Link number one:
Recently I discovered a fascinating blog by a Palestinian who lives in Montreal. Nizo, who seems to be the polyglot I was always too lazy to become, writes in English, French, Arabic, German and....Hebrew! (Really impressively good Hebrew). Nizo's writing is thoughtful, insightful and sometimes hilarious. In a post called Drunken Ponderings: In the Tub with Argov, he starts off by recounting an incident at work that had me snorting with laughter:
"I was on a three-party conference call with a local customer and a vendor in California who could not produce his widgets fast enough. The [French speaking, Quebecois] customer was understandably frustrated and since I'm the assembler, I had to speed up my own production to make up for the delay. Typical scenario.
Since my customer's command of the English language leaves much to be desired, I also played the role of interpreter. When the mild mannered Californian explained that he won't be able to deliver due to raw material issues of his own, the customer lost control and addressed the vendor directly.
He bellowed:
'(By not getting the parts), Nizo will be retarded, and then I will be retarded. In the end we will all be retarded'.
I had to quickly intervene and explain that by 'retarded', the customer meant delayed. In French, the word for delay is retard."
But how is this incident connected to Mizrachi singer Zohar Argov - or to ignorance, tolerance, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, shaheeds and hot baths with martinis, all of which are topics of this post? Read on to find out....
Link number two:
Gadi Taub, whose new book, The Settlers and the Struggle over the Meaning of Zionism (Hebrew) was just published, recently wrote a guest post on the blog of Ali Miraj, a British Muslim politician. The attention-grabbing title of the post is "True Zionists Must End Occupation." Exceprt:
"Israel’s friends are not doing it much good by justifying Israel’s settlements in the West Bank. By so doing they are only helping their opponents in identifying Zionism with settlements, and from there the road to delegitimising the right of Jews to self-determination is short: the occupation cannot, and should not, be justified, and if Zionism is equated with it, than Zionism cannot be justified as well.
The equation is, however, false. Because Zionism and settlements are in sharp opposition to each other. From its inception Zionism was not about redeeming land, it was about the right of all peoples to self-determination… "
Read the rest here. Please leave responses to the article on Gadi's blog rather than on mine.
Idan Gazit
In a post called Not in my name, Idan explains why he no longer reads or watches the news, and then segues into a lesson on democracy that would be an excellent teaching tool for high school civics teachers.
Excerpts:
"In the months since the war I have spent a lot of time soul-searching about Israel and my (admittedly complex) relationship with her. Out of disgust, or (worse) simple ennui, I have taken up a vow of news celibacy that would make a Buddhist monk proud. As soon as the war ended and it became clear that nothing, but nothing changed, no lesson learned, no epiphany experienced among our leaders — I simply got off the news treadmill."
...
"I bet I’m not alone in this, especially within the neon confines of the Tel Aviv bubble. Left to stew in a vacuum devoid of news, I’ve been thinking a lot about apathy and the bliss of ignorance. I’ve been thinking about the lack of national direction we all feel, even if we rarely admit the depths of crap we are mired in — at home; not in the mud of Lebanon or the sands of Gaza. I’ve been thinking about where I will go when Israel ends, and what the world will look like at that point."
...
"Not in my name!
I wince every time I hear it, because it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what democracy means. Democracy means that you must care enough about something you think is wrong to get up and make your voice heard, and thus influence the hand on the steering wheel. Democracy might also mean getting up and trying to convince others that you would make a good driver — but in reality the elected are rarely qualified or good, merely wealthy and well-connected, so I’m ignoring that aspect. Your civic responsibilities as a citizen do not end at the voting booth, they are only beginning — and this is a fact that has been lost on today’s Israel.
Forget all of the hackneyed crap about how “living soft” has erased Israel’s morals and backbone. Our founders, by and large socialists, understood the meaning of civic duty (not to be confused with one’s military service, which is a different thing entirely). They understood that making a country better requires participation, and that true participation means taking your country into your heart, for better and worse. You cannot truly celebrate national successes without mourning the failures. This had nothing to do with their politics: one cannot care without feeling. Like any emotional relationship, the pain makes us balk, and so we conveniently forget how democracy works:
In a democracy, if you are a citizen, everything is in your name. The stuff you don’t like, too."
...
In honour of Purim, my fabulous friend Nominally Challenged (Nomchy?) serves up a hilarious- and fabulously erudite - interpretation of the Story of Esther.
So, what is Purim?
"Essentially, it's a sort of Jewish Halloween, except, of course, in all the ways that it isn't. Firstly, it's in late winter (the Gregorian date varies because, like all Jewish festivals, it is based on the lunar calendar) and this is patently not like Halloween, which is in late autumn (yeah, ok, fall ...). Secondly, you don't go around bugging people for tricks or treats, but you are supposed to send gifts of food to people, and to give alms to the poor. Thirdly, well, in fact, it's nothing like Halloween at all, except that you get to dress up."
...
And what's the story all about?
Oh man, it's such a long story - there was this Persian king, his evil vizier, a beautiful queen... It's a plot that no Hollywood scriptwriter could hope to beat. Check it out, here.
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