Children of Hamas

"Bastards", I shouted in a rare display of road rage as a couple of cars ran over a crossing narrowly missing a school child. Then I realized with a small amount of embarrassment and guilt that I had my children in the car. You have to careful what you say around kids, sometimes they don't understand and sometimes they twist what you say.

A bit like the BBC.

I switched on the radio in time to hear the news. We are all news junkies these days and we listen to or read the news on the hour every hour and all the minutes in between in the hope that someone will announce 'it's all over, the boys are coming home and we are safe at last'.

The news reported heavy fighting and that many terrorists had been killed. Then they reported on the worldwide demonstrations against Israel. That was obvious. The world's Muslims really know how to whip up a crowd and become brothers in their fight against the Jews. They are united in rage because of their brothers in Palestine. Brothers, like the Sunnis and Shiites, hand in hand.

You can tell that all that happens is divinely led; the world's sympathy harbors the most violent, bloodthirsty people on the planet even when this violence occurs in their shops, stations and streets. 'It's OK, we forgive the suicide bombings in London, we understand using their children as human shields, because underneath it all they are pretty decent chaps, desperate, but decent and the Jews, well, they're bloodthirsty bastards.'

Then they announced that the schools in the South would remain shut. One of my kids started crying.

"What's the matter?"

"I just heard that there is no school in the South and I am scared if the rockets reach us they will close down my school. Are we safe in the 'merkaz', in the center of the country? They won't get us there will they, Abba?"

"Don't worry, " I assured her in the only way a parent can in these frightening and uncertain times. "We're OK and safe in the merkaz".

She stopped crying and I started thinking. Suddenly the war was only about protecting our children. Suddenly my mind went back to the faces of the kids in Sderot and the South. Can you imagine the terror they must feel every time they hear a siren, every time they feel the rockets impacting on their town, every time they nervously stray more than 15 seconds from their houses knowing that 16 seconds isn't enough time to dive into a bomb shelter?

I shouldn't have any sympathy for the Palestinian children, and I define children as any normal human being would and not to bolster the number of child fatalities - after all their parents made the decision to support and vote for Hamas, their fathers and brothers are fighting for Hamas - but I do.

Golda Meir once said 'peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.'

While I worry about my children, Hamas use theirs as another weapon. Alive they are indoctrinated into a culture of hate and blood, dead they are martyrs and propaganda weapons. To Hamas, as with all Muslim terrorists, there is no room for emotion and there is no difference between a child and a Kassam, both can be used in the 'struggle'.

They surround themselves with children at their rocket sites and strategic positions knowing there will be child fatalities, knowing the blind world will accuse, criticize, demonstrate and open the sluice gates releasing a rush of anti-Jewish hatred not experienced since Germany.

Hamas and the Arabs scream genocide and Holocaust. That's their insecurity, their propaganda and their delusional ideology. They do not realize that we have only one place to run, the sea. So we have no choice but to fight and no option but to win.

We fight so that our children won't be scared to sleep alone, wont wake up screaming with trauma, won't have to live in bomb shelters, won't have to be scared of Samir Kuntar and his protégées and won't have to see their parents and siblings killed in war or by Kassams.

We fight so that our children will have a normal and peaceful life.

And to the rest of the world who scream anti-Israel hatred at every opportunity, if you tolerate this, your children will be next.

"So", my daughter continued, "there is no school in the South because of the Hamas rockets?"

"Yes", I answered.

"Bastards", she said under her 7-year-old breath.

"Yes," I said under mine.

Peace, But Not Now!

Peace Now! What a great concept. Instant peace in return for, well, an Utopian existence where everybody beats their Kassams into ploughshares in the Garden of Eden. Just add diplomacy, add a little Joseph factor (sell your brothers) and a dash of cut your nose off to spite your face.

Perfect. Now we can all sleep at night.

I was surprised, no, - amazed, to read that at a recent 'peace immediately' demonstration, there were very few people from the South. You would have thought that those guys, being pounded by missiles, going through the trauma that you and I couldn't even imagine, would be screaming for peace. But no, the demonstrators were mainly made up of middle class Israelis from Tel Aviv. Extraordinary!

They are not under threat, yet they braved a cold night to demand peace now. What selfless people they are. Meanwhile the people under fire in Sderot, Beersheva, Ashkelon, Netivot, Kiryat Gat, Ashdod and all the surrounding towns, villages and kibbutzim as well as the North, were screaming just the opposite. They also want a 'Now' solution, but it doesn't seem to be Peace, well not in the short term.

Immediate peace would involve hurried diplomacy, painful Israeli concessions, total withdrawal from land, and the transfer of thousands of Israeli citizens. Hang on a second. Now I may have a short memory, but didn't Israel do that?

What happened? I wonder if you can remind me. That's right we withdrew from Gaza, transferred 8000 Israelis many of whom are still not settled, watched Hamas be 'democratically' installed as the 'government' of Gaza, and then what? Oh yes, they kidnapped an Israeli soldier, they have dug many tunnels to smuggle weapons into their kingdom and have been fired firing thousands of missiles into Israel ever since. Who could ask for a better peace?

You do understand that Israel cannot just sit idly by while they are being shelled, of course you don't? So when Israel tried to force Hamas to stop the shelling, 'blockading' Gaza, they intensified their attack with Kassams and Grads, because after all that's a legitimate response to Israeli aggression. And as for the people, well the humanitarian crisis is all Israel's fault because the Hamas death cult (you'll read that a lot about them, you didn't know they were? Well, now you do) are more interested in Israel's destruction than the fate of their loyal supporters.

How many 'peace very quickly', speedily in our days, supporters have visited Sderot, Netivot and the other Southern towns, in the past few days? Why did you hold your rally in Tel Aviv, are you scared? Of
course you're scared. Who wouldn't be, just ask the guys down South. But mainly I believe you are scared of admitting the truth! You would rather demonstrate from the safety of your comfortable back yard than face the screams of the children of Sderot. You would rather condemn your own people than admit the real problem. There is no quick fit fix solution. Either you are totally naïve or have no concept of the nature of the enemy, oh I'm sorry, the partner for peace.

Do the phrases, 'total destruction of Israel', 'drive them into the sea', 'more killings', 'Israel will burn', 'suicide bombers' and 'every Palestinian is a potential martyr', mean anything to you? It's your bloody house in Tel Aviv they are talking about! Not some illegal settlement outpost east of Hebron.

Now I am going to go out on a limb here and agree with you on one point. No one wants our sons and daughters to fight in a war. We would be inhuman to rejoice, as our neighbors do in, the deaths of their children, and for that I too would shout out Peace, but not Now. Just as in 1948, '67 and '73 we are fighting for our survival. The enemy is literally within. And we have to face them with strength courage and determination, not diplomacy and bits of paper because you know as well as I do that this enemy wants all or nothing and doesn't care to die trying.

Peace has to be lasting, and you cannot bring everlasting peace, now. In utopia just like the Garden of Eden, you need to do the weeding first, then the planting and finally eat the fruits, it never happens now.

This is the time for weeding. Every day I pray for peace but I know my history and I know that there is no such thing as 'peace now'.

To all you "embarrassed" Jews

When you come and live in Israel, that comfortable Diaspora fence you have been perched on all those years suddenly disappears. There is no more grey area; you're either for us or against us.

It's ironic that such a symbol of security should also be the symbol of indecisiveness. Such is the nature of The Fence.

It's easy to criticize Israel from afar, it's easy to be drawn in by the ludicrous political correctness, western liberalism and, in many cases, a sense of extreme embarrassment forced on and often embraced by Jews in the Diaspora. It's easy to shout and scream and criticize, worrying what your non-Jewish neighbors or colleagues may think, becoming the ultimate apologists. It's easy to scream from your comfortable pseudo-Jewish ivory towers. What seems to be harder is for you to muster some sense of loyalty and support for your own people (Jews) and your own country ( Israel). (Just a reminder.) And there aren't enough righteous gentiles to save us all.

'But it's for precisely that reason' you will cry, 'that we are so tough on Israel. We are enlightened, we understand because we live in the West where diplomacy rules. (Bosnia, Hamburg, Dresden, Iraq, Algeria, Congo, Falklands, we love Western diplomacy). Where we know Israeli concessions will bring peace and where we see an oppressed Palestinian people and a ferocious Israeli occupier.' Except of course Israel doesn't occupy Gaza.

Let me tell you something about you, you are not readily able to admit. You ignore the fact Israel no longer occupies a square inch of Gaza. You forget who created the infrastructure left there. You have no sense of history, are blind to the blatant anti-Semitic tide that drives most anti-Israel feeling. You probably receive all your skewed information about Israel through the media. You have never once tried to understand the facts from Israel's point of view. You have no idea of the reign of terror Hamas is conducting on its own people. You have no idea of the suffering of Israelis living close to Gaza suffering barrage after barrage of missiles. You conveniently forget all the facts in order to justify your hateful rhetoric against your own people (Jews) and your own country (Israel). Sorry for the reminder. You have never once asked why Hamas needs to attack Israel, when they could live side by side in peace. You have never asked why, if the people are impoverished, Hamas doesn't use its resources for food and education instead of hand-made bombs and more sophisticated weaponry. You will cry that the 'blockade' on Gaza is plunging the people into destitution. What you won't ask is why is there a blockade. Did I mention that Israel relinquished control of Gaza relocating 8,000 of its citizens?

Oh and you won't read this blog entry properly.

Your identity as a Jew has been stolen. You have turned your back on thousands of years of history siding with the media and Arab propaganda, not really understanding the true facts of the ground. Every other nation has the right to defend itself, show nationalism and expect support. But you deny this for your own people.

So now that Israel, after months and months of restraint and in the wake of thousands of rockets, has finally returned to Gaza to deal with Hamas, you say that you are "embarrassed" by Israel's actions?

You'll tell me I am insecure in my beliefs, that I am ultra right-wing, and that I am blinded by fanaticism. You'll tell me that you know what the problem is and what should be done.

I am not ultra right-wing, just a realist who takes the facts and history into consideration. This is not a simplistic view but a carefully considered opinion. This is not based on a persecution complex but a simple historical formula. They want us out. The President of Iran wants our total destruction. Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaida are all vying for the opportunity to drive us into the sea. Many other Arab countries would love to see us gone. That's a fact.

There is no room for diplomacy with an organization that wants your total destruction and perpetuates terror for the sake of an anarchic, megalomaniac blood lust.

There can be no more sitting on the fence. You need to understand that.

Christmas Jews - Repost

This time of year is always steeped in nostalgia. Every Anglo reminisces about the lovely atmosphere during the season of good will, looking at the lights, the dressed up shop windows and the decorated trees. Oh, and those cold winter nights crunching through the snow. Ah happy days! Well, go back then if it was so wonderful. I have nostalgic moments too and then I remember how bloody cold it was, how I was excluded from the office parties because I couldn't eat their food, drink their wine and didn't want to wish every stranger 'Happy Christmas' and kiss some drunk secretary under the mistletoe. OK, maybe the mistletoe thing...

I was more interested in rushing home to light Hanukkah candles and publicize the miracle of how the few vanquished the many, how we stood on the brink of extinction, culturally and religiously, to be saved by an army and leader who knew that the Hellenization of the Jews would have destroyed them just as surely as any holocaust.

So when I saw a posting on the Modi'in e-mail list about a carol service for Jews who yearned for the good old days in the US and UK, I felt sick to my stomach. I am still trying to fathom why these Jews would be so motivated to laud the coming of the son of god, in the little town of Bethlehem on a silent night in the snow, in a barn with shooting stars, Magi and a donkey. What's in it for them? Two thousand years of persecution, that's what.

Without our religion we would have ceased to exist culturally, we would have totally assimilated like the German Jews. Totally disappeared as a nation, a people, our history forgotten and our traditions resigned to the scrapheap. This may be a 'wake up and smell the coffee' moment. It's all very lovely, nice tunes but why not sing some good old Crusader tunes about the massacre of Jews or those catchy Catholic tunes about burning Jews at the stake or what about some of those memorable Nazi marching songs and to cap it all off we can sing 'Push the Jews Down the Well', Borat-style and watch all the rednecks clap along and join in. Have I gone too far?

The chief Rabbi of Ramat Gan summed it up in one sentence: "There is something masochistic about Jews celebrating Christmas, a day singled out by Christians for pogroms". Singing carols is celebrating Christmas - no two ways about it. There are those of us, in living memory, who suffered pogroms on Christmas, they weren't singing, they were clutching hold of their own religion, dying for it, not seeking harmless fun.

I can hear the creaking wheels of justification turning in your heads; it's no longer a religious event, it's commercial and cultural. Which incidentally I think is an affront to religious Christians who celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. While I respect the Christian religion and think that the singing of carols is an integral and very important tradition there is no room for Jews in the cloisters.

This is what I think of Jewish carol singers: there is no reason to live in Israel unless you want to preserve the Jewish integrity of the country. If you want to sing Carols, eat pork and secularize or make the country Judenrein then why not live elsewhere. You may think I am over-reacting, you may want to flame my blog, but I think if you understand what I am writing, if you are educated and mature enough to realize what you are doing you'll stop this ridiculous event. If you understand our history you'll find that, singing Christmas carols is the most inexcusable affront to every man woman and child who died for being Jewish and creating a Jewish state.

In a country where parents can accuse a boy of missionary work for putting on teffilin in a Jewish secular school, surely this carol singing (justified as harmless fun etc, etc) comes under the same category.

The greatest of our oppressors have been Jews turned Christian or self-hating Jews. You may see this as harmless fun, may even justify it as a cultural event, but it's a slippery slope, my friends. A very slippery slope.

So long and Thanks for the Hate

'Weapon of mass destruction', reads the label, easy to use anytime anywhere contains pure high grade anti-Zionism /anti-Semitism. If the weapons dealers could have bottled it or encased it in steel they would have made a fortune. These WMDs can be made out of anything animal vegetable & mineral. The most powerful trigger is certainly the human voice striking in the name of hate, ignorance, propaganda, incitement, disinformation and indoctrination. In fact just about anything in any form anywhere in the world has been used in one way or another in the active pursuit of wiping the Jewish people off the face of the Earth.

What a warm feeling it should be to be the center of attention. The state that goes out of its way to send help to earthquake and mudslide victims, medical and, dare I say it, humanitarian aid to the world's dark places, is the subject of so much hate.

Yet here we stand, more powerful than ever. Strike us down and we become more powerful, to paraphrase a famous man.

So bring it on. Misquote the Koran and bible, pervert your religious beliefs as much as you want, rewrite history and create facts on the ground. Write books about world domination, conspiracy theories. Yes, my relatives were the Elders of Zion, they loved Zion and they were old, but that's where it ends.

You'll keep trying, you won't stop. And the more you fail the more you'll try and then just as your grandfathers and generations spanning 4000 years have tried and failed so will you, because good always defeats evil. Maybe not immediately, but ultimately. But you have no idea how much good you are doing as well.

Where there is no anti-Semitism we disappear, assimilate, but you're too involved in rewriting history to notice that. Take Poland and Germany before the Holocaust you love to deny. The places where we were harassed most are the places we thrived and the places that accepted us we assimilated and disappeared.

It seems your greatest weapon of mass destruction is to accept us, welcome us, integrate us and make us assimilate and then we will cease to be. Well two things, we won't disappear even if you love us you'll never stop hating us so we don't need to worry. Every Kassam rocket you fire, every grave you defile, every word of your hate-filled rhetoric only strengthens us and secures us. So I guess what I am saying is, thanks. Thanks for hating us, thanks for reminding us we are Jews, thanks for bringing us together , trying to unite us.

But the trouble is that although you have done so much good, you're not going to escape unpunished. The price our people have paid for all the goodness you have bestowed on us over the generations is quite unbearable. We are still only a few million. You have culled our numbers, murdered us in unspeakable horror, and any Rabbi will tell you, really you can't do a sin in order to do a mitzvah, a good deed. You can't steal to give charity and you can't hate us in order to drive us together. And, oh, how you have sinned.

In an effort to neutralize your WMDs which you will never do willingly, we will have to wait. We have waited 4000 years, another few won't hurt. Then on that day we will totally vanquish you and on that day good will overcome evil.

Jewish Blood

Whenever we went on long car journeys when we were kids we would play all manner of word and general knowledge games. Describing the Prime ministers cat with every letter of the alphabet (X was always a challenge, he was always Xenophobic), countries of the world using the last letter of the country (A was the best, Australia, would then become Austria, Angola, Albania etc) and then there was ‘I Spy’. We have a new game, name a country that does not have a problem with Muslim fundamentalists, militia or terrorists. Now there’s a challenge. Now name a country where an act of Muslim terror has occurred which hasn’t somehow tied in with Jews and Israel. From Iraq to Bali, every act of terror by the many, many Muslim extremist and not so extreme groups have killed in the name of their global Jihad and, oh yes, for their brothers and sisters in Palestine.

Now name a time in the last 40 years when we have stood up for ourselves, turned our back on the demands for self restraint, diplomacy and doing what was right for us as a state, a people and nation without pandering to the US, EU, BBC, and any other worthless acronym you can think of. Actually that’s another game. Name all the acronyms of organizations seeking to destroy, destabilize or delegitimize Israel and the Jews. PLO, PFLP, UN, EU, HRW the list is endless.

OK a new game. Name a time when the world has cared, been moved, wept or mourned or uniformly condemned the spilling of Jewish blood.

Name a country that has stood up to the Muslim extremists and fundamentalists among its own citizens. Name a country that is not in denial about what they are seeing before their eyes. Name a country that isn’t trying to brush the problem under the carpet hoping it will go away and name a country that feels that action rather than words will solve the problem.

I Mumbai, an attack perpetrated by Pakistani extremists, Kashmiri separatists or Iran, they purposely targeted and attacked the Chabad center killing the Jews inside. Jews in India totally unrelated to any of India’s problems, non military, non-political, just there to help their fellow Jews with a warm smile, a Shabbat meal and maybe some direction in life. And Jewish travelers escaping to see the world and be young for maybe the last time before they returned to Israel, to study, work and settle down.
We are victims, and that’s our lot. In every generation, as we recite in the Haggada, they rise up to destroy us but the Holy One blessed be He, saves us. Or the running joke, they tried to kill us, we were saved, lets eat! We have been victims ever since Abraham was thrown into a fiery furnace by Nimrod. And since then look at our history. Pretty horrific. True in every generation they rose up to destroy, and some of us were saved to regroup and wait for the next round of crusades, blood libels, inquisitions, pogroms, holocausts. We have more ways to describe the way we have been persecuted and murdered than Eskimos have for snow.

Now name a nation that has more Nobel prizes under their belts, in every category. Name a nation that has produced some of the greatest teachers, thinkers, scientists, doctors, mathematicians. Name a country that in just 60 years has overtaken almost every country on the face of the world in commerce and industry.

Name a nation that should be proud, upstanding, strong and selfish in the face of so much adversity. Name a nation that seems to drag its feet and panders to the will of others at the expense of its own citizens.

Name a nation that will one day, with the help of those who are not in denial and don’t have their heads in the sand, breed great leaders that will stand up for the blood of their brothers and sisters and represent our people as a strong determined nation, pursuing peace and prosperity, security and tolerance and an example to the rest of the world.

Train of thought

The 7:43 train pulled out of Modi’in Central station. I sat on my seat mildly out of breath after a last second sprint an acrobatic dive saved me from waiting another 25 minutes for the next train.

In the UK when you’re on public transport, the idea is to be as anonymous as possible. You don’t look at anyone and you certainly don’t speak to anybody, in fact if you say hello or ask an innocent question about changing trains people look at you with suspicion and you are immediately branded a strange and people will avoid sitting near you. Great if you’re on a packed train.

Yet the train here is the absolute opposite, the antithesis of London. Firstly, when you get on the train everyone has to look at you. Sizing you up, who are you? Where do you come from? Nice shoes etc. Then you are inevitably sucked into conversation, could be with the person sitting next to you or the person three rows behind. Once somebody starts talking everyone gets involved. Opinions, ideas, political theory, theology anything. Of course everybody has his or her own opinion and everybody is right, or so they think.

The games we play on the train range for trying to decipher the shoulder tags of the soldiers. What do they do, where are they based why do they all have slightly different shades of green. There are dark green shirts, blue shirts, grey shirts, beige shirts and light green shirts. Reminds me of the bus we used to take to school. A myriad of uniforms and combinations of colour, even Joseph would have been jealous.

It’s funny the perceptions we invent in our mind for people we don’t know. The guy with a laptop case, blonde beard and ponytail must be a Russian programmer, the guy in a suit is definitely a lawyer and the guy with his sunglasses plastered to his head, tight jeans and smart shirt, definitely a hi-tech salesman.

Then there is the Arab girl sitting trying not to attract attention, but when she got on the train everyone went quiet, so now she has all the attention as whispers start circulating. What’s in her bag? Is she really pregnant? Don’t worry they check everyone before they enter the station. It’s a mixture of fear and self preservation with an unfortunate drop of discrimination. But where is she going? To Tel Aviv? Probably Haifa, which would make more sense. Why? Well it just would.
I counted 23 mp3 players in my carriage including mine, 12 laptops and two play-stations.

That’s a lot of hardware. The buzz from 46 speakers provoked my neighbor to throw down her paper and sit with her fingers in her ears. A bit extreme I thought until I removed mine and heard the incessant drum and bass reverberating from end of the carriage to the other.

I read the free paper and then took out my book, hoping that it would have registered with my fellow travelers that I was not one of the Anglos rejecting everything Israeli. I see myself as bridging both worlds I even try and put some accent into my Ivrit, which is more than can be said from some of my trans-Atlantic cousins. Did I mention the trains automatic announcements which have the most annoying American Israeli accent. What’s wrong with the way they do it on the London Underground? English (the Queens) heavily accented with a mix of Afro Caribbean and Indian, touch of the Empire. I never understand what they are saying, but then that’s half the fun.

My stations is coming up. Got to get ready for the final sprint to my connecting bus, miss that and I’m in trouble. Mp3 players go silent, newspapers are discarded and people start to make their way to the doors.

I jump off the train, no ‘mind the gap’ announcement here. I have my ticket at the ready as I run to the barriers and up the stairs to the bus stop.

The Arab girl waddles passed me, mp3 player in one hand, laptop bag over her shoulder. She is also running for a bus.

Jewish Blood

Whenever we went on long car journeys when we were kids we would play all manner of word and general knowledge games. Describing the Prime Ministers cat with every letter of the alphabet (X was always a challenge, he was always Xenophobic), countries of the world using the last letter of the country (A was the best, Australia, would then become Austria, Angola, Albania etc) and then there was ‘I Spy’. We have a new game, name a country that does not have a problem with Muslim fundamentalists, militia or terrorists. Now there’s a challenge.

Name a country where an act of Muslim terror has occurred which hasn’t somehow tied in with Jews and Israel. From Iraq to Denmark, every act of terror by the many, many Muslim extremist and not so extreme groups have killed in the name of their global Jihad and, oh yes, for their brothers and sisters in Palestine.

Now name a time in the last 40 years when we have stood up for ourselves, turned our back on the demands for self restraint, diplomacy and doing what was right for us as a state, a people and nation without pandering to the US, EU, BBC, and any other worthless acronym you can think of. Actually that’s another game. Name all the acronyms of organizations seeking to destroy, destabilize or delegitimize Israel and the Jews. PLO, PFLP, UN, EU, BBC, HRW the list is endless.

OK a new game. Name a time when the world has cared, been moved, wept or mourned or uniformly condemned the spilling of Jewish blood. (Maybe the Munich Olympics, maybe.)
Name a country that has stood up to the Muslim extremists and fundamentalists among its own citizens. Name a country that is not in denial about what they are seeing before their eyes. Name a country that isn’t trying to brush the problem under the carpet hoping it will go away and name a country that feels that action rather than words will solve the problem.

In Mumbai, an attack perpetrated by Pakistani extremists, Kashmiri separatists or Iran, they purposely targeted and attacked the Chabad center killing the Jews inside. Jews in India totally unrelated to any of India’s problems, non military, non-political, just there to help their fellow Jews with a warm smile, a Shabbat meal and maybe some direction in life. And Jewish travelers escaping to see the world and be young for maybe the last time before they returned to Israel, to study, work and settle down.

We are victims, and that’s our lot. In every generation, as we recite in the Haggada, they rise up to destroy us but the Holy One blessed be He, saves us. Or the running joke, they tried to kill us, we were saved, lets eat! We have been victims ever since Abraham was thrown into a fiery furnace by Nimrod. And since then look at our history. Pretty horrific. True in every generation they rose up to destroy, and some of us were saved to regroup and wait for the next round of crusades, blood libels, inquisitions, pogroms, holocausts. We have more ways to describe the way we have been persecuted and murdered than Eskimos have for snow.

Now name a nation that has more Nobel prizes under their belts, in every category. Name a nation that has produced some of the greatest teachers, thinkers, scientists, doctors, mathematicians. Name a country that in just 60 years has overtaken almost every country on the face of the world in commerce and industry.

Name a nation that should be proud, upstanding, strong and selfish in the face of so much adversity. Name a nation that seems to drag its feet and panders to the will of others at the expense of its own citizens.

Name a nation that will one day, with the help of those who are not in denial and don’t have their heads in the sand, breed great leaders that will stand up for the blood of their brothers and sisters and represent our people as a strong determined nation, pursuing peace and prosperity, security and tolerance and an example to the rest of the world.

With Perfect Faith

With unquestioning belief and with perfect faith Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Al Qaida’s brave warriors (even the children, pregnant women and kids with Downs Syndrome) rush to strap explosives to themselves in order to indiscriminately murder Jews, Christians and Muslims anywhere and at anytime.

What it is to have perfect faith, something we can only aspire to. Of course it is not without its extreme hypocrisy but when you’re the ‘down trodden wretches of the Earth’, you can get away with it.

Live by the sword, even if you firmly believe it will never happen to you and if it does there is such a fantastic reward that you almost hope it will. Confused?
Even if you live a relatively normal middle class existence it is still the principle that drives you to murder and once you’ve dehumanized your victims it is no longer relevant who they are or who you are. You are on a mission to kill and as they say in Israel, ze’ooh!

A few weeks ago I was waiting by the side of the road to cross with my kids. We saw cars speeding by drivers with no belts on and kids in the front and back with no belts on. Now we cant police the world and its very sad to see that these parents don’t love their kids as much as maybe they should and also are not really aware of the serious consequences of their actions. A bit like Golda Meir’s famous quote about peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us. Well drivers are the same, maybe they will strap their kids in and also have less disdain for everybody else on the road.

My kids, ever astute, commented on the way these drivers and their passengers young and old were not wearing belts. I told them they were lucky that their Imma and Abba always made sure everybody was strapped in and never took risks.

These drivers, I explained never think anything will happen to them. They have faith that they will be OK and they seem to ignore or more than likely not care about their fellow citizens.

Selfish, suicidal and stupid, you might get there quicker but it may be in the back of an ambulance.

So we are about to cross the road and a car very kindly stops for us. We begin to cross, cautiously, always aware of our surroundings. Meanwhile my kids were commenting on how nice it was that the lady stopped for us.

As we were exactly in the middle of the crossing a taxi came roaring up the hill, on a mission. Now taxi drivers are the most notorious of all of Israeli drivers and the simple fact that a car is blocking their way doesn’t really seem relevant.
My kids have a favorite song called bear hunt. ‘Going on a bear hunt, gonna catch a big one, uh,oh, mud. Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, gotta go through it’.
And so it was with the taxi. Cant go under the car in front, cant go over the car in front, what other alternative does he have, to stop? No, of course not. Gotta go through it. And he did.

Smashing into the back of the nice lady that stopped for us, the taxi driver and his unbelted passenger both had a bugs eye view of the road hitting the windscreen, the lady jerked forward from the force of the collision, severely whip lashed, and in a reflex reaction, belying my age and build, that would have looked great in slow motion, I grabbed my kids and pulled them away and pushed them, almost throwing them on to the pavement.

I used to be laid back about the driving here. Be always mindful of your surroundings, or some other Star Wars quote, used to be me my mantra. Its not you it’s everyone else on the road.

But when more people in this country have died by the hands of their fellow citizens or themselves on the road than by the hands of their enemies it makes you think, who are we really fighting?

The Dripping Tap 2

Drip, drip drip. Mental note, get the plumber in as fast as possible before I go completely mad. Drip, drip, drip. Actually this tap has some rhythm. Drip, drip drip. How can my wife sleep through this noise. Drip, drip, drip. This is real oriental torture. Drip, drip, drip. Mental note, due to lack of sleep everybody in the house should keep at least 2 kilometers away from me, call it a security buffer zone. Drip, drip, drip. Mind you I have not spent months on end in a public bomb shelter, can you imagine? Drip, drip, drip. Suddenly the drip doesn’t seem so bad. Drip, drip, drip. At least we’re central and safe.

The next morning I leapt out of bed, ran outside and breathed in the pure Modi’in air. What a wonderful morning I thought; the birds singing in the trees, children playing in the streets, the scent of flowers and pine calming and relaxing my senses. OK, so it wasn’t quite like that. The next morning I dragged myself out of bed, crawled into the bathroom, swore at the leaking tap, grumbled at the wife and was quite inexcusably rude to the neighbor who phoned to borrow some milk.

I nearly fell down the stairs, turned on the TV to watch the latest news; Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, budget, schools, teachers. I boiled the kettle and manhandled the phone book trying to focus on the plumber’s number. Even dialing his number was a challenge. “Is that Yossi? Get here as soon as you can. Got a leaking tap, driving me insane. No I’m not up in Gaza it’s the TV. And you, bye.”

The kids crept silently into the salon, the news disappeared and the cartoons took over. I decided to ignore it. Fell up the stairs to my office, sat at the computer and read all the news feeds.

As I read the feeds and saw the videos of our incredible country being torn apart and then a rush of anger overtook all my senses. I don’t think it was sleep deprivation and I am sure it was just raw emotion that caused me to cry a little.

So many questions unanswered about the Palestinians, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the international community and the blatant anti-Israel anti-Semitic reporting. Nothing new there. But, I asked myself, why are we not immune to all of this. For thousands of years we have suffered under just about every government in every country. You’d think we would have evolved such thick skin and be so tough as to able to ignore it all

But no. Every time the BBC refers to Hezbollah or Hamas as militants, my blood boils. Every time they call Israel’s response disproportionate I end up shouting at the TV, and every time they ignore Iran’s call for Israel to be wiped off the Earth, I stand there incredulous, waiting for someone to condemn them.


And just like a dripping tap, you never, ever, get used to it.

The Art of Negotiation

This isn’t an attack on the Government, may our leaders all live long and prosperous lives in the service of their country and not the service of themselves.

The art of negotiation, or the art of getting what you want, is a skill that has been perfected over many years by business gurus, but has yet to take into account what I call the ‘princess factor’.

The ‘princess factor’ also called by some ‘my little prince factor’, is a skillful and uncompromising almost savage negotiation technique between two hardened parties, you on the one side and your kids on the other.

The G8 in its trade negotiations uses it all the time. One side has a little tantrum and the other side gives in. The government makes endless use of this tactic, releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from its very effective prison system, by giving in to every demand even when there is only the slightest hint or threat of a tantrum.

In fact, the government has so perfected the ‘princess factor’ that it seems to give in even when it is not negotiating; I think it is called “good will”.

We have to make concessions, sometimes very painful, but surely only if we can have something in return, you know small things like recognition, the right to survive, the right not to be murdered, trivial stuff.

“Oh”, they cry, “you wouldn’t understand what goes on behind the scenes the tough negotiation, the diplomacy and the painful concessions”.

To be fair, when I feel there is the slightest discontent brewing in our happy little home I immediately start the pacification process offering bribes and promises just to diffuse a potentially explosive situation.

Take the swimming pool incident or “debacle” as history will recall it. The word swimming pool was used in a completely different context, but they got it into their pretty little heads that I had promised to take them. I tried to reason, negotiate and bribe but to no avail. Truth is, I was tired and couldn’t be bothered but that didn’t seem to bother them. Then the ‘princess card’ was played. One spontaneously exploded into tantrum-land, one ran to her room and slammed the door and one grabbed hold of my leg crying and wouldn’t let go.

A three pronged attack that would make even Neptune’s trident seem impotent, using every one of the three princess factor negotiation techniques; tantrum, cold silent treatment and puppy dog eyes.

Needless to say we swam that afternoon.

I couldn’t help thinking, as the kids clung and pulled at me in the swimming pool, what would the government have done?

Well, release some prisoners for a start.