, it is impossible not to recognize the Bush administration's centrality in the current campaign. Not only is the US rearming the IAF with bunker buster bombs, it is making certain that its own public andthe international community recognize that what is at stake here is fargreater than the well-being of Israel's citizens.
As President George W. Bush has made clear, this is not just Israel's war. This is a campaign of the Iranian-led axis of jihad that seeks to dominate the entire free world. And echoing Bush are voices like Portillo's that are heard from Beirut to Sydney. Moreover, by rising to the challenge Hizbullah, Syria and Iran have placed before it, the entire Israeli public is setting an example for its army, its government and the world to follow. Families in the North are stoically accepting the around-the-clock bombardments and standing strong in their demand for victory. Families in the rest of the country are opening their homes to thousands of refugees from Haifa and Nahariya and Tiberias. As a friend put it the other day, "Halutz has no choice but to win. Israel is a country with five million chiefs of staff and they are all breathing down his neck."FINALLY, the campaign in Lebanon is indeed the opening salvo of Iran's war against the free world. But this works both ways. Iran and Hizbullah believe that the ferocity of the attacks against Israel will deter us all from taking action against Iran's nuclear facilities. But by giving the West the opportunity to fight it first in Lebanon, Teheran is providing the US, Israel and others with critical intelligence about its own installations. The subterranean bunkers insouth Lebanon that IDF ground forces are now conquering were built byIranian Revolutionary Guards units and designed by Iranian engineers -the same forces that conceived and constructed Iran's nuclear installations. IN 1982, when Israel destroyed the Syrian Soviet-made and trained airforce in Lebanon, it was able to provide the US with critical information about the Soviet Air Force and its air defense systems that enabled the US to outstrip both in a manner that all but sealed the fate of the evil empire. Today, by fighting Iran's proxy, Hizbullah, Israel is amassing information that will be critical for planning a successful strike against Iran's nuclear installations.It is impossible to know what will actually be discussed today as Olmert meets with Rice. But it must be hoped that now that the US, Israel and other Western states are acknowledging the true nature of the war against Israel, they will abandon their suicidal demons and use this campaign as a stepping stone for neutralizing its chief instigator: The Islamic Republic of Iran.

Joschka Fisher's comment (from Ha-Aretz)

A proxy war
By Joschka Fischer

Haifa, Beirut and many other Lebanese and Israeli towns and villages are under fire. Who would have thought this possible a few weeks ago? Across the globe, the reaction to the images of destruction and death in Lebanon, but also in Gaza and Israel, has been one of abhorrence. The current war in Lebanon is not a war by the Arab world against Israel; rather, it is a war orchestrated by the region's radical forces - Hamas and Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and Iran - which fundamentally reject any settlement with Israel. Conflict was sought for three reasons: first to ease pressure on Hamas from within the Palestinian community to recognize Israel; second to undermine democratization in Lebanon, which was marginalizing Syria; and third to lift attention from the emerging dispute over the Iranian nuclear program and demonstrate to the West the "tools" at its disposal in the case of a conflict.

Moderate Arab governments understand full well the issue at stake in this war: It is about regional hegemony in the case of Syria with Lebanon and Palestine and, on a wider level, Iran's hegemonic claim to the entire Middle East. Yet the war in Lebanon and Gaza could prove to be a miscalculation for the radicals. By firing missiles on Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, a boundary has been crossed. From now on, the issue is no longer primarily one of territory, restitution or occupation. Instead, the main issue is the strategic threat to Israel's existence.

The rejectionist front has underestimated Israel's determination and capacity for deterrence. It has proved there is no way back to the status quo in Lebanon, and it revealed Iran's hegemonic aspirations to the entire world. The folly of this is readily apparent, because it doesn't require much imagination to see what the Middle East would look like if an Iranian nuclear umbrella were shielding the radicals.

This miscalculation will become obvious as four developments unfold: Israel avoids being sucked into a ground war in Lebanon; b UN Resolution 1559 - which requires the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon with the help of the international community - is enforced and a return to the status quo rendered impossible; b today's de facto "anti-hegemon" coalition, comprising moderate Arab countries (including moderate Palestinians), is transformed into a robust and serious peace initiative; and b the Quartet, led by the United States, becomes actively engaged for a viable solution and provides the necessary political, economic and military guarantees to sustain it over time. Israel has a key role to play here. Twice, it withdrew its troops unilaterally behind its recognized borders, namely from southern Lebanon and Gaza. Both times, Israel's land-for-peace formula resulted in land for war.

Now, with the existence of Israel under threat, peace with its Arab neighbors seems a more distant prospect than ever. I believe today's war in Lebanon can open up a new opportunity for peace. The sooner the guns are silenced in Lebanon, the better. But let's not forget the war's starting point: the clash within Hamas over whether to recognize Israel. And let's not forget the attitude of moderate Arab governments toward this war and to the hidden intentions of those who sought it. Israel's security makes a restructuring of Lebanon's internal organization and a guarantee of Lebanon's state sovereignty nonnegotiable.

Now is the time to play the Syrian card and bring President Bashar Assad onto the path of normalization. With the Golan Heights, Israel has the key element in its hand. Without Syria, Iran would be alone. Iraq, too, would profit from such a development. Finally, things are not as hopeless for the Palestinians as they may seem. In Israel's prisons, a consensus has developed among leading Fatah and Hamas Palestinian inmates on accepting a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. This new Palestinian realism must be supported. But there can be no way past the historic date of June 1967 (for both sides). How then, will Israel define its security in the future? Currently, Israel emphasizes massive deterrence, but it would be well advised to utilize the political and diplomatic possibilities presented by this war and take the initiative from a position of strength to offer a comprehensive peace to all those who are ready to recognize its existence and permanently renounce violence, not just in word, but also in deed. Now is the time to think big! This applies not only to Israel and its neighbors, but to the U.S. and Europe as well. This war offers a chance for lasting peace. We must not let it slip away.

Joschka Fischer, a leader of the Green Party for nearly 20 years, was Germany's foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. Copyright: Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences.

Cantina puscariei...

Stau la carciuma mea, Cafee Rehavia, lucrez, ingrijorat de situatia din jur. In jurul meu mai multi barbati decat muieri, la aceasta ora din zi, vineri dupa masa, ne asteapta sambata incremenita.
Totii barbatii din jurul meu, rasi pe cap. Chelia la moda, si aici ca si la Bucuresti este de doua feluri : chelia celor pentru care parul a incetat sa fie o podoaba naturala, au chelit in mare parte "de la natura" si, felul doi, chelia celor care isi cauta un "look" dur, care sa impresioneze gagicile.
Rezultatul este acelasi, parca sunt la ora pranzului intr-o cantina de puscarie.
Am pus poza de alaturi, am nevoie de par frumos... 

Diminishings expectations (from Ha-Aretz)

Diminishing expectations
By Doron Rosenblum

How flexible is happiness, how malleable is the level of people's expectations. Just two or three weeks ago, a happy report that has just been received on the radio and television news would have been Warren Buffet's purchase of Iscar, a bull market or a wave of performances in Israel by international artists. Now a happy report is the news that no one was killed although 10 were wounded, two seriously in a rocket salvo on Haifa. And a very encouraging report is that our forces succeeded in extricating a soldier's body.

The war of the speech
Humanity has known vicious wars that were triggered by bizarre causes: from the war of Troy and Greece because of love for Helen, to the assassination of Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which brought aboutWorld War I, to the soccer game that sparked a war between Hondurasand El Salvador. As Groucho Marx told the ambassador who refused to pull a card out of a deck: Of course, you know this means war!? Future researchers may hunt and comb to dig up all the historiosophic and political reasons for the outbreak of the current war with Hezbollah, but at least they will have no trouble finding the trigger. This war, with all its hundreds of casualties and tremendous damage, broke out not because of the abduction of the soldiers, but because of a speech: Hassan Nasrallah's short,bragging speech in which he provoked Israel's new leaders.Was it a clever trap laid by the wily fox, or perhaps one uncalculated moment of catastrophic hubris when, with that defiant smile, the Hezbollah leader told his listeners that Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Dan Halutz are inexperienced and small as compared with Ariel Sharon. And, as though to add fuel to the fire, he emphasized the small with his fingers. It's possible that the war would at least have been postponed if the prime minister or the defense minister had been a woman, or if Hezbollah had made do only with the incident in which soldiers were killed and abducted, without the provocative speech. But with that speech, and with this kind of cast on our side bad-tempered Olmert, egocentric Peretz, arrogant Halutz ? Nasrallah had a better chanceof emerging unscathed if he stood barefoot in a puddle and stuck a nail into an electric outlet. Is there a trigger that can light a fuse and generate testosterone more surely than that mocking smile and small gesture of the fingers? Whose blood wouldn't rush to his head? Who wouldn't be ready to get up and head-butt the man instantly, Zinadine-like? So the war, whatever its price, was unavoidable. Let us therefore not be surprised that it has no well-defined strategic goals. It burst out reflexively, like a blow delivered below the belt. And if anyone is still skeptical about the true motives for the war of the speech (not just Nasrallah's abduction speech, but also his spider-web speech of six years ago), the truth shall be revealed by the remarks of the chief of staff, Dan Halutz, this week: Bint Jbailis the symbol of Hezbollah, he said, against the backdrop of the fierce battles raging there. Nasrallah spoke there. And I would think that in his next speech if there is a next speech he will think carefully about his words. Who said the war's goals aren't clear?

Revenge of gibberish
Who thinks carefully about the words of his next speech around here? Could it be the overweening officers, both those in uniform and those who are retired, who have for years hijacked the national agenda, and whose boasting and patronizing (Benjamin Ben-Eliezer:That little dwarf, Nasrallah?; the commander of the Israel AirForce: The leader of that gang?) are shattered time and again by hitches, blunders, accidents, misses, clumsiness and a lack of creativity? Could it be the chief of staff himself, for whom the horrors of war are a small tremor on the wing of the plane? Or the former GOC Northern Command, Benny Gantz, who for years hurled threats at the enemy to the north, and this week was already philosophizing in the light of the difficulties on the ground about the need not to be militant, and adding: This is not the time to talk about what we said and did not say . Over the years this column has occasionally dealt with the phenomenon of hyper-security gibberish, based on the approach that such utterings are not trivial linguistic matters, but symptoms of a conceptual fogginess that have far-reaching implications. And indeed, it is increasingly clear that what we have here is not just a semantic hazard, but a genuine security danger. Because cliches and vague or untrue words reflect thinking that is automatic, insensitive and inert, casting over everything a pall of illusion, repression, empty pride and general unreliability.This is also the secret of the dark spell that Sheikh Nasrallah for years cast over the Israeli public. With his guile and alertness,the man simply succeeded in occupying the empty niche of the precise, credible comments of someone who means every word he says. This was the main source of his strength over us. On top of this, there was a gradual role reversal: Israel, its leaders and its spokespersons started to wrap themselves in the soft cotton of white and black lies, false promises, empty threats and arrogant fluffs of myth: We will know what to do, The IDF will know what to do, I wouldnot suggest to the enemy, The enemy is well aware of our might, The long arm of the IDF ... Now the gibberish is taking its revenge. Bewilderment, a lack of credibility and damage to morale are growing as the gap widens between the lofty words and the reality on the ground. Renewal of deterrent capability? Before that, we will do well to renew creativity and clarify of thought, which have become rusty underneath the layers of gibberish.

The knee-jerk dancers
Never mind the deja-vu of the feelings of tension and the pit in the stomach or, alternatively, the outbursts of revenge, which provide a moment's pleasure that accompany the flare-up of every new round of war here. All this is already part of our world and of the mental makeup of everyone who grows up in this country. The really oppressive thing, which is harder and harder to get used to with each new round, is the automatic reaction that accompanies it, like a boring ritual. After all, without any connection to the geopolitical or other circumstances of the war, we can predict the joy of the right wing's We told you so, which attributes everything to Oslo and demands that the IDF be allowed (once again?) to win, if only for the sake of the bashing itself (Netanyahu: Make mincemeat out of them!).Furthermore, we can also guess in advance the reflexive reaction of the peace camp, which in the inertia of its opposition each time to the use of force by Israel, no longer differentiates between declamations of occupation and the legitimate need to rid ourselves of subjugation to the threats and caprices of a Khomeini-ist bridgehead, which has leeched on to our carotid artery and challenges our very existence. In fact, those who advocate withdrawal to the last centimeter of the Green Line should be the first to leap, lion-like, to the defense of the sanctity of Israeli sovereignty; and not only vis-a-vis Hezbollah and Hamas, but also their patrons and inciters, the Syrians and the Iranians. But is it possible to imagine any military operation even one that is meant to underscore the Green Line without the automatic blessing of the settlers and the left's End the Occupation demonstration? People like to quote Henry Kissinger's remark that Israel has no foreign policy, only a domestic policy. But Kissinger was wrong. We don't have a domestic policy, either only reflexes and old habits.

The true spider-wed
How powerful is the rhetoric of Nasrallah, Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Each of their metaphors ?(We will turn Israelinto a dry branch) is engraved in our consciousness more than 100 neo-Churchillean speeches of our prime minister, which were written by a committee of advisors, ad-men and spinners. Or may be it isn't so much their rhetorical power as it is our traumas. A case in point is Nasrallah's spider-web speech, which gives us no rest. And because each of Israel's wars is intended to heal thetraumas of the one before, and based on our mystical belief inwords especially those of our enemies it is no wonder that the military operation has been referred to as Webs of Steel. But Nasrallah and Saddam were right. No, not about the staying power and resilience of the national home about the staying power and resilience of the physical home. In other words, with respect to the quality of construction in Israel. It is here, in the contracting and planning shoddiness, that the true spider-webs of the home front exist, exposed anew in every war: thin walls, which if not for theair conditioner stuck in them from the outside to act as a counterweight to the plasma screen hanging on them from the inside, would turn into a heap of cinder blocks at the very sound of an air-raid siren; neighborhoods consisting of houses of cards which, wereit not for the security rooms on which they are grounded, would collapse by themselves; and ceilings that peel and flake even at the sound of fireworks and thunder. We don't need the IDF to prove that we are not teetering or temporary we need a good contractor.

Four words
The gist of Israel's foreign and defense policy in four words (while pedaling on a bike with training wheels): Look, Condy: nohands!