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2002:April:9
4.9.2002
I would go on about what a crappy day I just had, seeing how I just found out my job is going to be posted: "we have two really good people and one job..." but I think that the situation in the MidEast might deserve a little more attention. I will use this mini break to post yet another thought-provoking story from my sister Lisa, the Happy Robot Tel Aviv correspondent:
-AG
The backlash against Sharon has begun in earnest. The guy who delivers soft drinks to the aforementioned corner coffee place showed up while I was still drinking my coffee. As the owner - a young, perpetually smiling guy who lives next door to me with his pretty blonde girlfriend - signed the receipt, the driver said that there are rumours of 20 Israeli soldiers having been killed in Jenin. last heard on CBC news it was 13 in a boobytrapped building in Jenin--ed(There's no confirmation of this rumour so far. It's difficult to get hard info, as the army has closed the area to all journalists.) Holy shit! said the owner. We've gotta get out of that hellhole. What did he say? What did he say? asked the woman sitting next to me. I repeated the rumour . She sighed. I don't know what to think anymore, she said. On the one hand we have to protect ourselves from the terrorists, but on the other hand it looks as though we might be getting sucked into a no-win conflict.
Here's an editorial from today's edition of Ha'aretz, which sort of articulates that woman's doubts:
JEWISH PILGRIMAGE
Did you hear that the March of the Living will stop in Poland this year? How ironic is that? The tour organizers decided that it's too dangerous to take the group to Israel. The trip, actually a tour designed to show North American Jewish youth what happened in the concentration camps, is supposed to end in Israel - the symbol of "never again!" (i.e., now that we have our own country we can protect ourselves from future Holocausts.) Unfortunately, the supposedly safe haven for Jews is now deemed unsafe for non-Israeli Jews! (Reminds me of a story told to me by a Canadian guy when I lived in Jerusalem during the mid-1980s. He had a summer job as a counselor to a Toronto Jewish youth group spending the summer touring Israel. This was just after the USA dropped a couple of bombs on Qaddafi, killing his daughter, and Libya was in the news a lot. Anyways, the mother of one of the kids called my friend and shrieked! , "I want you to promise me that you won't take my son anywhere near the Libyan border while he's in Israel!" My friend told the woman to find a map of the Middle East, take a good long look, and then get back to him.)
Couldn't help thinking about all this last night, as I flipped from a movie showing Germans killing Jews in Auschwitz, to news footage of Jews killing - and being killed by - Arabs in order to protect the country that "is built on the ashes of the Holocaust."
Here's a Dry Bones cartoon from the (more and more right-wing) JPost. Thought that it might amuse you...
BTW, Israelis don't talk on their mobiles during movies anymore. Just as the lights are dimming, one of the ushers shouts out, "everyone turn off your mobile phone please!"
Check out israelnews.net for tons of links to news sources reporting on Israel.
All of the above is my way of procrastinating. I'm supposed to be writing a technical writing exercise for the Amdocs job, and it's scaring the shit out of me. But I've gotta finish it today. I need the job - badly.
Lisa
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