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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!
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