=jplts3
JPost etc. Letters, Collection #3:
==================================================================
To whoever receives this by E-mail (and maybe to a few of the few
who read it on Website):

Again, I am interested in doing some volunteer work on the
analysis/response to anti-Israel media-bias.  I would prefer to
work in a somewhat professional context, where I might learn
something   I could work at least partially at home.  I do not
want to crank out pressure-type responses.  I am particularly
interested in the more refined, subtler  types of anti-Israel and
anti-Jewish bias; eg with academic and religious (especially
eclectic and humanist) communities.

================================================================
I.  AUSTRALIA DEMANDS:  TERRITORY FOR PEACE

---------------------------------------------------------------
                                                               
THE FREE STATE OF STEVE

Once again I am prepared to accept the principle of Territory for
Peace.  I am prepared to make my peace with the state of Israel in
exchange for a bit of turf.  I am prepared to be reasonable; I
mean, we're not talking beachfront condo here.  And I won't need
that much perennial foreign aid, unless the dollar continues to
weaken.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Estimating the number of demonstrators at competing Right--Left
demonstrations at Rabin Square is an inaccurate way to gauge
public opinion.  People with large families living on endangered
interior rural settlements are less free to go our for an evening
in Tel Aviv than people with smaller families who live in the
cities of the coastal plain. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
[ Instant Opress'd of the Earth ]

To the Editor:  Evacuate Herzaliya Now!

The 'Palestinians' should be granted, and allowed to return to,
their traditional homeland.  The only problem is, Philistine turf
is not the dry rocky central highlands, it was the moist rich
coastal alluvial plain.
                                
                                    (Signed):  Morris Herzog, Psd.
     
[The Psd. is intended to be the protagonist of Saul Bellow's book,
Herzog.  Herzog constantly complains about everything, shallowly.
(All Bellow's protagonists are shallow.  With him it ain't (as in
Rohmer or, delicately, Sallinger) an ironic depiction of the
bouregosis; it's his alter-ego.  Pop intellectuality.  The Nobel
Prize in literature is less than objective. ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------
===============================================================

 BUTTERING UP OUR UNCLE SAM:

--------------------------------------------------------------


[On the new-format JP:  from 7 to 6 columns wide] 

At last:  a newspaper I can read on the subway, as soon as they
build a subway.
[printed, JP; 9/03]

----------------------------------

Where do you sell the ends that you trim off your daily newspaper
-- with all those missing articles.

-----------------------
Take 2:

Those ends that you trim off the newspaper each morning -- do you
sell them somewhere -- with all those missing features?

----------------------------------------------------------------

TIME says George Bush, Jr., needs a foreign-policy success, so
let's do our part:  let's evacuate Ariel, but trade it for San
Francisco.

----------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Conspiracy fans, if not the Israel electorate, must eventually
consider the theory that the Rabin assassination was a double-
cross of an attempt by a secret security service to stage a
provocation that would serve as motivation for a declaration of
martial law that would have been used to evacuate the
'territories'.

----------------------------------------------------------------
===============================================================
NETANYAHU'S VOODOO ECONOMICS
----------------------------------------------------------------

DUELING DINOSAURS WITH EPEES

Apparently Netanyahu and Amir Peretzx deserve each other; but we
don't deserve either.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The 90-day Strike (Netanyahu vs. Peretz) ]

Letter to the Editor:
Dear Sir:

I am a consumer.  `I can no longer live without' -- whatever it
was that we didn't get today. (I believe it was my electric bill,
or maybe the sunrise.)  Tell the government to give whoever was
striking whatever they wanted, and we can all go back to normal.

[Ref:  Zurich daily newspaper, featuring each day an illustrated
interview with a lightly-dressed young woman, headed 'Ich kann
nicht mehr leben ohne -- ' ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------
WHILE WORKING ON MY SUN-TAN

Each day, about mid-morning, I climb ot the highest hill on the
Moshav.  I gaze out the distant highway, and watch the litte red
mail-truck drive by. There was a time, the old-timers say, when we
too got mail.  But who believes them.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's review this:  The Finance Minister is leading a move to 
deport about 13,000 foreign workers, 20% of the total, to open up
those jobs for unemployed Israelis who won't take them, because
the jobs are minimum wage, and likely to be under unsafe and
exploitative working conditions.  And then maybe these people can
be cut off unemployment compensation for having refused a job
offer.  That will help balance the budget & strengthen the economy
& support the lifestyle of the well-fed Minister of Finance.

----------------------------------------------------------------
================================================================

[Politically correct avocados, etc.]

Reference:  
cartoon by Oleg, reprinted in Advt, Women in Green, JP 5 Dec '03
Reportedly (Israel English news) this cartoon was pasted on walls
in Jerusalem, whereupon the Mayor ordered it removed (at least
until the question can be properly resolved by Meshiach).  Olmert
is depicted, with Oleg's usual incisive humour, as a harried
bureaucrat in a warehouse, rubber-stamping goods made in the
territories.  The rubber stamp is the notorious Nazi 'Jude'
symbol, the yellow patch which, following medieval tradition, Jews
were again obliged to wear. ]


 The cartoon by Oleg for Women in Green, depicting Olmert's
acquiesence to the incipient EU boycott of goods from post-1967
Israel, seems well within the bounds of democratic process. 
Olmert's decision, in contradiction to previous policy and to the
positions of other government officials, seems less so. 

----------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
 
----------------------------------------------------------------

[ Bushies Rampant ]

=jp031021
Letter to the Editor, Jerusalem Post
From:  Steve Amdur, Mevo Modi'in, 73122 ISrael
Date:  03/10/21 [ 21 Oct '03 ]
Ref:   JP 17 Oct 03, Advt, "Joint Declaration of Jerusalem Summit"

---------------------------------------

SAM HUNTINGTON WOULD BLUSH:

The Declaration of the self-styled 'Jerusalem Summit' (posted JP
17 Oct 03) seems a bit overblown.

Here are a few points in reaction (based only on the Jerusalem
Summit Declaration, not its Website): 

Israel may be the testing-ground for a new paradigm of warfare; a
sort of low-grade but multi-dimensional terrorist subversion of
democracies. 
But if so, the optimal response is not necessarily the sort of
unlimited international military opportunism practiced by the Bush
administration.  ("Fighting fleas with a sledgehammer.")  Nor is
Islamic fundamentalism necessarily the Arche-enemy.

Maybe "civilization itself is in jeopardy" (if only from SPAM &
McDonald's); but it has been at risk since the USA incinerated
Nagasaki, and increasingly more so with nuclear proliferation.

'Civilization' is not exclusive to the USA-dominated bloc. 
'Western civilization', such as it is, lacks the subtlety of
Islamic culture, the depth of African culture, the tradition of
Asian cultures.                       

The role played by 'radical Islam' even in Arab terrorism, let
alone international terrorism, is not clear (USA demonology
notwithstanding).  But it is not an imperial threat comparable to
Nazi-ism, or even to Stalin-ism.       

Islamic fundamentalism, like Christian and Jewish fundamentalism,
is not inherently malign; it is a particular cultural rejection of
the excess of modernity.

To advocate a 'war on radical Islam' [whatever that means] as a
'righteous cause' is conceptually incoherent, politically
simplistic, and ethically irreponsible.  

Sam Huntington would blush, or should.


================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------

=jp031202.txt
Printed, IJ, 5 Dec '03

Letter-to-the-Editor, In Jerusalem: 

Jerusalem should guard its character as the spiritual/cultural
center of the Jewish people.
Arterial automobile traffic should be excluded; unnecessary
automobile traffic should be minimized.  The tranquility  of
religious neighborhoods should be acknowleged and safeguarded;
those few who take offense at the existence of religiosity should
not be permitted to affront it.  
A broad multi-faith range of religious and cultural institutions
should be encouraged, as should inexpensive housing, living, and
recreational facilities. 
Sordid bars and the like should be discouraged.  Parks and other
public areas should be properly monitored.  The Midrahov should
not degrade into a sort of Coney Island. 

------------------------------------------------------------------

=jp281003.txt

To the Editor, Jerusalem Post:

Really, it's too absurd even for Dry Bones:
In their campaign for a subsidized mini-state, the 'Palestinians'
choose a terrorist strategy of killing and maiming randomly
selected groups of Jews.  Israel responds with a tactic of
individually assassinating identified mid-level terrorist
organizers.  And who does the world blame for civilian casualities
-- Israel.                             

=============================================================
[re:  Sharon's vague threat of 'unilateral disengagement']:
               
I seem to have missed something:  Sharon's latest threat is that
if the PLO does not reach a deal with us, we will surrender?

---------------------------------------------------------------

(11 Jan '04)

It was a relatively good week.  Sharon threatened to unilaterally
surrender territory.  And the PLO retaliated by threatening to
unilaterally abandon its campaign for a Palestinian mini-state.

----------------------------------------------------------------

TELL ME PRETTY LIES

The state of Israel wants to give aways Judea-Samaria, but nobody
will sign for it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------

 [ 'Yossi Beilin's
    Peres'  poodle'                       * [Rabin, ca. '93 ]
    Who   are  you?  ]


AND MAYBE A RELIEF PITCHER                                         
 
How about we trade Yossi Beillin for peace.

SENT 22 OCT
------------------------------------------------------------------
Followup to:

To the Editor, Jerusalem Post:
Dear Sir:

I didn't get my Geneva Initiative,

-------------------------------------------------------

Persuant to our prevous correspondence, you will be pleased to
here that I have received my copy of the Geneva Initiative, and
placed it adjacent to the Small Common Room.

Steve Amdur
Moshav Mevo Modi'im

(after Sam'l Jonson:
"I am sitting in the smallest room of the house, with your letter
behind me.  Soon it will be behind me.")

-----------------------------------------------------------------

LET'S BREAK THE ICE

Oh h*ll, I give up, this media-events frenzy is overwhelming;
let's trade Geneva for peace.  The PLO can all go paddle-boating.

---------------------------------------------------------------

=============================================================== =

TURF WARS 2003

Lately, inside the Jaffa Gate to the Old City, I have been subject
to apparent low-grade political harassment disguised as aggressive
begging.  I do not really look like a typical businessman from
Iowa.  
The rather intimidating men who demand my attention claim to be
residents of the Armenian Quarter; that seems unlikely.  
                                                            
SENT
------------------------------------------------------------------


================================================================= 

Two prominent and presumably objective foreign journalists
recently claimed that Israel has engaged in an unprecedented
escalation of the campaign against Palestinians.  By this they
apparently mean that a gentleman can no longer organize homicidal
bombings without himself risking assassination.

[ Reference is to talks given by Connie Mus and some dude from the
BBC at the 2 Dec '03 CJS Media Conference.]

=================================================================

BRECHT WITH A PENTIUM        

  Cyberspace is a "jungle of cities".  As us intelligentsia
(including most of Israel and half Manhattan) move into it, we
need honest guides. For every honest Website and helpful program
there are a hundred hustlers and a dozen predators.  The Post
should run more Internet features.

==================================================================
[ Orthodoxy & the Also-Rans ]

If 'the rabbis' said (e.g. ad absurdum) 'we put pencils in our
ears', many men would do so, and some women demand to do likewise.

[After a remark by RSC ]
==================================================================
                  
UNLESS HE LEARNS TO PLAY FLUTE

Netanyahu may be the only person in the world who could lose an
election to Shimon Peres.  And Peres couldn't be elected rat-
catcher in Hamlin.            

================================================================= 

The USA supports establishing a ("demilitarized") 'Palestinian'
state 9 miles from Israel's coastline; but risked World War III to
contain Cuba, 90 miles from the Florida shore.

================================================================= 

OK OK, NO MORE SWISS JOURNALIST JOKES

A Swiss journalist asks:  how does it feel to live on Arab land.
Try it in Manhattan, or Massachusetts.

==================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe a third-world 'autonomy' will co-exist amicably within the
first-world nation that reluctantly hosts it; but it seems more
likely to survive as an extortionist  pirate mini-state nurturing
low-grade terrorist warfare. .
Israel may be the first nation to try such an experiment.

==============================================================

Sent 15 Dec. '03 

AND I DIDN'T EVEN SEE 'THE MATRIX'

I am confused.  Maybe it's because I don't have a TV.  Somewhere
out there is a virtual reality, in which we are a grim, oppressvie
state.  And most of my friends from the old days are trapped in
it, as involuntary spectators.                                     
                       

==================================================================
15 Dec '03
Draft

JACK ARMSTRONG MEETS THE WARM FUZZIES

Maybe George Bush, Jr., backed by Slippery Jim Baker, would be
better for Israel than Howard Dean.  But that's not self-evident. 
And could the world afford it?

[Ref:  'Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy' was a radio show in
the USA 1940's, if memory serves ]
================================================================

15 Dec '03

RESTORE THE CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY:

So OK, we're all agreed; 'two-state' is Out; 'one-state' is In.
So now we're only arguing over voter-registration criteria for
national elections.

================================================================

15 Dec '03
Draft

In that Remedia scandal, if anyone still cares, did anyone ask if
the unexpected absence of Vitamin B-1 in a soy-based baby formula
was due to the use of genetically-modified soy products?

================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
17 Dec '03
Not sent

MEANWHILE THE ULTRA-HAWKS WERE EATING NAILS

The general who had Saddam taken alive may turn out to have had
more impact on U.S. and world history than anyone since Slippery
Jim Baker stole the Florida election.

==================================================================

17 Dec '03
Not sent

YOU'VE GOT MY VOTE

George Bush, Jr.'s capture of Saddam Hussein is the greatest feat
of courage and initiative by an American leader since Rudolph
Guilliani single-handely rousted a bum in Times Square.
     We can't wait to hear where put his "weapons of mass
destruction". 

[ Remark:  Recall that Sadaam's sons were killed in a reported
shootout with the U.S. Army ]

==================================================================
=================================================================

Ref:  Re: In Jerusalem, 5 Dec '03:  Letter, Walter Zanger  

Response:
[printed, IJ, 19 Dec '03; with minor edit.]

editor's elision  noted in {squiggly-braces}

I really was shocked to find in your 5 Dec '03 a Letter {which
included a remark about R. Shlomo Carlebach} that was false,
libelous, and ought not have been published.

--------------------------------------------------

Notes:
[ I deal more extensively with this issue elsewhere; but why give
a libel free air-play.  I have/will forward this material to the
Chair of the RSC Foundation (and anyone else properly concerned); 
it's the problem for which the RSC Foundation has been waiting for
10 years. 
My response was printed with several similar others, maybe better,
including one from Lilien Ritchie and a Miriam Katz [ whom I've
not yet met ] followd by an inept last-word comeback from the
[presumably Assistant] Editor, that in some respects really was
libelous [ for publication of a libelous letter can be defended on
the ground that the publisher did not affirm the statement, but
affirmed only that it was stated. 
I've since glanced for the first time at the 1998 Lilith article
that seems to me to have been the sole source for both Letter and
Editor's note in defense of that letter.  I think that close
internal analysis [ I can't attempt external
confirmation/disconfirmation] could show some very questionable
features in the source of that article; of that maybe later, &
elsewhere.]
It being by chance the week of the parsha of Joseph's flight from
Potiphar's wife, I wrote in response the following, not printed:

------------------------------

Letter-to-the-Editor, The Jerusalem Post 'In Jerusalem'
[Re:  Editor's note, IJ 19 Dec '03 et prec.]

Last weekend's Post carries a Note which cannot but send tremours
through the hearts of the usually fairer sex.  A hitherto
exceptionally well-regarded gentleman of the Judaic persuasion is
said to be accused by a Mrs. Portiphar, wife of a prominent
butcher, of what might at best be termed inappropriate romantic
importunity, if not precisely harassment, molestation, nor wolf-
like predation.  However, usually reliable sources suggest that
these claims need not be taken at face value.  Such canards seem
to surface annually, and we have reason to suppose that things may
yet turn out reasonably well for the young man in question.        
  

Ephraims Rufus-Leaky, Psd.*
Mevo Modi'im

*[Pseudonymn, Steve Amdur, Mevo Modi'in, 73122 IS]                


------------------------------------------

I'd add now only:  there seems a 2-pronged plot (by the Zeitgeist,
no doubt; no other being could do it) to freeze-dry RSC:
The fan-club has, at Modi'in  (despite BZ's efforts with his CD et
al to keep the vitality) packaged his nusach for Shabat visitors;
the Foundation cuts publication of his teachings to a trickle, and
those mostly very short excerpts, neatly edited, almost pareve. 
(Outside the loop, Ziv Ritchie offers longer verbatim teachings.) 
And on the other side:  the -- well, 'anti's' -- seem to 'damn
with faint praise' in order to retake the high ground; saying, he
hugged the zaftig, but death redeems from sin so we forgive him
and will republish a properly shlocked set of teachings, clean as
a turnpike restroom.  (Quite Christian of them.)
 
Well, I would attend his ostensibly concerts whenever he was in
town (and RSC once said, to a group a Naharayim, RN told me:  I'm
not here to entertain you, I'm here to fix your souls), and often
stand and wait when he entered to be recognized [and Alev Dilber
once said, everyone wants to be seen; some folks can tidy up your
mind with a 'hello'] and what I recall is personal greetings, not
physical contact, much less (cows defend us!) of a heterosexual
bent.
Ah, neo-Puritanism.
Oh well.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
==================================================================

GET =jplt4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A BETTER BOONDOGGLE:                  
    
Israel should immediately discontinue work on that atrocious and
ruiniously expensive misnamed 'security fence', and instead open
negotiations for a small portion of the Great Wall of China. 
Given the going rate for Chinese labour hereabouts, they could
probably deliver. 

----------------------------------------------------------------

Imagine how different the world might now be had Al Gore been
recognized as the duly elected President.  The USA wold not now be
held in the international disdain provoked by Bush Jr.'s pose of
know-nothing provincialism.  The 'rogue states' of Afghanistan and
Iraq might without war have been contained as superficially
genteel tyrannies. And some steps would have been taken to
acknowlege and confront the impending global ecologic crisis.  Of
course Israel mgiht now be managed by Holiday Inn on behalf of a
Saudi-led consortium; but the U.S. economy would be in much better
shape.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

To the Editor, Jerusalem Post                            

The foreign press hols Israel, not to a 'double-standard', but to
a utopian standard.  The Post's more intellectually fashionable
competitors, from excellent motives maybe, do likewise.
                         
Variant:

Israel is held, in the virtual reality of foreign news media, not
to a double-standard, but to a utopian one.

---------------------------------------------------------------
[On talk from the Bush administration of war with Syria ]
                
Why should Israel fight what for George Bush would be just another
fantasy war.

----------------------------------------------------------------
                                        
In choosing the civilians of Jerusalem as the present primary
target in this ethically lopsided war of attrition, the coalition
of ostensibly pro-'Palestinian' terrorists are trying to destroy
the spiritual/cultural center of Judaism.  What the world sees as
a minor territorial dispute may be the first move in a campaign of
religious/cultural if not physical genocide. 

---------------------------------------------------------------

If the Cold War is really over, why is Israel now acting like a
(reluctant) client state of the USA?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Some way must be found to let the poor use plastic cash -- at
least debit cards.  Most internet subscription and service is now
restricted to it.  It's bad enough to have an economic divide; it
must not become a socio-economic divide, with the poor excluded
from a large segement of contemporary culture.

--------------------------------------------------------------

(Sent, JP (under title: Seize the High Ground, Uncle Sam is with
you); IHT.                                       

[ Note: It was annoying to see that the IHT promptly printed a
letter from someone in Haifa supporting that head-scarf ban.  
I mean, in the real world, last time I visited, proposed
regulations, much less legislation, forbidding Jews the right to
wear kippot -- and on the preposterous ground that those pretty
little tea-pot--holders are intended as prosetelization -- would
provke unified, forceful opposition from the organized Jewish
community. ]

Although one ought not expect too much from a nation that invented
the french-fried potato 
One ought not expect undue sensitivity from a nation whose
philsophy of secularism starts with the guillltoine.
But Jacque Chirac's crusade against schoolgirls' headscarves is
exceptionally silly.  It is also a violation of the human right to
freedom of religious expression and to freedom of sexual decorum.

----------------------------------------------------------------
================================================================

Sam Orbaum wrote with wit, warmth, charm and courage.  He is
missed.

[Notes:  The Post has had a small number of good writers
(although, unlike HaAretz, no dreadful ones, except maybe Gillon
and sometimes that Alex chap).  Matt Nevitsky was one; though he
seemed to have lost spirit after the first Gulf War; maybe he ran
away from the assumed target area and couldn't forgive himself. 
Orbaum, though less witty (tho his, 'on the tip of Q-tip for
pricking your pupik' can almost stand with Maureen Dowd's  'an
Armageddon of dirty linen') could be warmer, especially when
writing of his somewhat unplanned triplets and their dog. ]  And
the frum woman who first wrote 'Out There' in the late '90's.  Of
course Dvora ben Shaul wrote well; but she had something to say
(which, for a contemporary journalist, is almost cheating).

-----------------------------------------------------------------


We should not be drawn into the media-games set up by our
opponents.  
     I recall an osensibly sci-fi short story, wehre the news-
media combat attempted terrorist hijackings by making a joke out
of them, with the studied disdain and off-hand mockery that are
stock-in-trade of establishment anchormen.  The terrorists are
thus denied the dignity of being cast as villains; and instead
depicted as inept bozo's.
    Humor has a part to play, in the dimension of media,  in a
democratic nation's multi-dimensional battle against terrorist
warlords.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
'self-styled Palestinians'

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"ONE NATION, INDIVISIBLE"              
           
The USAn fought the then-bloodiest war in history rather than
return independence to geographically discreet states of its own
citizens, which had volunarily confederated and united.  And now
the present US government faults Israel for not granting autonomy
to interspersed enclaves of Palestinians.  

------------------------------------------------------------------

One should not compare, and if possible not even state, the
numbers of Israelis and Palestinians killed.  This is not a
baseball game.

---------------------------------------------------------------
To JP:

Your new yuppie format has dropped the Islamic date from the
masthead.  That's a discourtesy, and a lack:  it's often important
to know the dates of religious holidays.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Sent to metro@jpost.com  re: Metro Friday 19 Dec '03
Printed 26 Dec '03  as noted                   

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM TOURIST CLASS [Ed: Not Haut Cusine ]

Can't say how much I relished your Review of that uniquely Bat Yam
Body Sushi Bar.  Only the Japanese could have re-invented
cunilingus [Editor's edit: 'a certain sexual practice'] , and only
Israelis would have bought it.

----------------------------------
MORE PAGE 2 NEWS:

To titillate the literate:  a recent Letter (IJ 9 Jan '04) stated
that "only the Japanese could have re-invented" what the Editor
elided & alluded to as 'a certain sexual practice'. 
It is:

   (a) abstinence
or (b) the midnight refrigerator raid
or (c) perusing the Sunday New York Times' 1950's lingerie ads
or (d) none of the above.

---------------------------------------------------------------
[response to IJ Letter; not sent ]                                 


AMD WE SPEAK ENGLISH WITHOUT AN ACCAINT

I like the USA.  It's got lots of beautiful country.
I like American food, eg Indian pudding and burritos.
But it's a shame about the Bushies.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The possession and sale of little ammounts of marijuana and
hashish  should be legalized; it's a savoury reasonably harmless
conscousness-enhancing natural product comparable to alcohol and
caffein; better and much safer than commerically adulterated 
tobacco.  And the sale of opiates should be faciliated, optimally
at pharmacies:  freedom from pain is a human right, recognized
(Cf. 'Lot') in the Bible.
                                                   
-----------------------------------------------------------------
For In Jerusalem, et al:  maybe one of the frumie mags --
Connections -- editor@thecapitalnews.com
[ not sent ]

Visiting Kotel Plaza for the lighting of Chanuka, I was
disappointed to see that six Holocaust memorial torches  placed by
Rav Goren above his yeshiva were not lit.  Each torch is topped
with a silver-colour Magen David; those should be polished, to
boldly reflect the sun by day.

--------------------------------------------------------------
          
[response to an article on shooting a demonstrator at the Security
fence:  Sent via www.jpost.com

First of all, that mis-named 'security fence' should be moved back
to the Jordan River.  Relatively normal nations build fences on
their borders, not through the middle of their own country.

It's not yet reasonably clear to me from media reports what
happened.  Maybe a few inexperienced reservists misjudged the
situation and yielded to panic.

If, as initially reported (Israel radio English news), this was
essentially a non-violent (albeit 'militant') media-oriented
symbolic civil disobedience protest -- (eg, using a pair of
pliers(!), rather than bolt-cutters, bulldozers, and explosives,
against a wannabe Berlin Wall -- then the military's use of force,
let alone lethal force, is entirely unjustifiable.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
As I recall from the USA '60's: non-violent media-oriented protest
demonstrations, including those based on civil disobedience, have
several rules.  The first is that the authorities (police and/or
military) are notified in advance; that hopefully forestalls
police/military over-reaction.  The next is that the civil
disobedience is merely symbolic:  eg, the CNVAniks who paddled
kyaks out into Groton harbour to climb on board a just-launched
nuclear submarine did not seriously intend to capture the vessel. 
And finally, a demonstrator who commits civil disobedience should
be prepared for arrest/imprisonment, to 'bear witness' to his/her
beliefs.  A quaint notion nowadays, I suppose. 
    Incidentally, 'non-violent' is usually taken to mean: 
refraining from inflicting harm upon human (if not all sentient)
beings.  Assaulting a fence or police barricade, without intending
to attack those on the other side of it, merely  characterizes a
demonstration as 'militant'.

------------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================

It seems to be a, like, 'meta-legal principle', even in
totalitarian societies, that 'sins of omission' necessarily (ie,
'logically') ain't criminal.  (In contradistinction, 'sins of
commission' may be criminal.)  Israel's very selectively applied
law against 'failure to prevent a crime' , like the USA's Fugitive
Slave Act (1863), thus seem violations of the essentially
unwritten Constitution.
(Incidentally, Unanumo noted, in Tragic Sense of Life, that an
unenforced law is like a loaded gun.)

----------------------------------------------------------------

BATTLE OF THE WOMBS, TAKE 2                       

I'm not sure that Israel should entrust its salvation to a
demographic competition.  I mean, what if 18 years & 9 months from
now they all pierce their belly-buttons and vote Shinui?

[the phrase 'Battle of the wombs' was first coined, as far as I
know, by Lynn Gottlieb at a Shabbaton with R. Zalman outside
Philadelphia, mid-70's; in reference, of course, to the story of
Leah and Rachel in Genesis. ]
---------------------------------------------------------------

This new idea of opting for a two-state solution to forestall a
demographic crisis has great potential.  The USA should
immediately grant autonomy to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
and possibly the State of Vermont, in order to enhance the chance
of continued employment for George Bush, Jr.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================

To the JP; not yet Sent.

It is not obvious that what Israel most needs now is a
kulturkampf.  A bit less rant & rave about 'The Left' etc. would
be a constructive gesture.   

----------------------------------------------------------------

Re:  Letter-to-the-Editor (Glaubach-Gal, Bundaki (LA), Arch.
Stallings (NYC)) JP 23 Dec 03

The 'Moonies' -- that is, the Unification Church of the self-
annointed 'Reverend' Sun Myung Moon of South Korea -- are
apparently a 'cult-like organization':   that is, a group in which
individual freedom of action, expression, and even thought is
subordinate  to a single leader; with a system of belief such that
any possible question can be answered within that system.  They
may also be a crypto-facist organization, with some politically
rather powerful allies.  Comparison with Lyndon LaRouche's group,
in the USA '70's, might be useful.

================================================================= 
----------------------------------------------------------------

Extention of the Western Wall Plaza 'davening area', characterized
by a 'vertical' seperate-sex barrier, may be unnecssary and a
boondoggle -- the area is filled only on special days; and a job
that could have been done in a day has turned into an slow ugly
disruption which has inched along for months.   But the
Conservative Movement's opposition to it is churlish and
disingenuous.  The Western Wall Plaza is on most days sparsely
filled, and the extention takes only a very small part of that
usually empty space.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

It is unhelpful to speak of the PLO/Hamas 'killing Israeli
civilians', as if intentionally killing and maiming Israeli young
men and women while they are in uniform, guarding the people of
Israel, is not as much a crime against human decency.

----------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
	

Continuing a rather old tradition of ostensibly attempting to save
the Jews from themselves ( before, perhaps, the afternoon's
scheduled entertainment, at a venue in this world or the next, of
an auto-da-fe), Brad Pitt & Jennifer Anniston, a most fashionable
Hollywood couple in the gentile (and genteel) analogue of show
business, write to their legions of followers:                     
    
"The last few years of conflict mean that yet another genereation
of Israelis and Palestinians will grow up in hatred.  We cannot
allow that to happen."   

"That's cute and sweet" but it presupposes a false equivalence:
I've noticed almost no instances of hatred of Palestinians, Arabs,
nor Muslims by Jewish Israelis.
                                                    
[Ref:  RSC would often say, referring to one or another innovation
in religious observance, "it's cute and sweet, but it's not
Yiddishkeit."


-----------------------------------------------------------------

For a nation busy prostituting much of its security and economy to
the USA, Israel is under-equipped with English-language electronic
interfaces.                      

---------------------------------------------------------------

Sent JP, IHT 29 Dec '03

Letter-to-the-Editor:
Re:  Pollard Case
Date of article:  14 Nov '03

In a recent procedural decision in the Pollard case, U.S. District
Court Judge Thomas Hagan denied Pollard the right see the
documents upon which his (exceptionally severe) sentence was
based, on the ground that  'he has presented no no credible
evidence that the current president is any more willing to grant
him clemency that the previous three presidents who declined to do
so.' 

This is a real Catch-22:  You can't have it because it wouldn't do
you any good even if you did have it.       

This judicial decision is blatantly incorrect; it abrogates the
rights both of the President and the petitioner.

It pre-empts and pre-judges the Presidential right of clemency, in
blocking the President from the opportunity to read a thoroughly
researched and reasoned appeal.

And it violates the explicit constitution stipulation that 'the
people [individually as well as collectively ] shall have the
right to petition for redress of grievances':  it denies a
prisoner the right to make a properly-based and due-process appeal
for clemency to the remaining senior authority.

================================================================

Draft:  To IHT
           
BECAUSE HE'S NOT BUSH

Who is this chap Howard Dean who keeps getting his name in the
papers, if not his ideas.  And why should he be elected President
of the USA?

---------------------------------------------------------------

Sent to In Jerusalem

The Mayor has the right to hire as many deputy mayors as he deems
fit; provided, of course, that they meet the City's operating
expenses out of their salaries.

----------------------------------------------------------------

To the Editor, JP
Not yet sent

It is not obvious that what Israel most needs now is a
Kulturkampf.  A bit less rant & rave about 'The Left' etc. would
be a constructive gesture.

---------------------------------------------------------------

For a nation busy prostituting much of its security and economy to
the USA, Israel is under-equipped with English-language electronic
interfaces.

----------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================

ESSAY-LENGTH LETTERS; AND SKETCHES FOR LETTERS;

----------------------------------------------------------------

There are some unwritten rules about hustling American tourists
and the galutz Jewish community for tzdaka, if not charity, on the
individual but especially the organizational level, that maybe
need reconsideration.

Tzdaka (Cf. Gr. dike, eg Heraklitus: justice as restitution,
restoring balance) is necessarily justified and hence obligatory. 
Charity (fr. Latin caritas, from the heart) is compassionate, even
merciful.    Tzdaka is necessarily bounded, limited [QUOTE FROM
KITZER:  let him not give more than etc. ]; charity is in
principle unlimited.  Tzdaka is a Jewish concept (eg Marx);
charity is a Christian notion. (Although R. Shlomo Carlebach is
said to have practiced charity.)         

The neo-conservatives, (sophmoric, shallow, class-ist, and self-
pleading as they seem), espouse tzdaka; the careful delimitation
of aid to the poor.  

That has certain implications.  The poor, and their organizational
advocates, can't demand money from the rich merely because the
rich have more.  We can't, or should not, feed too much off
'liberal guilt' and 'galutz guilt'.  The rich need their money
too; they have a part to play in building up civilization (
although most do so in rather vulgar, inefficient, and self-
flattering style).      

As so clearly perceived and precisely stated in the USA
Declaration of Independence, 'all men [ people ] are created equal
rights ... among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.'  As a corallary, a person, regardless of his merit, 
is entitled to minimal food, lodging, clothing, and essential
medical care.  And so he can claim those of the rich.

But beyond those basic needs, there are other needs (which Maslow
arranges in a hierarchy).  And the ethical obligation of the
better-off and the more powerful to satisfy those needs would seem
to become increasingly discretionary.  Following Maslow, once
might ask:  will satifaction for such a person of such a need
enhance his/her self-actualization.  So those who solicit tzdaka
have an obligation to show either that the request aid is
essential, or, if it is discretionary, that it would be well-
spent.

Fund-raising organizations should adhere to standards of financial
responsibility, accountability and transparency required of
(although often evaded by) capitalist business and democratic
government.  Money intended for clients, stockholders, and the
public should not be dissipated on staff salaries, bonuses,  and
perquisites.  Overhead should be kept down to the minimal
functional requirements. 

=================================================================
THE FOLLOWING, ALTHOUGH IT INCLUDES A Letter-to-the-Editor, is not
intended for general circulation.  It relates to my work with RSC
materials.  

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

 =================================================================

Generic Complimentary close:

Holding my breath in anticipation of your prompt reply,
I remain, Sir, your most obedient servant
(which don't say much for you)

etc.

================================================================

Complimentary saluation for use in replying to unsolicited
correspondence:  
( attributed, doubtless accurately, to Dr. Samuel Jonson)

Dear Sir:

I am sitting, with your letter before me, in the smallest room of
the house.  Soon it will be behind me.

=================================================================
SKETCHES:

The EU Report on Anti-Semitism is in one way good news:  in
finding that the recent increase in anti-Jewish 'incidents' was
primarily due, not to a spontaneous increase in anti-Semitisim,
but  to agitation and instigation from young radical Arab &/or
Islamists, and to radical non-Islamic rightists, it indicates that
mainstream non-Islamic Europe has not (as was and is feared)
become more anti-Jewish. 

The Report was intially suppressed, with a methodologic excuses
(which likely would not stand up well to analysis), butteressed
with an excuse of political correctness:  that it was defamatory
to members of Islam to conclude that some of them were responsible
for attacks on Jews. [ As Sarah Honig pointed out in the JP; that
is political correctness reduced to absurdity. ]
                       
===============================================================
Sketch for a response to a Letter-to-the-Editor in the IHT, ca.
10/'03

A recent correspondent argues, plausibly, that a 'right of return'
should be limited those (or their descendents, tho presumably for
a limited number of generations) who have been more or less forced
to leave their land of birth.

A few points in response:

Setting criteria for admission and citizenship is considered a
national perogative of a sovereign nation.             

Of course the Israel Law of Return intentionally though belatedly
mirrors the Nazi genocide; had Israel then existed, the European
Jewish people and living culture might have been saved.
                                                            
The religious culture of Judaism, like that of aboriginal
cultures, is interwoven with a particular land/ecology.
Jewish religion outside the land of Israel is 2-dimensional.

=================================================================
[response to a feature in the JP, ca. 11/'03                       
 
As _____points out, Zionism and humanism both presuppose the
meaningfulness of life; and both tend (in the perspective of
adherents) to take a teleologic standpoint.  
Post-Zionism and 'post-humanism'   tend to presuppose an anarchic
viewpoint.  But the persuasiveness of post-Zionism stems from an
unacklowleged Marxist teleologic standpoint: the notion that, as a
consequence of some sort of cultural inevitability,  there has
been an evolution through and past Zionism.  So in that sense --
by presupposing the deterministic inevitabilty of meaninglessnesss
- post-Zionism is diabolic.   Except for those who can take refuge
in the notion of international solidarity of the working class.
                           
[N.B.:  Cf. the Buddhist principle 'I take refuge in the sangha.'
(community of believers).

==================================================================

jrep@report.co.il
19 Nov '03
[Sent; some subsequent additions)

Gershon Gorenberg (JR 17 Nov '03) makes several interesting but
questionable assumptions.

First is to give ethics ontologic priority, if not exclusivity;
disregarding a 'transcendental spirituality' (eg traditional
religious Judaism) that embeds religiosity in a particular
geography/ecology. 

Second is to presuppose that the events of history occur in a
closed system.  "If only we had accepted their demands, all those
lives would have been saved."  
     And of course such would have been the case -- all other
things being equal.  But in real-world contexts (unlike laboratory
experiments) 'all other things' never remain equal.  Had Israel
accepted the PLO demands, it is also possible that the outcome
might have been disasterous, not utopian.   
     As Robert Frost observed ironically:  "I took the road less
traveled -- and that has made all the difference." 

[ I subsequently developed the philosophic aspects of these
points; I'll try to dig that out and post it elsewhere. ]

===============================================================
Mevo Modi'in 13 Jan '04 (19 Tevet).
SEND IT TO BED FRED
===============================================================



