israeli politics

strategy - 31.1.25

Waiting for the hostages to come back, a few at a time, I kept thinking today about the story I heard about Stalin.  That when he first came to power he brought in all his generals and leaders and said he was going to teach them how to lead.  Then he asked that a chicken be brought in, and he took the chicken and began plucking its feathers , one at a time.  The chicken squawked and made terrible sounds of pain, but he continued until he had finished plucking all the feathers.   Then he put the chicken down and it ran away.  

Then he took a handful of corn from his pocket and put it at his feet, and the chicken came running back to Stalin and ate every piece of corn.  

“That,” he said, “Is how you become a leader.”

I feel that Israel has become like the chicken with the hostages.  We are so grateful, we forget everything else.  We’ve certainly forgotten that we have to begin to understand our relationships with our Arab neighbors, that we have to propose a plan for rebuilding Gaza, that we have to lead the way in creating a two state solution.

I have been feeling all day like a plucked chicken.

Strategy – 31.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

hostages as survivors - 30.1.25

Whenever we have free moments, we turn to the tv and watch what is happening with the hostages that were freed today.  It has occured to me that we really don’t have a protocol for how to treat people who were imprisoned for  almost a year and a half – sometimes in isolation , sometimes as sex slaves, sometimes as servants, sometimes tortured, sometimes raped, sometimes all of the above.   Some are thin, but most are a bit chubby on carbs, and they claim to have been fattened up for the photo op of their release.  They are all still in hospital recovering.  

I wonder if that includes the 5 Thai workers who were released today.  What kind of trauma are they living through?  Certainly the army girls who lost more than 2/3 of their friends are not yet totally aware of their new situation.

But one thing the Hamas has succeeded in doing – stopping all of our lives, and filling us with fear of the future as we watch people who had been put away for life sentences for multiple murders being freed and scattered around the world where they can do harm everywhere. 

hostages as survivors – 30.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

President Higgins and Jonathan Swift - 29.1.25

St. Patricks Mental Hospital was one of the first institutions of its kind, built with 12,000 pounds left by Jonathan Swift, who ended his poem “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift”  with the lines:

       “He gave the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad;
And show’d by one satiric touch,
No nation wanted it so much.
That kingdom he hath left his debtor,
I wish it soon may have a better.”

I am sure President Higgins did not intend to insult the Jews and/or Israel when he spoke about the hostage and prisoner exchange on Holocaust Day, and I do not think the people in the audience who were insulted by his implications were expelled from the hall at his decree. But I do believe that they should remember what James Joyce said about how Ireland has much to learn from the Jewish people about reconstructing a culture and a nation.

But how can I blame Higgins?  I remember walking into an exhibit on the Bible in Dublin, and seeing elaborate illustrated books of the Bible in various languages – but not Hebrew.  Did they not know that the Bible was written in Hebrew?  

President Higgins and Jonathan Swift – 29.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

shopping 29.1.25

 

shopping - 29.1.25

I really didn’t want to write a piece for First of the Month about Arabs and Jews.  Every article I’ve read talks about the terrible discrimination -even hatred – and I am burnt out on hatred and stereotypes.  I’d asked Hillel Shenker what he felt about the change in relations between Arabs and Jews and he listed the organizations working for cooperation, and hoe there’s less in some organizations and more in others.  I kept mulling over what I knew.  First, I went to see if I had mail at the university and I looked in on the lecture hall where I used to teach.  The class was full – but from the back it appeared that they were mostly women, and half of them were wearing hijabs.  So much for academic discrimination.  Then, having found only dead flies in my mailbox, I decided I would forget about working in my office and go do some chores. The first 2 places on my list today were the pharmacy and the supermarket.  Yes, as I often tell you, the pharmacists speak Arabic and we are happy to let them take our health in their hands.  What does this tell you?

My next stop was the supermarket, where the cashiers were all women, all with hijabs.  Do we worry about our food being poisoned on the counter, or examine the itemized receipts to see if there were mistakes?  I didn’t notice anyone who did anything more than chat with the cashiers.  


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israeli politics

This morning I had a haircut.  It is such a often repeated event and I usually busy myself with my phone like everyone else.  But today, as Amir swept the floor, I suddenly recalled physically what it felt like to sweep the floor in my father’s barber shop.  Because of the union he had to work on Saturday, and Saturday was always his busiest day.  For a year or two I was old enough to work for him after synagogue and it was my great honor to do it.  My body remembered the long broom, the repeated movements to catch the fine white hair of the fat old man who laughed a lot, the thick brown-black locks of the young wrestler, the short crumbs of the redheaded boy who always asked to be completely shaved. I remembered the repeated emptying of the metal dustpan, and the sounding of the knocking of the pan against the bin to release the hair.  Of course now the hair is brushed into an electronic wastebin and most of the movements I so enjoyed don’t exist any more.

My payment was a bottle of seven-up from the machine.  

And while I was musing on all this, my coiffeur came out too short again.

 

haircut – 28.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

going home - 28.1.25

Picture this: You have a brother who was taken from his bed one morning to the tunnels of Gaza and has not been heard from again, and you are watching the programs on television of the released Hamas prisoners who might have been the ones pulling your brother out of bed.  And the prisoners are being treated like hostages (welcomed and pitied by the reporters as well as the families)  and your brother will never be heard from again.  How would you feel? 

 

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israeli politics

Poems for Holocaust Day - 27.1.25

here are 2 poems first published in Minyan Mag

 

Absence

“What are you looking for?”

we’d ask Mother, as she rummaged

a cupboard or a drawer or the phone book.

“My lost youth,” she’d answer

absent-mindedly, having forgotten

whatever had occupied her mind

when she first began to search.

 

The bombs, the soldiers, the streets

covered with bodies, the story of the children

smashed against the wall, her babies

washed down the drain in the bathtub in Danzig,

they were always

right there in the cupboard, the drawer,

the book next to the telephone.

Their Tattoos

At the annual picnic of the New Immigrants Society

in the park shelters at Ontario Lake Beach,

while all the children went to swim

I disguised my fear of water and assuaged my boredom

by concentrating on organizing the numbers

exposed to the sun on the refugees’ arms

into some kind of arithmetical sequence.

 

I knew enough to be discreet,

counting the history of their agonies,

without looking directly at the tattoos.

But their arms were bare, exposed,

as they sat telling indiscreet tales

around the samovar and the hill of sugar

and they had nothing to hide

from one another.

 

Now I cannot remember

a single cipher

except the number 1

that looked so much more fundamental

than what we learned in math class.

poems for Holocaust Day – 27.1.25 Read Post »