Updates from Hofit, May 25, 2010

What did Ezekiel See?

Last Wednesday, I read the Haftara (Prophetic Reading) in synagogue and it was wild.  In the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel the prophet described a vision that boggles the mind.  When I returned to my seat, Yosefa whispered to me "what was he smoking?"  Indeed a good question.  Go read it in whatever language you wish.

 Some of my colleagues have come up with the idea that he may have witnessed a low latitude aurora borealis.  These events are rare but they do happen and 2500 years ago the north magnetic pole was far east of where it is now.   I invite you to view this movie of an auroral display and to imagine how a priest in Babylonia in  593 BCE would have interpreted what he saw.

IN MEMORIAM 

MARTIN GARDNER
We are informed that Martin Gardner passed away this week at the age of 95. Over the years I, as a goodly proportion of you, have spent many a wonderful hour  with his games and comments in Scientific American.  He contributed to the quality of our lives as scientists and just informed lay people.  I post a tribute to his memory.

SCIENCE
Let us stay with science and nice things before getting on to the politics, rants, ravings and disgust that envelopes us all around the world.
This month we are marking the thirtieth anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.   It was a monumental event with the sound of the blast heard at a distance of over 1000km.  View a video of the eruption.  We experienced something of this magnitude now in Iceland.  Man is indeed puny compared to nature.

Planetary systems abound in the galaxy and universe, but some of them are stranger than others. In general, you can see interesting stuff in the Bad Astronomy blog listed on the right hand side of this blog as something that I follow.  Obviously quality control in making uniform planetary systems is deteriorating.  Do not, please, tell the Creationists.

You may have noticed that the weather has been a bit cooler these past few days.  In European folklore, these are called the days of the ice saints.  Indeed, there is a cooling trend at about May 20 on the Gregorian calendar.   I have never found an explanation for the phenomenon despite having been a meteorologist in the far past and having many colleagues who work in the field.  Odd indeed.


Judy sent me the following link to a bit of history of physics.  Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck discovered the spin of the electron but for  reasons that I cannot fathom never received the Nobel Prize for this incredibly important work.  The lecture that Goudsmit gave nearly forty years ago is fascinating especially to those who toil in the vineyard of physics or chemistry.  Thank you Judy.
 
  Many pregnant women use antidepressant drugs to deal with the stress and hormonal chaos of pregnancy.  New studies in pharmacology indicate that these drugs may have subtle and not understood effects on the development of the brain of the fetus.  No one is suggesting stopping the use of these medications, but it is food for thought.

New species of animals have been discovered in Papua   Some of them are quite striking.  Enjoy the slide show.

HUMAN RIGHTS
Before we  start in with our local mess, let us look around our lovely world.  Sri Lanka has come out of a civil war and the human rights violations roll on with total impunity.  Chutzpa!  They seem to think that they are Israel!  Please join the call to investigate.  
It is incumbent on the UN to do something about this deplorable situation.

In Mexico a human rights defender has been indicted on a fabricated murder charge.  Please join
Amnesty International in protesting this use of the justice system to put down dissent.  More on that later.

In Myanmar/Burma, the situation is no better and is getting worse.  I call upon you to join the action on behalf of a political prisoner 
who is being denied medical treatment in detention.

THE MESS AT HOME

OK, where do we start?  What pile of garbage has the highest priority.
At home it has been a fairly quiet week except for things that
you do not want to know. Zohar flew off to a meeting and
scientific visits in the US and we heard Cherubini's Requiem in
Abu Ghosh. Yosefa sang with her choir in a performance of
Athalia. We go on with our lives in our little bubble, but some
of us find it hard.
Before we get into the excrement, let us share the story of a young
woman who can inspire hope in all of us.  I refer to Emily Schaeffer
who provides an example of courage and integrity to all of us.  This is the
kind of human rights defender who is effective.  God bless her and the likes
of her.
On the other hand the political scene has been unbelievable.Uri Avineri speculates
that the behavior of our government derives from nostalgia for the good old
days when everyone hated us and therefore we were not accountable for our 
actions.  Maybe.
Noam Chomsky was denied admission to the West Bank by our
enlightened government. Everybody has been ranting about it and
all the obvious things are being said in the press about our
increasing isolation from the civilized world and the erosion
of democratic rights in Israel. Indeed it is frightening to
realize that we live in a country in which the regime is driven
by an ideology that brooks no argument. What is worse is that
most of the public support the regime and appear to be opposed
to democracy as a troubling thing that rocks boats. Gideon Levy
seems to see it correctly as does Bradley Burston
The smear campaign against   Richard Goldstone
is another example of our disconnect from reality as seen by
the rest of the world. The Dubai disaster goes on with
Australia the latest country to respond to having its passports
cloned by kicking out a diplomat. 

I have been asking myself what went wrong here and where was
the source of the original sin. I came here as a young Zionist,
but my Zionist vision was not that of the Revionsionists and
the messianic lunatics who control our policy and our body
politic today. Herzl is said to have been a liberal in that he
believed in separation of synagogue and state and that the army
should be kept out of politics. On the other hand, his thinking
was rooted in the colonial world of the 19th century and he
wrote of a bastion of Western civilization under the aegis of
the Great Powers. Indeed we came in after WWI as agents of
British imperialism and that may have been original sin number
1. The philosopher Achad Ha'am (Asher Ginsburg) called for a
moral Zionism but his voice was ignored. Today Chaim Gans makes
a case for A Just Zionism
but I suspect that he will have no greater impact than Achad
Ha'am. The fact that we were driven out of Europe is undeniable
but somehow we should have done a better job of minimizing the
impact of our settlement here on the indigenous population. The
belief that we can live on our sword (or the sword of the
Americans) indefinitely is both false and pernicious. It leads
to the eroding of democracy and of all humanistic values in our
society. Ben-Gurion and his Mapainik cohorts added to the
original sins, but had at least a vision of social justice t
least for Jews. Today we have a Bush style capitalism that
tramples on everything and everyone in the worship of Mammon.
The coupling of government, army and big money has subverted
our judiciary and totally distorted all national priorities.
The cases of Anat Kam, and   Ezra Nawi are examples of how this
works.  Both these are examples of how the judges are either lackeys
of the defense establishment or cowed by it to the extent of losing all
courage and integrity.

I must say that I found some encouragement last night when I
joined 6000 people at Tel Aviv Museum Square to protest the
deportation of 1200 children of migrant workers. These children

were born here, have no other homeland and belong with us. The
corruption of the revolving door system with imported labor is
a national scandal, but since the big money sharks are buddies
of the regime and our Interior Minister is a Fascist xenophobe
it is unlikely that anything will change soon. Maybe we can
protect these children. 

I also get some encouragement from the results of surveys of
young American Jews who appear to be moving away from the knee
jerk support for every Israeli policy that characterizes the
generation of their parents.  Our generation certainly ruined everything
by letting things happen while we were concerned with our own lives, careers, 
raising kids, etc.  Let us pin our hopes on the new generation both in Israel and the Diaspora
who might be able to turn things around.  On Friday we will go to Sheikh Jarrakh to
support them.

  If we get arrested for threatening the existence of the State, so be it.


To relax try Gene Weingarten Below the Beltway
or with what happens when kids are exposed to the  Bible"
IT COMES FROM A CATHOLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEST.
KIDS WERE ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ABOUT THE BIBLE WERE WRITTEN BY CHILDREN. THEY HAVE NOT BEEN RETOUCHED OR CORRECTED. INCORRECT SPELLING HAS BEEN LEFT IN.




1. IN THE FIRST BOOK OF THE BIBLE, GUINESSIS. GOD GOT TIRED OF CREATING THE WORLD SO HE TOOK THE SABBATH OFF.

2. ADAM AND EVE WERE CREATED FROM AN APPLE TREE . NOAH'S WIFE WAS JOAN OF ARK. NOAH BUILT AND ARK AND THE ANIMALS CAME ON IN PEARS.

3. LOTS WIFE WAS A PILLAR OF SALT DURING THE DAY, BUT A BALL OF FIRE DURING THE NIGHT.

4. THE JEWS WERE A PROUD PEOPLE AND THROUGHOUT HISTORY THEY HAD TROUBLE WITH UNSYMPATHETIC GENITALS.

5. SAMPSON WAS A STRONGMAN WHO LET HIMSELF BE LED ASTRAY BY A JEZEBEL LIKE DELILAH.

6. SAMSON SLAYED THE PHILISTINES WITH THE AXE OF THE APOSTLES.

7. MOSES LED THE JEWS TO THE RED SEA WHERE THEY MADE UNLEAVENED BREAD WHICH IS BREAD WITHOUT ANY INGREDIENTS .

8. THE EGYPTIANS WERE ALL DROWNED IN THE DESSERT. AFTERWARDS, MOSES WENT UP TO MOUNT CYANIDE TO GET THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

9. THE FIRST COMMANDMENTS WAS WHEN EVE TOLD ADAM TO EAT THE APPLE.

10. THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT IS THOU SHALT NOT ADMIT ADULTERY.

11. MOSES DIED BEFORE HE EVER REACHED CANADA THEN JOSHUA LED THE HEBREWS IN THE BATTLE   OF GERITOL.

12. THE GREATEST MIRICLE IN THE BIBLE IS WHEN JOSHUA TOLD HIS SON TO STAND STILL AND HE OBEYED HIM.

13. DAVID WAS A HEBREW KING WHO WAS SKILLED AT PLAYING THE LIAR. HE FOUGHT THE FINKELSTEINS, A RACE OF PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN BIBLICAL TIMES.

14. SOLOMON, ONE OF DAVIDS SONS, HAD 300 WIVES AND 700 PORCUPINES.

15. WHEN MARY HEARD SHE WAS THE MOTHER OF JESUS, SHE SANG THE MAGNA CARTA.

16. WHEN THE THREE WISE GUYS FROM THE EAST SIDE ARRIVED THEY FOUND JESUS IN THE MANAGER.

17. JESUS WAS BORN BECAUSE MARY HAD AN IMMACULATE CONTRAPTION.

18. St. JOHN THE BLACKSMITH DUMPED WATER ON HIS HEAD.

19. JESUS ENUNCIATED THE GOLDEN RULE, WHICH SAYS TO DO UNTO OTHERS BEFORE THEY DO ONE TO YOU. HE ALSO EXPLAINED A MAN DOTH NOT LIVE BY SWEAT ALONE.

20. IT WAS A MIRICLE WHEN JESUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD AND MANAGED TO GET THE TOMBSTONE OFF THE ENTRANCE.

21. THE PEOPLE WHO FOLLOWED THE LORD WERE CALLED THE 12 DECIBELS.

22. THE EPISTELS WERE THE WIVES OF THE APOSTLES.

23. ONE OF THE OPPOSSUMS WAS ST. MATTHEW WHO WAS ALSO A TAXIMAN.

24. ST.. PAUL CAVORTED TO CHRISTIANITY, HE PREACHED HOLY ACRIMONY WHICH IS ANOTHER NAME FOR MARRAIGE.

25. CHRISTIANS HAVE ONLY ONE SPOUSE. THIS IS CALLED MONOTONY.

More on weird science, the Shabak as KGB and happy Shavuot

Shavuot is coming up this week.  It is a pleasure to have a real holiday coming up after the fake Israeli celebrations, the latest and most egregious  of which was United Jerusalem Day.  It was inflicted on us last Wednesday and served as an opportunity for the government and its messianic allies to serve up their usual goulash of lies, propaganda and racist incitement.  Shavuot has two aspects, the First Fruits to be brought to the Temple and the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai.  While the first was mainly good for the priestly economy and the latter mythic, there is an idea of introspection and thinking about basic things that goes along with it.
We have a tradition of eating dairy dishes which has no significance other than culinary, but it is fun and another chance for families to get together, share a meal and some companionship.   Chabad which is not my cup of tea has some recipes.

Science Weird and Otherwise

Accent on accent: Let me start out as a proud Papa and refer you to research by my daughter Zohar:
 She has published a paper that attracted attention from the Washington Post.
The study is certain to attract comments, both pro and con.

Male Contraception has long been a Holy Grail of reproductive science.  It appears, according to BBC reports that some progress is being made.  New understanding of the propulsion of sperm can
provide a means of approaching this goal.  Another proactive technique involving ultrasound could really help with population control in parts of the world where condom use etc. is less acceptable or common.

The Ah Ha experience in which insight pops up has happened to all of us who toil in the vineyards of science.  New studies seem to provide insight into insight.

Dark Matter has been long proposed as a means of explaining gravitational effects and how
the galaxies are held together.  Now there is a debate on whether or not it has indeed been detected and what the implications are.  While this might be weird astronomy and/or particle physics, at least we think we understand it.
Entanglement and nonlocality and what is reality are a different kettle of fish.
Last week I attended a mini symposium at Tel Aviv University in which the Wolf Prize laureates gave their version of what is meant by long range correlations, the concept of the here and now and whether particles have characteristics that preexist measurement and are independent of it.  It was fascinating and confusing.  
In the meantime, here in Israel a new record has been set at the Weizmann Institute for multientanglement of photons.  As Alice (might have) said to Bob in Wonderland, things are getting .curiouser and curiouser
The Wolf Prize was given for pioneering work done long ago.  One of the laureates wrote an enlightening article a few years ago updating things a bit and clarifying things somewhat for the uninitiated.  As technology progresses, we are seeing that the issues of locality and reality are being challenged again and again, i.e. entangled particles however far apart communicate instantaneously and the existence of characteristics of a particle that existed before the measurement and independent of it.
.
Enough of the fun and nice stuff and let us move into the rant section;
Let us start with China where the persecution of human rights defenders and in particular of
lawyers who take on cases that the government does not like has plummeted to new levels of
depravity.  Here is a link to a press release by Amnesty Internatonal

From this delightful situation we move on to the Catholic Church where the Pope is finally waking up to reality and acknowledging that the decay is from within.  Sometimes satire can be more effective than a rant.  This YouTube comes and goes and I suspect that someone has an interest in censoring it.

There are  religious issues  in Israel as well. Please act on this most important petition.

We went to Jerusalem on Saturday night to participate in a
demonstration against West Bank settlements.
Later we went to the local courthouse to protest the arrest the
day before of a large number of peaceful demonstrators from
Sheikh Jarrakh. The demonstration included a large number of
groups from the so-called Zionist left. I was happy to see
different movements in the same tent, although some of the
things that were said did not really resonate with me. I find
the argument that we must end the Occupation in order to
maintain a "Jewish and Democratic Israel" to be at best
specious and at worst self-serving and dishonest. A Jewish
Israel in which racism, religious discrimination and
infringement of fundamental human rights, including freedom of
expression and association cannot be Democratic. If the
Occupation ended today, we would still be far from having a
democratic, pluralistic and tolerant society in Israel.  I also
gagged a bit on the talk of "our brothers the settlers."  War
criminals are not my brothers and sisters.

On the other hand, I sometimes find inappropriate (in my view)
attitudes on the side of the more radical left. I believe
firmly in a two state solution to the conflict and at the big
Sheikh Jarrakh rally someone from the stage called more or less
for the elimination of Israel. Nonetheless, despite all these
differences, many of which are much more than nuances, we need to
get into the same tent and act together because the Fascist
right is taking over the arena of public opinion and it will
soon be too late to do anything. Uri Avnerii has stated
correctly that we need new young leaders since the old
political hacks are worn out.


THE SPY CASE
The case of the Shabak vs Makhoul and Said gets more
preposterous as more information comes to light. Of course, the
Shabak pet judge from Petach Tikva has extended the no lawyer
decree and the gag order, but in truth, we now know what is
happening. It makes me wonder what I should do if I find a
scientist from an Arab country at a meeting and he/she wishes
to talk to me about the moons of Saturn. Richard Silverstein is
doing an excellent job on blogging this issue and the obfuscation
in our local press that fears to tell us that a Dr. Jaja is the great big
spymaster  who is running the evil spy in Israel.
. In the 1930's, Robert Benchley pointed out that you can always
be reasonably sure that when a fearsome spy scandal erupts, the
government is trying to hide something from the public.  I wonder
what scandal they may be trying to hide.  Was Eli Yishai caught at
McDonald's eating a juicy cheeseburger???
I also wonder if  any Israeli Jew who encounters an Arab colleague
at a scientific meeting would  be railroaded into a KGB type secret
arrest and denied legal counsel.  I have, therefore, decided to confess and
maybe avoid torture.  In 1963-64 I shared
an office at the University of Maryland with  a fellow graduate
student named Fuad Saidi who went on, I believe,
to a senior scientific position in Syria.  I also once rode a ski lift to a cookout
in the Cascades with Prof. Mahwadi of Cairo University (ca. 1974) and have
sent reprints to colleagues who may, Hashem forbid, be of the Muslim persuasion.
Shabak--I live at 30 Shaldag St. in Hofit.
Could the appearance of a gray whale 
off our coast for the first time in 200 years be an indication that the environmental
organization headed by Dr. Jaja the spymaster has recruited cetaceans  to spy upon us
and report via Dr. Makhoul?  I put no idiocy  beyond the reach of our stalwart
defenders.  You may recall how  well they defended Yitzhak Rabin, but what the hell, he was
selling out the settlers and making peace, which might have had a bad affect on their jobs
and budgets.  Just speculating of course...conspiracy theories are usually bunk.

OK, let us end with something that is intentionally funny.
Gene Weingarten is back and I have two posts of Below the Beltway  .
Here is the  second post.

Weird science, fuming outrage and a few nice things, May 11, 2010

This is a schematic of the set up for the weirdest physical experiment that I have ever encountered in the literature.  I append two links that try to explain it.  I am confused and find that quantum mechanics is truly spooky as Einstein said.  It raises hell with special relativity and with our understanding of causality to mention a few things.
This is one explanation.
and here is a description of the actual experiment.
Today I attended a mini symposium by this year's Wolf Laureates on Entanglement
and Nonlocality and became very confused by the weird physics.  It was somewhat
comforting to hear the laureates themselves admitting to some confusion as well.  Nature
still has many secrets for us.

Outrage over Blood Libels

The first and worst is what was broadcast on Syrian television
 as a rational panel discussion.  As you are aware, Israel sent
 a field hospital to Haiti in the wake of the terrible
 earthquake and all Israelis are justifiably proud of the
 performance of our medical teams.They drew praise from all
 the news media and were compared very favorably with the
 efforts made by many larger and wealthier countries.  Needless
 to say, no Arab country lifted a finger to help out.  We now
 are told by Syrian television that the Israeli medical teams
 used the opportunity to harvest organs from Haitian patients
 to sell on the organ transplant black market.  I invite you to
 view this abomination promulgated by a country we have as a
 neighbor and with home we must deal.  Make no mistake, I
 support peace negotiations with Syria and the return of the
 Golan Heights to their sovereignty.  Nonetheless, here is the
video clip of this monstrosity.

The other libel has to do with the ad hominem attempts in the
media in Israel to discredit Justice Richard Goldstone  as a supporter
of the apartheid regime in South Africa.   It is incredible that the people
who provided technology for nuclear weapons to the same regime are
vilifying someone who was chosen by Archbishop Tutu to serve on the
Truth and Reconciliation commission.  He also served on international
tribunals for Yugoslavia and Kosovo.   Here is a link to his biography.  Of
course, the Israeli interest in degrading him is a direct result of his report
on war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers during operation Cast Lead.
The media campaign is so transparently driven by self interest that it has no
real credibility behind it.

Civilians in Chad are in dire need of protection.  Please act on this call
from Amnesty International.

In Israel, the madness goes on, xenophobia, paranoia and a
 closing off from the world.  In Haaretz, at least warning
 voices are raised although little heeded and ynet has gone
to court to protest the choking off of information.   People write,
 satirize, rant, all to no avail.  A Spanish clown was denied
 entry to Israel out of fear that he might be connected to some
 terroristic humor plot to make children in Ramallah a bit
 happier.  That would of course make the good folks of our
 security apparatus most unhappy and frustrated.  The fact that
 we look to all the world like a horse's butt means nothing to
 them.
 Let me recount a conversation between a distinguished US
 scientist and the security gorilla of El Al at London airport.
 The poor scientist was coming to visit me at Tel Aviv
 University.
 Gorilla: Are you Jewish?
 Scientist: No
 Gorilla: What is your religion?
 Scientist: I am a Lutheran
 Gorilla: There is no such religion.  If you continue to make
 fun of me, you will not board the aircraft.
 At this point my friend asked for a supervisor who, surprise,
 surprise, knew of the Lutheran Church.
This would be funny if it were not indicative of the level of
intelligence of the security people.  What is happening is that
Israel is slowly following in the footsteps of North Korea and Burma
in closing itself off to the outside world.  The outside world is perceived
as a source of bad ideas, such as freedom of the press, liberal democracy
and god help us, atheism.  The Ministry of Education prevented the
circulation of a Hebrew translation of the UN Universal Declaration of
Human Rights on the grounds that it is subservive.  The closing off is also needed
as a means of steps that are being taken to get
the Palestinians to emigrate by making their lives hell.  It will not work, but it
is the messianic fantasy of our religious right and our Prime Minister is in fact
a subscriber to their ideology.  He is smart enough to know better, but he is
emotionally incapable of acting otherwise.


The Shabak as KGB or are we in Argentina in the 1970's?
Something even more frightening is happening to us.  People are beginning to disappear.  The
secret police come, arrest the person, ransack his or her home and then they get some corrupt judge,
usually someone who came to the bench  from the Army legal corps and who knows whom he/she is serving to issue a gag order to which the local press submit.  Haaretz at least protested. and ynet went to court and won in the most recent case.  Fortunately there are bloggers out there
who spread the word.  That is how the Anat Kamm case came to light and now we have the case of
the secret arrest of  Ameer Makhoul, director of the Israeli Palestinian community activist NGO, Ittijah, who was arrested in the dead of night at his Haifa apartment a few days ago after a team of 20 police and security agents ransacked his premises and stole cell phones, documents, computers and maps, including the research project of his teenage daughter.  The charge was eventually espionage.
 I think the blogging activity might have
had some effect as well.  It appears that Makhoul and Omar Said have been charged with espionage for Hizbullah.  
We shall have to  wait for the trial, but it is hard to imagine that such a prominent figure in the Arab community in Israel who must know that he is under a microscope at all times would be foolish enough to be involved in such activity.   Of course, the fact that such trials are conducted in camera and that the evidence is never shown to the accused, i.e. he/she cannot attempt to refute it, makes the fairness of such trials suspect.  They have been in custody for at least a week and have not had an opportunity to consult with legal counsel.  In the 1980's, there was a case involving the imprisonment of an IDF officer Izat Nafsu for espionage.  He was convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison on the basis of perjured evidence created by a Shabak man named Ginosar.  Eventually Nafsu was released, but Ginosar was pardoned.  The name of President Herzog will resound in disgrace through
our history.  He also pardoned Shabak people who had murdered prisoners in their custody.  Let us hope that some lesson was learned from that sorry affair.
 
OK, enough of this.  I would like to call your attention to a new album and performance by Jordi Savall 

I have long been an admirer of him and of his music.  I recommend you listen a bit.to something incredibly
beautiful.

Something Lighter...


There is science fiction and there is scientific fiction and we should be able to tell them apart. Start with Noah's ark.


and go on to a real ecological disaster...

and from Gene Weingarten, something old, but relevant to 
perjury by police

On Democracy and its Enemies May 3, 2010

Hatred of the Left by the Right

I am appending an op-ed article from the New York Times by Frank Rich
in which he discusses the hate campaign being conducted against
Obama and the Democratic Party by the right, which is no longer
just the lunatic right that we have always had to live with. It
is not only an American phenomenon which is the reason that I
bring it up. It is symptomatic of the asymmetry by which the
liberal side is willing to respect the right and opinions of it
ideological adversaries, but the right reacts with vitriolic
hate. We can recall the venom with which Bill Clinton was
pursued by the Republicans over a sexual indiscretion issue
that was no more than a bagatelle and should have been left as
an issue between him and his spouse. I mention this to defuse
the idea that the present wave of hate is purely racist.
Clinton is a pedigreed WASP, albeit not of the Brahmins of
Boston, but he fared no better than Obama at the hands of the
right. It is notable that neither Clinton nor Obama were or are
able to counter this spleen with an effective riposte. We
liberals are too nice.

In Israel, things are no different nor are they anywhere else.
Serb nationalism tramples any liberal expression. Turkey
bridles at the insinuation that it is insufficiently democratic
to join the EU, independent of the truth of the accusations.
Reform and Conservative Jews around the world respect their
Orthodox brothers and sisters and receive vilification and
scorn in return. Liberal organizations such as the New Israel
Fund, Breaking Silence and Combatants for Peace along with the
mainstream peace activist groups such as Peace Now, Gush Shalom
and Yesh Gvul are the objects of incitement and New Profile was
subjected to a police investigation designed solely to harass
and intimidate. Protest actions and demonstrations that derive
from a left-liberal agenda are subject to police repression.

Reading Rich's article immediately brings to mind the sly
tactics of right wing organs in Israel such as NGO Monitor and
Mekor Rishon. The trick is to portray themselves as victims of
a left wing power structure that deprives them of freedom of
expression and poisons the minds of young people through campus
brainwashing. In Israel, they blithely ignore the fact that the
radical right is in power and that most of the media kowtow to
the unholy alliance of messianic settlers and the military
caste. We are now facing legislative initiatives design to
crush free speech and eventually outlaw human rights and peace
activist organizations. The ostensible motivation is to protect
military officers from war crimes tribunals, but the intent
runs much deeper. The idea is to put an end to liberal
democracy in Israel in order to create an apartheid community
after the ultimate annexation of the Occupied Territories. The
right has no interest in peace and no willingness to cede land.
On the other hand, it is aware of the demographics and is
seeking a means of denying the vote to non-Jews in the ultimate
Greater Israel.

The driving force behind this opposition to democratic values
varies from country to country. I have been told by people
familiar with the American cultural scene that the reason
people vote against their own economic interests, e.g. Reagan
Democrats, is connected with their fear of change and the
modern world as represented by the youth rebellion of the
1960's and 1970's along with resentment of the educated
classes. This may explain the Sarah Palin phenomenon. In
Israel, we have the residue of resentment of the treatment of
the immigrant grandparents of today's body politic along with a
xenophobic religion and a jingoist attitude towards Arabs that
justifies anything. In all these cases, there exists a
political class that knows how to manipulate these amorphous
feelings and to exploit them. It is enough to note the scare
tactics used by insurance companies and doctors to fight
National Health in the United States or the invoking in Israel
of the Holocaust by the military caste and the settler
community to repress criticism and to obtain impunity for war
criminals. Note the pathetic victims...
 Goebbels can rest quietly in his grave; his doctrine
of the Big Lie and the inculcation of fear is alive and well
everywhere, including here. It is no accident that the big
money, the politicos, the settlers and the generals are all in
bed together. When they get up with fleas, it is not obvious
who is the source or maybe they are just sharing what they have
in common.

I was once told by a Chinese diplomat that people do not really
want democracy. In his view, Western democracy was foisted on
the people of the English speaking world by a particular class
of politicians in the 18th century. What people want is a
strong leader who will take care of them and relieve them of
responsibility for public affair. Even if we leave aside the
contribution of the French encyclopedists of the same period
and the spread of democratic ideas across Europe, he is still
spewing nonsense. It is enough to note the countless struggles
against tyranny that have marked all of human history. When you
see a concentrated attack against democracy, the question cui
bono arises and the Watergate rule "follow the money" is
usually a very good guide.
In my last blog I published a link to an article by Tzvia Greenfeld in
which she predicted the ultimate doom of Israel as we know it unless
the Occupation is ended soon.  The prospects for this look glum although
the Cairo proximity talks, if the Quartet figure out a way to get tough might
be a little ray of hope.

Equine Economics in Europe

To end, as usual, on a lighter tone, I refer you to the Greek economic
crisis and its resolution in the framework of the EU.  To anyone who objects
to calling this a lighter note, let me refer you to the famous conversation between
Tevyeh and Shalom Aleichem when they meet on the road:
Shalom Aleichem: Hello Tevyeh, how are you doing?
Tevyeh: Oy, Mr. Shalom Aleichem, let us talk of something more pleasant than my affairs.  What is
the latest news of the cholera epidemic in Odessa?
With that in mind, let us consider the Greek repayment of the EU bailout.   Credit the Borowitz report for this,

Rants, Comments and Musings on May Day 2010

Today is international workers' day and it coincides this year with the Lag B'Omer festival in which kids, of all ages, light bonfires in honor of something that might have happened 2000 years ago.  When I first came to Israel, buses flew red flags on May Day and socialism was in the air.  Now swinish  capitalism (so called by President Peres) is everywhere and pollution is in the air.   I show a workers' demonstration in Taiwan and you can see the day marked around the world.by clicking.


PowerPoint as we know and "love" it

My cousin Alan who is a chemistry professor at Reed College in Oregon has a blog posting that is very relevant to all of us who fall asleep even during our own PowerPoint presentations. This is a wonderful Dilbert.

On Freedom of Expression

A few days ago I put out an "extra" of this blog because of the
poll on freedom of expression. On Thursday, we attended a panel
discussion on the poll and its results at Tel Aviv University.
Naomi Chazan and David Newman made a convincing case that we
need to unite and struggle against the muzzling of dissent from
the left in Israel. Gerald Steinberg of
NGO Monitor
presented arguments showing that the Left is suppressing
expression by the Right etc. He forgot to mention who is in
power.  It is clear that human rights organizations and supporters of the
termination of the Occupation must close ranks and take steps to influence
public opinion in a more liberal direction.  This will be a Herculean task, but
it must be addressed.
We see here Israelis demonstrating shoulder to shoulder with the people of Bil'in.
We have been there and breathed the tear gas.  It is not much fun, but it is important

  The choices facing Israel are becoming ever more clear.. In an op-ed piece in
Haaretz Zvia Greenfeld puts the issue of the survival of Israel as a democracy in
the starkest of terms.  Her position that the intelligentsia and the people of initiative will
emigrate if Israel goes Fascist (she avoids the explicit term, but the implication is clear)
may not be totally correct, as Judy pointed out to me.  Indeed, many of the academic and
entrepreneurial classes stayed on in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and did very well.
She also did not develop the role of religion, or if you will, superstition masquerading as religion
with Messianic ideology running amok in driving Israel into an untenable situation.
Another cogent argument is made by a UC Berkeley student who points out that the
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), if operated in surgical mode rather than as a
bludgeon can be effective in ending the Occupation as it was in ending apartheid is South
Africa.  The movement is still in very early stages and did not get pass the veto of the
student body president at UCB., but it is only a question of time, IMHO, before a
groundswell of such actions will drive the actions of the US government.



Human Rights World
I would like to call your attention to the plight of two human rights activists in China. Duan Chunfang and Mao Hengfeng,who are being persecuted for their activism in the area of housing rights.  Please click on the link and support them.
I also would like to point a finger at the abuse of migrants in Mexico which is a frightful scandal.  In general, China and Mexico top the list of countries about whom I receive Urgent Action calls from Amnesty International.  China is a known dictatorship, but one might expect a NAFTA colleague of the US and Canada to do better in curbing rampant crime and corruption.  In many ways, Mexico appears to be a failed state.

To wind up on a lighter note, I do  have a fresh Gene Weingarten Below the Beltway for you Facebook junkies and a report on the seismic effects of well exposed boobs.

Unfortunately, there was no Boobquake day in our time zone, but things went off in the Far East.