7
February 6, 2018
Last weeks' murderer of an Israeli has been hunted down and destroyed. yesterday's murderer is still free. so we have what -ten orphans this month so far.
I keep thinking the refugees won't been sent back in the end. But i'm deceiving myself. just like my own parents who were exiled from this country by the British, and sent back to Danzig just before Hitler invaded, these people are being sent to their deaths.
February 7, 2018
As Shakespeare long ago pointed out and apparently our leaders learned by heart, "Be it thy course to busy giddy minds/ With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,/ May waste the memory of the former days."(act 4, scene 3).
The only problem with these lines is that he's talking about England, where the wars are far away, or can be seen coming. Here we have it all around. And we make new enemies every day. Our new close friend, India, for example, has an enemy that is friend to our enemies. So we network our wars.
it is so demoralizing to be sick all winter. i perk up - usually - for important events, but if i don't have to be somewhere i'm back in bed. since the day i got my flu shot.
February 8, 2018
"a fish stinks from its head down" is a common saying around here. Shakespeare also has a lot to say about the great chain of being and how can the people of the government be any good if its leaders are all crooked? moral turpitude is a tired term around here from overuse, but we are in desperate need of a leader who will help us become moral again. I read "No Room for Small Dreams," Shimon Peres' last book, and he was in so many ways the almost perfect leader. the only thing missing was that he couldn't get enough people to believe it.
so i'm going to give you some musical renditions of my stuff. there are more but these are the ones that came to mind when Shlomi on the radio asked for a few songs to put into the program he's doing with me next week.
Karni Postal, Roy Yarkoni, On the Telephone
Ronen Shapira, From Early Morning
Karen Alkalay-Gut, Roy Yarkoni, Cellular Phone
February 9, 2018
The airport here is always crowded. I get it. it's very claustrophobic around here. you can't just get into your car and drive more than a few miles without reaching a border. if you make a mistake and go over the border on the west, you risk getting lynched. if you go south, our army will make sure you don't go over the Gazan border, but you can get within hours to Eilat - the end of the world. in the north, well i've told you about the north a few times, how i look outside my friend's kitchen window and see the hizballah digging.
And we have not gone anywhere for the longest time. 0h for a weekend in london.i know that when i was in the US I didn't care about these things, but then i could drive to manhattan, or niagara falls, or toronto.
can't go to the Sinai - Egypt is finally 'cleaning it up' and i hope they succeed. Not for my prospective vacations but for the security of the region.
yes, there is plenty to do in Tel Aviv. One of the things that gives me a great deal of pleasure is being part of the Daniel Rowing Center. the latest tv program in English is here
February 10, 2018
Storm clouds brewing. Iran is threatening war - definitely threatening. and they can do it too.
It looks like we were ambushed. iran sent a drone into Israel, knew we would chase the source once we'd downed it, and bombarded the sky with rockets. Can you see the Russian chess move here? decoys, waiting for the enemy to enter your home ground, then attacking. it's a typical Russian move from the time of Napoleon. Unfortunately the Americans have left the building long long ago and have no influence.
so they shot down a plane. but at least the pilots got out thank goodness.
And there were 100000 local tourists strolling around the north today, oblivious of anything.
unfortunately the alarms went off all over the north at the same time that plane went down which means there were a hell of a lot of rockets thrown at once. We can deal with a lot, but not all at once.
By the way, the plane fell just outside of Harduf, a moshav pretty much surrounded by Arab villages in the Galilee. what if it had fallen on a village or moshav? And the injured pilots - what if the Arab surgeon hadn't been on duty? Our prayers for their health must include him as well. along with a prayer for peace.