"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.
Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).
Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."
Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."
Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.
Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
Notes
Care to Read What I Read?
I've embarked on a great reduction in privacy by bookmarking my web-based reading on the "delicious.com" utility. It may tip my hand as to what I have in mind for blogging, but the same may help friends and frenemies alike track my thinking: here is the URL:
Shabbat Shalom. May our arguments be resolved through perceptive words and good deeds only; may we live another week helpful to one another in relative peace.
Photography: Prints & Services
A gentle reminder: I'm in business as a producer of fine art prints and as a provider of shoot-for-fee services, including portraiture and weddings plus assigned photojournalism. My general location: intersection of I-70 and I-81; core camera system: Nikon; transportation: Mustang.
Effort in print-on-demand will not offset the production nor value of signed, limited edition prints made under my own hand. However, for very good convenience, price, and quality, print-on-demand may work out well for many fans and patrons.
Research Services
If you're engaged in funded research in conflict analysis or other areas that may be addressed here and wish to engage my mind in your project, feel welcome to drop me a note at [email protected].
The videographer's web site: http://www.trumpetofsalvation.org/index.php?id=32. In correspondence, Jacob Damkani, the videographer, notes, "that was our welcome there - they knew it before! It was absolutely amazing to see their love and interest for Israel!"
Among the smallest of countries--population: approximately 7.7 million Jewish and 1.6 million Christian, Druze, and Muslim citizens--Israel nonetheless mounts extensive emergency response and committed humanitarian missions worldwide.
* * *
In a gesture of care and support, one of the world's smallest nations is sending aid to the world's most populous nation in the form millions of dollars worth of equipment for earthquake relief. An Israeli plane carrying over 30 tons of medical equipment, water purification kits, electricity generators, tents and blankets took off on Monday for the Chinese city of Chengdu, which was devastated by a May 12 earthquake. The earthquake has left at least 62,664 people dead and an estimated five million homeless. 06/05/08 [3]
Commenting on the above, a YouTube watcher, "jimmyjameswang" wrote in response to the familiar bilge talk, "lol, Israel has been (secretly) a great friend of ours long before we start to develop our post war economy, and we sure were no 'world power' back than, we were poor and back ward and isolated. Quit trying to help the US to alienated us."
* * *
ADAPAZARI, Turkey, Aug. 26 — Amid the scenes of horror and death that have afflicted this city since the earthquake last week, the brightest sign of life is a field hospital operated by doctors and nurses from the Israeli Army.
Eight babies have been born here since the quake. One boy was named Israel, and one girl is called Ziona. Their names are symbols of how firmly the earthquake has sealed the alliance between Israel and Turkey. [4]
Turkey's political stance has changed since Stephen Kinzer published the above lead in The New York Times in 1999; however, Turkey's cooperation in the defeat of this year's Haifa fire may signal that some battles, perhaps especially those with nature, call for continuing humanitarian initiative and reciprocity.
* * *
Three years ago, fueled by a desire to arm myself with management skills for this career, I enrolled in an Israel-based Masters program in Community Leadership & Philanthropy Studies. Today, I am the Director of Volunteer Services at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda . . . From the moment I landed in Israel, not a day passed when I did not want to be there. Once again, I found Jewish peers who believed in the importance of social responsibility that extends beyond one’s own community [5].
Rachel Orstein, writer of the above quote, coordinated American and Israeli youth efforts to produce good through the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village of rural Rwanda. The Israel-based institutional element supporting her effort, Masa Israel, sponsors more than 160 programs for young adults engaged in the development of Jewish identity and the investment in human capital in the process of community. [6]
* * *
In 2009, a total of 2,375 professionals from 110 countries participated in 99 courses in Israel, while 4,357 took part in 82 on-the-spot courses (in host countries) in a total of 35 countries. MASHAV experts were dispatched throughout the world on 89 short-term consultancies and humanitarian medical missions to 31 countries and eight long-term experts were serving on MASHAV demonstration projects around the world, in a total of seven countries. [7]
By continent, here are the complements in countries engaged with Israel's MASHAV development and humanitarian missions:
Asia and Oceania: Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nauru, Nepal, Phillippines, Republic of Korea, Samoa, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tonga, Vanuatu, Vietnam.
Central Europe and Eurasia: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan.
Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis, Uraguay, Venezuela.
Mediterranean Basic and the European Union: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Malta, Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom.
Middle East and North Africa: Egypt, Jordan, Palestinian Authority (neutral aegis: Danish International Development Agency)
Some MASHAV programs may feature just one participant exchange; others as well involve dozens. Whatever the numbers involved, israeli and Jewish engagement with others everywhere in the world in the shadows of difficult circumstances and daunting problems seems rule, not exception.
Here is a little more about the Middle East program:
In 1999 an intergovernmental agreement for a Regional Agricultural Program was signed by Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority with Denmark as initiator and main supporter. It started with great optimism. Following the success of a trilateral program involving Denmark, Egypt, and Israel, it was suggested to expand the program to include Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. All agreed, and representatives of the prospective partners met in Alexandria to select subjects and objectives of common interest to all partners. MASHAV and CINADCO represented Israel. [8]
I may not wish always to indulge in puff and paraphrasis, but here in response to the broad demonization of Israel and the impact of that rhetoric on Jews of the Diaspora, it seemed to me worthwhile to look over Israel's encouragement, sponsorship, and support of much needed development, emergency, and humanitarian mission programs worldwide.
8. Abileah, Benjamin. "The Middle East Regional Agricultural Program: Working for Peace Through Cooperation." MASHAV, n.d., circa 2004: http://mashav.mfa.gov.il/mfm/Data/84644.pdf
The young Pasternak showed considerable talent for drawing and might have become an artist himself, but in the summer of 1903, while the family was staying in the country, he chanced to meet the composer Alexander Scriabin, whom he overheard composing his Third Symphony at the piano in a neighboring house, and decided that his real calling was music. For the next six years, he devoted himself to a serious study of composition. But at a key moment in 1909, after playing some of his compositions for Scriabin, who encouraged him and gave him his blessing, he abandoned music. Meanwhile, he had discovered the poetry of Rilke and had joined a group of young admirers of the Symbolists that called itself Serdarda--"a name," as he wrote later, "whose meaning no one knew." And he had begun to write verse himself. [1, introduction p. vii).
The neighbors make the neighborhood and the neighborhood the culture.
Boris Pasternak was Jewish, the son of an artist employed as a professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture and a mother embarked on a career as a concert pianist [2]. Alexander Scriabin's formation seems rooted in the experience of aristocracy, a home abandoned by his father who would go on to make him many half-brothers and sisters, and interests in Nietzsche and theosophy. However else informed, and whoever else may have been in the neighborhood, both had time for living with and within their chosen arts and that within the competitive but genteel strata of an intelligentsia sustained beneath the Romanov umbrella.
Keeping that bit of biography in mind, here in part is Pasternak's introduction of Yuri Zhivago as a boy:
Separately, all the movements of the world were calculatedly sober, but as a sum total they were unconsciously drunk with the general current of life that united them. People toiled and bustled, set in motion by the mechanism of their own cares. But the mechanisms would not have worked if their chief regulator had not been a sense of supreme and fundamental carefreeness. This carefreeness came from a sense of the cohesion of human existences, a confidence in their passing from one into another, a sense of happiness owing to the fact that everything that happens takes place not only on earth, in which the dead are buried, but somewhere else, in what some call the Kingdom of God, others history, and still others something else again.
To this rule the boy was a bitter and painful exception. His mainspring remained a sense of care, and no feeling of unconcern lightened or ennobled it. He knew he had this inherited trait and with self-conscious alertness caught signs of it in himself. It upset him. Its presence humiliated him.
For as long as he could remember, he had never ceased to marvel at how, with the same arms and legs and a common language and habits, one could be not like everyone else, and besides that, be someone who was liked by few, someone who was not loved. He could not understand a situation in which, if you were worse than others, you could not make an effort to correct yourself and become better. What did it mean to be a Jew? Why was there such a thing? What could reward or justify this unarmed challenge that brought nothing but grief? [1, pp. 11-12]
Of course much has been written about Boris Pasternak who in Russia has been regarded as among the language's greatest poets. Geoff Saddler's write-up [3] on the web contains sufficient bibliography for curiosity (he notes too that Pasternak as a boy met also Rachmaninov, Rilke, and Tolstoi) and ends with what I've taken as a surprise:
A Jewish artist who rejected separation in favour of a Christ-based gospel of integrity and sacrifice, Pasternak became an icon for many Russians. Lines from “When the Weather Clears” sum up his attitude to life and art. “In everything I want to reach/The very essence:/In work, in seeking a way,/In passion’s turbulence…// “Always catching the thread/Of actions, histories,/To live, to think, to feel, to love,/To make discoveries”. [3]
There's plenty above that coda to delight and inform the reader interested in Boris Pasternak.
Along the lines of the Jewish theme introduced here, one of Scriabin's daughters, Ariane, born in Italy, converted to Judaism, and became a key figure in the French Resistance of WWII [4]. I am uncertain of the lineage (such may the shortcomings of the Internet's perpetual second row seat to history, which I should like to correct for myself this year), but Scriabin's great great grandson is reputed to be the Israeli concert pianist Elisha Abas [5].
Cited Reference
1. Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Translators; introduction by Richard Pevear. New York: Pantheon Books, 2010 (first published in Italian by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan, 1957).
Make a new covenant with the whole of my body so that perhaps my right hand will stop saying God has chosen me' 'I am the first' 'I am the last' 'I am the best' while it stabs my left
If I were God - God forbid and forgive the analogy - how ridiculous would it be for my hands to quarrel each claiming it is me to the exclusion of the other?
Reading poems by Narda Azaria Dalgleish is like looking into a white hot implosion in which all divided reunites in the compressed plasma and dense gravity of a new consciousness.
Composing in the aftermath of the death of her son, Rotem Moria, in the October 7, 2004 Al Qaeda bombing of the Taba Hilton Hotel in the Sinai, one of a string of such bombings in Egypt at the time, Dalgleish found love and from it forged through her poetry a vision of a whole human existence suspended in divine encompassment.
Dalgeishe's book, I, Israel, Ask represents work created in the two years following the Taba Hilton Bombing, and it takes the form of a series of most traditional conversations with the All. In fact, if it is "Israel" that is delightfully pummeled with cleverly nudging riddles and unfettered declarations of affection, it may be less the State than the figure of Israel who was Jacob who also wrestled with God, and addressing that Israel in the title finds addressed in each poem God almighty himself.
How are You?
Oh instant, Oh breath, Oh place, Oh Love-to-be-known, how are you? what good news have you from He, who is unknowable, to me, who is none other than Him?
they said at the open portal, when you enter the Heart of Man place upon the altar of He who is unknowable the whole of existence in-question
Rotem Moria, pictured to the right, had been camping in the Sinai and was returning to Israel via the Taba border crossing (below) when he, with a friend, had walked into the Taba Hilton to use the bathroom.
How capricious and indescriminate God would seem at first, and indeed we may "place upon the altar . . . the whole of existence in-question," as one might say conventionally ("in question"), but with a startling twist we may also lend more weight to the mission and mystery that resides in inquiry itself ("in-question").
What art Thou?
And what art has Dalgleish created for--or because of--a mighty and perplexing Thou?
In an interview in The Times, journalist Libby Purves quotes Dalgleish as saying, "I went to the funeral in Israel and felt . . . extraordinary. Everything I have learnt, with a sense of certainty which has nothing to do with the intellect, was Love. It is not to do with one relative self in reference to another self. It is about what is real in every existence . . . . That is not to say that I was not grieving. Pain is not removed. But grief -- it strips you down."
Born in Tel Aviv in 1951, Dalgleish, arrived in Great Britain in the wake of a divorce in her twenties, put down roots after a while with an Englishman, opened a dress shop (as a designer) in Burford, Oxfordshire, and became involved in the Beshara School for Intensive Esoteric Education, which is located in the Scottish Borders. So it seems with "children of the 60's" that whether to, say, Esalan on the wings of the father of humanist psychology, Abraham Maslow, or to Beshara on the hopes for peace for all mankind, arrival, after one long, strange trip or another, has been certain, and the aspirations of all find expression through such souls removed to remote searching and thoughtful enclaves.
In Dalgleish's own words from correspondence:
My approach to peace making is very much in accord with JFK's quote on top of the page, from his commencement address at the American University, June 10, 1963.
"Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable ... that mankind is doomed ... that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade ... therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable ... and we believe they can do it again."
About a year or so ago, I came upon a long list of NGO's in the region, many of whom are Israelis making tremendous efforts to to overcome their fears and prejudice in order to learn how to make peace with the so called other, or enemy. As I was working online, sometimes up to 18 hours a day to research, select and create group pages, my heart would melt for the first time after years of ignorance and being subjected to one sided international media exposure ... for the first time I felt a kind of pride in being an Israeli and in belonging with these people ... I also felt a profound frustration that I could do nothing more than just showcase their work online ...
To begin with, I have, almost tyrannically, guarded the place from the possibility of frivolous discussions - hence no discussion happened. I suppose I was not ready to cope with people's possible protest, anger, or political divisive perspectives. Perhaps it was unwise of me to post that response, I apologize to you.
I am aware that no real peace making is possible without the grace of an acute listening to all points of view, however unpleasant. I really miss that kind of listening, very often when it's too late, and yet again forgotten by the force of habit ...
Call "an acute listening" an open reading, a ready state for an immense talent, a welcoming attitude toward possibility, including the possibility that one's enemies today may be working as hard to "overcome their fears and prejudice in order to learn how to make peace . . . ." In Dalgleish's universe made whole, a world healing and healed, the left and right hands know only cooperation--just the one Guidance--even while they fight a while longer.
In the worldwide war and peace camps, streams of conversation may work in the way of water across rocks, so continuous and full of suspended material the fluid, the rocks ultimately shape to friction, remaining where mettle and time prove stronger than the flow of abrasive thought but melting with slow certainty to suit where it may not. Dalgleish's poems in I, Israel, Ask have their own universal, resonant, and shaping power--we, as hard rocks, should all melt and meld a little bit with them.
I have heard of Ferenc Deák, an Hungarian statesman, a career legislator, whose spirit and works helped bring about the liberation and modernation of Hungary in the 19th Century, but know little about him today and mean to change that soon, for we often think that good ideas and great systems come about spontaneously, snatched out of the air by peculiarly resourceful minds, but they don't, or don't often, and if some do seem so would seem equally suspect.
While some may trust in magic, may most, and most of all leaders, place faith in diligent scholarship and responsible reflection.
Among Deák's accomplishments: the development of a system of public education that forged an intellectual movement that was to spread across Europe, influence Theodor Herzl in his conceptualization of a peaceful and persistent Zionism, and contribute to the success of such as Alexander Korda and Edward Teller.
While we might ask what in any of the democratic open societies could be more prosaic than a public library, we may be more wise to ask what could be more miraculous, for public libraries as, say, New Yorkers might know them would seem as exceptional in the world as they may seem common to those who have had the good fortune to access them.
What any given generation may take for granted in the way of common universal freedom, privilege, and right, be sure a previous generation put it there, whether constitution or library, deliberately and probably through struggles not much different than experienced today.
Here's a new wrinkle on books old enough to have fallen out of copyright: many are popping up online in multiple formats for the curious. Francis Deák, Hungarian statesman : a memoir.
From the preface by M. E. Grant Duff, Member of Parliament, York House, Twickenham (January 1880):
It is good to read the history of such men at all times, but never perhaps more than now, when a school has arisen and attained to no small measure of political power which pooh-poohs the idea that morality has anything to do with politics, or that there is any other test of statesmanship than obvious and immediate success.
From another work in which one finds Ferenc Deák mentioned, we have this:
One of the most interesting features of Hungarian liberalism was that its advocates were mainly noble members of the Hungarian State Assembly who pressured for reform while knowing that it would mean losing some of their privileges.
Source: Györe, Zoltán. "A Doctrine of 'Harmonization of Interest': the Basis of the Reform Policy of the Hungarian Liberals in the Vormärz." Ideology, Society and Values, n.d., p. 133.
Additional quick reference: Online Encyclopedia. "FRANCIS DEAK (FERENCZ), (1803-1876)". Originally appearing in Volume V07, Page 896 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
We have the immense fortune of visiting such as Ferenc Deák in books as well as discovering similar souls standing up and standing out, flamboyantly or quietly, some in political life, many not, on the World Wide Web.
Most importantly, we have a way through the globalized, if struggling, open online library of investigating, developing, and dispersing solutions to contemporary issues. those who visit and comment on 19th Century Hungary know the era's resonance in several of the world's contemporary ethnic and feudal struggles as well as the potential for a cultural blossoming out of them.
Last Sunday, eight boats were committed to challenging Israel's sovereignty and its obligation to all of its citizens to forestall shipments of war materiel by sea.
Today, three have abandoned the route, citing "technical difficulties" for cause, leaving five boats floating toward Israel's navy.
Although Israel Foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor may have said, as quoted by The Times of Earth, "If we let them throw egg at us, we appear stupid with egg on our face. If we try to prevent them by force, we appear as brutes," [1] Israel's defense and security plans belie any appearance as brutes, for they include the following:
Detainee's debriefing camp providing immediate medical support and swift transfer to deportation for most or jail for some, including participating Israeli citizens.
Plans to inspect and then, through United Nations shipping resources, distribute aid to Gaza as intended by donors.
Folks, I hate to tell you, but if an operation involves a state's military, life just doesn't get much friendlier than that.
Composed Monday, May 31, 2010--
More important, Israel's own campaign to get goods into Gaza dwarfs the efforts of those at sea. The state's Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims, "Well over a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Israel over the last 18 months equaling nearly a ton of aid for every man, woman and child in Gaza. Millions of dollars worth of international food aid continually flows through the Israeli humanitarian apparatus, ensuring that there is no food shortage in Gaza. Food and supplies are shipped from Israel to Gaza six days a week. These items were channeled through aid organizations or via Gaza's private sector. [2]
How is that for "Zionist criminality"?
The story only gets better.
No Palestinian is denied medical care in Israel. However, if the Hamas regime does not grant permits for medical care, the Israeli government can do nothing to help the patient. Israel will facilitate all cases of medical treatments from Gaza, unless the patient is a known perpetrator of terror . . . In 2009 alone, 10,544 patients and their companions left the Gaza Strip for medical treatment in Israel. Moreover, there were 382 emergency evacuations from Gaza for medical purposes. [2]
The May 25, 2010 Ministry of Foreign Affairs article covers in brief factoids the distribution of the basic elements of decent living, from the provision of building materials, including tons of concrete for direct use on known projects, to the distribution of electricity and sewage services.
Against that backdrop of Israeli efforts to contribute to the maintenance of a basic and decent quality of living even in its sworn enemy's camp, specifically, the Hamas government that has its hooks deeply set in the lives of Gaza's residents, have come the boat people.
In my fair and recession-battered small town, I too may take a camera into the low-rent districts and show all vacant buildings and structures, commercial and residential, in states of disrepair (truth to tell, given the age of some of neighborhoods here, even decent enough and occupied homes may sport their share of jury-rigged wires, peeling paint, and sagging porches), but I wouldn't claim such images to then represent the whole of a house, town, or region at large.
Running coals to New Castle, as the saying goes, this would seem the way in which well-intentioned people get themselves involved in something that gets them killed. With Israel's cooperation and resources providing essential goods and services (e.g., medical) directly and with donors around the world passing through to its people other than war materiel, Gaza has long been "rescued" despite the lethal agenda, not to mention fratricidal behavior, of Hamas.
In light of the above, we may now catch up with the story. This has been posted on YouTube by AljazeeraEnglish, May 31, 2010:
I have long mantained that a state's military, any of them, are generally "too large"--imprecisely lethal, minimally adjustable once mobilized--for the work at hand and have yet to be proven wrong on that; I've also said, and this in relation to Somalia, the best thing to do in the presence of an army if not directly engaged is to avoid or flee it.
Now you have watched above the flashy part of the story. Let's fill in what happened before that happened.
It's an old ritual, the establishment of political and military policy, fair general warnings at sea, and then a request, followed by the bravado of an invitation: "Negative. Negative. Our destination is Gaza."
The boat show's destination was Gaza.
Israel says the troops returned fire after they were attacked with live rounds, knives and clubs, but the organizers of the Gaza blockade busting bid insist the soldiers started shooting the moment they hit the deck.
"They fired directly into the crowd of civilians asleep," the Free Gaza Movement said. [3]
Let the Tuesday morning quarterbacking begin: I have a feeling Gazans know the sources of their electricity and water, their beef and medicines, their building materials and manufactured goods of all kinds, and not only where they come from but how they're delivered in the main and overwhelming part.
All of this, and this in light of America's Memorial Day Weekend: propaganda, self-aggrandizement, and show business with real blood.
Not only did the peaceful of the world not need the Gaza Boat Show, it's doubtful whether the people of Gaza needed at all.
The slogan of the "International Jewish anti-Zionist Network" is "Confront Zionism - Divest from Israel." MSU students at UC San Diego who rioted in support of a BDS resolution screamed, "Palestine is Free, from the River to the Sea." The ISM (International Solidarity Movement), the MSU (Muslim Students Union), the MSA (Muslim Students Association) the PACBI, Al-Awda ("the Return") and similar groups are behind the BDS movement. They are all out to destroy Israel as the state of the Jewish people. They all support "right" of return of Palestinian refugees, or a "one state solution" or both. [1]
The Carleton Pension Fund currently lacks any ethical guidelines, with its only mandate being the maximization of profit. SAIA has discovered that the Pension Fund, which provides retirement income for Carleton staff and faculty, currently has some $2,762,535 invested in five companies that are complicit in the oppression of the Palestinian people. [2]
Neofascist and white supremacist groups also reproduced antisemitic cartoons taken from Arab websites; they issued a call for White Nationalist Party members to phone the Malaysian embassy in London and express their support for Mahathir Mohamad after he claiemd that "Jews rule the world"; they reproduced boycott lists from Islamist or anti-Zionist websites of "Jewish controlled companies, used to prop up Zionism around the world," as one White Nationalist Party supporter put it; and they made frequent use of the logo of the Boycott Israeli Goods campaign, an Israeli flag in a red circle with a line through it.
These ultranationalist, racist and anti-Jewish groups saw in the Islamists something beyond their wildest dreams: a global force, armed and trained, committed to the destruction of both Jews and the Western political order. [3]
The formation of the Yozma Program, with its mission to create a viable venture capital industry, resulted in a dramatically positive change in the perception of foreign VC investors and their attitude towards investing in Israel. Under the Yozma Program 10 new venture capital funds were formed managing $20 million each, of which Yozma's share was 40% and the foreign investors' 60%. In the years since 1993, the Israeli VC industry has flourished and gained a leading position in the world, second only to the U.S. with the total capital raised to date in excess of $10 billion. [4]
While Israel continues to truck tens of thousands of tons of aid monthly to Gaza and the West Bank, leaving the left fringe--I like to call it the "New Old Now Old Left"--with a Potemkin-like cause whose potency derives from the confused hatred of the Jews and the establishment of open and yet ordered societies around the world founded on Judeo-Christian principles or with their influence integrated elsewhere, including in Islam, the Jewish state continues to grow, and not only for itself but for investors worldwide.
The success of capital in Israel has not been without regional consequences. Through Qualified Industrial Zone (QIZ) programs involving Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the United States, cooperating enclaves in both Egypt and Jordan have experienced dramatic economic growth in export income and job creation. [5] Brands associated with the programs, which involve around 20 designated industrial sites in Egypt and Jordan, include Calvin Klein, Victoria's Secret, Nike, and Reebok. [6]
From search string "trade China Israel":
"The average annual growth rate of bilateral trade in the past 14 years is 40 percent. Last year, bilateral trade volume reached 3 billion U.S. dollars," she said, noting that "we expect the volume to reach 5 billion dollars by 2008." [7]
From search string "trade India Israel":
“The bilateral trade is evenly matched at about $2 billion. As per estimates, this trade volume will go up to $6 billion once the FTA is signed. Apart from engagement between the two Governments in various projects, the trade growth would be expanded through public-private participation projects and business to business ties,” he said. [8]
From search string "trade Russia Israel":
Russia and Israel are going to expand trade cooperation, particularly in agriculture and high technologies, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said during the meeting with his counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu. “Israel is our long-time partner in the Middle East, and we hold regular talks on the Mideast settlement”, Putin said. The Russian premier added that although in 2009 the trade turnover between the two countries decreased, there are still very good prospects for productive economic cooperation. Mr. Netanyahu confirmed Israel’s intention to deepen ties with Russia. Mutual trade turnover between Russia and Israel increased from $12 million in 1991 to $2.8 billion in 2008. [9]
In any one of the areas I've commented on in this post or in the blog overall, I could spend days to weeks to years (my time's for sale for doing so, that' is for sure), but you get the drift, and no pun intended in light of the Gaza Boat Show: Israel not only has friends too, it has firm obligations to them in two most telling dimensions: 1) as a trading partner -- from Japan to Jordan, there is no question about that, and 2) as a representative of the overarching international community engaged in economic development, free market capitalism, and, in its totality, a cooperative and environmentally and socially productive and responsible stewardship of the earth and her inhabitants.
That children may be intellectually seduced by academic brigands and a propaganda focused to demonize 13 million souls and their legacy worldwide while denying the crimes of those associated with their indulgence in a political adventure as romantic as it has been tawdry comes as no surprise. However, the global establishment's lack of direct response to that propaganda and the quarters that harbor it as part of their inverted channel to power -- and it has been just that: a pursuit of raw intimidating power on the soapbox of a false cause -- has been abysmal and probably will result in some increase in the intensity and tempo of ersatz low-intensity armed conflict with heightened potential, especially this week with many military exercises and systems ready-alerts on deck in the region, for the onset of open state-to-state warfare.
Wikipedia. "Disinvestment from Israel": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinvestment_from_Israel. Includes overview and summaries of activity involving the Presbyterian Church (USA), World Council of Churches, United Church of Christ, New England Conference of the United Methodist Church, and others.
But those who truly deserve the greatest credit for this historic achievement are the citizens of Israel. We are an ancient people who established what is still a young country little more than six decades ago.
We possess hardly any natural resources. Our greatest assets are the brains, drive, ingenuity, and entrepreneurial spirit of our people. They are the reason why Israel is today a global leader in technology and why the world’s leading firms conduct advanced research and development in Israel.
Chomsky: You said I'm calling for the destruction of Israel or some words like that
Israel News: No, that you--
Chomsky: I don't think it should exist as a Jewish state. Yeah, I don't think the United States should exist as a Christian state, I don't think Pakistan should exist as an Islamic state.
Israel News: There's a big difference because the United States and Pakistan--there is no nation in the world calling for their destruction and having a nuclear weapon like Iran, for example--
Chomsky: Like Iran does not have nuclear weapons and it's not calling for the destruction.
Israel News: It is calling for the destruction. Ahmadinejad is very specific in saying that--
Chomsky: These are quotations that are appearing int he Israeli press.
Israel News: I heard him say that with his voice.
Chomksy: What he said is, I don't approve it, he was quoting Khomeini in a period where Israel was very close to Iran and didn't mind Khomeini saying it, he said in the end of time Israel will disappear, words like that.
Israel News: No, he was very specific, and . . . .
Chomsky: But Israel is in a position of security well beyond that of many other states which do not, in so far as they call themselves not states of their citizens but states of a particular category of citizens object to it in principle.
Civil in manners, direct in speech, comfortable before crowds or television cameras, we are the very soul of reasonable and reasoning conversation.
There can be nothing wrong, for example, in comparing Jewish-majority israel with Christian-majority America and Muslim-majority Pakistan. To be fair, America and Pakistan could well stand to be more polygot, mixed in population, indecipherable in cultural and religious makeup, for that, whether speaking of mixing up Hindus, Muslims, and Jews (oh my) or developing a polylingual America or Europe, such could become the soul of a peaceful global anarchy.
Then too, we in the west frequently decry gerrymandering and believe in one man, one vote, so let us put it to a vote--and Ahmadinejad knows all about fair voting--and discover through the election process whether Muslims, there being so very few Christians and Jews today left in the territories and camps by comparison, would not feel better about being taken care of by Jews, those terribly honest and responsible people (with the track records to prove it), than they would by their own.
No, my most gentle readers, one learns through looking over conflicts, especially ones generated out of the depths of language and psyche, that speaking softly may be all very well and fine, but how we listen, and with what discernment, knowledge, courage, and love, trumps all.
Source: YouTube poster "burnabycomputer". "Israelies Are Not Jews and American Leaders Are Not Christians." YouTube, June 15, 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrWguVsEih0
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