They declare a ceasefire

For the people in Gaza it was a war that threatened to destroy life in a split second or slow agony. For the rest of us it was a war of words and images; a testing ground that showed us where friends and nations stood. We will never forgive some of these, just as those who have been maimed or traumatized by falling bombs may never forgive those who have launched them.

I cannot speak of the pain of the victim – it is unintelligible to me. I can only speak of my own, lesser pain – that of being able to do nothing while the dealers in death are having their market day. Of living among people made blind by what? By hatred, paranoia or indifference? I don’t even fully understand what lies behind it. My assumption is that the motivation really isn’t any of these, but a kind of mass psychosis that affects people in times of war. Perhaps those of us who are not so affected have no right to judge those who have been. After all, the roots must be in human qualities that we all share and if conditions had been a little different, it might have caught us too. There are other kinds of mass hypnosis affecting all of us, some of the time. It just happens that war fever is one of the worst.

With all of that, there are some people who are not actually taken over and occupied by the national spirit. They just quietly succumb to it, or retreat into themselves, asking to be woken up when it’s over. The Middle East is mad againe – nothing to do about it.

But there are no private havens and no way that our spirits cannot be affected by war. It is inside and outside. When people are dying, a part of us is being killed; a part of us is doing the killing. Hey, this is crazy talk! No wonder they gave me my exemption.

Boycott Israel?

Naomi Klein has an interesting article in The Nation, January 7: “Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction”. The idea just reiterates what has been said for years – that if the policy worked in South Africa, it could work here. Klein deals in the article with the main reasons for boycott and the main objections. She doesn’t go very much into the psychology; about how this might affect Arab-Jewish relations, for instance, or how Jews react to what they see as a contemporary example of age-old antisemitism.

Perhaps, in order to be effective, boycott and sanctions could be more enthusiastically adopted by Jewish and Palestinian peace organizations, working together. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, but doesn’t have to be. Klein does give the example, in her article of the Free Gaza Movement, which also has a letter calling for sanctions and signed by Israelis. Gush Shalom, the Israeli “peace block” has long advocated a boycott of produce from Israeli settlements. Today I received an email from Juliano Merr Khamis (dramatist and co-director of Arna’s Children) an invitation to sign an open letter to Mira Awad. Awad has been chosen to represent Israel together with Noa (Ahinoam Nini) in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The letter calls upon Awad to rescind her decision because “The Israeli government is sending the two of you to Moscow in order to propagate a false image of Israeli-Arab “co-existence” and obfuscate its daily massacre of Palestinian civilians.” (for more, see the letter itself). Mira Awad is a Christian Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. On the other side of the Green Line, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has long been active, with partial success. In 2006, the organization was responsible for persuading ex-Pink Floyd artist Roger Waters to move his performance from Tel Aviv to Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom. That Waters made the concession of moving the concert to the Arab – Jewish peace village satisfied Palestinians at the time. Would it today?

By converting Gaza into a blood bath, Israel has convinced the whole world that when it comes to “self-defence” it means business. Today the body count stood at 914 Palestinians for 13 Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens. The world needs to show Israel that it too means business, if it wants to reverse a pattern of steadily escalating regional violence. And unfortunately there may be a need for some form of sanctions.

Was it a dream?

Today was Dorit’s birthday and her mother had arranged tickets a month ago to a play at HaCameri – Tel Aviv’s municipal theatre. The play was “Was it a Dream” – a love affair between a leading actress of the 1930s, and a poet of the time. Of course, it was completely bizarre to be attending a play while there is a campaign of mass murder going on in Gaza. And, no surprise, the theatre was full. The audience behaved like every theatre audience – dozing during the slow parts, clapping occasionally, tittering at jokes. I managed with the conversational Hebrew, glancing up at the English titles when the dialogue included poetry.

The Gaza offensive is purportedly intended to produce the kind of peace that will allow ordinary Israelis anywhere in the country (including the Occupied Territories) to pursue ordinary affairs – like going to plays – without worrying about rockets raining down on them. The only difficulty with this objective is the insanity of the execution. Or maybe the campaign isn’t quite insane, but deliberately designed to perpetuate the conflict. With regard to its stated goals – the reduction of the threat of rocket attacks on its territory, and “a change in the security realities of the region”, Israel will fail miserably. The campaign is just an amplification of Israel’s previous modus operandi, which hasn’t managed to cow Palestinians into submission over the 60 years of Israel’s existence or the 40 years of its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. If Israel’s intention is to keep Gaza and all Palestinians hostile but weak, perhaps it will succeed for a time. One motivation for that would be to delay a permanent peace agreement, which Israel knows will necessitate painful concessions.

Whether by madness or intention, the Middle East will be a less stable and more dangerous place after this campaign. Remembering the Joni Mitchel song, perhaps peace was just a dream some of us had.

Demonstrations in London

F. writes from London:

…My heart, soul, and mind is in Gaza and I feel I cannot concentrate or think about anything else. Like you, we are braving the bitter cold to demonstrate against Israel’s new holocaust. Today we were 200,000 people marching in London, even though the metropolitan police and BBC will say it was no more than 50,000. There was so much passion and support for Gazans and Palestinians.

When betas kick the bucket

Richard Stallman recently railed against “cloud computing”. The Guardian’s Jack Schofield also warns against its dangers:

“Look, if you have data online, you can lose access to it at any second, through hacking, an idle whim, a simple mistake, or some financial or even natural disaster. In fact, calling it “the cloud” is a good metaphor, because it’s insubstantial and easily blown away. It’s not Google’s fault, it’s the nature of the beast. “

If this might be true with big companies like Google or Yahoo (see another Schofield article about what can happen to your email), it is even more true of startups that offer tempting beta services. One of these was Zude (an innovative social networking service), about which I have written before. When I came back from my summer vacation in India, Zude had vanished without a trace – well almost:

Interested what had happened to them, I checked back through my emails to see if I had missed a message from the company. Not a peep. Then I looked through Google’s news and blogs searches, Technorati, and elsewhere. Complete silence. None of the writers who had written so enthusiastically about the advent of Zude had anything to say about its demise. The only reference I found on the entire internet was a comment appended to a Mashable article “ZUDE = closed. Not surprised…” (from August 18).

I’d spent just a few weekend hours playing with Zude, and didn’t visit the site very often. Others had invested a lot more time and effort, and I’ve no doubt a few of them felt cheated. Whether it’s absolutely the end of the story for Zude, I have no idea. But this should be a cautionary tale for all of us who spend a lot of time with web services, small or large. Afterall, web giant AOL recently announced the close of its blogging service, AOL Journals, by October 31. Anyone who happens to miss that message will find all their content vaporized.

Journal-2008-08-15

?The day started with the parade for independence day of school children in the area. Then we took a taxi from Joshimath to Govindghat. After eating a light breakfast there we began along the 13 kilometer uphill trail to Ganga ghari. This proved to be quite arduous towards the end. I began to feel my heavy bag, and everything was awash with rain. Gangaghari is at an altitude of 3040 meters and seems to be in a permanent cloud. Everything is completely wet all the time. We took a lousy hotel room. Perhaps there is a better place to stay but in two earlier hotels the rooms were full. Tomorrow we will trek up into the valley of flowers and see if it lives up to its name.

Indian cities are poor and rather unbearable – living up to their reputation. The people are friendly enough – probably more so than other places -, when they are not trying to cheat you. The food is good, and cheap – who knows whether it is sufficiently hygenic. Much of the time my body has felt vaguely in a state of shock. After being here I will need to decide whether to stay in Rishikesh, or whether to go to one of the better hill stations. Rishikesh appeals to me more, although the climate is a bit hot in the day time. But the town is probably more adjusted to Europeans than is many of the others. I know my way around and I can learn Hindi there. There are also good book shops and it is possible to do some sadhana. So probably Rishikesh is best. Maybe I should inquire about the Swiss Cottage – not sure whether my hotel or that is the most convenient.

There is also the possibility of spending some time in Uttarkashi and visiting the Sivananda Ashram near there.

What would I like to get out of this vacation?

A time to think, contemplate, read.
A time to do some sadhana, maybe enjoy some swadhyaya.
A time to re-think my connection with India, based on my experiences here.

Govinddham – Ghan Garia

Went this morning up to the Valley of Flowers. Expensive entrance fee of Rs 350. We walked up to about where the Valley begins, but it was raining really hard, so we didn’t continue very far. There were lots of flowers, it is true, but it would have been easier to enjoy them had the weather been better. It’s really a country of water, with torrents pooring from every side, and mists and cloud. We passed a miniature glacier along the way. While waiting under an overhanging rock there was suddenly a very loud rumbling, and we witnessed a rock slide far up above.

The comfort factor

I’m sitting here on my patio, taking in the cool night air, listening to Kate Bush, thinking of my trip to India in a few days. There, across the valley, in Na’alin, a family is grieving the death of their child, killed yesterday by live ammunition. His family had tried to keep him home, away from the daily demonstrations. Had he lived, he could have been proud that, even as a child, he resisted the stealing of his village’s lands by the occupying power. But he didn’t live, and I cannot be proud that I sit idle, while foolish children, with all their lives ahead of them, face the bullets of slightly older kids, in a game mapped out by adults.

Meanwhile, my email brings me the following story: “This month Adalah submitted a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court (SCt.) on behalf of a Palestinian Arab family from Nazareth whose land was confiscated by the state in 1958 for a “public purpose”. After many years of not using the land for a public purpose, it was put up for sale on the free market and offered to the highest bidder by Miftavim, Ltd., which received the land from the state after the confiscation. The petition demanded that the SCt. cancel the confiscation and return the land to the original Arab landowners who are citizens of the state. The petition relied on past precedent of the SCt. according to which lands were returned to their Jewish owners if there was no longer any public purpose for the confiscation or if a lengthy time had passed and the lands were not used for this reason. Despite prior precedent, the SCt. denied the Arab family’s request to freeze the bid for the sale of the land. As a result, the land was sold for NIS 183 million (US $53 million) which was received by Miftavim, Ltd. This case starkly illustrates how the state deprives Palestinian citizens of Israel of their land. The Israeli legal community treats issues of land confiscation as belonging to the past, to the era of the state’s establishment, and one which no longer affects Arab citizens. The SCt.’s decision proves that the land confiscation issue still exists and that the legal system concerning land is divided into two systems: one for Arab citizens and one for Jewish citizens. Undoubtedly, the legal meaning of confiscation for “public purpose” is not to benefit all the public but to deprive Arab owners of their land.”

It’s a matter of perception. Most Jewish Israelis – whether new army recruits or supreme court judges – are incapable of seeing injustice to Palestinians. It isn’t their fault. It’s just the way their brains have been wired. I too have my wiring. There are many things I do not see or have become inured to. But I have been speaking of injustices that I see, but nevertheless do nothing. Why? It’s so easy to find reasons to do nothing, so hard to find reasons to struggle, for as long as it’s comfortable not to do so.

ID Blues (new documentary series by Chaim Yavin)

Last night, in the framework of the Jerusalem Int’l Film Festival, was the first public screening of the first two episodes of Chaim Yavin’s ID Blues (Teudah Kehula in Hebrew).

The series very effectively explores relations between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel (i.e., those who carry the blue Israel ID card).

As with his previous series Land of the Settlers, Yavin puts to good use his credentials and qualities. Name recognition, face recognition, and his iconic status in Israeli news media, play no small part in this. His sometimes belligerent interviewing style, acquired through years of grilling politicians, manages to draw people out, and his understanding of what makes good television keeps viewers engaged.

The five-part series was two years in the making – and not all of the work was finished in time for the film festival. Taken together, the series should provide an uncommonly penetrating view of Arabs in Israel, and their relations with the Jewish State.

In 2008, a series like this can’t afford to fail, can’t afford not to spread before Israelis the soiled and ragged fabric of Jewish – Arab coexistence. It’s almost too late. “Don’t talk to me any more of coexistence,” says Adel Manaa in the first episode, to a well-meaning sympathizer. “I’m sick of hearing about it. Talk to me of equal rights… If you aren’t doing something to change the situation, you bear responsibility for the consequences.”

After the screening, Yavin answered a few questions from the audience. One viewer asked him whether he felt optimistic or pessimistic for the future. Yavin said that he was by nature an optimist, and in this case drew his optimism from the simple fact that Jews and Arabs are in a relationship that eventually has to improve. “Neither they nor we are going anywhere.” Yavin emphasizes throughout the series his Zionism, but said afterwards that Zionism has to make some adjustments.

When the adjustments grow large enough to allow both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians to feel equally at home in the state that governs their mutual homeland, perhaps we will all be Zionists.

Thanks to Anat Tsom (co-screenwriter and editor) – whose sharp editing makes every moment of the series count – for inviting us to the screening.

Jews from the Amazon

M., originally from Barcelona and now in Jerusalem, had been a volunteer in Wahat al-Salam during the 2nd Gulf War. All the other volunteers had fled, before the airlines cut their flights Since that time I hadn’t seen her. I only knew that she had initially gone to live in Efrat (the West Bank settlement), where she had converted to Judaism. I assumed that she was still there and happily married to a religious Jew.

On Saturday afternoon, she suddenly showed up on our doorstep, together with a friend originally from Milano, and we spent an hour or two chatting.

M’s conversion to Judaism and settlement in Israel had resulted from an inner conviction that her true identity was Jewish. She was convinced, without much factual evidence, that she was descended from Spanish Jews. It wasn’t so much a spiritual identity: “I am not at all a religious person.” When we asked her how the conversion process had been for her, she said at first that it had been all right, then confessed, with a chuckle, that it had been terrible. The conversion, learning a language, and all the other hassles of adapting to a new country had been, she said, “a parenthesis in life”. During the process she had learned facts about Israel that would have daunted someone with a weaker personality or lesser sense of purpose.

Among the stories she told was her meeting during Hebrew studies with the “Jews of the Amazon”. Dorit and I had not heard that there were a group of people from Iquitos, Peru, who underwent conversion to Judaism, were brought to Israel, and then settled in Kiryat Arba, the Jewish settlement in Hebron. Dorit was incredulous at this story, and I resolved to check it. But apparently it’s true. I found a web page with an account by a progressive rabbi of his journey to meet them in Iquitos, in order to establish their connection with Judaism. They, like our friend M, believe that they are descended from Jews. The rabbi describes his encounter with them:

“Standard questions received very strange answers. “I think a Chassid is one that is glued”, said one, awkwardly correct. (Dvekut, the state of total attachment to God, is central in Chassidism). Some confused Purim with Chanukah and a Mezuzah with a Menorah, and yet with a little help, strange old stories came out: “My mother lit the seventeen candles every first of December”… “… Since the leprosaria is open every day 9 to 6, I arrive always a little late for washing the hands and go to Friday Shabbat services here in Iquitos…

“Tapir[13] is not kosher, but I don’t really know what is Kosher,” said a lady from Santa María de Nieva, six days away by boat into the deepest Amazon. And so the line between ignorance and different codes was, despite all our efforts, an uncertain line, adding up to our puzzle…”

He also mentions the Kiryat Arba connection:

“To make it even harder, reports of an orthodox nationalist Jewish preacher urging these people to settle in Kiryat Arba, Hebron, made us aware of a possibility for them that made our role as progressive Jews even more compelling, urgent. Our abstention could lead to a sin of omission, to a vacuum to be filled by a nationalistic, arrogant and humiliating Judaism, which may corrupt all we stand for as liberal Jews. We made it very clear that we were not signing the certificates for them to end up in a trailer on a Judean hilltop, thus blocking a peaceful, secure and democratic Israel, hopefully alongside a future peaceful Palestinian state. Danger loomed there as well.”

Well they ended up in Kiryat Arba after all, mate. The wonderful thing about Zionism is that its long arm can reach to the Amazonian jungles, the deserts of Africa, or the borders of Burma, discover people with the most marginal connection to Judaism, then spirit them away to Israel. All in order to win demographic points against Palestinians, many of whom are themselves descended from Jews.

The Nine O Clock News

I found myself turning the evening news off fairly quickly again tonight. The programme opened with an item about a government decision to investigate police wiretapping used as evidence in the investigation of a sexual harassment scandal involving a politician, several years ago. The TV news brings us stuff like that every evening, and I’m tired of it. The real news goes unreported, while this crap is placed in the spotlight. As if it weren’t bad enough that the politicians are doing a poor job of running the country, they also distract everyone else from crucial and pressing issues by their follies and crimes.

When people rely on TV news, they surrender to the editorial decisions of the TV news staffs. This is not true of newspapers, since readers simply choose the stories that appeal to them. And it is even less true of web media, where it is easier still to hone in on the topics that interest us.

Web media is still developing. Right now the situation is one of utter chaos. Traditional newspapers are going under since web advertizing revenues are not as lucrative as from print media. People look elsewhere, to sites like Craig’s List, for personal advertising and this robs the newspapers of one of their main sources of income.

Readers of web media are also widely different in their sophistication and preferences. Some are regular readers of news feeds, whereas others have never heard of them. Some prefer to read stories, others listen to podcasts, and others watch video clips. Some get their news emailed to them, some use services like Digg, Twine, or Google News. And the technology is changing all the time.

I’m personally an avid reader of news feeds, but have to admit that it isn’t easy to give myself a “balanced diet”. In my case, I find it easier to read the tech feeds like ReadWriteWeb and Slashdot, than to follow stories that are more important and relevant to my world. The reason is partly technical: the tech sites generally include whole stories in their news feeds, whereas newspaper sites are more stingy. They usually provide only a headline and a teaser, and hope that will be enough to get you to click through to their site for the rest.

Probably, as the technology develops, my habits will change accordingly. I bet I will find myself watching more video, and using various aggregators to pull in the items that most interest me.

But I have to admit that till today there is nothing as easy as watching half an hour of TV news. It’s so easy that after about ten minutes I’m gone – one way or another. Either way, I miss the weather.