© COPYRIGHT: Michael L. S. -- 2004, 2005, 2006
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RECENT POSTS:
- ARIK MELEKH YISRAEL CHAI V'KAYAM!
- Light Relief
- The King Is Back!
- Dr. Sharon Hospitalized
- Another One Bites the Dust
- Remember when I said...
- The New Taliban
- Of Qadimah...
- אריק -- מלך על כל הארץ
- Zikharon, Humanity, Women
Sun-Il beheading; English persecution of Holocaust survivors
Posted on: Sunday, June 27, 2004
I saw yesterday the video of the beheading of that South Korean guy who had been kidnapped by al-Qu'ida. He was first shown pleading with the Korean, American and other administrations to rescue him, cried about how he wanted to live, how he didn't want to die. It was an agony to watch; can anyone begin to imagine how that man must have felt? He was on his knees with three masked gunmen standing behind him. The video then jumped to the point of decapitation. Kim Sun Il is still kneeling before his three captors, one of whom now has long knife about hit waist. There is a fourth masked "man" in the shot now who is pompously reading out a note in Arabic. Toward the end of his delivery, the animal with the machete is seen taking it out, grabbing Sun Il by his hair and literally slicing off his head, within a matter of second--five, seven seconds maybe. He then takes the severed head, hold it up in the air, and the whole pack of these beasts shout like possessed: Allahu akhbar. This goes on and on... The head is finally put down on top of Kim's inanimate body.
What can I say? On the one hand there is a lot, on the other there is nothing. Can a normal human being get his or her head round this? Religion or no religion, how can someone look another person in their eyes--the window of the soul--and then terminate that life the next moment, and in such a savage, beastly way? I was vehemently opposed to the invasion of Iraq and I still think it was a mistake which played right into al-Qu'ida's hands. I have come to the point of abhorring the United States: its administration as well as a large section of its people and history. But actions like these only make me go back to them, convince me that this IS about a clash of cultures--barbaric, zealous animals (al-Qu'ida) versus a culture of humanism and life (everyone else). How can people like me who find this "war on terror" spurious NOT side with the United States when we see what the choices are?
* * *
On another note, nothing less lugubrious, and I watched an edition of Israel National News earlier today, which carried an account from the survivor of the Akko (Acre) prison. Akko prison was the main jail in the Palestinian Mandate where many Jewish fighters against the Britisher occupation were incarcerated and murdered by the damn teabags. More information here: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/Acre.html. The important point to note was that people who were helping Holocaust survivors reach Israel following the end of WWII were imprisoned here. (More on that in one of my previous posts.) It's amazing how the arrogant, callous and Nazi-like British bastards treated Jews. But they got their comeuppance when Etzel organized the breakout from that jail--the biggest successful breakout ever. And afterward, when the courage of Etzel and Lehi got too much for the cowardly Britishers, they put their tail between their legs and buggered off from Eretz Tzion. And still it wasn't enough: Ariel Sharon recently had to shout a presumptuous teabag out of his office with the words: Do you think you're still running the mandate here!?? I cannot understand why the Britishers don't just stick to their own shitty little island and leave the rest of the world alone. You would have thought that after centuries of screwing up countless nations on all continents, they'd have learned the lesson. But no. Their schools, hospitals, transit system, law and order, social security, and societal fabric are falling apart. It's one of the most over-priced and over-hyped places in the world. People are often incompetent, lazy and dishonest (try getting your heating or drainage fixed and see how much you're charged and for what). There is racial strife: Asian European and African European communities are so oppressed that there are regular riots all over central and northern England: Oldham, Burnley, Stoke-on-Trent... Not a day passes that the "foreigners" are not exposed to a barrage of Europhobia, homophobia, racism, bigotry and general xenophobia from the media, politicians and general population. And still, they think they should run world affairs; or at least play the second fiddle to the USA in doing so. Pathetic. And that's not even mentioning their vitriol against destitute refugees and asylum seekers--more on that later.
Shavua tov!
Posted on: Sunday, June 27, 2004
ב''ה
I saw yesterday the video of the beheading of that South Korean guy who had been kidnapped by al-Qu'ida. He was first shown pleading with the Korean, American and other administrations to rescue him, cried about how he wanted to live, how he didn't want to die. It was an agony to watch; can anyone begin to imagine how that man must have felt? He was on his knees with three masked gunmen standing behind him. The video then jumped to the point of decapitation. Kim Sun Il is still kneeling before his three captors, one of whom now has long knife about hit waist. There is a fourth masked "man" in the shot now who is pompously reading out a note in Arabic. Toward the end of his delivery, the animal with the machete is seen taking it out, grabbing Sun Il by his hair and literally slicing off his head, within a matter of second--five, seven seconds maybe. He then takes the severed head, hold it up in the air, and the whole pack of these beasts shout like possessed: Allahu akhbar. This goes on and on... The head is finally put down on top of Kim's inanimate body.
What can I say? On the one hand there is a lot, on the other there is nothing. Can a normal human being get his or her head round this? Religion or no religion, how can someone look another person in their eyes--the window of the soul--and then terminate that life the next moment, and in such a savage, beastly way? I was vehemently opposed to the invasion of Iraq and I still think it was a mistake which played right into al-Qu'ida's hands. I have come to the point of abhorring the United States: its administration as well as a large section of its people and history. But actions like these only make me go back to them, convince me that this IS about a clash of cultures--barbaric, zealous animals (al-Qu'ida) versus a culture of humanism and life (everyone else). How can people like me who find this "war on terror" spurious NOT side with the United States when we see what the choices are?
* * *
On another note, nothing less lugubrious, and I watched an edition of Israel National News earlier today, which carried an account from the survivor of the Akko (Acre) prison. Akko prison was the main jail in the Palestinian Mandate where many Jewish fighters against the Britisher occupation were incarcerated and murdered by the damn teabags. More information here: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/Acre.html. The important point to note was that people who were helping Holocaust survivors reach Israel following the end of WWII were imprisoned here. (More on that in one of my previous posts.) It's amazing how the arrogant, callous and Nazi-like British bastards treated Jews. But they got their comeuppance when Etzel organized the breakout from that jail--the biggest successful breakout ever. And afterward, when the courage of Etzel and Lehi got too much for the cowardly Britishers, they put their tail between their legs and buggered off from Eretz Tzion. And still it wasn't enough: Ariel Sharon recently had to shout a presumptuous teabag out of his office with the words: Do you think you're still running the mandate here!?? I cannot understand why the Britishers don't just stick to their own shitty little island and leave the rest of the world alone. You would have thought that after centuries of screwing up countless nations on all continents, they'd have learned the lesson. But no. Their schools, hospitals, transit system, law and order, social security, and societal fabric are falling apart. It's one of the most over-priced and over-hyped places in the world. People are often incompetent, lazy and dishonest (try getting your heating or drainage fixed and see how much you're charged and for what). There is racial strife: Asian European and African European communities are so oppressed that there are regular riots all over central and northern England: Oldham, Burnley, Stoke-on-Trent... Not a day passes that the "foreigners" are not exposed to a barrage of Europhobia, homophobia, racism, bigotry and general xenophobia from the media, politicians and general population. And still, they think they should run world affairs; or at least play the second fiddle to the USA in doing so. Pathetic. And that's not even mentioning their vitriol against destitute refugees and asylum seekers--more on that later.
Shavua tov!
Yet more football, Zionism, Occupation
Posted on: Friday, June 25, 2004
Heye shalom! And what a fine day it is what with England having been routed in Portugal last night! It really was gut-wrenching experience; uncertainty until the very last minute. As I had said: I'm not a follower of football by any definition but last night was really a wonderful game--all 120 minutes of it, really good soccer. Well, the Englishers are out; good riddance. Naturally, they can't go quietly but have to bitch about the supposed iniquity of the disallowed goal and cry yet again "boo-hoo, we was robbed". Pathetic. Why was the goal disallowed? Because John Terry, England's number five, very deliberately held down goalkeeper Ricardo's arm as the latter extended it to deflect the oncoming football. And he did this in the five-meter goal area in which every contact with the goalkeeper is prohibited, even normally allowed tackle methods. So, Terry's action stopped the game and, naturally, any immediate scores were rescinded. Hey, rules are rules. Therefore, no England, you "was" not "robbed"; you merely got beaten by a better team. Suck it up.
Well, I'm back posting to Usenet. It used to be a pastime of mine a couple of years ago and I'd spend hours posting and replying, mostly on alt.politics.british. It was fun; we were all like a family almost. Of course, most of us despised each other--after all, how could Reich-wingers, left-wingers, libertarians and secular humanists possibly get along well--but it was good to see people whose silly "arguments" you could deconstruct piece-by-piece there daily, offering yet more fodder. It's changed now. Most of the regulars left in the meantime. There don't seem to be as many articles on the Middle East (touch wood) and just as well, for it's very easy to get sucked in and take the bait of any dope who thinks they're the foremost expert on the matter and whose "expertise" is encapsulated in their sigs: "zionism=$=racism". LOL!!
I promised I'd offer my dubious wisdom about Zionism. What IS Zionism? Zionism is the belief that the Jewish nation, after millennia of pogroms and persecution which culminated in haShoah, deserves the protection offered to a nation by its having its own state. It's as simple as that. Zionism says NOTHING about the superiority or inferiority of Jews or anyone else, the "purity" of such a state, its size, its territorial occupation, even its location. Indeed, early Zionists at the end of the nineteenth century actually toyed with the notion of establishing a Jewish state in Uganda, Australia or South America. Nevertheless, Jews and the international community actors at the time resolved to establish Medinat Yisra'el in the Palestinian Mandate. THAT is what Zionism is.
Now, has Zionism been responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian people, their refugees, the occupation of Yesha, etc? Well, one by one. The State of Israel was established in 1948. Was there at that time even a semblance of a national consciousness of a Palestinian people and/or a movement toward their own nation state? No. If anything, they did not even call themselves Palestinians and their leaders had only a few years earlier advocated joining a greater Syria. Of course, things have changed since but we're talking about then. Did the Jewish immigrants displace the "indigenous"* population? Well, most Jewish immigrated to the Mandate BEFORE the war in 1948 which, co-incidentally, was started by external Arab states. And before 1948 there were NO refugees and there was comparatively little strife. So, how did Palestinians become refugees? In the war of 1948 which was started by other Arabs.
*Were the non-Jews in the Palestinian Mandate in 1947/48 really "indigenous people who have lived on the land for generations", as Israel's detractors like to parrot? Many were; a lot were not. When Britain took over the Mandate at the end of the Great War, its administration, together with Zionist immigrants who introduced European standards of professional expertise, healthcare, etc, effected a radical change in what had until then been mainly barren land. The infrastructure was built up, infant mortality rate slashed, jobs created and so on. This attracted inward migration from neighboring Egypt and Syria. How many Arabs thus immigrated is difficult to say. But in 1918 there were 570,000 Arabs in the Mandate (very important point: Mandate includes both today's Israel proper AND YESHA!), while in 1947/48 they numbered almost 1.2 million, which is a roughly 100 per-cent. increase and is considerably more than comparable rates of adjacent countries, especially when one considers the fact that industrialization tends to DEPLETE the natality rate, not the other way round.
But the main point is that despite an influx of Jewish refugees into Israel, no Palestinian was displaced resultantly. And, as I pointed, the first ever Palestinian was made a refugee in consequence of the 1948 war. Now, is the cause of this ongoing conflict Israel's presence in Yesha? Logic says no: the conflict started in 1948 whereas Israel first entered Yesha in 1967. So, there had been war and animosity between Israel and the Arab world almost twenty full years before the beginning of the "occupation". I do NOT think Israel should stay in Yesha; I actually think we should withdraw as soon as possible (not because of the threat of terror but because I see that as the decent and lawful thing to do). But I wanted to make it clear that the "occupation" is not the root-cause of this enmity and, consequentially, terminating the "occupation" will not end the conflict either.
B'shalom...
Posted on: Friday, June 25, 2004
ב''ה
Heye shalom! And what a fine day it is what with England having been routed in Portugal last night! It really was gut-wrenching experience; uncertainty until the very last minute. As I had said: I'm not a follower of football by any definition but last night was really a wonderful game--all 120 minutes of it, really good soccer. Well, the Englishers are out; good riddance. Naturally, they can't go quietly but have to bitch about the supposed iniquity of the disallowed goal and cry yet again "boo-hoo, we was robbed". Pathetic. Why was the goal disallowed? Because John Terry, England's number five, very deliberately held down goalkeeper Ricardo's arm as the latter extended it to deflect the oncoming football. And he did this in the five-meter goal area in which every contact with the goalkeeper is prohibited, even normally allowed tackle methods. So, Terry's action stopped the game and, naturally, any immediate scores were rescinded. Hey, rules are rules. Therefore, no England, you "was" not "robbed"; you merely got beaten by a better team. Suck it up.
Well, I'm back posting to Usenet. It used to be a pastime of mine a couple of years ago and I'd spend hours posting and replying, mostly on alt.politics.british. It was fun; we were all like a family almost. Of course, most of us despised each other--after all, how could Reich-wingers, left-wingers, libertarians and secular humanists possibly get along well--but it was good to see people whose silly "arguments" you could deconstruct piece-by-piece there daily, offering yet more fodder.
I promised I'd offer my dubious wisdom about Zionism. What IS Zionism? Zionism is the belief that the Jewish nation, after millennia of pogroms and persecution which culminated in haShoah, deserves the protection offered to a nation by its having its own state. It's as simple as that. Zionism says NOTHING about the superiority or inferiority of Jews or anyone else, the "purity" of such a state, its size, its territorial occupation, even its location. Indeed, early Zionists at the end of the nineteenth century actually toyed with the notion of establishing a Jewish state in Uganda, Australia or South America. Nevertheless, Jews and the international community actors at the time resolved to establish Medinat Yisra'el in the Palestinian Mandate. THAT is what Zionism is.
Now, has Zionism been responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian people, their refugees, the occupation of Yesha, etc? Well, one by one. The State of Israel was established in 1948. Was there at that time even a semblance of a national consciousness of a Palestinian people and/or a movement toward their own nation state? No. If anything, they did not even call themselves Palestinians and their leaders had only a few years earlier advocated joining a greater Syria. Of course, things have changed since but we're talking about then. Did the Jewish immigrants displace the "indigenous"* population? Well, most Jewish immigrated to the Mandate BEFORE the war in 1948 which, co-incidentally, was started by external Arab states. And before 1948 there were NO refugees and there was comparatively little strife. So, how did Palestinians become refugees? In the war of 1948 which was started by other Arabs.
*Were the non-Jews in the Palestinian Mandate in 1947/48 really "indigenous people who have lived on the land for generations", as Israel's detractors like to parrot? Many were; a lot were not. When Britain took over the Mandate at the end of the Great War, its administration, together with Zionist immigrants who introduced European standards of professional expertise, healthcare, etc, effected a radical change in what had until then been mainly barren land. The infrastructure was built up, infant mortality rate slashed, jobs created and so on. This attracted inward migration from neighboring Egypt and Syria. How many Arabs thus immigrated is difficult to say. But in 1918 there were 570,000 Arabs in the Mandate (very important point: Mandate includes both today's Israel proper AND YESHA!), while in 1947/48 they numbered almost 1.2 million, which is a roughly 100 per-cent. increase and is considerably more than comparable rates of adjacent countries, especially when one considers the fact that industrialization tends to DEPLETE the natality rate, not the other way round.
But the main point is that despite an influx of Jewish refugees into Israel, no Palestinian was displaced resultantly. And, as I pointed, the first ever Palestinian was made a refugee in consequence of the 1948 war. Now, is the cause of this ongoing conflict Israel's presence in Yesha? Logic says no: the conflict started in 1948 whereas Israel first entered Yesha in 1967. So, there had been war and animosity between Israel and the Arab world almost twenty full years before the beginning of the "occupation". I do NOT think Israel should stay in Yesha; I actually think we should withdraw as soon as possible (not because of the threat of terror but because I see that as the decent and lawful thing to do). But I wanted to make it clear that the "occupation" is not the root-cause of this enmity and, consequentially, terminating the "occupation" will not end the conflict either.
B'shalom...
Lousy online service, Britain and World War Two, Tradition, Assimilation
Posted on: Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Posted on: Tuesday, June 22, 2004
ב''ה
Don't you just HATE companies that fob you off and which you practically have to BEG to give you a half-decent answer concerning a problem you have? I do; I abhor them. Alas, oftentimes there is no alternative as it's too cumbersome to take one's custom elsewhere or--more frequently--one is too complacent (read: lazy) to do anything about it. But I'm talking here about the common courtesy of ACKNOWLEDGING that you actually sent them something. Over the past three weeks I must've dispatched at least twenty e-mails to my lawyer (I'm selling my house in Britain), synagogues as well as local and international companies selling networking equipment. I am, you see, looking to buy a wireless router, and since Croatia is not exactly at the forefront of technological or economic world, getting reasonably priced equipment from an even slightly more obscure manufacturer like Buffalo, US Robotics or Netgear is nigh-on impossible. All the same, I wrote three or four companies after some research over two weeks ago and have received no replies to date!!! Granted, I wrote my e-mails in English but that shouldn't be a problem since many people here can speak it reasonably well. It really pisses me off. And the situation isn't any better elsewhere: I was driven to the end of my tethers trying to get something done by e-mail when I was living in Britain. My best experience is with Germans: professional and efficient as always.
Was very sad yesterday about the soccer match result (Croatia vs. England). I couldn't have been happier when the Croats scored the first goal but then the Englishers kept pounding the Croatian net--one after another after another. Thank G-d Israel is not playing so I don't get REALLY excited... Portugal is next against England and again I'm hoping there's gonna be some teabag-ass-kicking.
Speaking of which, I received an e-mail yesterday from an Englander who took exception to my view of his "great nation" . He used that typical anti-Semitic diatribe: "we saved you in the Second World War". As if without Englishers Jews would now be a bar of soap in some German's bathroom. What crap. England did not fight to save Jews. It did not even fight to save Europe. I can think of no event in world history when a military intervention took place for purely altruistic reasons. Mediation yes (most famously Norway in Sri Lanka) but a full-scale war no. The only reason England fought in WWII was that its own position as the still dominant world power was imperiled by the ascendancy of Nazism. That, and the fact that Germany invaded Poland with which Britain had signed an alliance thus triggering English intervention. But Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia beforehand AND had been persecuting Jews for over half a decade without any action on Britain's part. Well, if you discount Chamberlain and the "royal" family's cozying up to the Nazis, that is. It is also an incontrovertible fact that Britain knew perfectly well about the concentration camps: they had aerial photos and witness accounts of the horrors of Treblinka, Auschwitz, Theresienstadt and so on. And they did nothing. They could have bombed the railroad tracks leading to those place of death but no. Conjoin all this and what I wrote in one of my previous posts about the limeys deliberately preventing Jews from reaching the safe-haven of Israel, and I think it leaves no question why I despise them so much. And that's just the past!
Look at the European Union: an incredibly successful project which has ensured that a continent that had been embroiled in constant war for millennia has seen peace and unprecedented prosperity for over half a century. And guess who was the most uncooperative and obstructionist element in the EU? Indeed, merry old "blighty". EVERY step of the way they grumble, complain, filibuster, gerrymander and act as if the EU is an incommodity to and servant of Britain. Educated people and those who know their elbow from their ass when it comes to the EU observe the English media and their coverage of the Union with utter disbelief. When you see the kind of bull propagated by the xenophobic Sun, racist Express or mad Mail you don't know whether to laugh or cry, especially when you remember that that bollocks is read by the vast majority of Englishers (those who can read, that is; mind you, the tabloids tend to be very accommodating vis-a-vis their audience and make sure they do not use any "big words").
Heh, only last year Mr. Blair's government decided to abolish the post of the "lord chancellor". The LC, for those not in the know, is an age-old institution where a member of the house of "lords" (ie. someone unelected!) is selected by the prime minister (even more democratic, but wait--it gets better) to do the following: preside over the house of "lords" (neutral role, supposedly), preside over the judiciary in England and Wales (ie. perform a judiciary function), make speeches in the house and at cabinet meetings as a member of the cabinet (an executive function) and occasionally vote in house of "lords" debates on legislation (ie. participate in the creation of the legislature). So, this man (and it always has been a man) is a COMPLETE anathema to every value of a liberal and social democratic regime which extols the separation of powers, transparency, representation, intra vires and accountability. In my view, therefore, anyone with any common sense would exult at the news of abolition of this anachronism, especially if the government proposed in its place a department for constitutional affairs, a supreme court, a more transparent system of judicial appointments and someone elected and accountable to preside over the joint. But, but, but... What was the reaction of the Daily Mail? They screamed senseless about this "vicious" Blair abrogating thousands of years of British history at the stroke of a pen, no respect for tradition, subversion, sell-out to Europe and the "continental" ways, blah, blah, blah, blah... THAT was their best argument!?! That the post of the "lord chancellor" should stay in the name of tradition and history!!? Oy gevalt! Hanging gays and persecuting Catholics used to be part of a long-standing tradition, too, you morons! Are these right-wingers (or should that be: Reich-wingers) for real?
Now, I don't mind tradition. After all, keeping to our ways and customs, religious and otherwise, has acted as a mortar for the Jewish nation and has ensured our survival over the ages. But when something is evidently flawed and when a better, more decent and humanistic system or practice is proposed, how can anyone howl like a maniac demanding that the traditional ways be kept for the sake of their being traditional?!! It pains me most when I see fellow Jews acting like idiots and fighting for goyishe "establishments". The most notorious example I can think of is Melanie Phillips--a Daily Mail and assorted columnist whom The Guardian invariably describes as "uber right-wing". In her zealotry to laud Britain, Tories, Europhobia, anti-environmentalism, anti-feminism anti-liberty and all the other right-wing pet-subjects, she regularly comes across as more obnoxiously English than the English themselves. Pathetic. She is one of those idiots who wrote (and STILL write) pseudo-scientific call-them essays on imaginary links between Saddam Hussain and al-Qa'eda. Of course, she was at the (armchair) forefront advocating the invasion of Iraq. And she vehemently defended the disgustingly racist Robert Kilroy-Silk when he went to town on supposed Arab backwardness and barbarism. (Kilroy-Silk in the meantime became a candidate for another racist, introspective clique which lives in the past century: the UK independence party. He became an MEP a few days ago and wowed to "wreck the EU parliament" from within because it's "eroding [English] independence". Where do you even BEGIN to combat such bullshit but anyway, those of us who believe in Europe and a one world of equal human beings can only say: we're shaking in our boots, Silky.)
And this doesn't go just for Jews but ALL minorities. I cannot for the life of me understand people of the eg. African-European heritage who join that bastion of racism the Metropolitan "police", the "army", the "immigration service", etc. Goodness, YOUR OWN PARENTS were enslaved, raped, robbed and greeted to Britain with signs of "No Irish, no dogs, no blacks" and now YOU are doing pretty much the same thing to other people. Shame on you.
Ah, nearly forgot: eight English "sailors" were arrested in Iran yesterday for entering Iranian territorial waters and the Foreign Office is "concerned". Too bad. Armies should exist to defend their own countries so long as countries exist (hopefully, we will all be part of one, unified world one day). What the fuck are English toysoldiers looking for thousands of kilometers away from Britain??! Are they on a humanitarian mission? Sorry but murdering over 10000 Iraqi civilians doesn't sound very humanitarian to me. Nor was dropping depleted Uranium bombs all over Serbia four years ago. Why don't the teabags piss of back to their shitty little island and feast on what loot they've still left from their colonial era?
L'hitraot...
Was very sad yesterday about the soccer match result (Croatia vs. England). I couldn't have been happier when the Croats scored the first goal but then the Englishers kept pounding the Croatian net--one after another after another. Thank G-d Israel is not playing so I don't get REALLY excited... Portugal is next against England and again I'm hoping there's gonna be some teabag-ass-kicking.
Speaking of which, I received an e-mail yesterday from an Englander who took exception to my view of his "great nation" . He used that typical anti-Semitic diatribe: "we saved you in the Second World War". As if without Englishers Jews would now be a bar of soap in some German's bathroom. What crap. England did not fight to save Jews. It did not even fight to save Europe. I can think of no event in world history when a military intervention took place for purely altruistic reasons. Mediation yes (most famously Norway in Sri Lanka) but a full-scale war no. The only reason England fought in WWII was that its own position as the still dominant world power was imperiled by the ascendancy of Nazism. That, and the fact that Germany invaded Poland with which Britain had signed an alliance thus triggering English intervention. But Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia beforehand AND had been persecuting Jews for over half a decade without any action on Britain's part. Well, if you discount Chamberlain and the "royal" family's cozying up to the Nazis, that is. It is also an incontrovertible fact that Britain knew perfectly well about the concentration camps: they had aerial photos and witness accounts of the horrors of Treblinka, Auschwitz, Theresienstadt and so on. And they did nothing. They could have bombed the railroad tracks leading to those place of death but no. Conjoin all this and what I wrote in one of my previous posts about the limeys deliberately preventing Jews from reaching the safe-haven of Israel, and I think it leaves no question why I despise them so much. And that's just the past!
Look at the European Union: an incredibly successful project which has ensured that a continent that had been embroiled in constant war for millennia has seen peace and unprecedented prosperity for over half a century. And guess who was the most uncooperative and obstructionist element in the EU? Indeed, merry old "blighty". EVERY step of the way they grumble, complain, filibuster, gerrymander and act as if the EU is an incommodity to and servant of Britain. Educated people and those who know their elbow from their ass when it comes to the EU observe the English media and their coverage of the Union with utter disbelief. When you see the kind of bull propagated by the xenophobic Sun, racist Express or mad Mail you don't know whether to laugh or cry, especially when you remember that that bollocks is read by the vast majority of Englishers (those who can read, that is; mind you, the tabloids tend to be very accommodating vis-a-vis their audience and make sure they do not use any "big words").
Heh, only last year Mr. Blair's government decided to abolish the post of the "lord chancellor". The LC, for those not in the know, is an age-old institution where a member of the house of "lords" (ie. someone unelected!) is selected by the prime minister (even more democratic, but wait--it gets better) to do the following: preside over the house of "lords" (neutral role, supposedly), preside over the judiciary in England and Wales (ie. perform a judiciary function), make speeches in the house and at cabinet meetings as a member of the cabinet (an executive function) and occasionally vote in house of "lords" debates on legislation (ie. participate in the creation of the legislature). So, this man (and it always has been a man) is a COMPLETE anathema to every value of a liberal and social democratic regime which extols the separation of powers, transparency, representation, intra vires and accountability. In my view, therefore, anyone with any common sense would exult at the news of abolition of this anachronism, especially if the government proposed in its place a department for constitutional affairs, a supreme court, a more transparent system of judicial appointments and someone elected and accountable to preside over the joint. But, but, but... What was the reaction of the Daily Mail? They screamed senseless about this "vicious" Blair abrogating thousands of years of British history at the stroke of a pen, no respect for tradition, subversion, sell-out to Europe and the "continental" ways, blah, blah, blah, blah... THAT was their best argument!?! That the post of the "lord chancellor" should stay in the name of tradition and history!!? Oy gevalt! Hanging gays and persecuting Catholics used to be part of a long-standing tradition, too, you morons! Are these right-wingers (or should that be: Reich-wingers) for real?
Now, I don't mind tradition. After all, keeping to our ways and customs, religious and otherwise, has acted as a mortar for the Jewish nation and has ensured our survival over the ages. But when something is evidently flawed and when a better, more decent and humanistic system or practice is proposed, how can anyone howl like a maniac demanding that the traditional ways be kept for the sake of their being traditional?!! It pains me most when I see fellow Jews acting like idiots and fighting for goyishe "establishments". The most notorious example I can think of is Melanie Phillips--a Daily Mail and assorted columnist whom The Guardian invariably describes as "uber right-wing". In her zealotry to laud Britain, Tories, Europhobia, anti-environmentalism, anti-feminism anti-liberty and all the other right-wing pet-subjects, she regularly comes across as more obnoxiously English than the English themselves. Pathetic. She is one of those idiots who wrote (and STILL write) pseudo-scientific call-them essays on imaginary links between Saddam Hussain and al-Qa'eda. Of course, she was at the (armchair) forefront advocating the invasion of Iraq. And she vehemently defended the disgustingly racist Robert Kilroy-Silk when he went to town on supposed Arab backwardness and barbarism. (Kilroy-Silk in the meantime became a candidate for another racist, introspective clique which lives in the past century: the UK independence party. He became an MEP a few days ago and wowed to "wreck the EU parliament" from within because it's "eroding [English] independence". Where do you even BEGIN to combat such bullshit but anyway, those of us who believe in Europe and a one world of equal human beings can only say: we're shaking in our boots, Silky.)
And this doesn't go just for Jews but ALL minorities. I cannot for the life of me understand people of the eg. African-European heritage who join that bastion of racism the Metropolitan "police", the "army", the "immigration service", etc. Goodness, YOUR OWN PARENTS were enslaved, raped, robbed and greeted to Britain with signs of "No Irish, no dogs, no blacks" and now YOU are doing pretty much the same thing to other people. Shame on you.
Ah, nearly forgot: eight English "sailors" were arrested in Iran yesterday for entering Iranian territorial waters and the Foreign Office is "concerned". Too bad. Armies should exist to defend their own countries so long as countries exist (hopefully, we will all be part of one, unified world one day). What the fuck are English toysoldiers looking for thousands of kilometers away from Britain??! Are they on a humanitarian mission? Sorry but murdering over 10000 Iraqi civilians doesn't sound very humanitarian to me. Nor was dropping depleted Uranium bombs all over Serbia four years ago. Why don't the teabags piss of back to their shitty little island and feast on what loot they've still left from their colonial era?
L'hitraot...
England, Separation Fence, Football, Weather
Posted on: Friday, June 18, 2004
Goodness, it's been very hot here today: 32 degrees. The worst part is that it's not so much the heat as lack of any breeze. On the Spanish coast temperatures can easily reach forty degree, even exceed it. But there is invariably some air breezing. Oh, how I miss Spain... I just might decide to move there shortly...
Euro 2004 is getting intricate. Yesterday was interesting. Now, just to explain: I'm not a soccer aficionado by any standard. It boggles my mind no end how people can run around for one and a half hour chasing a silly ball--not to mention those watching them do it and don't even get me started on those who're eager to shout, waste hundreds of euros and physically fight in the name of soccer and their particular club/tribe. All the same, tournaments of this sort are not your regular premiership matches. This is more. This is politics. This is when all our prejudices tend to rear their heads and run amok. My day was completely ruined yesterday after England had beaten Switzerland. Thank goodness I had prepared myself for that very likely possibility. I can only hope that Croatia vanquishes the teabags come Monday.
No, I don't like the English; and I've reservations about the Britishers, too. Why? Where does one start!? Foremost, it's their arrogance and this stubborn cleaving unto the past. The young generation tends to be completely nihilistic; the older thinks Britain still runs an empire; both are imponderably ignorant. According to statistics, a quarter of Englishers are functionally illiterate, ie. they couldn't fill in a simple form. How many of them have atrocious spelling is anybody's guess. I'm not talking about the odd word here we all have a problem with; it's the "accept" and "except" or "bananas" and "banana's" and "bananas'". Pedantic perhaps but telling nonetheless. And how does that ignorance tend to manifest itself? In other forms of ignorance such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia, europhobia. I saw and experienced their bigotry first-hand. And we Jews have a might ax to grind with them in this respect, too. Does anyone remember what the Englishers did just before the Second World War when Jews were being persecuted in Germany and needed desperately a route into the Palestinian Mandate which they were controlling? In typical English fashion they shut off the borders and refused to let us in! Hey, it was only Jews! And after the War, when thousands of survivors of concentration camps needed to make their way to Eretz Yisrael to start a new life following year of trauma and so they scraped whatever belongings they had and set off on dilapidating ships for the Mandate? (They couldn't return to eg. Poland or France as they were unwelcome there and would probably have been killed or at least discriminated against there.) What did the English do? The motherfuckers blocked all naval routes to Israel and SHOT at unarmed refugees onboard who'd just been freed from Nazi concentration camps! They murdered quite a few Jews like that. And those they didn't kill they INTERNED, oftentimes in former concentration camps like Luebeck!!! Read the stories of people from the ships "Exodus" or "HaTikvah". I thank haShem every day that Etzel and Lehi kicked their ass out of Israel thru guerilla warfare.
I think I'll continue this some other time as thinking about the teabags has really gotten them up my nose. They tend to have that effect on me. Moving on, and whadaya know: BBC World carried a short report today about the separation fence the Government are building between Israel and Yesha. Of course, the Palestinians are bitching about it and--even more predictably--Jew-haters are fainting all over the place with outrage: "apartheid wall", "Berlin wall", "racist wall", "poor Palestinians", "land grab", blah, blah, blah. They don't really care about the Palestinians, they just abhor Jews (some because they're anti-Semitic, others because they also hate America, etc. etc.). After all, there are tens of other peoples in the world in much more precarious a position than the Palestinians, who are being killed off like flies and over whom there is no kerfuffle. Just look at Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria, Chechnya... - dozens of people killed daily. Do you ever hear of demonstrations against those governments, calls for boycott of their products and services, academical cold-shouldering of their students and staff, pages and pages of bile spewed against them in papers and on the Internet? Of course not. But I diverge. Let me clarify my position on the fence. I hate it. There are few things I'd like more than to tear down the wall, the machsomim (checkpoints) and, yes, some settlements. It is awful that we have resorted to building a physical barrier between us and the Palestinians, AND doing so in a rather insensitive and selfish manner. But as the aforementioned report said, and as is clear to anyone who even cursorily follows the events in the Middle East, it works! The wall DOES stop homicide bombers. It's stopped completely infiltration from the Aza strip and greatly hindered similar attempts from Yehuda and Shomron (the fence is not yet finished in the latter). There hasn't been a terrorist attack in Eretz Yisrael ever since the fence went up. So, like it or not--and I don't--the barrier is effective. For now, it has to be there. I fervently hope the day comes when it'll be possible to dismantle it, when--as g'veret Golda Meir said--the Palestinians start loving their own children more than they hate ours. My only objection is the route the fence takes, which has given ample ammunition to the enemies of Israel (not that they ever need any but why HAND them more?!). It should've followed the "green line" excepting only the annexed parts (ie. Yerushalayim). Too late for that though. I hope to watch the second part of the report which will present the Palestinian viewpoint but I'll probably forget to. It's shabat tomorrow anyway.
And on that note, may I wish you shabat shalom and l'hitraot!
Posted on: Friday, June 18, 2004
ב''ה
Goodness, it's been very hot here today: 32 degrees. The worst part is that it's not so much the heat as lack of any breeze. On the Spanish coast temperatures can easily reach forty degree, even exceed it. But there is invariably some air breezing. Oh, how I miss Spain... I just might decide to move there shortly...
Euro 2004 is getting intricate. Yesterday was interesting. Now, just to explain: I'm not a soccer aficionado by any standard. It boggles my mind no end how people can run around for one and a half hour chasing a silly ball--not to mention those watching them do it and don't even get me started on those who're eager to shout, waste hundreds of euros and physically fight in the name of soccer and their particular club/tribe. All the same, tournaments of this sort are not your regular premiership matches. This is more. This is politics. This is when all our prejudices tend to rear their heads and run amok. My day was completely ruined yesterday after England had beaten Switzerland. Thank goodness I had prepared myself for that very likely possibility. I can only hope that Croatia vanquishes the teabags come Monday.
No, I don't like the English; and I've reservations about the Britishers, too. Why? Where does one start!? Foremost, it's their arrogance and this stubborn cleaving unto the past. The young generation tends to be completely nihilistic; the older thinks Britain still runs an empire; both are imponderably ignorant. According to statistics, a quarter of Englishers are functionally illiterate, ie. they couldn't fill in a simple form. How many of them have atrocious spelling is anybody's guess. I'm not talking about the odd word here we all have a problem with; it's the "accept" and "except" or "bananas" and "banana's" and "bananas'". Pedantic perhaps but telling nonetheless. And how does that ignorance tend to manifest itself? In other forms of ignorance such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia, europhobia. I saw and experienced their bigotry first-hand. And we Jews have a might ax to grind with them in this respect, too. Does anyone remember what the Englishers did just before the Second World War when Jews were being persecuted in Germany and needed desperately a route into the Palestinian Mandate which they were controlling? In typical English fashion they shut off the borders and refused to let us in! Hey, it was only Jews! And after the War, when thousands of survivors of concentration camps needed to make their way to Eretz Yisrael to start a new life following year of trauma and so they scraped whatever belongings they had and set off on dilapidating ships for the Mandate? (They couldn't return to eg. Poland or France as they were unwelcome there and would probably have been killed or at least discriminated against there.) What did the English do? The motherfuckers blocked all naval routes to Israel and SHOT at unarmed refugees onboard who'd just been freed from Nazi concentration camps! They murdered quite a few Jews like that. And those they didn't kill they INTERNED, oftentimes in former concentration camps like Luebeck!!! Read the stories of people from the ships "Exodus" or "HaTikvah". I thank haShem every day that Etzel and Lehi kicked their ass out of Israel thru guerilla warfare.
I think I'll continue this some other time as thinking about the teabags has really gotten them up my nose. They tend to have that effect on me. Moving on, and whadaya know: BBC World carried a short report today about the separation fence the Government are building between Israel and Yesha. Of course, the Palestinians are bitching about it and--even more predictably--Jew-haters are fainting all over the place with outrage: "apartheid wall", "Berlin wall", "racist wall", "poor Palestinians", "land grab", blah, blah, blah. They don't really care about the Palestinians, they just abhor Jews (some because they're anti-Semitic, others because they also hate America, etc. etc.). After all, there are tens of other peoples in the world in much more precarious a position than the Palestinians, who are being killed off like flies and over whom there is no kerfuffle. Just look at Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria, Chechnya... - dozens of people killed daily. Do you ever hear of demonstrations against those governments, calls for boycott of their products and services, academical cold-shouldering of their students and staff, pages and pages of bile spewed against them in papers and on the Internet? Of course not. But I diverge. Let me clarify my position on the fence. I hate it. There are few things I'd like more than to tear down the wall, the machsomim (checkpoints) and, yes, some settlements. It is awful that we have resorted to building a physical barrier between us and the Palestinians, AND doing so in a rather insensitive and selfish manner. But as the aforementioned report said, and as is clear to anyone who even cursorily follows the events in the Middle East, it works! The wall DOES stop homicide bombers. It's stopped completely infiltration from the Aza strip and greatly hindered similar attempts from Yehuda and Shomron (the fence is not yet finished in the latter). There hasn't been a terrorist attack in Eretz Yisrael ever since the fence went up. So, like it or not--and I don't--the barrier is effective. For now, it has to be there. I fervently hope the day comes when it'll be possible to dismantle it, when--as g'veret Golda Meir said--the Palestinians start loving their own children more than they hate ours. My only objection is the route the fence takes, which has given ample ammunition to the enemies of Israel (not that they ever need any but why HAND them more?!). It should've followed the "green line" excepting only the annexed parts (ie. Yerushalayim). Too late for that though. I hope to watch the second part of the report which will present the Palestinian viewpoint but I'll probably forget to. It's shabat tomorrow anyway.
And on that note, may I wish you shabat shalom and l'hitraot!
Introduction
Posted on: Thursday, June 17, 2004
Shalom aleichem! I've been wanting to do this for quite a while but never got quite to it. Tout d'abord: please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Michael. I'm twenty-five years old and currently "chilling". I've another year before I finish my Master's degree in Law. I'm doing this in Britain but am currently in Croatia. What afterward? Well, the options are really very many. There's anything from getting a job with an organization like the UN or ICC (not that either institution is really relevant any more after the war in Iraq but more on that later) to going off to a place like Colombia and living a peaceful life of comfort. I could also do a PhD in Israel... - who knows. I'd like to stay in Europe while my parents are alive but then it could be literally anywhere.
ANYWAY, more about me if and when needed. Ah, just one more thing: my moniker. Locham Yisrael means "fighter for Israel" in Hebrew. I'm not too politicized but the welfare of Israel is the issue closest to my heart hence the name. Though I'm not politicized in the usual "tribal politics" sense of the meaning, I AM opinionated. However, one of my struggles in life is always to form my opinions based on sound information and following an examination into all aspects and viewpoints of a particular matter. So, I am not a Zionist because I'm Jewish but because after months of study I came to the conclusion that a decent human being cannot but be a Zionist. (Note, before you jump at my throat for supporting Zionism, make sure you UNDERSTAND what Zionism exactly is. I will offer my view on this on another occasion.)
I tinkered with my new digital satellite equipment earlier today and discovered I had close to 500 channels. Oy vey! A more sobering discovery was that literally all of them, without exception, seemed to be crap. Of course, it's only the free ones; I'm sure the pay-per-view is better but I'm not paying for it. I watch little TV anyway. Well, the reason I mention this is that I came across al-Jazeera (Arabic which I regrettably cannot yet speak) as well as a host of other Arab channels. Now, I don't know if it just happened to be particularly eventful day today, but I was struck by how much coverage was accorded to Israel. Without exaggeration, every third sentence on every channel had the word Isra'el or Isra'eli or Philistini in it. These people are totally obsessed! It's a terribly sad state of affairs when nations which are so populous and disadvantaged in so many ways forever exercize themselves about a country the size of New Jersey or two thirds of Belgium or half of Bhutan. Is Israel TRULY such a huge threat to a Syria, an Egypt or a Saudi Arabia!? Of course it isn't. But we're hardly talking democracies here; the foregoing are anything from oligarchies to outright autocracies. And the age-old recipe for such regimes to hold on to power is to invent an enemy. I'll touch on this, too, at a later date. I've a feeling I'll devote quite a few paragraphs to this.
One last thing: Euro 2004 is in full swing. It's Switzerland v. England and Croatia v. France today. I hope the Swiss kick the teabags' arrogant ass though I realize there's not much chance of that happening. Here's to hoping though. (Yes, I do PROFUSELY dislike the Englishers for reasons I'll explain some other time.) France and Croatia? Well, don't mind either way really. Probably France because they'll then have a better chance to bitch-slap the English, what!
Well, I think I'll leave it here. I will try to update this as often as I can.
Kol tuv.
Posted on: Thursday, June 17, 2004
ב''ה
Shalom aleichem! I've been wanting to do this for quite a while but never got quite to it. Tout d'abord: please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Michael. I'm twenty-five years old and currently "chilling". I've another year before I finish my Master's degree in Law. I'm doing this in Britain but am currently in Croatia. What afterward? Well, the options are really very many. There's anything from getting a job with an organization like the UN or ICC (not that either institution is really relevant any more after the war in Iraq but more on that later) to going off to a place like Colombia and living a peaceful life of comfort. I could also do a PhD in Israel... - who knows. I'd like to stay in Europe while my parents are alive but then it could be literally anywhere.
ANYWAY, more about me if and when needed. Ah, just one more thing: my moniker. Locham Yisrael means "fighter for Israel" in Hebrew. I'm not too politicized but the welfare of Israel is the issue closest to my heart hence the name. Though I'm not politicized in the usual "tribal politics" sense of the meaning, I AM opinionated. However, one of my struggles in life is always to form my opinions based on sound information and following an examination into all aspects and viewpoints of a particular matter. So, I am not a Zionist because I'm Jewish but because after months of study I came to the conclusion that a decent human being cannot but be a Zionist. (Note, before you jump at my throat for supporting Zionism, make sure you UNDERSTAND what Zionism exactly is. I will offer my view on this on another occasion.)
I tinkered with my new digital satellite equipment earlier today and discovered I had close to 500 channels. Oy vey! A more sobering discovery was that literally all of them, without exception, seemed to be crap. Of course, it's only the free ones; I'm sure the pay-per-view is better but I'm not paying for it. I watch little TV anyway. Well, the reason I mention this is that I came across al-Jazeera (Arabic which I regrettably cannot yet speak) as well as a host of other Arab channels. Now, I don't know if it just happened to be particularly eventful day today, but I was struck by how much coverage was accorded to Israel. Without exaggeration, every third sentence on every channel had the word Isra'el or Isra'eli or Philistini in it. These people are totally obsessed! It's a terribly sad state of affairs when nations which are so populous and disadvantaged in so many ways forever exercize themselves about a country the size of New Jersey or two thirds of Belgium or half of Bhutan. Is Israel TRULY such a huge threat to a Syria, an Egypt or a Saudi Arabia!? Of course it isn't. But we're hardly talking democracies here; the foregoing are anything from oligarchies to outright autocracies. And the age-old recipe for such regimes to hold on to power is to invent an enemy. I'll touch on this, too, at a later date. I've a feeling I'll devote quite a few paragraphs to this.
One last thing: Euro 2004 is in full swing. It's Switzerland v. England and Croatia v. France today. I hope the Swiss kick the teabags' arrogant ass though I realize there's not much chance of that happening. Here's to hoping though. (Yes, I do PROFUSELY dislike the Englishers for reasons I'll explain some other time.) France and Croatia? Well, don't mind either way really. Probably France because they'll then have a better chance to bitch-slap the English, what!
Well, I think I'll leave it here. I will try to update this as often as I can.
Kol tuv.
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