Name:     Michael L. S.   [E-Mail]
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      Website:  Middle East Resource Center


 

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Congratulations, Dr. Sharon, on a job impeccably done


My personal hero, Maj.-Gen. Dr. Ariel Sharon has done it: the civilian part of hahitnatkut has been completed almost seamlessly. I am still finding it hard to believe that Arik actually did it. He ably faced down the extremists, fanatics, terrorists and other types of fascist in the Jewish and Israeli (but also "Xian Zionist") society, and did the only right thing: withdraw from Aza. Of course, immense credit goes to all our guys and gals in Tzahal, Mishtarat Yisrael, Mishmar haGvul, Shabak and all other unsung heroes who helped make it happen. They withstood tremendous pressure and did it all very professionally and with sensitivity. Kol hakavod!

For months we had fundamentalist lunatics litter haAretz with orange trash, attack our valiant shoterim and khayalim--throw acid and paint at them, scream pejorative terms (e.g. "Nazi") at them, intimidate their families--, recruit every raging maniac from the States and elsewhere they could muster to pontificate to the rest of us what G-d wants, flagrantly breach the law of the land, and engage in intense and underhand psychological as well as physical warfare. But, settlers, the writing was on the wall. The vast majority had spoken. People come before land and you will NOT hold millions of Jews hostage to hatred, terror and defense of the indefensible so that you could live out you perverse dreams of being hybrid missionaries-cowboys.

Slowly but surely, we are doing what is right and what should've been done a decade ago, right after Oslo. We have to withdraw to our international borders because the necessity for the occupation is expired. Aza has been the first step. Teneh Oranim is the next. It may take a year or a decade or two, but the Palestinian people will get their state in Yesha. I just don't know what the hell we're going to do with the settlers. Can we ship them to Australia? J/K.

Anyway, yishar kokhakha, Arik!

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Bibi Netanyahu has announced his intentions to run for the premiership. Puh-lease. Having been a Likudnik for a long time, my sympathies lie firmly with Dr. Sharon. His best move would be--as has been proposed in some circles--to form a new center party with the likes of Messrs. Peres and Lapid. But Arik has survived through thick and thin and he knows best what to do. An Israel (or, for that matter, haLikud) under Bibi would be a prospectless nightmare. Fortunately, I am wholly confident that the electorate realizes that.

* * *
As for me, I am more or less back. I spent a wonderful and unforgettable month and a half in the Dominican Republic, and fell in love with the place. I've been wanting to move to Drom Amerikah for quite a while but only this summer did I experience a small part of it. The people, the weather, the lifestyle, the ladies ...hehe... --seriously, it's bliss incarnate. It only convinced me fully (not that I truly needed it) that people in the "West" don't know how to live. I'm going probably January to Colombia or thereabout on a reconnaissance mission, and, if I like it, this time next year I should be ensconced in that neck of the woods (IY"H).

And then immediately afterward I went on a somewhat shorter vacation to Tunisia. I fell in love with that place also! Oy gevalt!! But yes, ladies and gentlemen, Europe has assuredly outlived its usefulness for me. Work one's ass off in order to live a somewhat comfortable life, without any spare time for family and friends... - for what? As one ad many years agone said: what's the point of being the richest person in the graveyard?

And in between my peregrinations, I went to Britain for a week (just before Tisha bAv)--speaking of Britain, FUCK YOU, FIONA!! --and then with my parents to Auschwitz. (I had hoped to visit that place with a special somebody but since that somebody had ceased being special some months previously, there was no point in waiting any longer.) That was doubtless the most somber moment of my life, further augmented by the fact that my Dad had been interned in a Fascist detention camp during WWII, and would have been transported to a death camp had the war not finished when it did. I met there two girls and the brother of one of them--noting interesting per se; except one girl was from Thailand and the one with the brother from Viet Nam: all of them students in Slovakia. They were really sweet. And cute. Getting there was a nightmare and the experience at the border reminded me that the Poles are still heavily set in their Communist mentality (in addition to being one of the most Jew-hating nations of Europe, second only to Russia). Having gotten there (was wearing arba kanfot especially for the occasion) I put on my talit but felt nothing, no emotion. Even perambulating through the buildings, it all seemed like any old excursion. Until...

At one point you realize that those are the exact same corridors, the same walls, the same gravel, which saw literally hundreds of thousands of people's last moments before they were taken to their deaths. And that realization hits you like a ton of bricks falling from hashamayim. Even normally reserved people like I break down crying. To the point of almost fainting. Awful.

The experience does, however, fortify one's resolve in defending haAretz by all means available and never taking shit again from anyone. They hate us? We don't care. They can kiss our ass.


March of the living, Auschwitz-Birkenau

How can one today not be concerned with the assault that is being waged on Jewish memory? Some people deny that it occurred, others turn it around and say that we were guilty. Others still, in their viciousness, use a vocabulary that we use with regard to the killer, but they use it against Israel. How can there not be concern about anti-Semitism? We were convinced that anti-Semitism perished here. Anti-Semitism did not perish. Its victims did. --Elie Wiesel in Auschwitz

Shalom aleychem.

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